I’ve been with my boyfriend for about four years, but the first few were really complicated with us both being with other people. It was a lot of sneaking around and off and on. Now we are actually together, but it is still very up and down. Last year, we broke up for about seven months. I left him. We are now back living together, but sometimes he makes me upset. He’ll disappear for days. He goes out and doesn’t answer his phone for hours. I feel crazy a lot of the time, like I’m just here to take care of him or something. I guess, things are OK. However, lately we only have sex when we are drunk. Lucky we are drunk a lot of the time, but still. Why is this happening?
–Drunk Sex Only
Read back what you sent me and you just answered your own question. The drunk sex is the least of your concerns, because your relationship clearly sucks.
You have been with this man four years. However, the relationship began with the two of you not actually together and “a lot of sneaking around”. I can only assume that either of you were cheating to be together in secret? So, you finally quit the cheating and end up together, but you broke up for seven months last year? And now you are back in a relationship and he disappears for days. Your only sex is when you are drunk? I’m assuming there is a lot of fighting and you crying in the bathroom at work.
Humans are creatures of habit and we do things more pathetic than our rodent brothers when it comes to what we perceive as “love”. This relationship sounds like a gross mess and clearly, neither of you are happy. If you were, you wouldn’t have to write me. You wouldn’t just have sex with your boyfriend when drunk. You wouldn’t feel crazy a lot of time. You wouldn’t feel used for your matronly services. No relationship is perfect but yours is so far from it.
At a certain point no one can really feel sorry for you, no matter how bad things are, if you don’t get up and go. You are not married to him, nor do you have children together. You are free to leave. Imagine you were legally and paternally bound to this pile? You can walk away tomorrow and never see him again. I realize you share a home together, but that’s what friends’ couches are for. Pack up your shit and go. You did it once before and now it’s time to do it again. It’s been four years of turbulence. Get off the airplane before it blows up into the side of Shit Mountain. Any sane person would.
Wasting one more day with a person who doesn’t know how to show you love, friendship and appreciation is stupid. It’s not your job to fix a grown adult. At this point, you are abusing yourself. Imagine you saw a chick slamming her head into a brick wall over and over and over and over, eventually you would ask yourself, “Why is she doing that?” This is probably how most of your friends feel watching you with this loser. It’s time to stop banging and deal with the massive bruise. It will fade eventually, but you have to quit him before your brain turns to soup.
I’m a 28-year-old woman who has been with my 31-year-old boyfriend for about three years. He’s great, but I hate that he watches porn. It’s not like he forces it into our sex life by pressuring us to watch it together or has to watch it everyday and jerk off. But he does watch it whenever I am out of town for work and we can’t be together intimately. Why does this bother me so much? I just don’t like porn, and I know this is totally normal! How do I get over this?
–Porn Hate
If your boyfriend was watching porn multiple times a week, sneaking into his office to jack off to a gang-bang of 10s while you’re flicking through Netflix waiting for him to return to the living room sofa, then you should have an issue with it. (To that problem, I would suggest an initiative put forth last year by Gavin McInnes called #NoWanks, where he challenged men to only masturbate to pornography once a month in a hopes of improving their relationships.) But you are just irritated by your boyfriend watching porn when you are sitting in some conference room across the country. Unless you put one of those kid blocker things on all his Apple devices, you probably are not going to stop the guy from watching porn, so this is going to have to be something YOU have to get over.
Men need visual stimulation to masturbate. It’s really not a big deal. Porn is created for masturbation. It’s adult entertainment. Maybe you need to watch a few movies yourself and figure out why you truly hate it. There is so much variety of porn out there now that doesn’t follow the mainstream ritual most anti-porn people associate with it. Erika Lust makes award-winning “feminist porn” which plays out like erotica, follows a story and eases the viewer into the sex scene, just like a freezing, frail woman sinking into a hot tub.
Consider this your immersion therapy. Get comfortable in your bed, open up your laptop and watch some porn yourself. You may even actually like it.
