Picture it: You’ve spent all day taking care of your clients, your boss, and your coworkers. All you want to do when you come home is rip off your clothes, rinse off your hellish commute, and jump your lover’s bones. You walk in, let out a heavy sigh, set down your purse, and zoink! There’s your partner on the sofa with one hand down their pants and the other slamming their laptop shut. Betrayal! Horror! Disgust! They’ve taken their own hands to their own private parts with the help of online pornography! You think, How could they? What did I do wrong? Is this the end for us?
Dear reader, it is probably not. In fact, you might be better for it.
Your bodies are different
Even if you’ve become one flesh through holy matrimony, your partner’s body still belongs to them. As such, they have preferences you will never understand, like that disgusting brand of mayonnaise they insist on buying. But you both like sandwiches, right? And
you can agree that sandwiches without some sort of lubricating medium are the worst? Buy your brand and their brand, make lunch, and you’ll see that you can enjoy differently-lubricated sandwiches together in peace. The sandwiches are sex.
Porn takes the pressure off both of you
Tell me there hasn’t been one time when you were exhausted and didn’t feel like jiggling your horny partner’s junk. I dare you. Props if you’ve got forearms of steel, but you’re not lacking if you don’t! We ask ourselves to be therapists, secretaries, fashion consultants, and unendingly ravenous sluts for our partners. Isn’t it nice to outsource some of those services to others? What’s so different about orgasms, especially given that neither their favorite porn stars nor their favorite hand is going to give them (or you) an STI?
You might learn something
Many of us watch porn all by ourselves. What would happen if we began to use porn as an opportunity to share our whole selves with our partners? After all, porn stars have given us a jump-start by sharing their naughty bits and tricks. Maybe we’ll see a fun new position to try, or a kink we didn’t know we had. Remember when sex was about discovery and fun?!
It’s not always fun to learn that our sexual needs and gifts don’t exactly complement our partners’. But when we lean into our differences, we give ourselves permission to be imperfect matches, and we lay the groundwork for intimacy and exploration that’s rooted in the humanity we share with our better halves.
Next time you catch your partner with their hands down their pants, sit down next to them to see if you can get off to it, too. Maybe you’ll love it, maybe you’ll hate it — either way, you might find you’re closer for it!
