Welcome to Reader’s Request Fridays. As a reminder, I addressing one reader email every other week.

This week I received a question from Melinda*. She writes, “my boyfriend of six months recently asked me to watch porn with him. I can’t help but feel strange about this. Is this something couples frequently do?”

Hi Melinda,

Thanks for the question. Porn can be a triggering topic for a lot of people, so I can sympathize with the fact that  it’s bringing up a lot of feelings for you. The first thing I can tell you is that couples watching porn together happens pretty frequently. A fairly recent study found that approximately 45% of couples look at porn with each other. That same study also found that unmarried couples who shared their porn habits reported having more committed and sexually satisfying relationships than couples who hid their porn from each other.  It makes a lot of sense; being able to have open and honest communication about sex is an integral part of a healthy relationship. Watching porn with your partner is a great way to bond and open up conversations about sex. You may find yourselves getting aroused by different things, or being surprised by your similarities. You can talk about which sexual acts, positions, or fantasies look appealing to you. You can reenact what you’re watching as you’re watching it. You can get inspiration for new things to try. You can laugh together over bad dialogue or poorly constructed plots.

I think it would be useful for you to take some time to consider exactly why you’re feeling “strange” about looking at porn with your boyfriend. There are a multitude of reasons why it may be off-putting to you, and each specific reason holds it’s own meaning and potential solution.

• You may be feeling uncomfortable because you grew up being taught that porn was “wrong” or “evil”. If this is the case, take the time to consider if you want to allow those beliefs to be a part of your life. I want to encourage you to act from a conscious and thoughtful place, rather than simply reacting. It’s absolutely your prerogative to decide that you think porn is wrong, just as it’s absolutely someone else’s prerogative to decide that it’s harmless. What it boils down to is differentiating whether your distaste from porn comes from outside sources, or from a place within yourself.
• You may find yourself thinking that women don’t or aren’t supposed to watch porn. The “aren’t supposed to” is a variation of the above bullet point. The “don’t” part is straight up wrong. One recent study found that 2/3 of women watch porn. Other studies have put that figure even higher. Women account for approximately 25% of porn revenues. The facts are simple: Women watch porn.
• You may think that porn is gross or degrading to women. In this case, you’re right… most of the time. A lot of porn is degrading to women. A lot of harmful sexual stereotypes are evident in porn. But the solution arguably isn’t to eradicate porn, it’s to look for and create better porn. Websites like Make Love Not Porn set out to dispel common sexual myths seen in porn and produce more realistic and authentic porn. The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health has this great list of “sex-positive and feminist friendly porn”. The Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards is now in it’s 8th year. It’s becoming easier and easier to find porn that is ethical, responsible, sex-positive, and female friendly.
• You may think of your boyfriend’s porn watching habits as cheating. Many women believe that their partners should not think about any other women in a sexual context. I can sympathize with the desire for fidelity, but it’s an unfortunate fact of life that you will never find a partner who doesn’t fantasize about other people. Women and men alike have active fantasy lives that often feel out of their direct control. You may make eye contact with someone on the street, feel that instant spark of chemistry, and find yourself fantasizing about them before you even know it’s happening. Your partner will find other people attractive, regardless of how much they are attracted to you. They are going to want to see other people naked, regardless of how good you look naked. I try to encourage men and women to think of this as a good thing rather than a bad. You can take all of this sexual energy you feel at various points of the day and bring it back to your partner. Getting charged up all throughout the day is only going to keep your sex life hotter and more active than trying to pretend that you’re never attracted to anyone else. Plus, you can remind yourself that your boyfriend can’t reach into the computer and start cheating on you with the porn star he’s watching.
• You may be scared of learning what your boyfriend is into sexually. You might worry that you’ll discover that he’s kinky or into sexual practices that you’re not willing to participate in. If this is the case, try to think of porn as an opportunity to learn about your sexual compatibility sooner rather than later. If this boyfriend is someone you can see yourself with long-term, it’s crucial for the two of you to be on the same page sexually. This doesn’t mean you’re both going to like exactly the same things, or that either of you are going to get 100% of your fantasies met. There is going to be some mismatch, but you can talk about whether those mismatches are dealbreakers or unfortunate but acceptable.

* Names changed for privacy