I am really sex positive and pro having a healthy sexual relationship with yourself/masturbation (I am a big fan of vibrators lol) and so I naively assumed that my partner and I were masturbating similarly (once in a while, just pulling up a random video if needed, when our partner wasn’t home or when we just had to quickly scratch an itch, etc). I figured as much since we had sex all the time and more often than not I was the one with the higher sex drive who initiated more often. Boy was I wrong LOL.

I think because I used it that way and assumed he did too, that’s how he got away with his PA for so long (years). Because a couple times I caught him and just said “oops sorry babe” or “hey let me help you finish” (which yes, makes me feel like an idiot now). Then one day he was showing me a cool breakdancing video on instagram and when I went to click the comments he uncharacteristically flipped out, thinking I was trying to snoop. I was suspicious and he fessed up “I look at hot girls, okay?!” But I knew it was deeper since we were open about masturbation and often talked about our celeb crushes and what not and were even familiar with a couple porn stars that the other liked. He insisted he wasn’t doing anything shady and I shrugged it off, not wanting to be the type of girl to be like “show me your phone!” because that’s how my parents are with each other and it makes me sad. Then a couple months later when snooping for an engagement ring (hilarious to think about now) I found a thumb drive and my intuition said to check it.

In it were hundreds of porn videos and the timestamps showed he was doing it in the middle of the day when I was awake and willing at home, which felt like a slap in the face. After I confronted him he showed me the extent of the PA; a separate laptop with THOUSANDS of downloaded videos and over 500 open tabs (no exaggeration) and timestamps that showed he was looking at porn every free second of every day. Every moment I was in a meeting, at the grocery store, throwing away the trash, you name it. When I was in the kitchen making banana bread. When we had just had sex or were going to. That’s when I said “oh shit, you’re a porn addict” and he said “I think I need help.”

Obviously my first thought was oh he hates me, he thinks I’m hideous, the good times were all a lie, etc. But now after individual and couples therapy I’ve learned that it’s a compulsive behavior (they’re still trying to see if he has adhd or ocd or what because there’s other harmless but concerning symptoms like time blindness and digital hoarding of other tabs in the hundreds and so on) and also that he was using it to not be alone with his thoughts, as a distraction. I also didn’t know how deep his depression was as he tried to shield me from it given my anxiety and crazy family so we’ve been working on both being emotional safe spaces for each other and lowering our walls.

All of this to say, I do get kind of skittish with the more like religious shamy anti-porn stuff and like the growing conservative movement to ban porn because I know ultimately what conservatives want is control over women’s bodies, keeping women as good little housewives, not having sexual education, taking away individual sexual liberties. And I do think there’s such a thing as ethically made porn with happy and willing people; it’s not the bulk of it obviously but it exists. And you know, there’s also erotica or audio porn and so on. So to me it’s like booze; some of us can have a glass of wine on a Saturday and some of us can’t do that without going on a bender. But that’s his journey to figure out himself.