Advice – My boyfriend watches too much porn [NSFW].

January 17, 2020January 24, 2020 / teatimewithtomato / Leave a comment

“We [25F] [23M] are in a long distance relationship and about 3 months in while staying at his parents house for a week I walked in on him watching porn while he said he was packing for a trip. Ever since then I noticed a pattern of him watching porn or looking at explicit photos of women behind my back. I say behind my back because I told him that while we are apart I don’t care if he watches porn but to please not do it while we are together in person. He agreed to this. Almost every time we had/have sex it is initiated by me. He often can’t maintain an erection during sex either. This worried me and I made the mistake of checking his internet history to find he had been watching porn while I was in class, at work or sleeping. Every time I bring it up he tells me he won’t do it or blatantly denies it. I’m not really sure what to do at this point anymore. The people I confided in told me that they think it’s best to break up but is there another solution?”

– /u/nvbii, /r/relationship_advice.

Dear NVBII,

There is a major communicative and sexual disconnect taking place in your relationship with your boyfriend. The fact that he is dishonest with you about his porn usage actually reveals a bigger issue than whether or not he can maintain an erection. At least his inability to maintain an erection can be explained away by his porn usage. His inability to be honest with you about how his porn usage is impacting your sex life is very concerning. I wonder to what extent that hesitation is a manifestation of social conditioning that porn usage is to be ashamed for and how much of that is determined by your personal perspective on his porn usage.

And let’s talk specifically about his porn usage. Different folks masturbate differently. But a lot of guys do masturbate because there is a lot less pressure to perform in masturbation. You only have to please yourself and your eyes and hands are basically doing all the work. Adding more pressure around his performance is only going to drive you further and further apart. I get the sense that you’re very bothered by his dishonesty as much as how his usage affects your sex life with him. If this is how he likes to conduct his own sexual headspace, then this might just reflect mismatch on sexual chemistry. You’ve already communicated your expectations around his porn usage (“Since we are in a long distance relationship, please limit your porn usage so that we can have more intercourse when I’m in town.”), so the next steps might be to reiterate your agreement. Have him recommit to the agreement you’ve made and hold him responsible for breaking your agreements.

I also don’t think you made a mistake in checking his browser history. Dan Savage often says snooping isn’t wrong when the act of snooping is justified (even retroactively). You found what you needed to find – evidence of broken agreement – and the best thing to do is to address what you found.

I strongly disagree with your people that you need to breakup. So I’ll provide a couple alternative solutions in place of a breakup.

It is always surprising to hear to what extent male sexuality is linked to the ability to maintain an erection. That if we cannot get or stay hard, then we are somehow less of a man. Truth is that male sexuality is much more than just our genitals, just like female sexuality. We have larger erogenous zones that isn’t just our penises, despite what mainstream porn claims. We are much more than our penises. We have fingers, tongue, lips, and other body parts to which we can augment with sex toys.

Your boyfriend is much more than his penis. If your boyfriend really cannot maintain an erection during intercourse, he has fingers, tongue, lips, and other body parts to which he can augment with sex toys to help please you. If you feel that genital penetration (or at least simulation of) needs to happen in your sexual intercourse, he can always wear a strap on to simulate penetrative intercourse. If he refuses to wear a strap on, he can always hold a dildo with a flared base near his pelvic area to simulate the same sensation of penetrative intercourse. You might have a deeper issue if he further disregards your sexual needs by refusing to please you in other ways – orally or digitally – while he pleases himself through masturbation.

If none of these alternatives above work for you and your boyfriend, kindly remind your boyfriend that long distance relationships are hard enough without that sexual disconnect even in close proximity. If your boyfriend continues to disregard your sexual needs in place of his own immediate satisfaction, ask yourself if all of this is a price of admission worth paying to be in this long distance, sexually dysfunctional relationship with your boyfriend.

Good luck!

Tea Time with Tomato is an informative relationship and sex advice column for both monogamous and polyamorous folks. By submitting your post, you agree to let me use your story in part or in full. You also agree to let me edit or elaborate for clarity.

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Advice – Abstinence in LDR.

December 2, 2019December 2, 2019 / teatimewithtomato / 16 Comments

“Modern Tea” *by Adara Sánchez Anguiano is licensed under* CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

/u/strawberryxcheeks on /r/relationship_advice writes…

“So I’ll keep this short. I’m a 27 year old male with a LDR gf [26F]. I see her for 3 weeks a year. We’re working towards cutting the distance. As far as sex goes, she wants to wait till after marriage. I love her to bits, but basically I haven’t had sex in years, even when we get together we just fool around, no proper sex.

I try to control my urges with porn. I’ve only really had one other serious gf, and I haven’t had too many sexual experiences outside of that. I pay for porn sites as well as two girls on Snapchat premium. I don’t interact with them but like the content they send when I pay. My gf sends me nudes but I’m desensitized to them at this point. I don’t want to cheat on my LDR gf, but I need help as to how to approach this relationship further. I love her to death and cannot imagine anyone else with me, but the lack of sex is driving me crazy.

I need help and advice as to how I should go about continuing this relationship, is paying for Snapchat premium a step too far or am I just lonely, I’m very confused.”

Dear Strawberry X Cheeks,

For the sake of this column, I am going to operate under the assumption that you are also okay and completely onboard with waiting to have sex with your current long-distance girlfriend. I am also going to wholeheartedly trust you when you say that you want better ideas on how to communicate your needs better.

Have you ever taken a really long flight out to somewhere? Like five to ten hours out? What do you do when you get settled in for a five to ten hour flight? You hydrate up, bring a full bottle of water, and enough entertainment to keep you busy while you’re in the air. It’s just a temporary aspect of the travel that sometimes the transportation aspect in between the destinations suck. But you have to do your best to prepare to stay sane.

It might be a good time for you to sit down and reconsider what are the most important facets of your relationship. What are those needs you need met? The problem isn’t that Snapchat premium services are one step too far. The problem is in the total sexual communication breakdown. First determine how important it is that you get your sexual desires met. Decide if you’ve done your best to get ready for this flight you are already on. Do you have enough entertainment at hand? What do you need to do to stay sane with your current travel partner until you can land in Marriage? It sounds like you are at the assessment part of your planning here, and you are considering if you need to reach out to your travel partner – your girlfriend – to make sure that you have enough here in between the two of you to make it to Marriage safely.

Start with what you shared with us here – “I love [you] to death and cannot imagine anyone else with me, but the lack of sex is driving me crazy” – and figure out a way to make this relationship work. What are some boundaries and agreements that you might have agreed to either implicitly or explicitly? And what adjustments can you make to make sure that you and your partner can remain sane on this journey together? What is the furthest extent you and your girlfriend can remain flexible for each other? Once you can get a better idea on what she is and isn’t comfortable in terms of sexual boundaries (and specifically what she would consider to be infidelity), you’ll have better idea on what you have to work with. Some people do consider porn to be cheating while others do not consider consensual non-monogamy be to be cheating. So there is a lot of grey area here to flesh out.

Some of those grey areas you might want to explore is in what different ways you can continue to keep intimacy interesting in your long distance relationship. Nudes by themselves don’t mean anything without context. You’re already getting fresh influx of new pictures and videos of other people online. Think about in what different ways you can utilize all of internet to make the foreplay, exchange of photos/videos/audios, and dirty talk captivating and stimulating for both of you. Get creative with each other.

I really hope your conversations with your partner are fruitful. It is hard enough to do this walk with wholly consenting partners who are enthusiastic. So mindfully approach this with bright attitude and eye for silver lining. It really is just a journey you two are on together. Destinations might be set, but the itineraries are not.

Good luck!

Advice – Intimacy after pregnancy. [NSFW]

November 20, 2019 / teatimewithtomato / Leave a comment

/u/throwaway309329 on /r/relationships writes…

“We’ve [29M] [27F] been married for 2 years. My wife just had our baby almost six months ago. I love our son so much, and I love my wife. Truly, I do. I expected changes to my wife’s body after pregnancy. I told myself and I told her that I will love her body no matter what, but I don’t. I don’t find myself physically attracted to her anymore.

After the doctor gave us the green light for sex again, she was very embarrassed and nervous to show me her body. My wife saw my face when I saw her body and she was mortified–I don’t remember what I did or said but clearly it wasn’t the reaction she was hoping to get. We didn’t have sex that night and I was completely turned off. I apologized later on and she forgave me, and she asked for some more time before we jumped the gun again. I agreed.

We tried to have sex a couple weeks after that and it was very disappointing. Her vagina wasn’t as tight as before and she was in a lot of pain. We stopped and she was crying from the pain. I consoled her but I was VERY turned off. I pushed her for exercise a couple days after that night, told her to do some kegels, etc.

She’s been exercising a lot more lately when she has the time and she’s slowly lost the weight, but she still has her stretchmarks and other loose skin. I tell her she looks beautiful, but I really don’t believe myself when I say it. She’s slowly regaining confidence in herself, but the other night I made a couple more comments about her stretchmarks and she is crushed again. I feel bad. She’s an amazing mother and has been a wonderful companion to me, and has stuck by me through thick and thin. But her body isn’t beautiful to me anymore. I don’t know how else to bring this up, or what to do in this situation. I’ve thought about cheating but I’ve been going back and forth on that.”

Dear Throwaway 309329,

What a hurricane.

Let’s start here. Consider that your wife just gave birth to your child six months ago. Cheating on your wife is a very bad idea.

Your wife has gone through an intense, body-altering experience in childbirth. It is very common that most mothers wait about four to six weeks before attempting vaginal intercourse. That usually gives enough time for the cervix to close up, uterus to shrink, and C-section wounds to heal. But the actual physical recovery process can extend can extend further into two to three months as well. The emotional recovery could take a bit longer than either of those timelines. Learning to re-associate sexual attributes to her organ that just extracted a brand new human being is quite a lot. According to BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth, 46% of women expressed no interest in sex six months after child birth. Motherly’s survey in 2019 found that 31% of women are having postpartum sex before they felt ready. All the signs and studies point in the direction that you need to be much, much more patient. Some of the common advice regarding postpartum sex suggests to use a lot of lubrication, especially at first, to reduce bleeding from unnecessary friction.

Now let’s talk about the your sexual disconnect.

Your wife’s body has changed. There is no denying it. She will have stretch marks at best case scenario for another twelve weeks. The way you describe sexual intimacy with your wife is so… self-centered and egocentric, so discompassionate from the pain she is experiencing and the efforts she has been making to feel reconnected with her own body. She is your wife. It is time for you to make some serious effort to reconnect with your wife’s body. It’s your time to do your emotional labor.

Why are you putting so much pressure on your wife to be comfortable with vaginal intercourse right away? Both you and your wife have to approach this sexual reconnect with mindfulness and patience. Start with mutual masturbation. If all of that goes well, then consider intensifying to oral sex and outercourse. Only if you both still feel comfortable at that point, consider slowly introducing vaginal intercourse into your sexual routine.

Commit to this reconnect with your wife. She deserves way more than just your best shot at this after what she went through the past nine months carrying your child to term.

Good luck.

Advice – Husband is no longer interested in sex. [NSFW]

November 19, 2019 / teatimewithtomato / Leave a comment

/u/AJfish6729 in /r/sex writes…

“We’ve been together for 2 years and married for 3 months. Our sex life used to be great, although I’ve [23F] definitely always had a higher sex drive than he [29M] has.

As we got closer to our wedding, sex wasn’t really a priority. I started to realize that if I didn’t initiate it, it wouldn’t happen.

After we got married, we decided to try for a baby. We started having sex more, but surprisingly, I got pregnant on our first try. That’s great, but now we’re back to not having sex. He doesn’t really see the point since I already got pregnant.

We got in an argument over this recently. I’m frustrated because for over 6 months, I have been the only person to initiate sex. When we do have sex, I am the only person who takes an active role. I’m on top, I get him hard, he doesn’t make sure I’m physically ready for sex, and if I’m not physically ready, we just won’t have sex (instead of him simply helping me out).

He says he’s embarrassed about this because it’s just not something he’s interested in. What do I do? What do we do? I’m not thrilled about only having sex a few times a year for the rest of our marriage.”

Dear AJ Fish 6729,

First off. Congratulations on your pregnancy! Not a lot of people get to say that they got pregnant on the first try. I am so happy to hear that you’ll be growing an entire human being inside of you. So, so happy for you.

These are really challenging times. And you have outlined two specific points that stand out to me.

His words here reveal a lot about him.

“He doesn’t really see the point since I already got pregnant.”

This tells me that his perspective on sex is (unfortunately) very goal-oriented. It sounds like he has internalized a lot of his sexual headspace around sex and intimacy as something he HAS to do, rather than something he WANTS to do. Trying for a baby was a definitive goal in mind when he was more interested in sex with you. And now that the same purpose/goal of “getting you pregnant” is not there anymore, the same kind of motivation isn’t there.

I can speak from a very personal experience that having sex for the sole sake of creation does rob sex of what makes sex and intimacy feel rewarding: sense of risk. It is something that I’ve personally had to reflect on after my partner got pregnant with our child. Think of the last time you held off on paying off a bill until the last minute. It might have provided you a subtle sense of accomplishment to know that there was a danger of late fees being added onto your account? The thrill, the joie de vivre, is invigorating. In the same way, sex and intimacy also craves newness. Settling into an established pattern of this-then-this-then-that-and-its-over is not at all sexy. It might be beneficial for you to break up that routine and think about approaching sex from a different angle altogether. Start again from ground zero. If it means rolling around in bed together naked without intercourse, do so because you both want to. Commit to a re-connection and learn to crave each other’s flesh again.

Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

“He says he’s embarrassed about this because [sex] is just not something he’s interested in.”

This also revealed a lot about where his current headspace is at regarding sex and intimacy. In specific, it tells me how he has personally internalized and perpetuated a really toxic mentality around sex as a male-bodied person.

In our culture, men are often told that their erection is a given, and that they are sexual beings who should always be interested in sex. This kind of mentality is so often perpetuated through popular media through male characters who never struggle with virility. And it is reflected in how often the topic of male sexual dysfunction comes up as if a lack of erection in het-intercourse is an inability or a failure upon the man. It is an incredibly damaging perspective to internalize because it’s clear and evident that sex and erection is not always a given. If we flip this around and say a woman who cannot get wet, we would not claim it as a failure on her part, would we? This is a concept that he will have to wrestle with on his own, to decouple his erection from exploring intimacy and sex with you. But it doesn’t sound like maintaining erection is really the problem for him, but rather in his general lack of libido.

I’ll add here that even if you aren’t pregnant-presenting at the moment, your body will be going through some intense changes in the coming months. Both you and your husband will have to quickly adjust to the developing changes in your body as the baby grows more and more. You might need to think a bit more about how much you want to continue investing in helping him along with the changes in your body and closing the gap of sexual disconnect, as that gap will continue to grow even with the best intentions from both of you.

I am really sorry to hear you are experiencing such a disconnect from your husband. I sincerely hope that you two can see eye to eye on reconnecting as lovers again… not just for the sake of your marriage, but also for the sake of the brand new human growing inside of you.

Good luck!

Advice – Intimacy in an arranged marriage. [NFSW]

November 18, 2019 / teatimewithtomato / Leave a comment

/u/Throwaway__56 on /r/deadbedrooms and /r/relationships writes…

“I [22M] got married two weeks ago. It’s technically an arranged marriage, but we’ve been getting to know each other over the past year and a half and I really am happy to have married her [21F] We never had sex because she wanted to wait until marriage. I was fine with it. We are also from a culture where it is common to wait until marriage.

So, our wedding night two weeks ago. I tried to get her in the mood, but she was just too nervous and scared. So we stopped. She was really apologetic and said its her fault, sorry, etc.

The next day, I tried again. We were kissing for ages, but as soon as I tried touching her (through her clothes!) she froze up again. She told me to just keep going, but I don’t want to feel like I’m raping her/ also don’t want to hurt her. So I stopped, and I could tell she was relieved.

I know she feels really guilty, but I don’t know what to do. We talked about it a few days ago, and she said that she really wants to, she just is scared. She said she is definitely attracted to me, and she loves kissing, but I don’t want us to only be kissing for the rest of our lives. What should I do? were any of you afraid of sex? What did you do?”

Dear Throwaway 56,

This is another one of those circumstances that where I wish the other party was also present so that we can talk more about this disconnect at a more therapeutic setting.

There is a lot of missing gaps in what you have outlined. Have you tried to explore other forms of intimacy outside of intercourse (i.e. mutual masturbation, assisted masturbation, etc)? Have you talked in more detail about what could make you both feel more comfortable to exploring intimacy in your relationship? All of these could be one possible way to close that intimacy gap that feels so wide between you two.

It sounds like there is a lot of sexual negativity and hangup surrounding her sexuality. So instead of trying things that have consistently failed, why not try looking at this from another angle?

Maybe we’ve been approaching this from a completely wrong perspective. Have you ever considered having her approach you and initiate first instead? She already knows you are interested. She already knows you are mentally prepared to have sex. If she needs to do that same mental preparation beforehand, it might be better to just take that pressure off and have her come to you at her pace first. That should help establish basic level of comfort in her own terms before she involves you in her sexual headspace.

Conscientiously and intentionally approaching each and every step of your next developments should also help guide you. But it is also important to keep in mind that intercourse is not the end-all-be-all. 25% of gayfolks do not have penis-in-anus intercourse. In the same way, there’s plenty of sexually rewarding levels of intimacy you can explore without genital-to-genital contact. Find joy in exploring each and every one of those steps as well.

Good luck!