Dr. Love,I read your column on line and appriciate what you are doing here!Let me give you a little background, I live with my boyfriend. We both have computers and are online. when mine crashed, I had to use his to email my sister. I noticed 2 weird screen names he had, meant for inviting sex online. Hmm. I got a little curious and dug around his hard drive. It’s loaded with porn.Now that my curiosity was high, I looked in one day to see him crusing the personal ads of women looking for men. Well, I later found an ad he had placed looking for a local woman, to have a relationship with, sort of on the sexual side. I lost it. He was out of town and I started packing. He came back to town upon learning I was packing, Swore it was only’playing’ on the net, that hed never done anything outside our relationship, and promised never to do anything that would make me doubt his love for me.I believe that. He is a most caring man, a good man who has been a tremendous friend. He treats my teenagers like they were his very own. I care deeply for him and love him dearly. The problem is, now, I don’t trust him. I feel if I hadn’t caught him, he might have gone on, eventually ‘meeting’ someone. Dr. Love, we have great sex 6 nights a week! And what can I do about his apparant obsession with pornography? It really does make me sick to my stomach. He gets up at 5am to ‘play’ on the net with this porn. So, I know when I wake up, I know what he’s been doing.I don’t feel good about it. Is this kind of internet ‘play’ considered cheating? As much as I care for this man, I’m not sure he’s right for me any more, and it’s all because of this! Or is there something I can do on my end? I’m confused in a very big way.Thank you, Dr. Love
I understand why you are upset. If he had told you up front what he was up to, instead of sneaking behind your back, I think you wouldn’t have been so upset.Here’s the deal. From a biological point of view, men are not wired for monogamy. In fact, men are wired to want sexual variety. They have been wired with this urge to sleep with (and impregnate) as many women as possible in order to insure the survival of the human race.Because men aren’t hard wired for monogamy, you can see how marriage or living with someone puts a big cramp on a man’s natural instincts. Since your guy loves you, he has found a way of satisfying his biological urge for variety while making sure to stay faithful to you. I view his porno escapades as his way of trying to satisfy his biological urge for variety while remaining true to you. Bottom line, he never enacted his fantasies in real-life.I think your only hope here is to open up this can of worms. See if you can frankly discuss the issue and find a way to have him satisfy his biological cravings in such a way that you feel included rather than excluded. For example, some couples navigate this thorny (I didn’t say horny) issue by watching pornography together, and/or role playing.The point here is, if you are going to make it work with your man, you will need to find a way to help him satisfy these normal urges for variety within his relationship with you and in such a way that you feel included not discarded.Good luck.
