Monday, June 1, 2026

Porn

I boxed up the contents of my other nightstand yesterday.  It was just CDs and DVDs so I didn't expect to find anything interesting but there was CD with his handwriting on it that said "Ren Faire".  It was enough to make me curious so I dug out my disk player for my laptop, plugged it in, and popped the CD in.

It had all kinds of files on it with last modified dates from 2003, mostly February and August of 2003.  We moved into our first apartment together in late August of 2003.  He had just finished his undergrad and moved up to my college town to get his masters while I finished my undergrad.  There was a folder of photos from a Renaissance Faire but it was just a small fraction of what was on that CD.

What caught my attention was a whole bunch of mpg files named with women's first names.  I didn't hesitate to open one although in hindsight I probably should have hesitated.  At the time I had no clue what I might be opening - it was a pretty graphic porn video.

I didn't know he watched porn that early in our relationship, although maybe I should have expected it.  I understand almost all men watch porn.  He hid his porn consumption from me until more than a decade later.  Although even then, I don't know how often he watched it.  We had a few arguments over it though, when he would get obsessed with a particular act.  I felt like his porn consumption negatively shaped the way he viewed sex.

The few times I saw what he was watching it was always one-sided and unrealistic.  The woman was just an object the man was using for his pleasure.  I don't know if all porn is like that but that seemed to be the porn my ex-husband watched.

I was taken aback that he had porn saved from this early in our relationship.  Initially, I just felt disgusted.  And it made me start to wonder where this fit into the status of our sex life.  When I try to recall the times where it felt like he tried to make sex more reciprocal, my only memories are pre-August 2003.  Was it really that early in our relationship that he stopped even pretending to care about me?

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