|
By Andrea
Nemerson DEAR ANDREA: I've been with my boyfriend for 10 years. He's always liked pornography, but recently I found about 30 porn DVDs in our basement. I don't expect sex three times a day anymore, but I'd like it at least three times a week. However, we only do it about five times a month. This really bothers me now that I found out he regularly jacks off to movies. He says it's normal, but I feel like it hurts our sex life because he'd rather jack off than be with me. Should I try to get over it, or do we need to work this out? Love, Replaced Dear Place: Everyone talks about "normal," but nobody agrees on what it means, at least when it comes to sex. It can mean common, average, not harmful, or socially accepted, but I'd have to agree with your boyfriend that watching porn is normal by almost any measure. Having sex five times a month is also normal for longtime couples, and pretty damned good for couples who have been together 10 years, but who cares what everyone else does? How normal is watching porn? If we take normalcy to mean how most people do it, then I point out we're talking about an industry that grosses as much as $10 billion a year. Obviously your boyfriend, dedicated fan though he may be, isn't supporting the industry all by himself. He is one of millions of satisfied customers. A few people take "Is it normal?" to mean "Does it occur in the natural world?," yet there's a strong undercurrent of "Is it natural?" running through our way of judging which sex acts will send you straight to hell. Certainly the specter of unnatural acts still hangs over public discussion of perfectly normal things like homosexuality and anal sex. Oral sex was only recently abolished from a number of state statutes as an unnatural act. Partisans are forever countering accusations of what's natural with examples from nature, such as the lifelong monogamy of many birds or bonobos that will screw anything. A dangerous tactic, since for every placidly monogamous prairie vole, there is a gang-raping duck (seriously, look it up). What does your boyfriend watching porn have to do with drake-on-duck violence? A study was recently published in the Current Biology journal, and it certainly did not set out to concoct an apologia for porn based on the viewing habits of rhesus macaques. It explored the way that monkeys value "social information," in this case pictures of high- and low-status individuals and of female perinea. It's autism research, really, but it had the slightly bizarre side effect of informing us that boy monkeys will "sacrifice fluid" (not what it sounds like; it means the guys will forgo a glass of fruit juice) to see pictures of high-ranking monkeys and female monkeys' rear ends. And that they had to be bribed to get them to look at the uninspiring mugs of loser monkeys nobody likes. In other words, monkeys will pay to look at movie stars and porn. So where does this leave you and your monkey, I mean, boyfriend? As I was saying before, your boyfriend's habit is normal, but you still don't have to like it. Unfortunately, you will likewise not like what happens when you continue to accuse him of preferring solo sex to making sweet love to you. You have a legitimate gripe, but do not whine. Do not bitch. Do not issue any sort of ultimatum (never a good idea, really). Ignore the porn and concentrate on your boyfriend. If you tell him he is starving you of sex while wasting all his mojo on Shaved Blondes in the basement, he will bristle and sulk. If you tell him (or better yet, show him) that you're ready and willing to climb him like a monkey, he'll be sacrificing fluid for you in no time. Love, Andrea E-mail Andrea Nemerson at andrea@altsexcolumn.com.
|
