[Guest]

I agree with many points that you make willhelm, they're rational and paint an ideal world... I embrace my reality for what I hope to be the best life - I suppose I'm a hedonist.

anon - i hear you on this. we're all hedonistic to a degree. we're all interested in maximizing pleasure & minimizing suffering. i guess our ability to keep from stepping on each other while we're chasing our own pleasure is what makes us good citizens - in a marriage, friendship, society, etc.

i want to comment on a few of your points in a minute, but this is really what i'm interested in - what i hope you'll respond to if nothing else. you said up there that i'm painting the picture of an ideal world. but then you spoke of your reality - which is in conflict with the ideal world i'm painting - is what you imagine as the "best."

i don't know if i'm making sense here. you're saying that the idea of a relationship where a guy denies himself the pleasure of getting off on porn & focuses all of his (sexual) attention on his partner is "ideal." we can argue semantics, i guess - but i'm assuming you'd be OK with my treating "ideal" & "best" in the same manner. the ideal world is, in fact, the best world, isn't it? even if it is thought to be unattainable.

so when you acknowledge a porn-free relationship as ideal, but then say your relationshp with porn is the best you can imagine, you lose me. i'm not trying to trap you with your words - i really don't understand that. why would you settle for something less than ideal, and say it's the best?

unless you believe the ideal - which in this case is a relationship where no one looks at porn - is so far-fetched that it's ridiculous to even consider it. and if that's the case, what is it that's so far beyond reach about a relationship without porn?

this is not rhetorical or sarcastic - i really want your sincere answer. obviously it involves denial of something that's fun, maybe other sacrifice too.

explain that.


here are some other reactions you can respond to if you like - less important to me than the above:

For there to be absolute truth, there has to be absolutely no fear of the concequences

i could not agree less with a statement, depending on what you mean by fear. truth - and honesty, more specifically - almost always renders consequences, often negative ones for the one being truthful. i would agree that in order for there to be total honesty, people will have to choose honesty regardless of consequences - even if they are afraid.

an extreme & maybe dramatic example would be william wallace's adherence to his convictions in the face of having his intestines ripped from his stomach. no doubt he feared that consequence.

"never, for the sake of peace & quiet, deny your own experience & convictions." - dag hammarskjold.

If she was easier to approach he wouldn't have such a compulsion to avoid the truth.

i know what you're saying, but you're making an assumption. his compulsion to avoid the truth could be rooted in a need to please - or similarly, the need to make sure people aren't upset with him. this is a common handicap that many mothers hand down to their sons, without intending to. they grow up with an "inability" to tolerate someone being angry or upset with them.

in that case, it wouldn't matter the approach of the person confronting him, or whether or not that person was justified in the confrontation. it would elicit an inappropriate response because of his own inadequacy in that area.

i bring it up because not only is it prevalent in men in general, but it often finds solace in the consumption of porn.

And women should have a basic understanding that we're wired to want many women... It's pretty much a miracle that we've overidden our instinct to be able to commit to monogamous relationships - to try and control every thought of the mind is madness

here agian, you & i are right on regarding the understanding, but we're worlds apart on the implications of that understanding. men are wired for sex with multiple partners to the same degree that women are wired to have babies. the same science that supports one idea supports the other - and it might be generally true. but try to spread that over the entire gender population & you're making a mistake.

this is called upon when we (men) want to support habits we don't want to let go of (like porn, infidelity, casual sex, whatever), but it's left behind when those habits aren't at stake. the same science that indicates i have a primal need to fertilize many different women also suggests i have a need to hunt & to guard my "territory" (my family, my food, my possessions) with ferocity.

so maybe that's true - so at work i have a primal urge that causes me to want to climb the ladder, make more money, be the boss. but society deems it acceptable for me to tame that urge for the sake of being reasonable at work. it would be foolish for me to ignore any relationships with my co-workers, ignore any consequences, and simply chase the most prominent, highest paying position in my organization recklessly & only with regard to my own benefit.

do guys do it? sure, some. but few people would condone that as wise behavior. so why, then, is it OK for be to bow to my primal urge to fertilize multiple partners?

different direction - let's say you don't think it's wise. you're just pointing out that it is an urge & we do well to control it in general. women should be grateful we are able to be monogamous at all, much less considering our interest in porn. this holds even less water for me, though it does come down to a definition that we might not share.

we begin the process of learning to control our urges & impulses at about age 2, even before. our instinct is to be selfish, to disregard the feelings & welbeing of others and relentlessly pursue satisfaction of our desires. we want to take what we want, when we want it. period.

so you're saying that because you have an urge - maybe even an instinctive, intuitive urge - to use porn, you should obey it b/c its natural, and women need to simply understand this, accept it, and get over any objections to it.

yet, if you sat down in a restuarant, ordered your meal & looked over at the guy's plate two tables over & liked it better - i doubt you'd get up & grab his food and take it back to your table & eat it, even though you might have wanted it.

that's exactly what you would have tried to do when you were 2. it's natural. instinctive.

how are the two different? both are intuitive. both have to be controlled for the sake of honoring someone else's dignity & feelings.

why is your adherence to porn so excusable & your stealing another guy's dinner so inexcusable?

i think if you really think it through, you'll find that the idea of a world where people don't try to control their thoughts would be madness.

Where I stand morally on this is here: A lot of lifes pleasure is at stake, if I was in a great relationship, but knew that she was a bit stubborn and akward about this idea, then I wouldn't reveal it to her... and it would be her responsability that you didn't share it... That's morally grey, I suppose, but it's pretty much where I stand.
two problems i have with this. one, i think our society (i'm american, but i think most modern cultures are guilty of this) offers what it wants us to believe is pleasurable, when in fact those pleasures are fleeting & ultimately unsatisfying.

go back to the 2 year old, who left to his own would eat a box of twinkies rather than a healthy meal. he would do that every day if he could (& many adults do just that). he thinks a lot of pleasure is at stake, because eating a twinkie is fun. now, anyway.

you know where i'm going with this. he ends up underdeveloped, unhealthy, fat, whatever. what he ends up with is decidedly NOT pleasurable, even though the short-lived pleasure seemed to promise nothing but good things.

so here we are with porn. it's fun. it feels satisfying. it scratches an itch, if you will.

back to the child - we have to make him wear cloth mittens so he won't scratch his chicken pox. he doesn't realize that in satisfying that urge, obeying that desire (natural one, by the way) & obtaining that temporal pleasure - he would scar himself forever.

what he thought was pleasurable was actually NOT pleasure at all, but the illusion of pleasure.

my very long point, i suppose, is that porn is just an illusion of pleasure that, when pursued, leaves us scarred. sometimes so severely that we are unrecognizable to ourselves & the ones that love us.

[anonymouswhitefemale]

I agree with many points that you make willhelm, they're rational and paint an ideal world... I embrace my reality for what I hope to be the best life - I suppose I'm a hedonist.

anon - i hear you on this. we're all hedonistic to a degree. we're all interested in maximizing pleasure & minimizing suffering. i guess our ability to keep from stepping on each other while we're chasing our own pleasure is what makes us good citizens - in a marriage, friendship, society, etc.

I'm not sure if someone else used this idea on the subject already, but for me it helps to apply Mill's Harm Principle. What this basically means is that freedom should only be restricted where it Harms other people, and this harm has to be direct in nature - in so much as that it's not harming a racist for a foreigner to move in next to them, because the problem is their own - and therefore only an INdirect harm, and as such shouldn't prevent someone from doing what they want to do.

I also really don't think I'm mature enough to contemplate a relationship on the scale at which it seems you're speaking - I never took on the responsibility to own somebodies heart and be responsible for everything they feel - even if I have wound up in the position that if it was my intention I could cause unparalelled hurt. You say that in a marriage, you give your soul and the inner workings of your mind to your partner... Maybe that would be great, I know that (certainly at this time in my life) I would never give up the soverignty of my own mind, if that was a condition of the relationship I would end it. A slightly different point, is that by your rules you would HAVE to tell your partner when she looked fat.

i want to comment on a few of your points in a minute, but this is really what i'm interested in - what i hope you'll respond to if nothing else. you said up there that i'm painting the picture of an ideal world. but then you spoke of your reality - which is in conflict with the ideal world i'm painting - is what you imagine as the "best."

i don't know if i'm making sense here. you're saying that the idea of a relationship where a guy denies himself the pleasure of getting off on porn & focuses all of his (sexual) attention on his partner is "ideal." we can argue semantics, i guess - but i'm assuming you'd be OK with my treating "ideal" & "best" in the same manner. the ideal world is, in fact, the best world, isn't it? even if it is thought to be unattainable.

What I am saying is this. I believe that in an ideal world, my partner would be the most attractive woman alive, her sex drive and naughtiness would be on par with mine, allowing me to share my entire sexual facet with her. That I believe would be an ideal relationship. However, the ideal relationship that unfortunately only exists the metaphysical perfect world. In my reality for example, my partner has a far lower sex drive than me, which pretty much means that the ideal relationship already doesn't exist. Then take for example this girl putting on weight and getting a flabby bum. This isn't sexy, and whilst you're masturbating a flabby bum isn't the first thing that will turn up in your mind - I'm sorry but I see that as an unbendable reality, at least for me. If I find a partner that fulfills what I see as a perfect world relationship then I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to making it an ideal relationship in the way that you say.

so when you acknowledge a porn-free relationship as ideal, but then say your relationshp with porn is the best you can imagine, you lose me. i'm not trying to trap you with your words - i really don't understand that. why would you settle for something less than ideal, and say it's the best?

My sex drive is ~30% satisfied by my partner. In an ideal world, my sex drive would be 100% dominated by my partner, leaving no need for porn or masturbation as an outlet. If I never settled for anything less than perfection I would be forever alone, and likely incapable of forging a real relationship with anybody.

unless you believe the ideal - which in this case is a relationship where no one looks at porn - is so far-fetched that it's ridiculous to even consider it. and if that's the case, what is it that's so far beyond reach about a relationship without porn?

It's not so much a question of porn, at the moment I'm not arguing so much for that but against the fact that it's dispicable for thoughts of another lady to pass through your mind... And I see that as so intrinsic to our very nature that to expect to tame that beast is impossible. Which is why I don't really take one who expects that beast to be tamed very seriously. It seems like telling your cat that you really don't want it to hunt or eat meat.

For there to be absolute truth, there has to be absolutely no fear of the concequences

i could not agree less with a statement, depending on what you mean by fear. truth - and honesty, more specifically - almost always renders consequences, often negative ones for the one being truthful. i would agree that in order for there to be total honesty, people will have to choose honesty regardless of consequences - even if they are afraid.

an extreme & maybe dramatic example would be william wallace's adherence to his convictions in the face of having his intestines ripped from his stomach. no doubt he feared that consequence.

"never, for the sake of peace & quiet, deny your own experience & convictions." - dag hammarskjold.

Ok, there will always be concequences to any action, and that will be true for whatever truth you have to tell. My girlfriend herself has told me that white lies are lubrication for a healthy relationship, it does no good for me to tell her she's looking fat, or that actually I didn't miss her when apart for a week, since I'm independant and she's the reverse. It's creating a nicer world for them. Also, if the person that you're supposed be sharing every inner truth with is going to run to an internet board to ask if you're normal and if you should be dumped for it, you have no basis for a crystal clear relationship. There is simply no incentive.

If she was easier to approach he wouldn't have such a compulsion to avoid the truth.

i know what you're saying, but you're making an assumption. his compulsion to avoid the truth could be rooted in a need to please - or similarly, the need to make sure people aren't upset with him. this is a common handicap that many mothers hand down to their sons, without intending to. they grow up with an "inability" to tolerate someone being angry or upset with them.

Sure, there's many possible reasons for everything. It's just that the aura this post was giving was of a stoney and ununderstanding partner, with which a frank conversation on the matter would not be desired.

And women should have a basic understanding that we're wired to want many women... It's pretty much a miracle that we've overidden our instinct to be able to commit to monogamous relationships - to try and control every thought of the mind is madness

here agian, you & i are right on regarding the understanding, but we're worlds apart on the implications of that understanding. men are wired for sex with multiple partners to the same degree that women are wired to have babies. the same science that supports one idea supports the other - and it might be generally true. but try to spread that over the entire gender population & you're making a mistake.

I believe that it is an active part of every mind, the only issue is whether a (likely based from defunct religion) ethical code is employed. So it would be a mistake to say that every man was defeated by his genetic engineering would be a mistake, but to say that every man shared tendancies to act towards their instinct would be on the money.

this is called upon when we (men) want to support habits we don't want to let go of (like porn, infidelity, casual sex, whatever), but it's left behind when those habits aren't at stake. the same science that indicates i have a primal need to fertilize many different women also suggests i have a need to hunt & to guard my "territory" (my family, my food, my possessions) with ferocity.

I'd say that that instinct is also true, I do indeed defend my possessions and those important to me with ferocity, and that that's mainly instinctual - but seen as a good instinct to roll with. And the in my opinion the fact that technology/society has in the past few thousand years mainly made the hunting instinct defunct is the same reason we see so much meaningless personal conflict, drunked pub brawls and stuff. Man is in a strange place in todays society, where he lives almost in contrast to his instinctual urges, which is why I think that men (in my experiences) are less settled, know less what they want, and are more generally spiritually lost than woman. As a woman's instinct is to rear a family, she's thinking about making her home nice and seeking stability and that is what gratifies her - it's still a part of today's society.

so maybe that's true - so at work i have a primal urge that causes me to want to climb the ladder, make more money, be the boss. but society deems it acceptable for me to tame that urge for the sake of being reasonable at work. it would be foolish for me to ignore any relationships with my co-workers, ignore any consequences, and simply chase the most prominent, highest paying position in my organization recklessly & only with regard to my own benefit.

Sure, choose an ethical code to which you choose to adhere. Mine is pretty much the harm principle when it comes to freedom of action. I think it's fine that people who are agressive in their business life do well, they're the ones that would be doing well in the wild - doing whatever they can for those they care about. I would say though that todays working world is almost far enough removed from the world in which our brains evolved for instinct to not really play too big of a part here.

do guys do it? sure, some. but few people would condone that as wise behavior. so why, then, is it OK for be to bow to my primal urge to fertilize multiple partners?

I never said that it was fine by your probably christian morals (upon which the white world was founded), or even that I condone that action. All I said was that we have a genetic predisposition to do that, and it should be to our credit that we can control the actions of it. But to have to control what goes on in your mind, it being evil to think about shagging that hot girl you just saw, is unattainable and unreasonable, in my opinion.

different direction - let's say you don't think it's wise. you're just pointing out that it is an urge & we do well to control it in general. women should be grateful we are able to be monogamous at all, much less considering our interest in porn. this holds even less water for me, though it does come down to a definition that we might not share.

we begin the process of learning to control our urges & impulses at about age 2, even before. our instinct is to be selfish, to disregard the feelings & welbeing of others and relentlessly pursue satisfaction of our desires. we want to take what we want, when we want it. period.

so you're saying that because you have an urge - maybe even an instinctive, intuitive urge - to use porn, you should obey it b/c its natural, and women need to simply understand this, accept it, and get over any objections to it.

yet, if you sat down in a restuarant, ordered your meal & looked over at the guy's plate two tables over & liked it better - i doubt you'd get up & grab his food and take it back to your table & eat it, even though you might have wanted it.

Your examples aren't correlating with what I've said. If the example was modified to "thinking about eating the food that someone else has, imagining how succulent that juicy steak tastes" then it would be the same. Although I agree that our instinct might well be to take it - which we supress like so many other instincts in order to function as a pack animal.

how are the two different? both are intuitive. both have to be controlled for the sake of honoring someone else's dignity & feelings.

why is your adherence to porn so excusable & your stealing another guy's dinner so inexcusable?

Porn is like wishing you were eating his meal, not eating it. To compare sex to stealing food would actually sleeping with other women, porn doesn't cut it. As for people cheating, it happens - sex to us is better than food, especially since none of us really have trouble getting nice food.

i think if you really think it through, you'll find that the idea of a world where people don't try to control their thoughts would be madness.

People control their actions - that's fine, actions affect other people. Thoughts are the sole property of you, and should have no affect on the outside world. I would hate to think that I'm forcing people to think differently, as that is essentially the ultimate infringement of freedom and privacy.

Where I stand morally on this is here: A lot of lifes pleasure is at stake, if I was in a great relationship, but knew that she was a bit stubborn and akward about this idea, then I wouldn't reveal it to her... and it would be her responsability that you didn't share it... That's morally grey, I suppose, but it's pretty much where I stand.
two problems i have with this. one, i think our society (i'm american, but i think most modern cultures are guilty of this) offers what it wants us to believe is pleasurable, when in fact those pleasures are fleeting & ultimately unsatisfying.

Sure, we're all told that we like sex and if we weren't I'm sure we'd have become cellibate thousands/millions of years ago. I know that people can desire things that are essentially not any good for them, I'm no stranger to it, for example I smoke cannabis, more than I should. Whether desiring women is as bad I think is questionable.

my very long point, i suppose, is that porn is just an illusion of pleasure that, when pursued, leaves us scarred. sometimes so severely that we are unrecognizable to ourselves & the ones that love us.

It is in it's own way an illusion, or at least a differing level of reality. It does indeed desensitize us, etc etc, but it's a good way to vent excess sex drive. Period. Usually the woman who is trying to force you to give i t up is willing to submit to sex twice a week or so, without even trying to understand that it's just hormones that make you want it twice a day for example, just like the reason she wants less is her hormones...

[Guest]

a wealth of interesting information in that post - i can't do it justice immediately. that'll need to be read again when i have a minute.

it does seem like we might be talking about 2 different issues at times. if you're point is to secure that we do, indeed, have primal instincts & that men's instincts are to chase women, i'll agree.

you & i have been down the road of arguing whether or not porn is harmful - i guess we don't need to do that again, unless for the benefit of anyone else reading. i can't buy the "no fault - no harm" principle here because i think a guy's use of porn does do harm - to himself, to his partner, & to the performers. we might just have to agree to disagree on that.

but let me suggest something to you - i appreciate your honesty in this paragraph especially:

What I am saying is this. I believe that in an ideal world, my partner would be the most attractive woman alive, her sex drive and naughtiness would be on par with mine, allowing me to share my entire sexual facet with her. That I believe would be an ideal relationship. However, the ideal relationship that unfortunately only exists the metaphysical perfect world. In my reality for example, my partner has a far lower sex drive than me, which pretty much means that the ideal relationship already doesn't exist. Then take for example this girl putting on weight and getting a flabby bum. This isn't sexy, and whilst you're masturbating a flabby bum isn't the first thing that will turn up in your mind - I'm sorry but I see that as an unbendable reality, at least for me. If I find a partner that fulfills what I see as a perfect world relationship then I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to making it an ideal relationship in the way that you say.

that's brutal honesty. and you're right, that's the reality for us all. our partners begin to deteriorate physically the day they're born, before we ever meet them. but consider this - there are couples who manage to maintain their attraction - their physical attraction - for each other well into their 60's, 70's & beyond. flab, wrinkles, hair and all.

how is that?

i mean, we'd all have to agree with your words. there's nothing inherently sexy about a flabby body. but yet, for so many couples, there seems to be something sexy about their partner's flabby body, specifically & uniquely.

i would argue that there is only one way to achieve that kind of attraction for another human being - the kind that transcends what our culture offers up to us as "sexy" and "appealing." and that is to focus your sexual energy & attention on that person, sacrifically at times, and to - by all means - stay away from porn. nothing will kill your desire for your spouse more quickly than lavishing your sexual energy on younger, firmer, dirtier girls in porn.

this is why i feel compelled to ring the bell of warning when people post here - as the author of this thread did - regarding porn in their marriage. i don't think there are many things as potentially toxic to a marriage than porn.

how does it relate to your comments - because i'm suggesting that your/our notion of what's sexy is fabricated. it's created by the media - perhaps by porn in many cases. and it's held up to us as the standard by which we measure anyone we might think is or isn't sexy.

and my point is that it's an illusion. guys who get into that rut find themselves spending a lifetime comparing theior partner to an illusion - an image that doesn't even exist.

there are no eternally firm a*ses out there. they all - no matter how much we love the person they're attached to - they all will sooner or later fail the test, if we measure them against what porn shows us is sexy. the longer we follow that dead end, the deeper that deception grabs us until, sadly, some of us end up unable - not unwilling, but unable - to be truly attracted to another person, thus unable to enjoy a real relationship. we might be able to be attracted to them today, or for a year, maybe a few years - but there will always be an unattainable image, and unpassable test, that will keep us from being able to say, with sincerity, "my partner is the most beautiful person in the world to me." she will always fall short of the image porn helped to build in your head.

you can't control your thoughts all the time. i'll give you that. but the more you indulge those thoughts about other women, the more that image gets established in your head - the one that you will use to measure your partner. that's why i advise that it is dangerous to indulge them. i'm not a monk. i have thoughts like any guy does - maybe worse, since i looked at porn for so many years. i'm just saying it's wise to be careful & try not to follow them when they appear.

now, all this is only applicable to those who are interested in more than sex. mine is worthless advice to someone that's only interested in sex without a relationship, commitment, or marriage.

i've taken much more time than i had -

quickly:

It is in it's own way an illusion, or at least a differing level of reality. It does indeed desensitize us, etc etc, but it's a good way to vent excess sex drive. Period.

OK i need you to explain this. how is it good if it desensitizes, etc, etc us?