Youâve given me good advice in the past and it has led me to casting aside previous baggage and settling down with a man whom I valued for being trustworthy, responsible, and hard-working. The one downside: He's always been straight as an arrow, uninterested in kink or any nontraditional relationship options. I figured it was a small price to pay for his many fine qualities.
This partner of 10 years got into photography about five years ago. He does "boudoir" photography, i.e., sexy ladies either naked or scantily clad. I have no problem with that, Iâm glad he has an interest outside of work, and he does take lovely, artsy shots of women. But a couple of years ago, he showed me some shots of a naked lady squatting with either foot on the two prongs of a forkliftâtaken from below. I told him at the time that I thought that pictures that left nothing to the imagination were no longer art but rather pornography and that I didnât like him taking such shots of other women. (We were occasionally doing naughty photo sessions of our own at the time.) Since then, when he has shown me the fruits of his creative endeavors, it has always been of sexy, edgy images that qualified as art.
The other night I asked to borrow his computer to work on a document.
After a couple of hours of work, I clicked on the File manager icon to locate a previous version of my document, only to have a folder of photos show up on the screen, with thumbnails. I barely glanced at them but I immediately saw a bunch of thumbnails that looked very explicit. I clicked on a couple and found, indeed, they were of the same ilk as the ones I objected to a couple of years ago. One of them was a picture of a model mooning him, with anus and clitoris in full view, another one was of the models lowering herself onto a dildo.
I finished my work and told him what Iâd seen, and how I thought that heâs been duplicitous in carrying on taking such pictures on the quiet. And if that wasnât bad enoughâwhich I thought it was, though not terminal in itselfâit emerged during our argument that the dildo the model was lowering herself onto is mine! We special ordered it from a glassmaker in the States, to our specifications. Unfortunately it was too large for me and after a couple of tries we put it away. And though we hadnât used it for years, I still cherished it as a part of our intimacy and hadnât quite given up hope of being able to use it one day. And here I find it inside a complete stranger, having sex with it in front of himâor should I say for him? With him?
My husband has gone so far as to admit that he should indeed have asked me before allowing someone else to use it, but there is so much more to it than that:
1. Loaning out an intimate item that I thought was just for the two of us, whether or not he thought weâd ever use it againâI feel betrayed and violated.
2. Having a model perform sexual acts for him, which I believe is tantamount to having sex with her, though he claims he was not aroused and that it was all business, not pleasure, and that her husband was present (which I do believe, but doesnât make a difference in my mind).
3. The fact that this erotic photography coincides with the end of our naughty photo sessionsâI feel like Iâve been replaced and cheated on.
4. The fact that he doesnât feel like heâs done anything wrong in taking those pictures (other than the permission aspect), despite my stating my position on them.
Also in the course of our argument, I asked him how he would feel if I were to perform such acts for another man to take pictures of, and he said that he wouldnât mind. This is surprising, as at his insistence, weâve always had a vanilla relationship, despite my efforts to introduce some kink. Furthermore, he has always been a stickler for the monogamy. I have respected his wishes, though at the beginning of our relationship I made an emotional attachment with another man (and believe me, it was purely emotional) and it took him years to forgive me for it. Now I find that his definition of monogamy is a lot more elastic. What an about-face! Or is he merely bullshitting to justify his awkward position? And why is he indulging in kink with strangers, when Iâm willing, waiting, and wanting to get some at home?
I feel so defeated and disgusted by this whole tawdry mess that I just want to end this relationship. Or...
Am I Overreacting?
1. He shouldn't have handed that old dildo to his model/client. But as you weren't using it, AIO, and hadn't used it for years, and were highly unlikely to use it ever again (big dildos do not get less challenging as we age), it seems like a silly thing to get hung up on. That goes doubleâtripleâif he wasn't aware you still had great-and-possibly-unrealistic expectations for that dildo.
2. Yeah, that's pretty fucked upâbut only because he'd previously agreed not to take anymore under-the-forklift-style photos. It does seem silly to me to say, "You can take erotic photos, not pornographic ones," as the line between erotica and pornography is blurry and notoriously hard to police. But that line was without a doubt crossed when his model/client slid his wife's large glass dildo into her hole while her husband watchedâand, again, he had promised you he wouldn't take photos like that anymore. So, you know, not cool.
3. If taking a particular dirty picture again and again was what turned your husband onâlet's say a picture with the anus and clitoris in full viewâand it didn't matter to him whether it was the same A&C combo again and again or a random selection, AIO, then discovering your husband was seeking out random A&C combos to photograph when you were sitting on a perfectly good combo yourself would certainly be annoying.
So what are to make of those other pornographic shots of other women? Well, AIO, either your husband gets off on photographing lots of different women's clits & bits or his clients wants those kinds of shots and he's just being a good businessman. And even if this is sexual for your husbandâand, okay, it most likely is sexualâpresumably it's just one small aspect of your husband's sexuality. So long as your sex life is healthy (is it?), AIO, so long as you're not being neglected (are you?), so long as he agrees to respect the sanctity of your unused sex toys going forward (will he?), why not allow him to enjoy taking these photographs? What harm is there in it?
4. You open by saying that putting up with "straight as an arrow" and "uninterested in kink or any nontraditional relationship options" was a price you were willing to pay to be with this man. But now that you've discovered your husband has at least one kinkâtaking dirty picturesâand now that you know he's open to exploring "nontraditional relationship options," you're contemplating dumping him.
Seeing as your husband is suddenly where you wanted him to be all alongâkinks! Nontraditional options! Monogamous elasticity!âit seems silly to dump him for taking the long and bumpy route there.