Here’s yesterday’s porn column. Hope you enjoy.
ONE MAN’S PORN IS ANOTHER MAN’S POISON – Paige Nick
My friend Riaan is in big trouble with his wife. He was at rugby when she called and said he needed to leave immediately and get home fast, she was not happy. He wasn’t either, his team was winning. He wracked his brains all the way home. He wasn’t having an affair so that wasn’t it and he was almost positive he’d put the toilet seat down.
His wife of three years had discovered his stash of pornography and she was furious, betrayed, devastated. My friend was confused; pornography has been part of his life for as long as he can remember, he wasn’t sure what she was so mad about. He’d never mentioned it before because, well it was perfectly normal and nothing worth mentioning. For him.
As you no doubt already know, your average woman has a very different relationship to pornography than your average man. I say average here, because not every single man enjoys pornography. Bwahahahahaa I kid, I kid, of course they do. Not every single woman has a problem with pornography either. Some don’t mind if their partners indulge, there are lots of couples who enjoy it together, and many women have perfectly healthy relationships of their own with Youporn, Massage Rooms, youngbucks.com, or whatever other portal they regularly delete from their cache and browser history.
But for Riaan’s wife, it was a betrayal of monstrous proportions. It was as if he’d been cheating on her with a great number of large jugged, self-tanned and well-waxed women throughout their relationship. She asked him over and over why he needed those other women, isn’t she beautiful enough, sexy enough, booby enough? Poor guy, nothing can save him now. It would have been better for him if she’d found the dead body he buried in the basement.
Is secretly looking at pornography while you’re in a committed relationship cheating? I must warn you that I honestly don’t know the answer here, so there’s no need to skim to the bottom of this column looking for it (and for permission to continue reading loslyf – for the articles of course). My gut says no, but I suppose keeping secrets from the person you’re supposed to be sharing your life with is an emotional betrayal of sorts. That being said, I’m a firm believer that we shouldn’t tell our partners everything. Honey I’m going to get my upper lip waxed, and effective bowel movements are secrets I’m all for hiding under the bed together with your gimp mask and dodgy porn.
After a six-year marriage, another friend found three hardcore gay bondage porn magazines under the driver’s seat of her husband’s car. That will tip you off to a person’s sexual preferences. She says apparently it’s a very common place for men to stash their porn. (Right now hundreds of men around the country are racing their wives to the garage.) Women hide their porn too. Doesn’t everyone put it in folders on their hard drive called ‘Tax Admin’, ‘Visa Application’ or ‘Lease Agreement’?
Although many men will say that women really don’t have to hide theirs, men would be only too happy for their partner to indulge. Oh my goodness, would they be happy! In fact a large percentage of men’s porn (not the hardcore gay bondage stuff of course) involves men walking in on their wives or girlfriends (or in some movies both) watching or taking part in porn.
But that’s probably one of those things that only works in theory. In practice, I suspect a man would feel equally betrayed, self conscious and short on esteem if he discovered that his wife regularly got it on to the image of some young, well-built stud with a nine inch spirit level a tool belt.
I think the only solution here is not an honorable one, or one with a particularly high moral thread count – have a wank bank of choice if you want, but whatever you do, just make damn sure nobody finds it.
I was originally a bit miffed when I discovered my man of many, many years had a regular porn website he visited. But is computer illiterate and does not know how to hide or delete browser history. I say nothing and so what. Nothing has changed and if he wanted it to be a joint thing he would have mentioned it. So he is happy and so am I. C’est la vie.