Tag Archives: long-term partnerships

We Don’t Know: Communicating Below the Belt

There’s probably no feeling in the world more powerful than knowing you’re wanted, especially by somebody you want in return. That feeling in and of itself can serve as a pretty magical aphrodisiac. What you want is sexy, and what you’re going to get is sexy. Even if the first time you sleep with someone you really like isn’t that great, it still feels great because you were with a person you really wanted to be with. Hormones do all the dirty work. That’s just science. Sexy, sexy science.

But what about the next time you do the deed? What about six months down the line? Or heck, six years? We typically give our new paramours a mulligan if they don’t deliver the Cosmopolitan-front-page mindblowing orgasm we’re craving the first time around… But everyone reaches a point at which they absolutely must speak up. Your partner isn’t a mind-reader, even if they’ve gotten to know you insanely well in every other department. If there’s something you like better than other things, or if there’s something you really do not like at all—you need to use your words!

Ugh, but that’s the worst, isn’t it? That feeling of “Oh my God, if I ask her to do this thing, will she think I’m some kind of pervert?” or “If I tell him I don’t want to do it in that position anymore, will he be unable to have an orgasm? Am I ruining sex for him?” This kind of self-doubt can send anybody’s sexual confidence into a tailspin. And we all do it.

But here’s the surprising thing: you know that powerful feeling of being wanted by someone? There’s also that powerful feeling when you ask for something and you receive it. What a high that is! And what about when someone asks you to do something? Isn’t it sexy when a person knows what they want? Confidence is the most underrated turn-on in the history of mankind. Forget all the weird little things people focus on: sexy lingerie, gorgeous makeup, a body that’s a walking replica of Michael Phelps. In the end, if Michael Phelps’ twin can’t ask for what he wants in bed and autopilots through his sexcapades, he will be far, far less admirable than the regular Joe who worked up the nerve to ask his girlfriend for something kinky.

It can be scary to communicate and tell someone what you want in bed, whether it’s a confession about a secret fetish or even the simple “less that, more this.” But if you stay silent, your sex life (and as a result, your relationship or potential relationship) might never fire on all cylinders. Think of all that wasted potential! That’s no way to go through life, for either party. So find a way to say what you need to say, whether it’s in the heat of the moment or in a totally mundane setting. Whatever’s easiest for you, as long as you’re able to get brave and use your words. And who knows? You might learn some very interesting things about their desires as well, leading to better sex for everyone involved. Everyone wins, big time.

Readers, what are some awesome ways that people can learn to be more open with their partners? What has your experience been?

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Oh Baby! Sex During & After Pregnancy

The first time I saw D, I knew I had to have him. We worked at the same hotel, in different departments, and would flirt constantly. I would confidently tell my co-workers “I’m going to fuck him.” They would laugh, but I wasn’t joking—he was going to be mine. After a few months of flirting I finally had an opportunity to nonchalantly ask him out to a bar after work. It was a month before my twenty-first birthday and he snuck me in by giving a twenty to the bouncer (it’s like a bro-code: you have to help your fellow bro hook up with the underage girl by letting her into the bar). During the first few months of dating, all we did was eat, drink, and screw: it was bliss. When things got more serious, and people would ask when we were going to have kids, my boyfriend would always respond “We’re just practicing” and wink at me. But all of those years of practicing didn’t prepare us for the reality of sex after a baby.

I’ve always been DTF (if you have to look that up, I’m sorry) and was not at all concerned about getting down while pregnant. My boyfriend, on the other hand, got a bit apprehensive towards the end because the baby had dropped considerably and he didn’t want to “poke an eye out.”  Positions started to become a challenge with my ever-growing bump. Pregnant women are not supposed to lie on their backs (apparently as your uterus gets heavier, it can potentially cut off the circulation to a major vein going through your body), so that ruled out a couple of  standbys. Then, my belly got too big for me to be on top without it pushing into him and him feeling our daughter’s kicks, which totally freaked him out. But, overall, I remember very much enjoying myself, often even more so than our pre-pregnancy romps. The sex dreams weren’t bad either…

We tried to have “relations” before my due date because we knew it would be quite a while before we could again (longer than we had ever gone before… it was depressing to think about). Doctors recommend that women wait six weeks after giving birth to have vaginal intercourse again and I knew I couldn’t wait that long to get it on. After two weeks, neither of us wanted to wait any longer, but D had witnessed the distress my lady-parts had been put through, and, despite his desire, forced me to wait. We made it another week before we couldn’t take it anymore. I won’t go into vivid details, but it was really great—that is, until we changed positions, and my va-jay-jay was not having it. The most embarrassing part is that we had to put our daughter down in her swing on the floor, and she would not stop crying (she did eventually, but it was awkward for a little bit). Sometimes we have to take drastic measures to fulfill our carnal desires, I guess.

In those three weeks pre-nasty and post-baby, I started reading up on it a bit. I was shocked to find out that many new moms wait months, or even a year after giving birth to have sex with their partners again. It can be pretty difficult to feel sexy after having just pushed a tiny person out of your body, dealing with the pressure to lose the “baby weight,” earning chapped nipples from breastfeeding, and getting little to no sleep. Not to mention, a lot of women tear or rip during delivery (I did), which can make you feel damaged or insecure. I have accepted the fact that my vagina will never be the same, but I couldn’t be happier with what I gained. I did my kegels—and I will be perfectly honest that it took a while before it felt “normal” again downstairs. But, since then, sex has felt even better than before.

Even once the healing has completed, and your partner has patiently waited for his or her turn, another road block is put up: being a mom is a legitimate full-time job, especially in the beginning. Your newborn is 100% dependent on you, and your focus and all of your energy goes to them. There were countless nights where we would say that tonight would be the night we would have some “sexy time,” just to pass out not long after getting in bed. I can remember times when D would come up behind me and would try to start feeling me up and I would disregard him or push him away—totally consumed with cleaning the baby’s bottles and my breast pump for the next day so I could finally go to sleep. Some women are hardwired to put their offspring before anyone else, and their partners bear the burden of being forgotten. It took a long time for me to realize that I was being inadvertently negligent and wasn’t giving him the attention he needed in and out of the bedroom.

When you get down to it, sex is a big part of why you got together with your co-parent in the first place, and it’s how you made that screaming child who is now cock-blocking you from having more. Overcoming the exhaustion and chaos of post-baby life can be insanely difficult but, without intimacy, we would just be roommates or really good friends raising a kid together. At first, putting myself ahead of my child made me feel like a bad parent, but I continually remind myself that I can’t be the best mom I can be unless my needs and the needs of my partner are met, too. We may not be humping like rabbits anymore, but we do our best to keep the fire alive and our passion for each other strong through the many hurdles of parenting.

Photo by Willow Rose

Photo by Willow Rose

 

Nobody’s Perfect, Neither Is Sex!

My boyfriend and I have been together for a year and a half. That is long enough for the flames of passion to turn into a mere flicker without a bit of effort. Nothing kills a good boner (of the lady or manly variety) quicker than pressure, self-consciousness, or criticism. The key to keeping sex hot while in relationship is to settle into the fact that you’re going to be doing this act with this person many, many, many, many times, so there’s no need to put pressure on any one roll in the hay to be the best in your lives. Instead, it’s about learning each other’s bodies and continually raising the bar.

You’re creating a sexual relationship with your partner and, like all relationships, it will require communication and a little effort to stay healthy and vibrant. The most toe-curling orgasms aren’t planned out: they sneak up on you. And like many things in life and nature, they’re ephemeral. Subtle differences in mood, context, and connection make each sexual encounter unique. The best we can do is set up an environment that invites this kind of magic.

Here are a few tips to fire up the action in your bedroom:

Unpack your bags. No matter your gender, if you’re over the age of 20 then it’s likely that you have some skeletons of the emotionally traumatic variety hanging out in your closet. It is helpful to know some things about your partner’s history. When you know what the body you’re touching has been through, you can touch that body in a way that subtly acknowledges those experiences. This can be incredibly healing and is the first step to clearing the slate for the relationship that you’re creating now.

The flip side: Don’t feel like you have to rush through this process! At a year and a half, my boyfriend and I are both still working on certain deeply ingrained beliefs and patterns.  If you’re suppressing a thought or feeling because you’re afraid your partner won’t understand, this is either a sign that you need to build the courage to speak up or a sign that this isn’t the right partner for you.

The male ego can be sensitive. In my experience, men often do not receive criticism in the moment very well. I’ve had more than one partner over the years ask me to please bring things up outside of the bedroom. It is so much easier to discuss the anatomical / mechanical aspects of sex when you’re not in the middle of doing them.

The flip side: Men, make sure your lady feels like she can talk to you. Lady parts are highly sensitive and personal preferences are as unique as finger prints; if you don’t encourage your partner to share these details with you (which may feel nitpicky if your ego is in the way), you’ll never fully understand how her body works.

The female sex drive is (often) a slow boil. Men, I suggest you make peace with this fact now. After the initial hump-like-bunnies phase, many women start to feel sexual urges in sync with their hormonal cycle. We’re horny when we’re most fertile, which is a bit of a catch-22 if you aren’t trying to make a baby. The key is to know how to warm your lady up in the in-between times. She may not want to jump your bones on sight, but if you check in with her there are probably many things you could do to heat things up. A few standard ideas: massage, cuddling, kissing, heavy petting, etc.

The flip side: Ladies, your man may sometimes need a reminder that you want him, really want him. Make sure you slow down and lavish your attention on him some of the time, too. It can help to make sure that you proposition him some of the time. Surprise BJs are another option for making your man feel extra happy.

Put your focus on your partner. When either partner is caught up thinking about their own wants and needs, he or she isn’t fully present. The quickest way to get out of your head? Stop thinking about yourself. Put your attention on pleasing your partner and all of a sudden you’ll feel your body light up, too.

The flip side: Don’t focus so much on your partner that you aren’t enjoying what they’re offering. If one of you habitually leads or follows, one way to shake things up is to switch roles and see what happens with a fresh dynamic.

Revel in the beauty along the way. Don’t rush to the big O. As long as time allows, savor every moment with your partner. Remember what it was like seeing them undress the first few times. Remember what it was like to hold each other naked when it was new. Even if you aren’t in the mood to go down memory lane, there are ways to slow down and savor. I once saw an article in a grocery store lady magazine (probably Cosmo or Glamour) that pointed to all the parts of sex that it’s easy to overlook if you’re focused on orgasm: from the moment of penetration to the pleasurable plateau that precedes orgasm—the more your mentality is about absorbing and enjoying the whole experience from start to finish, the more enjoyable it will be.

The flip side: Quickies can be really hot. ;)

A note about gender in this article: this article is written from the perspective of a cis-gender, heterosexual female, since that’s the only perspective from which I can knowingly write. I find the gender binary is useful here in teasing out the differences created by the hormones men and women have in their bodies. That said, I hope these tips will be relatable to anyone anywhere on the gender spectrum.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

I Put a Ring on It in a City of Single Ladies

I moved to Los Angeles about four years ago. In all that time, LA has proved to be a lot of things. Yes, there are a million blonde white girls who look exactly like me (and it seems like they snapped up all the agents already). Yes, there are images of fitness perfection everywhere and people really love the word “cleanse.” Yes, there’s no such thing as winter, to my great dismay. But most of all, people here care about their careers more than any other city I’ve lived in.

Granted, I haven’t lived very many places, and I have no reason to be surprised. Working in entertainment in LA takes a great deal of focus and drive. But I had no idea the level of scrutiny my own life choices would be subject to.

I had long ago decided that the LA lifestyle wasn’t something I would subscribe to completely. I moved down there with a grain of salt and an escape plan in mind. I wasn’t planning on scrabbling for infomercials or paying hundreds of dollars for “Agent-Meet Workshops”; really, my personal goals were to gain experience doing projects I was interested in and expanding my acting horizons. Because of this level of detachment, I hadn’t thought that the attitude of Los Angeles toward marriage would be any different than that of the rest of the country, where 20-something-year-old women are subject to the questions of their older counterparts: “Who are you dating? When will you settle down? When will you be married?” So, when I became engaged at 23 and set the wedding date for after I turned 25, I didn’t consider it unusual at all and was excited to wear a beautiful ring that would scream the happy news for me without me even having to open my mouth.

But man, the reactions I got! People acted as if I had decided to become a nun. Or join a cult. The ring on my finger became an instant magnet for attention, and not all of it was good.

Let me clarify: those who have known me for a while, and who know my fiancé, or are at least good enough friends with me that they feel as if they know him, didn’t have any comments to offer except “I’m so happy for you! It was only a matter of time!” Instead, it’s those who met me more recently, and who noticed the ring, who had less positive things to say. Things like, “Wait….you’re getting married? How old are you? Oh my god, you’re a baby! How do you even know what you want when you’re so young? What about your career? Do you want children right away? Wait…you don’t want to have children right away?!? Why get married so soon then? What about your career? Why are you settling down? What about your career? What’s the rush? For the love of GOD, what about your CAREER?!? THINK ABOUT YOUR CAREER, WOMAN!”

I was completely unprepared for this onslaught of questions. I got them from new coworkers, new acquaintances, and even had other comedians ask me these questions while I was working… a completely unsolicited barrage of opinions and judgment. I tried not to fall in the trap of explaining my life choices to a stranger, but the more I was exposed to it, the harder it got to not be defensive.

The fact was, I had never really thought about what a marriage would do to my career because I never felt the need to weigh “career vs. relationship.” I wasn’t planning on having children for at least five years. I wasn’t planning on being a stay-at-home wife. My fiancé is an encouraging and supportive partner. I had been in a relationship with this man for six years and was still able to pursue a career. Our relationship, and my love for him, has in no way been a detriment to that end. I’ll admit that if there was no one in my life, I would have been more engrossed in my job, but the situation I was in was what I had been looking for all along: a balance in my life, with love, passions, art, family, and career.

The thing that drove me over the edge was that other women were having the exact opposite problem that I was having. Women who were single, whether to concentrate on their jobs or simply because they hadn’t found the right person yet, were being examined and questioned for not doing the exact thing that I was about to do. Ladies just couldn’t win! I was also baffled that—given that there are so many different family structures and relationship choices in this modern age—there is anybody left to be surprised or seemingly personally offended by my somewhat conventional life choices.

Later, I discovered that one of my coworkers who questioned me so relentlessly was actually unsatisfied with her own relationship status. It made me realize that there’s usually more under the surface when people present their judgment, but I still don’t excuse those people. To me, if someone tells you about their relationship or family status, whether it’s “married with children,” “single mother/father,” “dating around (or sleeping around),” “gay,” “bi,” “straight,” or “polyamorous,” it is insufferably rude to respond with anything other than: “Oh, that’s cool.”

The plus side of all of this is that I have learned to gain some perspective on the whole concept of judgment. I realized that no matter what your choices, no matter how “normal” they might seem, someone somewhere is going to judge you for it. I’ve learned to not give a shit. I’ve resolved to become less judgmental myself. If someone goes on about something that someone else is doing and how “weird” it is, I just shrug my shoulders and say, “Well, if it works for them and it’s not hurting anybody…” Even if I’m uncomfortable with something, it doesn’t give me a pass to be a judgey little meanie about it.

Finally, this thought: Many people have many opinions and thoughts on marriage. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but for me, marriage doesn’t mean a one-way ticket to Stepford wife-ness, nor is it the equivalent of a grave. It is not an excuse to stop growing and learning and exploring. The reason I cringe at the term “settling down” is because I never plan to, no matter what my relationship status. When my fiancé becomes my husband, we will both continue to be ever-changing and ever-expanding human beings. The beautiful part is that we choose to pursue that growth and learn those lessons with another person. My life and marriage will be, in the words of J.M. Barrie, “an awfully big adventure.”

Photo by Michelle White

Photo by Michelle White

We Don’t Know: Is Love a Choice?

In the description of Martin Ingle’s video, You don’t fall in love, you jump., he admits, “I do my best at trying to explain this. But I really have no idea (don’t tell anyone.)” We feel the same way, we don’t know. So we want to hear from you: do you think love is a choice?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZ_YiWngXw&w=560&h=315]

Martin argues that love is not something you feel, it is something you do.  That real love is not the fiery passion but the “slow burning embers” and that we must choose to make the effort, to do the work, that keeps those embers burning. That love is not something you know, but something that you are figuring out. An action, not an emotion. Love is a battlefield where fear meets choice. It is not a destination. It is the burn in your muscles after you’ve been swimming up stream.

What do you think?

Photo by Michelle White

Micromanaging My Engagement

I’ve never believed that real proposals are like the ones in the movies.  Raise your hand if Billy Idol helped your significant other propose to you. See? That like hardly ever happens.

It’s all about what fits you best as a couple.  Personally, I’m on the practical side.  My fiancé and I discussed it beforehand, came to a mutual decision, and agreed that we wanted to get married.  I wasn’t caught off-guard with crowds of strangers and loud megaphones like those viral videos you see these days—knowing that the question was coming was a mixture of anticipation and excitement, culminating in a night that was sweet and relaxed and perfect for us.

When my then-boyfriend popped the question to me, it had been a while in the making. I had already known him for ten years (hel-lo, middle school), and we had been dating for five. But we were (and are) young: so how did we know? How could I be sure he was good for me? How could he know that I would want to marry him? How certain were we that we would be compatible forever?

Seventeen-year-old me thought I would never get married. My parents finally ended their unhappy marriage in an angry, years-long divorce when I was 12. In the years that followed, my significant others in high school simply reinforced my belief that committed relationships were a melange of manipulation and selfishness—the behavior that I had seen in my dad for years.  To me, “compatibility” was a temporary mode: a person could fill a place in your heart for a little over a year and, when the laughing inevitably stopped, it was time to move on.

What changed my mind? Honestly, I have no clue.  I dated Mike for three years and realized at some point that I didn’t want to ever let him go.  Gradually, we started talking what the future held for us (a somewhat inevitable conversation, considering we were in college preparing for that future).  We planned our careers, talked about how we both loved our city, dreamed about vacations and whether either of us would ever be able to afford a house in the insanely expensive Silicon Valley.  And those conversations occasionally, jokingly, included one another.

Our joking continued for over a year—laughing about how our hypothetical children would be insanely smart but with horrible unibrows (from both of us), horrible teeth (from both of us), horrible eyesight (from me), and horrible scoliosis (from him).  Those poor things.

And then, at some point, I started wondering.  Graduation inched closer, and as a forward-thinker I had to know whether or not to plan to keep him in my life.  I decided I didn’t want to ever lose him, but guys get freaked out by commitment, right?  I broached the subject a few times (with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop): “So, uh, I love you a lot and stuff.  Do you think we could, like, be happy forever?”  Somewhat infuriatingly, I couldn’t tell if Mike was catching my hint: his adorable, easy-going nature led to the ever-so-helpful responses such as “Of course, darling, I will love you forever!”  I had no idea if he was engaging in stereotypical romantic hyperbole, or if he actually was down with this whole marriage thing.

Today, I can’t recall exactly how I first introduced the M-word, but I do remember a period of a few months where I alternated between swells of blissful happiness and deflating dread that I was “pushing him” toward an engagement because “men are afraid of commitment” so obviously he’s just saying these wonderful things to “appease me.”  (I’m obviously neurotic.)  It only took Mike reassuring me approximately fifty thousand times before I started to believe that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.

These now-serious conversations sweetened into sappy heart-to-hearts and continued for almost a year, until the practical side of my brain just couldn’t take it anymore.  I pulled up Google Calendar and we blocked out a general plan: my graduation in spring 2012, a summer engagement, his fall graduation, next year’s wedding, some crappy entry-level jobs, living abroad in 2014, then coming home and getting real jobs.  It was getting real, you guys.

In the end, the plan didn’t work out.  Mike’s counselors had steered him wrong and he ended up taking summer courses in order to avoid delaying graduation: this caused a very stressful summer where he was too overloaded to plan a proposal.  In the meantime, I landed an actual, real job right off the bat, thus ruining our plans of living abroad anytime soon (oops).

After Mike finished school in fall 2012, I sat him down, opened up gCal, and we tried to plan our lives again.  The year abroad was put on indefinite hiatus, and the proposal was moved to the following spring so that Mike could focus on training at his new job.  But after waiting a couple months into 2013, I got impatient and finally just picked the day for him to propose: our five-year anniversary.

It was nothing like the movies.  While that’s perfect for some, it would have been all wrong for us.  We’re of a practical ilk, and that works well for us.  When the chosen day rolled around, I knowingly let Mike drag me around to all the spots that meant so much to us: cavorting around all day at the museum we love to visit, changing into fancy clothes at the hotel where we had stayed when I got home after my semester abroad, indulging in a champagne dinner at the restaurant from our third anniversary.

And when stage fright caused him to forget everything he had planned on saying, I laughed, wiped the tears from my eyes, said yes and kissed him.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Clear History: Porn and the Long Term Relationship

“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 21st 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