by Claire Purdue

Created on: October 27, 2008   Last Updated: May 06, 2010

I choose to take the question to mean "should wives be all right with their husbands watching porn". Because, come on, "allow"? Issues with semantics aside, I believe that there is nothing wrong whatsoever with an adult male, married or otherwise, watching porn. Now I'm not talking illegal stuff like child pornography; I'm talking depictions of adults engaged consentingly in adult activities.

Human beings have minds. Minds have fantasies. If you, Mrs. Goodwife, tell me that you have never let your mind linger on that handsome delivery driver or doctor or actor on TV, then I simply won't believe you're telling the truth. Women and men, generally speaking, tend to have different ways of indulging those fantasies. Tell me, how many supermarket paperback bodice-rippers do you have on your shelves? Has your reading them ever even been an issue?

When you read your novels, you're not cheating on your husband at all. You know this. Sure, you might imagine yourself in Princess Damsel's place when the roguish Captain Naughtybreeches begins to manhandle her. But it's not like Captain Naughtybreeches is real anyway. He's fiction. He's a fantasy. As a matter of fact, you might be so bold after you put the book away as to ask your husband to put his striped tie around his head like a bandanna and steal you away to his quarters! Wouldn't that be something?

That's what porn is to men. Really, that's it. Men (again, generally speaking) prefer to indulge their fantasies in a visual way; women prefer words and ideas. I'm told that it's just a difference in how we're hardwired, and we can debate that another time. When you read your novel, you're indulging a fantasy in the safe harbors of your own mind, without looking outside the marriage to do so. When he watches his movie, it's the same thing to him.

He's not going to leave you for Miss October; the thought hasn't even entered his mind. He is also not looking at you and thinking, "Damn, if only she could look more like Miss October..." If you're worried that he is, then you really need to ask yourself what the actual issue is: how you feel about him watching porn, or how you feel about yourself? He loves you, he married you, and no DVD is going to change that fact.

That said, if you have a problem with porn itself, you're well within your rights to say so. Tell him you personally don't like it, tell him why, talk about this. But understand that his respecting your opinion means keeping it out of your sight (and I reiterate "keeping it"), not necessarily throwing it all in the trash can. I mean, unless you're willing to throw your own little library in the trash.

Learn more about this author, Claire Purdue.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.