What Happened When I Found Out My Husband Watches Porn

We have some ground rules, of course: no interacting directly with anyone on or offline, nothing violent, and if it messes with our sex life, we need to re-evaluate pronto.

But other than that, my husband watches porn and jerks off pretty frequently — almost daily. And I’m fine with it.

I consider myself someone who has a pretty normal sex drive. I’ve always been in touch with my sexuality. I’ve masturbated since I was pretty young. I’m really awesome at getting myself off, and I do it whenever I feel like it.

But my husband is different. Masturbation, to him, has always been somewhat of a ritual. He does it because he enjoys it, but also because it calms him, helps him deal with stress, and helps him fall asleep. I would say his sex drive is quite high; sexual thoughts and feelings occupy a lot of real estate in his mind.

I didn’t always know about the porn. We met when we were young. I knew he jerked off. Sometimes we would show each other how we did it — that was really hot. But I kind of found out about his obsession with porn by accident.

And at first, I was pissed.

It was decades ago, before it was as easy as it is now to find porn online — the days of AOL chat rooms and IM’ing. My husband (then boyfriend) would lurk in the chat rooms, chat and flirt, and find stuff.

Once, he made the mistake of leaving a chat room window open on his computer, and I found it. I saw the kind of stuff he needed to say in order for someone to send him a picture, and I was like NO. I was really upset.

That’s when the ground rules were established (and refined as the years went by). We had a good talk about it all. It was hard and painful at first, because who wants to talk about something that feels secretive? But when it wasn’t a secret anymore, we could talk about it and figure out how it would play out in our relationship.

The bottom line was: I was OK with him looking at stuff, but I wasn’t OK with him interacting with people online in any sort of sexualized way, even if it was mostly to exchange pictures.

I got that he really enjoyed the visual and craved new stuff to help him get off. That was never my thing; mine was always fantasies in my head or a sexy book, but I understood that some people really like porn.

I believed him when he told me that he wasn’t actually pursuing any relationship with those people online, that he was just using it for pictures and fantasies. But it still made me uncomfortable, so he stopped.

Well, I should say that it took him a few years to totally stop. We were in college at the time, and there were some relapses of that behavior, but he grew up and out of it. He married me, and we had a few kids. We’ve been married for 15 years now.

He’s a great husband, and I trust him. I think that’s the important thing with this kind of stuff. It’s about openness and trust. My husband shares with me the kind of porn he likes. It’s nothing very kinky — he just likes to watch naked people have sex. He’s not a sexual deviant in the least — watching porn doesn’t mean that you are.

We share our feelings about it all, and I can tell him if anything feels off to me. Sometimes we incorporate his outside sexual interests into our sex life. I actually find it pretty hot sometimes when I think about what a horny bastard he is.

Did I mention that we have a great sex life? Fifteen years together and it doesn’t get old. If he happens to watch me change my clothes for half a second, he gets totally hot and bothered. We’ve managed to find time to hook up even while managing babies, toddlers, jobs — the works. We like each other. We try new things. We have fun.

And we value each other’s sexuality, however it looks. We get that it’s normal to have private moments, to want to get your rocks off alone sometimes, and that it’s normal for each partner to have different interests. He respects me, and I respect him. We’re cool.

And the ground rules, yes, those are big. Without them — and without the trust that we’ve established in all our years together — I wouldn’t let my husband watch porn. But I trust him. I love him. He’s a great husband, and he’s totally hot to me, porn and all.