Submitted by mondaygoddess t3_123pn15 in relationship_advice
TLDR; my wife stopped having sex with me, and has been reading raunchy straight erotica. To the extent of setting alarms around my work schedule. How do I bring this up?
We have been married for two years, dating for almost 4. We haven’t had much sex in a couple months. Lately she’s been masturbating every morning as soon as I leave for work. I found this out because one day I was late for work, I heard her alarm go off and caught her in the act. She admitted she sets an alarm for my leaving to masturbate. I told her I thought it was cute and moved on.
She has been reading this book for a couple weeks now, and has been absolutely enthralled in it. Shes also seemed in a better mood, and has been friskier than usual. Albeit, still not frisky enough to want sex. She’s a book reader so I figured she had just found a good one, and didn’t connect the two dots.
I will mention, we use each other’s phone often and yesterday I was using it a lot more than usual. Well, she fell asleep a bit earlier after being on her phone and I needed to look something up so I pick up her phone and go to safari. The first thing that popped up was this erotica book.
I don’t snoop typically, but as I was navigating to open another tab I read a few words that caught my eye. It was something like “The quivering reached Draco’s lips, to his legs, to his lungs as he moved hermiones robe.” So I thought, wait wtf that wasn’t in the book. So I read a bit further.. it got bad. I rationalize, maybe it’s one weird spot. I start scrolling. She was on chapter 47, about halfway through. I go chapter to chapter. Every single chapter was intense hard erotica. I look the book up, and it’s tagged things like “mirror sex. Oral sex. Masturbation. Smut. Wizard fucking. Dark. Possessive behavior. Controlling sex. Rough sex. Losing virginity. Healing sex. Marking.” And the list goes on and on and on. In my opinion, it’s harder “porn” than anything I have ever read or watched.
Now I’ve never been jealous, I’ve never cared how much she tends to her own body, nothing like this has ever bothered me. However, a few months ago I was doing something similar. I won’t lie I watched porn, it was all vanilla and the women always looked like her. not often, but it was 1-2 times a week. It never impeded on our sex life. When she found a video open in my safari tabs she flipped out. She reemed my ass, told me it made her feel unwanted, it was the same as cheating on her, and as though she wasn’t enough. I promised her I’d stop and I did, haven’t given it a second thought until now.
A part of me says it’s not a big deal, it’s just an erotica book not harming anybody. But another part of me that I can not seem to shake, is jealous, mad, and now I feel gross because I am recognizing that when she reads this book, she will start touching me intimately for bits at a time throughout the evening. It’s detailed about Draco’s penis, and hermione. We are in a gay marriage. Is she getting hot about dracos cock? She likes things I’m not providing her? She can get off to other things however I can not? She’d rather read about Draco fucking hermione? I feel horrible about this. And though simple erotica is no big deal to me, the effect it’s had on our sex life, the fact it’s something entirely different than I can provide her, the fact she sets alarms to work it around me, feels absolutely shitty. The way I feel, is that this is just as bad as any other porn addiction. It’s upsetting me immensely.
I haven’t confronted her or anything yet. I feel as though due to my feelings I have no choice but to. I am wondering, what would be the best way to ask her about this?
[UPDATE]
I talked to my wife about it. I told her how I felt insecure, as if she was choosing that over me, and also that I was worried she was into imagining Draco.
She told me she didn’t read it like that, and that the story line is really good. She profusely apologized for making me feel that way, and that she started reading it because she felt insecure to the point she couldn’t have sex. But that it was helping her through her insecurity, and it was influencing her to slowly start initiating sex again. She enforced that she does not imagine them, but their relationship is very similar to ours. She said she felt embarrassed and could see why I felt like it was similar to watching porn. She would stop for me.
I told her I understood and that I also worry it could be depression, also that because of the previous response, I didn’t want to take something away from her that was helping her.
We then compromised that instead of reading it alone and going down rabbit holes, that we would read it laying together and then have fun time when it gets us hot. Although I will feel weird and uncomfortable reading smut, I think if it helps us having sex more, I will slowly break down this bias I have around it and might enjoy it.(the positive reinforcement sure will help)
I appreciate all of your responses, they made me feel a lot better and safer about the situation. As well they helped me work through the initial emotions I was having about it!