I think Jacqui Smith, whose programme Porn Again was broadcast on BBC 5 Live last night, is brave to talk openly about her husband using pornography. It’s certainly caused a sensation, and, as some people suggest, whether or not she’s using this as an opportunity to open up a career in journalism isn’t the point. But pornography being a major issue in society certainly is. I discovered just how much during my research for Sex, Meaning and the Menopause.
Until I started writing the book, I hadn’t given pornography much thought. Of course I was well aware of it. I can remember watching a couple of porn movies on video as a much younger woman, encouraged by my then new boyfriend. It did nothing for me. And that was the end of the relationship.
These days, anyone with a computer has access to over 500 million porn sites. I find these numbers appalling, especially as most of the content is not regulated. It is horrendous to know how many children are accessing these sites.
It’s also easy to think that pornography is the province of younger people. But this is certainly not so. Sexual changes that women experience during the menopause cause many a husband (possibly including Jacqui Smith’s) to reach for his computer.
Of course, some women continue to be just as sexually active as they were before the menopause. Some even experience an increase in their libido. But many I discovered, had lost interest and only had sex to keep their husbands quiet. Others found sex so painful that penetration was no longer possible. But in a porn-fuelled culture that equates sex with penetration, husbands and partners in most cases were finding this difficult to accept.
So what’s an older man to do when he still wants sex and his partner doesn’t? Being unfaithful is one option. Visiting a prostitute is another. But most men I spoke to did not want to cheat on their wives. They loved them, and cherished what they had built up together. So, being healthy sexually active people, this is where porn seems to come in. One man in particular found pornography the only way he could survive after his wife reached the menopause. He’d never told his wife about it, but he said she had probably guessed.
However, Wendy Maltz, an American sex therapist, and author of The Porn Trap, told me that it can be very difficult for older wives and partners when they discover their husbands are using porn to compensate for a lack of sex. It’s not just the rumpus caused by being found out. Pornography, said Wendy, is highly addictive, and men often become less emotionally available when they use it. This puts added stress on a relationship already undergoing huge changes at this crucial time of life. Therefore, it can sometimes be the last straw.
It‘s well known that men and women have different sexual needs. As one man said to me when I was researching the book, evolution is very unfair. In his experience, women were happy to have sex to attract their mate and to have their babies. After that, everything seemed to go to pot, and all made terminal around the menopause. Most men, he correctly noted, remain driven by their sexuality, yet all hell breaks loose if they have sex with other women. As for using pornography – it’s the most dreadful thing to have done. ‘Yes,’ he said with feeling, ‘evolution is bloody unfair.’
So sex and pornography is a extremely complex issue that continues to be so as we grow older. Personally, I have always admired the fourth century BC Greek playwright Sophocles, who, aged 70, replied to the question whether he still had sex: ‘Hush, man; most gladly indeed am I rid of it all, as though I had escaped from a mad and savage master.’ And he wasn’t talking about his wife.
I wonder what Jacqui Smith’s husband is thinking.
2 comments
jeannette
Honest communication with one’s partner can go a long way in the libido/menopause/porn debate. I too, find the quantity of porn sites on the net appalling as well as the accessibility of these sites to children particularly horrendous. However, my husband and I started watching porn on the computer together as I my libido was naturally waning while his continued on but with less than lunatic frequency (thank goodness). At first, I was unsure whether this shared libido building activity would be explored more than once, expecting to be turned off by the experience. We decided to boldly go there together in the interest of spicing up a solid 24 year relationship. We have found it a good way to take our sex life together to a new and different level.
For the most part the films we watch are not “scripted” (if you can call it that) or professional, these are ordinary couples filming themselves and posting the films on the internet (yikes!) We often have to do a little searching to find something appealing. And, clearly sometimes it can be a bit much, and either one of us will say, “let’s turn it off”.
When or if, I decide I am not interested anymore (in sex or in watching porn) I will not be alarmed at his continued interest in watching it, since that cat is already out of the bag, so to speak. I’m grateful that we have talked about it, shared the experience and taken some of the distasteful mystery out of it. Frankly, I would much rather know that my husband is watching porn in the comfort of our own home (with the option to join in if I like) than having sex with a prostitute, or having a physical (and potentially emotional) affair with another woman.
Charles Cowling
Speaking as a man who enjoys sex enormously I have to say that I find porn loveless, mechanical, exhibitionist, exploitative — and deeply repellent. Perhaps I’m a prude or my tastes lack breadth. I hate it.
But if sex were to be denied me, what would I do? It’s a really good question and I have wrestled with it, because the frustration would be hard to bear.
I guess any man in this position (and woman, too) can rise or sink. To sink to sleeping around or porn watching would be, according to my values, to betray myself as a human being and ditch my self-esteem. I think the only way is up and, like the exercise of any virtue, would require exertion. Simply, love shows the way — the channel. Yes, self-denial does have its rewards!
George Melly said at the end of his life, when he had lost his sex drive, that he felt as if he had been unchained from a lunatic. I guess I would have to console myself that the same would eventually happen to me.
For the time being I remain happily sexually active. Arguably, this disqualifies me from commenting!