“All I’m saying is… if we like, move in together or get engaged or something, I don’t want to find out he’s watching porn ever again,” a dear friend confessed to me in a scandalized whisper over a bottle of wine one night.

I was floored when I heard her say this. This was a girl who was comfortable with her sexuality and was always up for dishing about her most recent inappropriate nocturnal activities. I snorted into my glass of Merlot and said, “Yeah, okay. And what’s he gonna do if he ever catches you watching porn?”

“I don’t watch porn,” she said.

“Lies.”

“I don’t need to,” she argued. “Why would I? My relationship isn’t missing anything. Sex is great how it is.”

She then elaborated on how degrading pornography is towards women and that she didn’t understand why her boyfriend, a self-professed male feminist who was down to take his wife’s name when he got married, could allow himself to watch it.

And thus began a long day’s girl talk into night as she and I hashed out the place of pornography in today’s long term relationships. It was a doozy.

My side of the argument sounded a little something like this:

It’s important for both parties in a long-term partnership to be able to express their feelings about porn, because guess what: it’s here to stay. We can’t get rid of it as long as the Internet is also here to stay (and I’m pretty sure that’s a given). Gone are the days when a guy would sneak away at 3 pm on a Sunday, pop the collar of his shady looking trench coat, and duck into a dirty movie. As adults engaging in sexual relationships in the 21^st century, it would be naïve as all hell for us to pretend that porn doesn’t have a seat at the table (er… in the bed?). It’s too accessible. You cannot pretend that your significant other isn’t ever going to watch it again if he or she is already in the habit of doing so. If my friend came down hard on her boyfriend for watching porn, he would probably just start sneaking it, and then it would turn into this weird, dirty secret he had. Why have weird, dirty secrets if you don’t need to have them? Unless you like having them—but, that’s neither here nor there.

My friend and I then chewed over this idea that, if someone watches porn, is he or she fantasizing about something that is missing in his or her relationship? This was the reason she said she didn’t “need” to watch porn, and one of the reasons she was offended when she found out her boyfriend occasionally did. I guess the thought process goes like this: if your significant other is seeking out a very specific type of fetish every time he or she pulls up the YouPorn home page, you might conclude that he or she wants you to incorporate said very specific fetish into your sexytime routine. But the truth is that he or she likes it because it’s not real life; it’s a fantasy, an indulgence. It would lose its allure if it were part of reality.

“Listen, you don’t watch him play Grand Theft Auto and think he’s going to run around the city jacking cars and running over innocent bystanders, right?” I asked her.

She agreed that the analogy made a lot of sense. Even if her guy was peeping on some kind of freaky stuff, it did not necessarily mean that she was expected to imitate it IRL. After all, porn doesn’t show you what it’s like to have sex with someone you’re emotionally invested in. It’s not a roadmap by any means! It’s important that both people in the relationship know that.

My friend then conceded that maybe porn did have its benefits because it can help people deal with the boundaries of a monogamous relationship, especially if a monogamous relationship is what you ultimately aspire to. Sometimes we have to resist the urge to behave like animals. I wholeheartedly agreed: everyone, male or female, gay or straight, has had to avoid forbidden fruit at one point or another. Porn allows people to keep their shit together in real life; the temptation for forbidden fruit is super rare if said forbidden fruit isn’t looked upon as a super rare thing.

At that point, we circled back around to this idea that pornography is, traditionally, just plain offensive to women. If a teenage boy is caught looking at porn, a lot of parents might write it off as “totally normal for his age.” But if a young lady were caught in the same predicament… well, it goes without saying: we’re kind of not supposed to like porn. Because, as she argued, porn, in the “classical” sense, degrades females. There’s really no getting around that.

However, thanks to the Internet, more varied types of erotica have become accessible these days. It’s no longer 100% for-dudes-by-dudes, I argued back. I encouraged her to give it a whirl sometime and see if there was anything out there that she might like.

We hit the bottom of the bottle about an hour later and found our conversation in a very different place than where it had started. But my friend seemed much happier and far more relaxed now that she’d aired out her concerns. We agreed that monogamous couples don’t have to turn a blind eye to porn in our relationships and marriages if we don’t want to. And it might be healthier not to do so, especially considering it is everywhere!

And as for her boyfriend’s status as a self-professed feminist—his rep can remain intact.  We settled on this: it’s okay for a guy who upholds those ideals to find something sexy even if it goes against the feminist grain. If a person is a champion for non-traditional gender roles at home and in the workplace, the fact that they like guy-on-top sex shouldn’t discredit said championing. Sometimes, the body just wants what it wants—which is also probably what hurts the most for someone like my friend. Why does the body want that? I don’t know. Ask the cavemen, I guess. We also discussed the fact that it seems like a huge percentage of women secretly prefer guy-on-top-type sex as well—women who want their guy to “be in control” in the bedroom. But a great deal of ladies are hesitant to really own up to it because they don’t want to sound like a scab to the feminist agenda. Feminism and pornography have been waging a very complex cold war for years, so I didn’t want my buddy to think of it in such black-or-white terms. If she loved this guy (and of course, she did), she would have to find a way to navigate this question with an understanding, open mind.

If you’re invested in someone and you really care about them, hold their sexuality to the same standard that you hold your own. Don’t put them down if they enjoy certain things. Respect the chemistry, as Walter White would say. Porn doesn’t have to draw a dividing line between two people in a relationship. If you approach the subject in a respectful manner, it might even strengthen your relationship in ways you never expected.

I’m happy to report that my bud is now engaged to this awesome fellow. I’ll take a smidgen of credit where credit is due for this one (though that bottle of wine probably deserves an honorable mention, too).

Have your own opinion? Share it in the comments!

Photo by Sara Slattery