Today though there was a post there which got me thinking.
“Watching porn isn’t chea-“
Cheating is anything against the rules those in the relationship agreed to. In some relationships, porn is cheating. In some relationships, getting triple penetrated by strangers in a truck stop bathroom is totally ok.
The dishonesty and disrespect for your partner’s boundaries is what defines cheating. Not a list of actions."
Obviously the comments were a mess of people arguing for and against this position. I think that this particular disagreement, like many disagreements, quickly falls apart once you correctly unpack the details.
People can have whatever agreements they want. Certainly if you and your partner agree that watching porn is cheating, then for you, it is. Fine. Most of the time this is done for ridiculous reasons that reinforce sex negative cultural norms, but some people obviously have fair reasons for this sort of restriction. Personally I would laugh at anyone who planned on policing my porn watching or masturbatory habits, but you do you.
The key is that when people say porn isn't cheating, they aren't generally talking about a relationship where one person lays out early that they have huge issues with porn, and can't abide a partner that watches it. When people say porn isn't cheating, they mean that it shouldn't be taken as automatically cheating in the absence of a specific discussion on the matter. Mostly the exact details of what constitutes cheating in a given relationship are never discussed. Both people assume that the 'triple penetration in a truck stop by total strangers' scenario would be cheating, and that having sexual thoughts about someone other than your partner is not cheating, but many of the details in between are undefined.
'Watching porn isn't cheating' is designed for the situation where two people get together, don't talk about their expectations or limits, become exclusive, and then get to arguing about what their agreements should have been, long after those agreements were already in place. In that situation people should not assume that porn is cheating - you have to define that specifically. You should not, three years into an exclusive relatinship, tell your partner that by the way, you define porn as cheating, and if they watch it, they are cheating. You have to get that kind of thing on the table right away.
Of course we should get all of our stuff on the table in a hurry. We should discuss monogamy or not, kink or not, 24/7 D/s or not, tickling feet or not, and all the other dealbreakers we have before anybody commits to a relatinship in a serious way.
What we should be saying, rather than 'Watching porn isn't cheating' is 'No one gets to claim their partner is cheating or otherwise violating their trust just for watching porn unless that person agreed not to and violated that agreement.'
It is absurd and destructive to decide that your personal relationship boundaries are going to be written simply by following cultural norms. You can do better than that! But if you are going to follow cultural norms and refuse to think for yourself, then don't go into a relationship and assume you can use that as leverage to prevent a partner from watching porn unless you get their enthusiastic buy in at the start. (Even if you do get said buy in, get ready to be disappointed when they break that rule anyway.)
In the absence of a detailed discussion, porn should not be assumed to be cheating. You should have that detailed discussion though, no matter what your expectations are. If you then prohibit your partner from cheating and they accept that, ethically you are in a fine place, but you should definitely plan on what to do when they go ahead and break that rule anyhow.
Lastly, if you are going to rail against something on the internet, try not to strawman quite so hard, mkay?
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