Comments

1
Oh shit. Run, woman, run. You've waited more than long enough. His shifting blame onto you means he'll never accept how ugly he/his behaviour is. Get out of there (and into a lawyer's office) before he's done your daughter and you any more harm.
2
Seriously. GET OUT NOW. (Or throw HIM out now.) That is one fucked-up guy, and fucked-up guys tend to fuck up everything around them as well -- don't let that be you and your daughter.
3

Multi- layered question. Incest porn can be really creepy to many, and since there are already serious trust issues between you two you get some extra creepiness points to worry about.
His blaming you is not a good sign either.

I’m not sure if husband wants to change, but you should demand this if you have plans to continue this relationship (and I’m totally with you if you decide not to.)

As for incent porn, I couldn’t tell if the question last week was, “Why does it seem to be so popular nowadays?” or, “Why do I find it hot?”
I’m not an authority to answer any of them regardless.

As for my own porn preference, I always found the age difference to be intriguing in terms of the woman being older.
A search in that direction often leads to stepmom titles and/or “horny cougar fucks her not-son.”
This is a tricky issue as beyond a deboner it can also be a major legal one.

4
WIFE, your family is already torn apart. I can all but guarantee you that you staying with an alcoholic asshole husband hasn't made you or your daughters life any better. You need to leave, to preserve your own sanity, at the very least. He's made it clear he's not changing. Don't wait around for something that'll never happen.
5
Apart from everything Dan said, which is 100% on the nose - don't let your daughter continue to grow up in a home with an alcoholic parent. Alcoholism is a family disease - it's hurting you, and it's sure as hell going to have an impact on her, too.

Take a look here: http://www.adultchildren.org/lit-Laundry…

FFS, GTFO now for your daughter's sake. Don't let her be one of the people, like me, who have to sit through painful twelve step meetings and therapy for years to work through the shitpile of issues that come back to fuck with you as an adult child of an alcoholic.
6
I agree completely that the LW should DTMFA, for plenty of reasons.

That said, she does not seem as porn-positive as she believes she is.

For one thing, she implies that porn purporting to feature legal teenagers is just as likely kiddie porn as not. That is a heck of an assumption.

Second, all porn these days is incest porn. I don't understand why in the slightest, but that's how it is. Sometimes the best you can do is ignore the premise and the dialogue, which I believe is what most people do with most porn anyway.

So her message is, "I am totally porn-positive; but people who deviate from the type of porn I'm comfortable with are disgusting and likely criminals as well."
7
I don't want to be alarmist but holy hell....

I know what it is to be married to an alcoholic. I am intimately familiar with the blame-shifting (onto me, his parents, capitalism, god, etc). I know what it is to witness the poor impulse control and trying to clean up the resulting mess.

WIFE, you can't help him. You can't. From what you describe, he's moving down a dangerous path and his need to indulge outweighs any other consideration. You can hope he gets help before something awful or catastrophic happens but in your place, I wouldn't.

Definitely GTFO but do so carefully. Trust your gut, and get legal and social help. The well-being of you and your daughter are paramount.
8
My question is how can you be certain something hasn't already happened. And as a survivor, don't just take your daughters first answer as truth.
9
@6 I'm not sure she isn't porn positive. I think she is saying that her husband goes to sites that say the pictures are of "teens" AND they look young enough that they have to STATE that they are of legal age. It would creep me out if my husband was looking at porn featuring girls who looked 12, or 14 no matter if they were actually over 18. I'm guessing by porn positive she means she has no problem with porn that involves people who look over the age of consent and who are over the age of consent.

She definitely needs to GTFO. He's not going to change and blaming her for his problems means he sees no reason to change. There is no reason to stay. There is nothing left to hold together.

10
The main reasons I think she should leave is that he's not asking for help, he's not seeking resources, and he's blaming her for everything. There is no hope for that mix. As far as a divorce, she should absolutely seek advice from a badass lawyer before doing anything. He can get unsupervised visitation unless she has real proof that there is reason to deny that, and she needs to know what that entails FIRST. Wishing you all the best, mama.
11
For whatever it's worth (and it sounds like there are a LOT of other issues going on here), there seems to be an increasing amount of incest porn being caught up in non-incest porn searches. For example, I often search for cuckolding and cougar/MILF porn and regularly have to navigate around things like "wife cuckolds husband with her step-son" and "MILF step-mom and step-son." Maybe it's the categories that prompt it, but it seems increasingly (and unfortunately) common.
12
LW: As said above, consult an attorney in family law, DTMFA, AND arrange for counseling for your daughter and yourself. You may want to attend Al-Anon meetings, as well.

Question: why are you still waiting for this man to change into the person you want him to be? He won't change unless HE values changing...unless HE is willing to feel, admit, and express what he is doing and how it harms himself and those he ostensibly cares about. He has obviously not yet hit HIS rock bottom AND, until he does, HE won't change and will likely get WORSE.

Not to lay more at the LW's feet but what of her moral and legal responsibilities to her daughter or even her best friend's daughter? Suppose her husband starts spying on his own daughter? "Peeks in" on her when she's dressing? Or worse? Even if he never touches her, this situation is fraught with the potential for inappropriate behaviors in his own home. I knew a woman who was sexually abused by her dad during the years he was actively drinking alcohol. It took years of individual and family counseling for her to be able to even speak to him and to have a healthy relationship with a man.

It might be advisable, AFTER SPEAKING TO AN ATTORNEY, for her to advise her friend to have all her daughter's photos and posts be viewable to friends-only. She will lose that friend and, perhaps worse, if she doesn't act NOW!

13
Agree with GTFO. Seeing as she said "my" daughter, not "our" daughter, he may be her stepdad instead of her dad (which would make daughter 18 and living at home)... but that doesn't change the advice.
14
Just as an FYI
Due to changes in the legal porn industry, "teen" porn has exploded in popularity; probably related to the fact that today's 18 years olds have lived in a world where porn is fairly mainstream, significantly less taboo, and way more accessible than it was for my generation. (Someone wrote about this regarding whatshername, the Duke Porn Star). So for me, a guy with I suspect fairly vanilla porn tastes, Teen Porn and even Incest Porn is now nearly unavoidable. They basically just replaced all traditional porn by saying the two actors are somehow related. That's about it.

So anyways, I didn't read the letter hard enough to form an opinion as to what you should do, but his porn tastes probably shouldn't raise any special alarm bells in 2017. It was a little unclear if he was "looking at" (literally) pics of the bestie or jacking it to them. The former, eh, the latter, definitely an issue, in my book.
15
@14: Well, in that industry you have the dichotomy of "teen" "mom" and really nothing in between.

That said, the masturbating regularly to the daughter's friend is 100% gross and the addict-brain blaming the wife for all of it is definitely dtmfa-worthy.
16
If your husband was only an alcoholic, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If your husband was only addicted to porn to the point where it's getting in the way of his relationship with you, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If your husband was only creepily looking at clothed images from facebook of your best friend's 15 year old daughter, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If you husband was only jerking off to photos of teenagers, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If your husband was only getting into incest porn of porn stars who share your young daughter's name, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If you husband only confessed under duress, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If your husband only apologized with resentment and anger, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If your husband only blamed his creepy porn predilections on anger for you, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If there were only other areas of your relationship that he's angry with you about, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If you were only worried about the safety of your daughter, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If he only refused counseling for either the sex or alcohol addiction, that would be reason enough to dump him.
If you only felt trapped by the hope that things could change and your family would not have to be torn apart, that would be reason enough to dump him.

For all these reasons, oh WIFE, please dump your husband already.
17
" blame-shifting, responsibility-avoiding bullshit" is SOP for an alcoholic, in my far too extensive experience. The reason she appears to be numb to how outrageous this is is that she IS probably numb to it - she gets it in some form every day.

C'mon, Dan, you say you are from a family of alcoholics - surely you're familiar with this?

This might be the kick in the ass she needs to finally get out that door, and if she does, she can go with my blessing, for what it's worth.
18
No blame here -- I ask this because I stayed too long in a marriage with a drunk. Do you want your daughter to choose a man like this? Because that is what you are teaching her.
19
"Consider all the searches of the form "I want to have sex with my..." The number one way to complete this search is "mom.""

So that smug, cigar-smoking motherfucker was right all along?
20
Yuck. If "all porn is indeed incest porn" (am I allowed to summarise using quotation marks? Please note that this is a summarisation and not a direct quote of anyone) then I'm gladder than ever that I have an imagination and know how to use it.

Benjamin @6, you sound really creepy. Of course these sites strongly imply that the "teens" involved are indeed underage while simultaneously asserting that they are not. "It's okay, she only looks 14!" is hardly reassuring about either the age of the girls involved or the preferences of those who choose to view it. I can only take some reassurance from the fact that a large majority of searches do not involve incest. Surely porn exists for a variety of tastes, including the vast majority of people who prefer to fuck non-relatives.
21
@14, I'd also like to add that even though there's a large sum of "teen" porn sites, the actresses aren't necessarily that young. For example, a site called "TeenFidelity" had a shoot recently with one of my favorite actresses, Allie Haze, who turned 30 in May. The only sites where I could argue that the at least look younger than 18 are the petite style ones and, from what I can tell, as a sort of connoisseur, those girls are also legal since they have regular careers outside those sites as well.

Then again, I'm into mainstream sites and can also agree the whole incest thing is getting in the way of my regular watching.
22
"Of course these sites strongly imply that the "teens" involved are indeed underage while simultaneously asserting that they are not."

Again, I'm pretty mainstream in my porn consumption, but I haven't come up with this type of situation since I was in high school (which I would've agreed with you then).

Nowadays there seems like there's a renaissance towards romantic styles of pornography. X-Art, Sexart, ____art (they still aren't creative with their names), HDFantasy, these sites definitely cater towards younger bodies but they don't seem, at least in my mind, to push towards jailbait. Which, on second thought, might be what the LW is talking about. And, if he's looking at jailbait, GTFO.
23
Ew. There is no debate here. I'd have my (or his) bags packed faster than you can say "barely legal."
24
Please run. Don't wait. Run.
25
Only the letter-writer will know what exactly she meant by alcoholism. Did she mean "gets trashed all the time, can barely function", or did she mean "has wine with dinner every night and I don't like it"? I don't think Dan would see it as a clear-cut DTMFA trigger if someone objected to their partner's recreational pot habit, for example.

The FB stalking is creepy, but many of us have stalked a crush on FB, and Dan is the first to rule out objections to masturbation and crushes as unrealistic. The only issue here is the age of the crush, but since teens are depicted sexually everywhere, why object to someone responding to it? Yes, it's creepy, and it should raise red flags, but this is a 17-year relationship (and with a "young daughter", she sounds like his).

If the letter-writer has exaggerated details, I guess whether to stay or go is down to her tolerance for creepiness -- and apologies to everyone, but aren't most fantasies kinda creepy? I think she's angry, but an auto-dump may be going too far.
26
Incest survivor and observer of addicts here. Depending on legal situation here, kick him out swiftly or run.
27
Legal advice and kick him out. Like, yesterday.
28
Queen @25: If over seventeen years there have been "many difficult times (caused mostly by alcohol)", I don't think the husband's drinking can be classed as recreational.
29
@25: "The FB stalking is creepy, but many of us have stalked a crush on FB, and Dan is the first to rule out objections to masturbation and crushes as unrealistic."

It's not one of the wife's friends though-

"I don't mind my husband looking at age appropriate porn but have recently become aware (yes, I spied) that he was looking at images (clothed, from FB) of my best friend's 15-year-old daughter"

That goes beyond "unrealistic" into creepytown with the power imbalance.
30
undead @ 15
“the masturbating regularly to the daughter's friend is 100% gross and the addict-brain blaming the wife for all of it”

I hope Dr. Lei, our in-house no-such-thing-as-addiction expert, is reading this.

31
@16 - fantastic summation!
32
Hey I'm totally willing to believe that many people dig incest porn because of the taboo and even the age differences and the transgression, etc, and that for most of them this has nothing to do with their feelings towards their actual family members nor correlates with any actions towards them.

But if you are beating off to pics of a teenager that you actually know in real life- that's a big deal. It's not the same thing as fantasizing about a general young looking person through porn but a specific one that you know in real life. And it's not the same as just noticing that a teenager is attractive (natural enough) but actually taking the extra step to find pics of her and jack off to them. That's seriously creepy.

As for alcoholism, again we could second guess how honest LWs are being or how warped their perception is all day long, but then it makes giving advice or commenting on their situation pointless. The LW says her husband is an alcoholic. Maybe in real life he's a marathon running tee-totaler. There is no end to speculation. We have to take what they say at face value. The LW does not sound like a prudish or judgmental person- open sexually, willing to work through addiction. If she says her husband is an alcoholic and there is nothing in the letter to suggest that she's overreacting or anti-alcohol, then it's silly to suggest we shouldn't take her words at face value.
33
LW, this man sounds pitiful and by staying, you enable him, you continue to accept him. Waiting seventeen years and I waited thirty. They Don't change, if you stay. They might change, on their own. Their business.
Your husband is starting to become a sexual threat, at least in his fantasy world, to young women. Is this a step for this man, towards acting it out. Given his very low bar for self control with his drinking etc, I'd suggest it is. So this is serious. Maybe you need to ring a support line for sexual abuse, get their take about what you should do. This cannot stand though. This man is not well and it needs to be addressed. He doesn't seem to notice, so maybe the world has to make him notice.
34
My husband wasn't a drinker, his affliction was anger.
35
Happy Fouth of July, Independence Day.
36
Fichu at 16 @
The way you wrote this post reminds me of the fairly annoying repetitive Passover song "Daay Daayenu."
37
Oh, I meant the song, not your post, and I hope LW was reading it.
38
I'm flat out pissed that Dan wasted so much time justifying this guys incest porn that he almost ignored the real problem

LW it sickens me that your husband may assault your daughter or her friend and I get the feeling you would still stand by him. How many times does he have to show you that he doesn't care about you, or your daughter, or himself? Do the police have to be called for you to step up and do what you should've done 17 years ago?

LEAVE HIM.

And get some therapy for your daughter because God knows you don't seem to care about her well being.
39
36-CMD-- Yes, that was the idea. I was trying to make a point. Enough already. Dayenu.
40
Emma @32: Your last paragraph said what I wanted to say much better than I did. Thank you.
41
@fichu and @cmd I was singing along too. It was quite the litany of red flags and reasons to leave.
42
OMG run away! The fact that he blames HIS predatory behaviour (wanking to the teenage neighbor's facebook and watching teen porn with your daughter's name, what the actual fuck) on YOUR actions is a huge red flag. The house is haunted, the walls are bleeding, and a scratchy voice from nowhere is saying "leave now." You need to leave now.
43
@38: I didn't take it as justifying so much as sorting out what is the set of subjective issues from the tangible threats to her family's safety. Dan sometimes uses these letters as a springboard to discuss other aspects of sexuality versus all of them being self-enclosed. He looped back.
44
Hopefully this post goes through-

@38: I didn't take it as justifying so much as sorting out what is the set of subjective issues from the tangible threats to her family's safety. Dan sometimes uses these letters as a springboard to discuss other aspects of sexuality versus all of them being self-enclosed. He looped back.
45
@30: I'll bite. Addiction* is a category that describes a somewhat-contested set of behaviors or stimulus responses, so it's real in that sense, but as something that's almost entirely socially mediated, it's more of a symptom (of depression or various other mental illnesses, social alienation, etc.) than a cause or an isolated disorder.

*In the psychological sense; if we're talking about psysiological habituation and dependency that causes withdrawal symptoms upon cessation, behavioral addictions (porn addiction, sex addiction, internet addiction, etc.) categorically aren't real. The social degradation of expertise is killing jargon across the board, so it helps to define how one is using technical terms, especially those where mutated versions have become popular in common use.
46
I haven't read all the comments, but have two things I'd like to say:

On the subject of age-appropriate porn, there is nothing more natural and normal than men of all ages being sexually attracted to teens in the 15+ range (or even 14+). What's abnormal is trying to act on that attraction when men are way older and know that it's not permissible even in the unlikely event that the girl in question were interested.

Moving on: your daughter or the daughter of you and your husband? It matters. if your daughter is not also his daughter, the danger signs would be enough for me to say that, given the signs and your concerns, it would be inappropriate and bad parenting for you to fail to DTMFA. If he's the biological and lifelong father, I'd say you should probably DTMFA because of the failure to deal with his alcoholism and the creepy behavior towards your daughter's friend. Being turned on by her and maybe jerking off to her wouldn't be the end of the world, but the stalking even after he knew he was likely to get caught shows really bad impulse control.

So, I advise the LW to either DTMFA or DTMFARTVI (right this very instant) depending on her husband's relationship to her daughter. [Source: I've known a few women who were raped by stepdads. It's just not very uncommon.]
47
@6 I reject the premise that all porn is incest porn. There is plenty of teacher/student, prison guard/inmate, and interracial porn out there. I watch my share of porn and I can't really remember the last time I watched any with an incest theme. Now, my wife calls me daddy, but that's mostly her kink, although I like the fake non-consensual aspect of it.
48
@46 And, just to be clear, I am not saying it's OK to watch kiddie porn. Even if a man is attracted to underage women, it's not OK to watch kiddie porn. My discussion of age-appropriate porn is limited to the hundreds of sites and tens of thousands of films focusing on "teens" and "schoolgirls" portrayed by actresses who are actually 18-35 and the company producing them swears to keep records of all actors' and actresses' ages.

BTW, why is it that "MILF" porn sites had so many scenes shot with actresses who looked like their next gig was going to be on a teen porn site? I mean there are teen moms out there, but I thought the point of MILF sites was supposed to be women who were somewhat older.
49
WIFE, it will end when you end it.

People do crazy things. It's quite possible that your husband will molest your daughter because of angry feelings he entertains towards you. Even though he's not a pedophile by inclination. Even though he hasn't done it before. He's an addict; he's angry and out of control.

There's no reason not to leave him now, to protect your daughter in the immediate term. 'You're tearing your family apart'. No, you're protecting your daughter. He will remain her father, and will fulfill his responsibilities when you can be sure it's safe. 'You're throwing away the last 17 years'. No--there were perhaps some good times, and you're actually giving yourself a chance to have something better. Humanly and romantically. There is no respect or equality in your marriage as you describe it.
50
'You want to help him'. You can do this best outside the relationship. He'll find someone with whom he has less unhealthy relations of codependence, or it will be a shock. He will reassess. He'll fight for an ordinarily good relationship with his daughter. What can things have been like for you for the last 17 years? You care perhaps too much about being reasonable and not enough about your own wellbeing.
51
I wonder if Seth Stephens-Davidowitz doesn't protesteth too much on the incest point. My autocomplete for "I want to have sex with my" is "boyfriend." (I'm a straight guy, though apparently google thinks differently.)

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