Reader’s Question

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for two years now, and I am scared that he might be addicted to porn. I’m not really sure about this, which is why I need advice.

Our sex life is good. We have sex about 3-5 times a week, and it’s always great. Recently, I got professional (nude) pictures of myself made and gave them to him as a present. When I watched him load the disc of my photos onto his laptop, I could see that he had hundreds of files of porn. I have always known he watches porn when I’m not around to have sex with (I like to be in my own apartment on occasion). But the amount of porn he has seems like it could be a problem. One night when I decided to stay at his house and we had sex, I started to fall sleep. He tried to wake me up so we could have sex again, and I said I couldn’t because I had to be at work early. About ten minutes later I awoke and saw him with his laptop by him, looking at porn. I was so offended!

For Christmas, I told him I wanted to go on a shopping spree at our local sex shop. From the moment we walked in, he kept looking over at the DVD section. I told him it would be fine for him to just go over there instead of shopping with me. He should have known that I was just being a girl by saying that I actually wanted to shop for this stuff together. But he went straight to his porn. I got upset. But instead of him trying to mend my hurt feelings, he got really mad at me. I mean really furious. It scared me. He spends a lot of money on porn about once a month.

Am I crazy? What is considered an addiction? I don’t want to further things with this man if he has a problem. Please help! Thank you!

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

The question you ask about whether your boyfriend might have an addiction to porn is indeed a valid question. However, it would appear that the much more pressing question to ask is what kind of relationship (sexual and otherwise) you want to have with this person. If you want to send the message that you’re content to be viewed as a sexual object (by providing nude photos) and that you also place a high value on sexual titillation (by asking to go on sex store shopping sprees), then it should not surprise you if your boyfriend is relatively insensitive to your emotional and other needs while apparently being overly invested in pure sexual gratification.

You seem to already know where this man’s primary interests lie and how upset he gets if denied. If you really want a different kind of relationship (and only you can determine that), perhaps you need to find another guy.