Why do guys watch porn when they have a gf? And why does it upset gf? :O

[Kaius]

See, I wouldn't mind if my boyfriend was watching porn WITH me, as we've been talking about doing it to see if we like it (spice up the sex life), we just haven't got around to doing it. But I went away last weekend and yesterday he confessed to have watched lesbian hardcore porn and masturbated which for some reason really upset me.

Just to be clear, I want to say that I'm not some religious prude who thinks porn=rape, no no no, I couldn't care less if Jesus watched porn or not and if everyone's legal and makes their own decisions, fine!

What upset me was that he watched two naked girls to get hard and jerk off when I was away for 4 days. I thought I would be cool with it if he watched porn but it really really feels like he don't find me as attractive as these girls and that he has "cheated" in a way. If he was watching porn when I was home so I could join in that would be one thing, and if he wants to masturbate to relive the pressure when I'm away that's fine too but if he needs something to arouse him, why not watch pics of me? Or skype me?
When I told him how I felt and asked him about it he just said he "didn't know" why he did it, he's "just stupid", didn't look at me, said "Sorry, I wont do it again" and left the apartment, while I was sitting here crying because he rather watch some other girls when he says I'm the most beautiful girl in the world. Maybe my emotions doesn't make sense but this is how I'm feeling. Is that so weird?
And why does guys watch porn when they have "the real deal"?
And is it really ok to watch other naked girls just because they're on film not irl? No-one would think it was weird if I was upset if he'd brought home a naked girl while I was away right?

AND why did he just leave without looking at me instead of hugging me and saying sorry I didn't mean to hurt you? Mumbling sorry while looking away like a little boy that's been told to say sorry but don't really mean it doesn't really count...

All guys do this... it's not wrong. It's biology. Males are not designed to be monogamous. Because our society has forced it upon men to believe they can only have one woman at a time, there has to be a way for the male brain to vent.
watching porn and jerking off is a healthy way to vent. He's not cheating on you, yet he gets sexual gratification. You ask why he can't enjoy it with you.... well that would defeat the whole purpose of the porn. Let him have his alone time...
he would much appreciate it and treat you with more love than if you prevented him.

[romantic_guy]

Nobody wants to hear about your wrinkle-sex, old man.

HEY...I don't have wrinkles!!! (didn't say that I was not old)

Seriously, we got married at 16 & 17 so I am only 56...and 56 sure seems younger than it used to!! (take a look at my photo album...my wife sure doesn't look 55!!)

[Kaius]

For a while, I was totally fascinated by a porn star named Sara Stone because I thought she was by far the hottest porn star ever. But that's just fantasy. I would never trade my fiancee to be with her... no way. Do i fantasize about sex with that porn star? Sometimes. Would I actually have sex with her if given a chance? No way! My fiancee is much sexier and is way prettier. I am happy in my current relationship. A little fantasy on the side is perfectly innocent...IMHO. I think as long as you don't obsess over porn, it's actually benign.

[Togoru]

Guys are visual creatures.

If your problem is with him looking at some stranger online, just give him so naughty pics of yourself for him to use. Problem solved.

I did this though... when I discovered my boyfriend's "stash" a month ago and when I asked him about it he said to me "it's normal! Guys just like to look at this stuff. When you're not around I get killer urges and I need something to get me going. I'll always look at other women, you'll have to accept it. I love you and would never cheat on you. I don't love those women. Sometimes I just need visual images. You're USUALLY in my fantasies though. I start with an image of you and gather images of other women and pan through them to pleasure myself quickly." then He deleted the images he had saved of the naked women from the internet which I did NOT ask him to do so but he did anyway. Then he said to me "well I guess this means we can send each other sexy pics". Which I DID send him pics like that, and still do, various poses, underwear and no underwear/naked yet he STILL (or is again) saving and looking at other images of women along with mine too. Although, some/most of the women have similar builds to me and the same hair color. So the images of other women still kind of look like me even though of course at first it confused me of why... why does he do that when I give him images like that and if we have always had great sex before. It made me feel bad at first or made me wonder if something was wrong or what do they have that I don't already give him. At first it was hard for me to understand but the more I read threads like this I start to get it more. Even though I am not a guy and will never understand what that's like. On an emotional level it was hard to grasp at first, but I do see it more and how images like that/porn don't really mean a boyfriend doesn't find his girlfriend desirable necessarily. And there are many reasons why guys like porn. Even some girls are into porn too! But my boyfriend's reasoning seems to be that when I am not there it's just something for him to release some steam quickly. But he seems to like variety, like most men seem to, and he told me he will always like looking at other women. And everyone masturbates, alone time is important too or also pleasuring yourself, it's healthy. Overall I know he finds me very attractive because he tells me and he wouldn't love any of those women in those images and so that'd mean he doesn't feel emotionally attached to them in the way he is to me, and he wouldn't cheat on me. And of course he still loves me. I don't think porn is a problem in a relationship unless it affects actual intimacy with a partner or if that partner prefers the porn over their partner.

[Yet another guy]

Yes I know there isn't an objective attractiveness, that's why I put the quotation marks. I was referring to what you call attractive, and I was saying that I was talking about something else.

What I mean by attractive depends on context. When I talk about how attractive someone is in general I indeed mean the same thing you apparently mean by "objective attractiveness". Attraction between two people is quite another thing. I guess I should have used the in general to avoid confusion. I thought that the two different definitions were obvious from the context.

I personally don't care at all whether my guy is considered attractive "by most people". I want him to be attractive to me! That's all that matters. So I really don't care for what most people think is beautiful

I doubt that anyone - save the most vain and superficial people - cares if their SO is "objectively attractive". But it makes a difference to your SO. Or at least it did back when he was single.

Are you implying that most people just go with what they have, because they can't afford what they'd really want?

If you can't get something... you won't get it. Sure you can try to reach for the stars but they are lightyears away and you'll never make it. Even if you did, your hand would burn clean off. If the most attractive person rejects you, there's no point in trying to change their mind and it's smarter to settle for someone who doesn't. In my opinion.

I guess I'm one of the few lucky/very attractive people then (<-sarcasm) °_°.

Maybe you really are. Are there several people who would consider dating you if you were single? If there are, you're "objectively attractive". If he's your only choice, I'd consider you lucky for having a SO whom you find the most attractive person you know.

What I'm 100% sure of is that I personally would NOT settle for some guy who I am not really that much into just because I can't get a guy I was a lot more attracted to (again, I mean subjectively attracted to, in my sense).

I wouldn't settle for someone I didn't perceive attractive either. But I wouldn't turn down all other options (if I had any) because the most attractive girl turned me down.

Back when you met your SO, you didn't know anything about his personality. So your attraction towards him was based just on physical appearance. But you say that "I know that my bf is not the most attractive guy on earth". So back then he wasn't the most attractive person you know but you gave him a chance anyway.

I believe that most likely there are people whom you would find more attractive than him if you had the same feelings towards them and you knew them as well as you know your bf. So by my definition (see below), he's not the most attractive person to you.

I really think our different views on attractiveness can be taken down to one basic difference. You think a person is attractive; I think a person is attracted to another person. Attractiveness is not, to me, a characteristic of the person in object. It is on the other hand something that the subject feels, with regards to another person.

Hmm yeah, that there seems to be a difference. When I talk about how attractive someone is, I mean how attractive I would find them if I knew all about them. When you talk about attractiveness, you mean how attractive you find them based on your current perception of them.

Of course, the true attractiveness (by my definition) of a person is something that I can never figure out exactly. The perceived attractiveness (your definition of attractiveness) just slowly converges when I learn more about them with more or less error caused by misunderstanding and what not. The perceived attractiveness probably also fluctuates strongly because it's affected by emotions and things like [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_relationship_energy"]NRE[/URL].

When it comes to physical beauty, the attractiveness is more or less the same as perceived attractiveness give or take whatever effect make up has and how much is revealed by cloting or point of view. In contrast, personality is something that takes a long time to figure out and is easily clouded by preconceptions.

I often use the word attractiveness for the perceived attractiveness as well (unless I'm trying to explain myself...) but I try to do my best to leave out temporary things like emotions out of the picture.

Attractiveness is not, to me, a characteristic of the person in object. It is on the other hand something that the subject feels, with regards to another person. You say that a person is "attractive" if "most people are attracted to her". This doesn't work at all for me. I say that a person X is "attractive to person Y" if person Y is attracted by person X, that's all.

I already explained above, but I guess it doesn't hurt to repeat since it's so easy to misunderstand. Here you're mixing up my definition of how attractive someone is to people in general and what I mean by attraction between two people.

You say attraction is something that the subject feels. I agree. But I say that the true attractiveness of the person in object is how subject would feel about the object if they knew all about them and when comparing attractiveness, emotions and other temporary things were considered equal.

That is all

[vashti]

There's no such thing as objective attractiveness. Attraction is always subjective.

Wrong. Sorry.

[url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16932187]An objective system for measuring facial... [Plast Reconstr Surg. 2006] - PubMed - NCBI[/url]

[searock]

What I mean by attractive depends on context. When I talk about how attractive someone is in general I indeed mean the same thing you apparently mean by "objective attractiveness". Attraction between two people is quite another thing. I guess I should have used the in general to avoid confusion. I thought that the two different definitions were obvious from the context.

I doubt that anyone - save the most vain and superficial people - cares if their SO is "objectively attractive". But it makes a difference to your SO. Or at least it did back when he was single.

Ok, thing is, I don't think it's anyway useful to consider the "in general" sense of attractive, in this topic at least. As you said, it makes a difference only to the person who is "attractive in general" (he/she is found attractive by most people he/she knows), but we are talking about people who are already into a relationship, and have no interest in persons other than their SO.

If you can't get something... you won't get it. Sure you can try to reach for the stars but they are lightyears away and you'll never make it. Even if you did, your hand would burn clean off. If the most attractive person rejects you, there's no point in trying to change their mind and it's smarter to settle for someone who doesn't. In my opinion.

Maybe you really are. Are there several people who would consider dating you if you were single? If there are, you're "objectively attractive". If he's your only choice, I'd consider you lucky for having a SO whom you find the most attractive person you know.

I dunno... well if you define "attractive in general" people whom more than one other person would like to date, then yeah I guess I'm one of those... but really I'm average-looking...

I wouldn't settle for someone I didn't perceive attractive either. But I wouldn't turn down all other options (if I had any) because the most attractive girl turned me down.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that I can't reach the highest levels of physical attraction with somebody unless I know them very well first. I know this from experience.

Back when you met your SO, you didn't know anything about his personality. So your attraction towards him was based just on physical appearance. But you say that "I know that my bf is not the most attractive guy on earth". So back then he wasn't the most attractive person you know but you gave him a chance anyway.

It's not like I "gave him a chance"... he was (and is) my best friend, and it took me over 6 months to realize that I was physically attracted to him as well as on other levels. If there were no other levels, I most probably would not have found him physically attractive. Right now, I can't think of a guy who I am more physically attracted to, overall! This is pretty much similar to my other experiences with men. First I saw them as persons, and only after I got to know them better and realized that I really liked them as persons, did the physical attraction begin.

You say that one can only be attracted to another person (not in the general sense) only once that they know that person well - once again, we are talking about people who are into a relationship, so we are pretty much assuming that they do know each other well.

I believe that most likely there are people whom you would find more attractive than him if you had the same feelings towards them and you knew them as well as you know your bf. So by my definition (see below), he's not the most attractive person to you.

Yes, true. But I doubt that I could have the same feelings for somebody different from my bf. I have those feelings for him because he is him. Perhaps if it was 100% him, in the body of someone else... but I'm still not sure - maybe what's sexy in him (like his scent, the way he talks and moves, etc) wouldn't fit at all on the other body. Who knows!

Hmm yeah, that there seems to be a difference. When I talk about how attractive someone is, I mean how attractive I would find them if I knew all about them. When you talk about attractiveness, you mean how attractive you find them based on your current perception of them.

So, based on your definition... how can you tell if someone is attractive if you don't know all about them yet?

---

Anyway, in general, I agree with pretty much everything Togoru said.

[Yet another guy]

Ok, thing is, I don't think it's anyway useful to consider the "in general" sense of attractive, in this topic at least. As you said, it makes a difference only to the person who is "attractive in general" (he/she is found attractive by most people he/she knows), but we are talking about people who are already into a relationship, and have no interest in persons other than their SO.

I see you're missing the point about the attractiveness in general. I said that most people are most attracted to those who are attractive to most people, by definition. Those, generally attractive people, have plenty to choose from as their partner and it is highly unlikely that they would choose a generally unattractive person. Thus it's unlikely that an unattractive person would end up with the most attractive person while ending up with anyone else would be "unhealthy".

I dunno... well if you define "attractive in general" people whom more than one other person would like to date, then yeah I guess I'm one of those... but really I'm average-looking...

Or modest. That's attractive as well.

It's not like I "gave him a chance"... he was (and is) my best friend, and it took me over 6 months to realize that I was physically attracted to him as well as on other levels. If there were no other levels, I most probably would not have found him physically attractive. Right now, I can't think of a guy who I am more physically attracted to, overall! This is pretty much similar to my other experiences with men. First I saw them as persons, and only after I got to know them better and realized that I really liked them as persons, did the physical attraction begin.

It's great to hear that you let him past your friend zone You're different from most girls though. Usually they don't bother getting to know guys unless they find them physically attractive already.

You say that one can only be attracted to another person (not in the general sense) only once that they know that person well - once again, we are talking about people who are into a relationship, so we are pretty much assuming that they do know each other well.

I say that you can only tell how attractive another person truly is once I know all about them. I can be attracted to someone based solely on their physical beauty, it's just very uncertain whether I still do if I get to know them better. People in relationships know their SO but they can hardly know everyone else and thus they can't know their SO is truly the most attractive person there is.

But I wouldn't be surprised they perceive them very attractive while they are in love.

Yes, true. But I doubt that I could have the same feelings for somebody different from my bf. I have those feelings for him because he is him. Perhaps if it was 100% him, in the body of someone else... but I'm still not sure - maybe what's sexy in him (like his scent, the way he talks and moves, etc) wouldn't fit at all on the other body. Who knows!

That's how you feel now. I'm curious, how long have you been together?

So, based on your definition... how can you tell if someone is attractive if you don't know all about them yet?

As I said: "Of course, the true attractiveness (by my definition) of a person is something that I can never figure out exactly."

I can't know for certain if someone is attractive before I know them better. The perceived attractiveness at first consists only of the physical attractiveness. I can't know yet if I'd be interested in dating her, but I might be. Just how attractive she really is depends on her personality. The more attractive she is physically, the higher potential for attractiveness she has. A sexy girl with a good personality is more attractive than an ugly girl with the same personality.

[smackie9]

Visual attractiveness comes first with me. Shoot first ask questions later.

[searock]

I see you're missing the point about the attractiveness in general. I said that most people are most attracted to those who are attractive to most people, by definition. Those, generally attractive people, have plenty to choose from as their partner and it is highly unlikely that they would choose a generally unattractive person. Thus it's unlikely that an unattractive person would end up with the most attractive person while ending up with anyone else would be "unhealthy".

If by the part in bold you don't mean that they would only "choose" a generally attractive person, then I agree. But then, most people would not "choose" a generally unattractive person, by definition: not only the "generally attractive" ones. If you take the "generally unattractive" persons aside, then I'm pretty sure it all comes down to subjectivity. Unless your definition of "attractive" really is so vast as "a person whom more than one other person would date" - in that case, ok, you're right. It's just a matter of definitions I guess : ). To me, if only one other person (or no person at all) would date person X, then person X is "generally unattractive". If more than half of the people (attracted to persons of the same gender of person X) who know person X would date him/her, then person X is "generally attractive". All the ones in between are "average-looking". Standing by these definitions, both the "generally attractive" and "generally unattractive" are only a smaaall part of society. The "generally attractive" are not more likely than other persons to be attracted to other "generally attractive" persons.

It's great to hear that you let him past your friend zone You're different from most girls though. Usually they don't bother getting to know guys unless they find them physically attractive already.

That's how you feel now. I'm curious, how long have you been together?

Actually it wasn't hard at all: I am a firm believer that the best relationships are the ones that arise from friendships. It was just a "natural evolution" I guess (I am NOT saying that all friendships between man and woman are destined to become love relationships - I have plenty of guy friends and we're very happy as friends). It's true, most girls do that. Most guys do that too, in fact. It's such a silly approach IMO, sometimes it makes you miss out on the best relationships ever and you don't even know it.

BTW I know that as time passes I will most probably become less and less attracted to him (and him to me). It's normal *sigh*. But I think it's going to be quite a looong time from now : ). We've been dating for 4.5 months, but we've known each other for over 3 years, and I've been madly attracted to him for over 2 years. So it's not like I'm only just getting to know him : ).

I say that you can only tell how attractive another person truly is once I know all about them. I can be attracted to someone based solely on their physical beauty, it's just very uncertain whether I still do if I get to know them better. People in relationships know their SO but they can hardly know everyone else and thus they can't know their SO is truly the most attractive person there is.
But I wouldn't be surprised they perceive them very attractive while they are in love.

I can't know for certain if someone is attractive before I know them better. The perceived attractiveness at first consists only of the physical attractiveness. I can't know yet if I'd be interested in dating her, but I might be. Just how attractive she really is depends on her personality. The more attractive she is physically, the higher potential for attractiveness she has. A sexy girl with a good personality is more attractive than an ugly girl with the same personality.

I've bolded those two bits because I think it all comes down to the fact that, for me, I know that I will never reach the highest level of attraction to somebody unless I know a LOT about them. As for simple "low-level" attraction to somebody I don't yet know: I can be physically attracted to them, but only if at least I know SOMEthing about them. For example, a guy might be really hot and sexy, but a total jerk and a bit stupid (both things that are sometimes very evident just at first sight) - then I will NOT be physically attracted to him at all. It doesn't get a long time to know enough about another person to understand whether I'm physically attracted to him: it's all in the eyes, in the way he moves, etc. It's not just about the physical body per se. I can't imagine a "soul-less" body to which I would be attracted to, so that doesn't work either. I can't separate looks from "personality" (when it comes to the first approach to a person, "personality" would be things like the ones I said before: the way he moves, smiles, looks at people, etc). The "sexiness" of a person is a combination of looks and personality, hands down.

[smackie9]

Is anyone actually reading any of this.....?

[searock]

Is anyone actually reading any of this.....?

Nah, I think it's just Yet Another Guy and myself XD.

As for the actual topic, when it comes to me, I don't care what my guy thinks about when he masturbates as long as I know that he is very attracted to me and that our sex life is great . Oh, and also as long as he doesn't think about my mother, or my best friend, or something ò_ò. But then it's all good too, just so long as he isn't silly enough to tell me XD.

[KingZ]

Oh, and also as long as he doesn't think about my mother, or my best friend, or something ò_ò. But then it's all good too, just so long as he isn't silly enough to tell me XD.

There isn't a man in the world who hasn't at least once thought about his girlfriend's mother while masturbating, if she's at least the slightest bit attractive.

I just told you. Sorry honey.

[searock]

Bahaha, well in my case it's alright since he hasn't seen her yet I guess XD. Now I'll have to be VERY careful then. Thanks for ruining all my relationships XD.

[KingZ]

Well, hey now. It's possible that your mother is just completely ugly.

Did you think about that?