I started dating my boyfriend at the beginning of last year and a few months in he told me he was a porn addict. I asked him to seriously reduce his porn use, but I began noticing things I had not previously noticed and looking into the industry. I didn’t mind porn before I started dating him; now I do. He is completely incapable of being present during sex, he can’t cum with me, and he often can’t stay hard unless he’s using viagra. He’s only 37 and these things applied when he was 36 as well. These issues ebb and flow with his porn use, but he is consistently incapable with the kind of mindful, loving sexual interaction that I am used to.
My previous partner watched porn maybe once a month but generally preferred actual sex and had normally working parts. He was a very unusual person, though, with no social media and generally did not engage with a lot of the normal masculine things. I am considering breaking up with my current boyfriend because of all of this. Aside from his behaviors during sex, I’ve begun to notice aspects of his behavior that I think correlate with his porn use. He’s sensitive to novelty and thinks that women are paying attention to him when they’re not. He makes comments about my body that make it clear that he sees me as one in an array of bodies. But most of the naked bodies he sees are not actual normal women who he is in the room with and touching; they’re posed and primed representations of femininity on a screen.
My partner is a very kind man, and even leans feminine in his expression and emotional fluency. But his sexual behavior is completely counter to his personality. He seems to have the easiest time staying hard when he is shoving his penis so hard and far into my mouth that I cannot breathe. I literally threw up the last time we had sex because of this. I gave him oral sex for over an hour and he stayed hard but did not cum. This does not seem normal or healthy to me. He goes through positions like they’re a checklist and does it mostly for me, and gets tired during, because he can only cum with porn. He goes down on me regularly and is good at that, and it is the strangest thing to be in a relationship where all my sexual needs are being met except for the emotional connection piece.
I am tired of trying to get him to understand that his lack of presence during sex is the result of his porn use. I am tired of thinking about what might happen once my body ages and no longer looks proximal to the porn he’s watching. I am tired of thinking about the doors that might open for him in terms of desire toward other women. I don’t want any of this. None of this is even touching on my concerns regarding the representations of women in porn as frequently being degraded or overacting their pleasure, and the expectations that my eyes are going to be rolling back into my head or that I will behave in a way that is not consistent with how I actually feel, and is focused on performance.
To me, sex is not performance, it is connection. But I am aware that the majority of young people now are exposed to porn before they even get close to puberty. I am aware that most men in the dating pool have been watching it since before they ever touched a woman. That these overacted, performative, degrading representations of sex are being turned into sex education. I never received that education, I never watched it growing up, and I feel completely like a fish out of water. I have had good sexual experiences and I know what it’s like to be in the room with your partner, experiencing your partner without all of these schemas and other representations running through my head. I don’t know whether I will be able to find anyone who feels the same way as me, though. I’d like some outside perspectives from women specifically.