i have been with my boyfriend for about 5 months and things were going fine until a few days ago i stumbled upon his internet porn collection. i am not a 'snooper' or at least i wasnt intending to do anything other than use his laptop to watch a movie, as he said i could, but then on the desktop i saw a file that said "unlimited porn." i figured since it was on the desktop and he knew i was going to use his computer it wouldnt be an issue for me to take a peek. boy was i wrong...or i dont know, maybe it is better that i know. anyway, what i found shook my very foundations: incest, mock child porn, women gagging while giving blow jobs, women in 'brutal anal sex' videos who--from the looks on thier faces--clearly didnt know what kind of treatment they were singing up for, and finally a rape video. i couldnt bring myself to watch the rape video so i dont know if it was real or not but to be honest im not sure if it matters. i cant see how it can be natural for a man to view something so painful as erotic and pleasurable. i am not someone who is anti-porn however i do believe very strongly that it should be only viewed in moderation and it should feature consenting adults.

i talked to him about it b/c it made me so upset and he admitted that it turns him on though it also makes him feel ashamed and that perhaps that was part of the attraction. he didnt say how long he had been watching the porn but he did say that since he started he has gravitated more and more to the hardcore abusive stuff, despite the way it makes him feel about himself. i admire that he was able to open up even that much in the end but i still cant reconcile the fact that he has those horrible images in his mind. what we do in bed, what i enjoy, is so radically different to what is on those videos, i cant help but feel both inadiquate and repulsed. i guess in essence im confused and frightened to know that he gets pleasure from others' pain.

i feel so moved by all this, just thinking of it makes me shake, and while he is the first man i have come close to falling in love with i cant help but feel that when he says he can change he is promising the impossible. as much as i would like to believe him when he says that we will stop watching those videos how will i know? i dont want to check up on him, i dont want to feel the need to, but i dont think there is a choice if i choose to stay. and do i even have the right to ask him to give up something he enjoys even if i think it is wrong?

also, this happened a few days ago and while i told him i would need some time to digest everything in the end i left him with the belief that i would stay with him in hopes of working through this. since then however he has been distant and i have felt resentment towards him and towards myself for thinking of staying with him. there is something he said after i confronted him that really stuck with me, something that, though he claims he didnt mean, seems to speak to the heart of the matter, or at least falls to closely to it to be ignored. he said: "there is a part of me that is a bit of a satist, and for every satist there is a masicist."

the trouble is i am not a masicist and dont want to be made to feel like one. because of this i feel like if i stay with him i am consenting to something that i dont feel comfortable with. on some level too i feel as if he resents me for staying with him too. he is a man of low self esteem, or at least in some areas. he has always told me that i am a better person than him, that i make him want to be a better person, and that i am a "good woman" and he is suprised i would be with someone like him. as flattering as it is to know i make him want to be a better person, these kinds of statements are detrimental on a few levels. first, it puts him down and marks him as a kind of 'undesirable,' ignoring all the good points and perhaps even causing a kind of 'self-professed' outcome where he enacts the bad person he believes himself to be. second, it makes me feel as if i have lowered my standards by being with him since he tells me i am 'too good for him' and it then makes me focus on the bad parts of the relationship aswell.

Up to now I felt very lucky to be with him but now I am not so sure and I am starting to think this may be the tip of the iceberg so to speak. I cant help but think that the hardcore porn is bad but is is just the begining? is there really something to his self degredation that will lead him to even more violence? the sex we have is good but, that said, I have to tell him to slow down and to this day he has knowingly not made me climax due to this 'difference in speed' preference. While he may start out slow without fail be begins to move too quickly into something much faster and harder, ultimately leading to my feeling numb in the very areas where I should feel aroused. Before all this mess, the porn I mean, we were begining to connect while in bed and I came very close to orgasm but now I don't know what to think. Before this he said things like "I know what to do now, I just have to listen to your body and go with the way you move," but then he evenutally moves away from what I desire into what he enjoys: fast, rough sex. with this occuring even before I found the porn I cant help but feel as if he is picturing the horrible images he has on his computer while in bed since what he desires is so much wilder than what I prefer. He says that I don't like wild sex becuase I am not as experienced as he is in bed but I have tried rough sex and I know I dont like it...and I know it is not for lack or trying (especially after being with him for 5 months). He says too that evenutally I'll 'learn to like it' and that in some ways I already have but I shouldn't have to learn to like something I am not comfortable with. and as for the progress i have made in the way of enjoying rough sex, it is all for his sake because it is so clear that he enjoys it. I have learned to accept it to some degree, and even enjoy it in the sense that i know he is enjoying it but 'like it' in the terms he means, in terms of my reaching climax, isn't going to happen the ways things are going now--porn aside.

wow, I just read the 'porn aside' bit. Can you ever put that kind of porn aside? I think there is more than one BIG problem here, and it didnt start with the porn.

So, I guess, the real problem for the purpose of this blog is that while I think talking to him more may change his behaviour in bed with me, I don't know if he can change his desire for being rough and his lust for things that I find unacceptable. Even if he could change there is the issue of whether he wants to, since he is the one making the immediate choices of whether to hit downlaod or not. Even so, is changing his actions enough? If he changes the way he is in bed will be always wish he could change back? and, is it a kind of chicken and the egg thing? which came first the violent porn or the violent sex? are they mutually exclusive?

i feel really overwhelmed. i didnt realize i felt all this until i started writing. any advice? right now as upset as i am with the idea i am thinking my best shot is the solo one. thanks for reading to the end, i really appreciate it.