I think her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend would need to undergo a life changing event to titillate the prurient interests of elderly necrophiliacs.

Have we ever gotten a letter from a LW from someone who didn't find their partner's porn habit and didn't immediately compare themselves to the women they see in the porn?

"actual starfish"

Do they just delete random words from these columns purposely now? The proofreading is atrocious.

Right about the starfishing of course. I am not sure about the kinky stuff though, these days with porn so ubiquitous I'd imagine there are a number of folks who are turned on by the weirdness and transgression of out-there kinky porn. People who have no serious desire to make them actually happen. We have no problem believing that everyone who sees Die Hard does not want to shove people off buildings, but if someone looks at granny porn they must be about to head down to the retirement home for ladies night.

“Browser History”?!?

Was this letter originally published in 1998?

Don't stay with starfish. That should be a dating rule.

Somewhere out there there's a great joke about this post involving Sneetches with stars upon thars. But I'm too tired to come up with it tonight.

The porn in the browser history is irrelevant, I bet. A while back when Dan posted that letter about the blueberry kink- well, I'd never heard of that and looked up that porn. I probably spent all of 10 minutes watching blueberry porn, but if you looked at my browser history, you'd see dozens of blueberry porn related clicks. He might've just gotten curious about it one day and that's what she is seeing in his history. Or, if she searched more carefully and saw a real trend over time, then maybe he likes to watch old people fuck. I can think of a million more disturbing things to discover about a partner. Dan is right, though. Why in the world is she staying in a relationship with a dude who is lame in bed and won't go down on her?

LW, if you are reading, listen up:

Even if things were grand between you two, it's incredibly unlikely that this relationship is going to last forever just because of your ages. That's fine btw. Plenty of fun and meaningful things don't last forever. But it does mean you ought to consider just how much of your youth (when you are relatively free and physically healthy) you want to spend having bad sex. He's either pretending to be straight for whatever reason that is not your problem or he is selfish and lazy for whatever reason that is not your problem. Don't take on either of his problems. There's no reason to do so- you have no children with him, no financial ties with him, no long term responsibilities to him, right? You've been with this person for three months. Right now is the time to amicably end it with good memories and potential future friendship -if you want that.

He sounds primarily attracted to himself, or perhaps equally to LW's self-torture. Not that it really matters, but my crystal ball says bi, only ran into a bigger male starfish and doesn't want to risk repeating the experience.

Oh, for the day when we can tell the young not to wear any letter that one knows doesn't fit.

With the emphasis on thicc girls I think a lot of skinny girls are getting insecure. Skinny girls, don't be insecure. I wish I was a skinny girl.

Dan is right with this one. Well endowed or not, LW, he is anti oral, what?, and lies there like a prince. Move on LW.
His porn viewing may indicate his real world tastes, or not. People get off on stuff they will never act out.
You should not have snooped, and don’t mention it as you walk out the door.

Oh drjones, such ageism. Not all grandmothers are ready for retirement homes.

Ah, to be young and oblivious again!

I am the kind of person that worries I am not enough for my (currently hypothetical) boyfriend, should I find out anything about his porn tastes. The solution to this is don't go hunting or asking, and live in blissful ignorance. That said, this guy Just Isn't That Into You, so you should break up with him on those grounds alone.

Another fine example of the 90-day money-back-guarantee approach in effect. At three months, she knows all she needs to know -- he isn't the guy. Move on. And I've learned a new word. Starfish sex, the kind of sex you have when you don't want to have sex.

Sporty @2, and what of it? Women are socialised to compare themselves to other women, pretty much every minute of every day. That's how the whole beauty industry exists. The other potential reaction would be to be turned on by the porn one sees, and one would hardly write to Dan if that were their reaction, would they? Just as you don't see letters saying, "My partner asked to open our relationship, and I was so relieved because I'd been thinking the same thing, and things are going really well so far." No need for a letter in those situations, nor when one is not at all fazed by one's partner's porn.

TLC @12: It's the straight hair/curly hair thing all over again. It's almost as if the beauty industry has a vested interest in making ALL of us feel bad about our bodies. Got curves? You're fat, spend lots of money on weight loss schemes. Lack curves? You're unsexy, spend lots of money on boob and butt implants. If Mr OVCG's porn searches teach us anything, it's that all of us can be desirable.

OVCG, what you’re supposed to do is something called “Kondo-ing.”

It works as follows: “By the KonMari cleaning method, if your personal belongings aren't "sparking joy" in your life, they go straight in the black rubbish bag.

By that same token, Kondo-ing sees people cutting their love interests out of their lives if they aren't bringing joy, with no prior warning, and no resolve to work out any issues.

It's the literal equivalent of donating a bag of old clothes to the charity shop; quick, simple, no explanations needed.”

Someone doesn’t lick your pussy. Kondo them. Someone lays like a starfish during sex? Kondo them.

Dadddy @7: He doesn't give oral sex and he lies there like a starfish during intercourse. What benefits? :)

Sporty @2: Ha, just re-read your probable typo: "Have we ever gotten a letter from a LW from someone who DIDN'T find their partner's porn habit and didn't immediately compare themselves to the women they see in the porn?"

Sure, we've had tons of letters from people who didn't find their partner's porn habit, and wrote in for other reasons!

"Dear Dan, my partner left their phone out and I checked their browser history, and there was no porn. Now I have no idea what sort of women he likes! What should I do!?"

LW, have you talked to him about this? The Kondo method is fine and dandy but it doesn’t teach anything about conflict resolution.

Coffee @20: About what? They're not sexually compatible. They're only three months in and she is just 21. She needs to claim her 90-day money-back guarantee. Things will not get better.

9-Corydon-- Nice. I hadn't gotten to star-bellied sneetches and am glad you did.

Ah, 21. At that age I'd discovered sex. (I was the first one ever, I was sure of it.) I discovered I liked sex. This liking was so non-discriminatory that I was slower at discovering that other people felt differently about it. I think I was appalled to realize that some were better at it than others, or to be fair, that some were better for me than others. If I were enjoying Starfish Man even a little, that would be so much than the recently left behind pre-discovery mode that I'd have felt a tug to keep on with it. (In my case, it wasn't starfishes, it was premature ejaculators, but the point is the same.)

It's the "refuses" part that stands out. If she'd said he was just inexperienced with women or shy or submissive, then it's possible she might want to take on working with him if everything else was good and she was so inclined. But he's refusing- which means she's asked and he's said no. So I'd say, yes the kondo approach is fine and there's no reason for conflict resolution or personal growth - the dude already passed on that and the woman is not responsible to be his learning experience. Plus I don't know that it would necessarily do him any good for her to say that she's leaving b/c he's a lame fuck. If she mentions it at all, she can just say she feels they are sexually incompatible.

Also all the people who are discussing her comparing herself to what she sees in porn as if she has issues with her own body might want to re-read the letter. She doesn't seem insecure about her body. She seems perplexed about why he's with her when he seems to be attracted sexually to people that are nothing at all like her (age, gender, body shape) which is reasonable since he ALSO shows very little sexual attraction to her in real life. Seems like we have some variation of this conversation every time a woman's question about her man's porn use comes up. It's often more about being perplexed, as Dan correctly says. We've discussed again and again that loads of women (most probably) don't understand the way loads of men (most again) get off on a lot of kinds of porn. Not understanding something and asking about it and expressing that very common feeling is not the same thing as being jealous or insecure or controlling. Feels like people are being deliberately reductive here, especially in avoiding the real life circumstances in this particular letter that would lead this woman to believe that her dude might not be into young women (namely that when he has sex with this young woman, he is not into it).

Several observations:

If you're 21 and look 16, well, there are a lot of "special interest" men out there for you!
If your boyfriend finds older, larger women sexually attractive, there are definitely women out there for him. And grampas too.
As my male junior high science teacher famously told Dennis Berry upon being given the bird "You wouldn't enjoy it, I just lay there and sweat". Regardless of your bfs sexual interests, he's a lousy lay.

@20 what conflict could get resolved here? Not seeing it. That they'll talk and find better sex? That they'll part amicably because he understands his sex bores her?

@20 What @21 said. Also, since she said (something like) he refuses to go down on her, that means she's asked and he said no. So they've already talked about it as much as anyone needs to. Oral comes standard. A glorious cock that lays motionless can be easily replaced at any sex toy shop.

@17 can we retire the word "socialized"? It's another symptom of the "women do not have agency" theory - women don't make a choice to behave in some manner, they're programmed by society to compare themselves, and therefore cannot be held accountable for their actions. Men, meanwhile, are immune to socialization and the common problematic behavior patterns that men exhibit only occur because, uh... well, they're uh men of action and they make decisions and if they want something else it's on them because they can make other decisions. (in case you can't tell, I'm implying that this difference between men and women is arbitrary)

Don't you see how infantilizing this is? This is all interconnected. As long as we believe women are fundamentally children, they'll never get paid as much for the same work, never get the highest-stakes job opportunities, more likely to lie, will be considered inherently weaker, all the things.

If she's enjoying the one not - little thing he provides, and is in no hurry to pair off for life, no harm dating him. (Dating guys who are wild for women who look 16 is also potentially fraught / requires some oversight. Which may be what the poster was checking for.)

Just a thought, but maybe before breaking up with starfish-boyfriend, why not try ASKING him to go down on you (and be prepared to also explain how to do it right), as well as giving a few pointers like "grab my ass when I grind on top of you" to break the starfish habit.

If you've already tried that in a few different formats (I say a few, because sex within a relationship is to important to just 'one-and-done' it) then by all means dump him.

Sporty, I know you know better than this:

"Men, meanwhile, are immune to socialization and the common problematic behavior patterns that men exhibit only occur because, uh... well, they're uh men of action and they make decisions and if they want something else it's on them because they can make other decisions."

You can agree or disagree as you like, but this is a dishonest representation to what gender socialization is. No one claims this. So if you want to claim that people believe this and then tear it down, go right ahead, but it's a straw man and you are arguing with yourself.

Patriarchy affects everyone- men as well as women- and both are socialized into gender roles. The way some behavior (of men, of women, of children) is socialized in patriarchy is literally the topic of entire fields of gender studies, feminism, etc.

You can agree or disagree as you like. In my opinion, we have no idea if this young woman is being manipulated or not since we know absolutely nothing about her and very little about the man. But it's just dishonest to claim there's anyone who says gender socialization affects women and not men. And you know it.

@27 You seem to have made up a definition for socialization and then chosen to angry with it. It's a head-scratcher. People, in general, are socialized. To suggest otherwise is to say that all of the differences we see in adults that are strongly correlated with traits like gender are the result of ... what, genetics? "Choices" ... right so why do women in general in our culture make different choices? Why do men?

To say that our environment as children strongly affects the types of choices we are prone to make as adults is not to remove anyone's agency - on the contrary it frees us from self-judgement, provides insights into why we all do some of the inexplicable things we do, and gives us a chance to address the underlying issues driving those decissions. E.g. telling a person with anger problems to stop choosing to respond to situations of uncertainty with anger isn't very helpful, while helping them understand how and why they learned to act that way so that they can move forward and learn different behaviors tends to be more productive.

Adults have agency, yes, but telling adults that they had agency as children and therefore the beliefs that were crammed into their heads when they were developing are their choices is not constructive.

@EmmaLiz, good attempt to convince us that your browser history on blueberry porn was just an innocent exploration, but we are too savvy for fall for that. :-)

Likewise, agency just means the ability to make choices for yourself in the world. It doesn't mean that you exist in a void nor that people spontaneously arise as individuals. A teenager just out of highschool does not have the life experience of a 50 year old. She will exercise her agency within a context. In this case, that context is patriarchy and the sexualization of young women. Again, does that mean she's being manipulated or exploited or that the dude is taking advantage of her? Not necessarily. We have zero evidence that this is the case other than that the LW (who does not know her and hardly knows the man) believes it to be the case, and the LW has proven herself to not be a very reliable judge on these matters since she thinks that an older man who has sex with an 18 year old woman is a pedophile. But it's stupid to pretend that socialization and patriarchy do not exist at all or that teenagers and 50 year olds are exercising their agency in an even context.

Likewise, I don't think this has shit to do with the infantilism of women. If it were an 18 year old male teenager and a 50 year old, plenty of people would have the same concerns. I think the difference is that there is a pattern of old man / young woman relationships hurting the lives (long term) of the young woman in a way that there is not with old woman / young man relationships and old man / young man relationships. Namely that there is a long history of men having decades of experience exercising their agency in the world and then choosing a very young female partner when he's ready to start a family, and so the woman's experience of exercising agency in the world is restricted. Not that this is always the case, and I think it's becoming less so in recent years due mostly to contraception. As women's sexuality is more and more liberated from reproduction, I think we'll find more and more women who look back fondly on their youthful experiences with older lovers in the same way men do. Nonetheless, in whatever combination, some older people do exploit a younger person's inexperience and immaturity. Again, we have no idea if this pattern applies in this case, but it's stupid to pretend none of this exists.

EmmaLiz @23, gold star comment. She's perplexed, indeed.

Sporty @27, we can retire the word socialised when everyone is raised in a bubble with no other people around. Of course men are socialised as well. This is not to imply that they, nor women, are children, nor that any human is incapable of analysing the assumptions they were socialised to have. It's just stating the FACT that certain -- gendered and not -- messages are everywhere; they get deeply ingrained in a person by the time they reach adulthood, and some of us find them easier to analyse and/or overcome than others. It's ridiculous to say women deserve lower pay because they're targeted by makeup ads! Come on. As an example of a non-gendered socialisation, Americans are socialised to believe their country and their form of government are better than all others, and most reach adulthood believing this to be true. Do you deny that? Do you deny that as a boy, you were socialised to like sports because boys like sports? Sure, some men grow up and don't like sports, but other men look askance at them. That's how socialisation works. We receive certain expectations, and we can employ our agency, to a certain extent, to choose whether we meet those expectations or suffer the consequences of failing to do so.

Shit, she's 21, and he "decided" on his sexuality (her words) at 19. People are so quick these days to fall all over themselves to assign labels to themselves as if they're degrees (I'm a 36 year old cisgendered heteroflexible polyamorous man in a monogamous relationship!) - or maybe it's always been this way, and our current ability to communicate with each other makes it seem like a trend. In any case, I sure as shit didn't know my sexuality "for sure" at 21, and still don't - it's a lifelong journey, it seems to me. The guy is still figuring himself out, and so is she, and it's no big deal.

But yeah, DTMFA for the bad sex.

I have no way to quantify this but clearly some people are into certain types of porn that reflect their sexual lives (i.e., they watch porn that mirrors what they do when they have sex), others are into porn that has nothing to do with their sex lives (i.e., pure fantasy), and others probably fall in between. And I'm sure there are people who only watch certain types of porn and others who jump around from one type of scene to another. If someone charted my porn viewing, I don't think it would make any sense. That's a long way of saying that I would think sometimes a man in a straight relationship who watches gay porn might be gay but also it might just be what he was digging that week.

Emma, BDF - perhaps my meaning wasn't clear: of course we're all socialized. My objection is that we expect men to conquer their socialization, a man displaying socialized male behaviors is fully responsible for his actions, they're internal to him. Meanwhile, women are not expected to overcome socialization, and when they display socialized behaviors, any negative consequences are societies fault, the individual is not responsible. Do you see this pattern?

@38 here an example: magazine covers

Girls routinely do immense physical harm to themselves in order to look like the girls in magazines. This is a societal problem which we've inflicted upon these poor, helpless girls.

Boys frequently use steroids and exercise to excess in order to look like the super heroes on magazine covers. This is considered a weakness of the individual, his desire to look like a magazine guy is misguided, it was his choice to take steroids and he must accept the consequences. Society is not blamed.