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I Feel Insecure When My Boyfriend Watches Porn
Porn triggers my body dysmorphia, anxious attachment, and existential dread
Let me say this upfront — I’m not anti-porn. But I am anti-my-boyfriend-using-porn.
It makes me feel un-sexy. It makes our relationship feel less intimate. Like he’s allowing others to intrude into our sexual bond.
And that makes me resent him when we’re having sex. When I look into his eyes, I feel like he’s not seeing me. I’m some interchangeable object without my own unique allure. I can’t control the thoughts that go through my head. Thoughts like “I bet you’d be more turned on if you were with that porn star you always watch.”
Or, “You’re closing your eyes so you can imagine I’m someone else.”
Or, “Please don’t notice how ugly my body is compared to those porn stars.”
When he watches porn — which he does regularly — it gives me a sense of futility, a feeling of failure, a fear that I’ll never measure up. I’ll never turn him on like those women do. Those women whose body-perfecting surgeries are subsidized by their industry. I admire those women. But I also deeply envy them. Their sex appeal seems unattainable to me.
So what’s the point of trying? How could I ever compare? Why put in heaps of effort just for the consolation prize of being my boyfriend’s second-best (if that), when he’s my first?
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not proud of my visceral aversion to porn. But I feel like I can’t change it through sheer force of will. The feeling has been unshakable even since my first gut-wrenching encounter with porn.
My struggle to come to terms with porn’s ubiquity
When I met my first boyfriend, at the age of 16, I was naive enough to assume he didn’t watch porn. I thought to myself, “He’s a really nice guy and he respects women. Of course he doesn’t watch porn!”
Boy was I wrong.
It was only about a month later that I discovered his habit. We were sitting side by side on his couch, when I saw his latest Google searches pop up on his laptop:
