Ogling, an ingrained male trait?

Gracie

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Thank you for clarifying where your brain is at.  That is helpful.  And when we referred to your age affecting your view, it is because we remember how we thought of things in our 20's.  And we realize how much just living life changed those thoughts.  As an unmarried 20 something, it would be difficult if not impossible to understand the great harm that occurs when porn addiction is in a relationship.  Just as you have said your past life has led to a distrust of women, porn leads men to not value their wives.  And teaches them that their wives and families aren't good enough.

So if you read the effects of porn, you see that just two or three times a week of soft core porn, Cinemax type, can turn a marriage or relationship upside down.  When you have been married for years or decades, this has a major impact when it is discovered.  We wives, partners are here to heal.  We are here to help men see it is not about the state of their dick.  It is about relationships.  It is about communicating.  Most addicts state, I was lonely, I was angry, I felt worthless, I was scared, I was anxious, I felt unloved.  All things that can be helped by reaching out to others.  And in fact the only way they can be helped is by doing that. Instead they go into secrecy, lying, up at night alone and PMO which drives them to be more alone and feel worse. 

We partners want men to know that reaching out is possible.  If your wife seems far away, who moved?  We want them to know that we already know someting ain't right so talk to us.  Talk to us. Come out of the lonely place, we are here.
 
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NwaltRed

Guest
I understand. I have examples in my life. My grandparents didn't need anything in life other than each other.
My dad watched porn all the time, he was depressed and my folks seemed to have lost much of their connection as I grew up.
I think things are going better now, maybe dad laid off the porn and drinking and is feeling more connected now.
He seems to be a lot less depressed and only very rarely lashes out in a verbally abusive way these days.

It's interesting that I tend to blame my mom for things. Such as dad went for porn because mom was overweight and lazy. I remember now that she lost a lot of weight quite awhile back, so evidently she was putting in some effort, but she stopped the exercise and gained the weight back soon after giving birth to my younger sister, and never went back to exercising.

My dad still does almost all the cleaning around the house though, as well as working the more physically demanding/longer hours job, so I don't think my mom is blameless in this case. I used to side with my mom in the past when my dad would be verbally abusive (albeit mildly verbally abusive), and as I grew up I began to side with my dad for some reason.

So I guess from my perspective dad made changes in his life and mom mostly stayed the same. That probably has the biggest effect on my outlook and opinion of women. Certainly you are experiencing your relationship first hand Gracie, but imagine the fairly neutral outlook a young man gets as he grows up witnessing the difference between a healthy (grandparents) and not so healthy (parents) relationship.

I support you and other partners on this forum to be sure, but I am a little jaded as well, and I hope a partner's recovery process encourages them to look inward as their partners currently are. I know introspection is difficult when you are currently the one on the receiving end of hurt and betrayal, and certainly there are times when there is nothing you could have done differently, but not always. Relationships are funny that way, always about give and take, sacrifice and honest communication.

My dad often attempts to speak reasonably with my mom all the time, suggesting that he'd appreciate a little more help around the house. It hasn't paid off yet even though she agrees at the time. Sometimes actions speak louder than words.

Again I'm not suggesting this is the same as your relationship to your partner Gracie, nor anyone one else on this forum. Just providing some insight into my experience and why I have formed my opinions.
 

Emerald Blue

Well-Known Member
NR, I think you have highlighted some of the difficulties facing young guys who are coming of age at a time when the traditional roles of both men and women are no longer as relevant as they were. It must be very difficult to work out how you see yourself in the future, and how you would like to see your life work out, including your close relationships. We have all lived through times of significant social change and one thing I think we can guarantee is that you will see even more changes in the years ahead. Whether these are changes for the better or the worse, who knows?

Before people were connected to the internet in their homes, pornography was mostly magazines that you'd have to go out and buy. There were x rated movies but before people owned video players they'd have to go out to see a 'blue movie' and sit in a movie theatre with other people. After people started getting VHS and DVD players they were able to watch porn movies at home for the first time but they still had to buy every movie from a store. There wasn't enough opportunity for people to see that as much porn and it all had to be paid for. Because porn was limited by these constraints of opportunity, the conditions necessary for porn addiction to develop weren't quite there.

There are people on this forum who did not grow up with the internet, and these are the ones who know a time "before" and "after" the availability of hardcore porn and the increasingly extreme genres that are readily available to anyone at any time, and at no additional cost. Pornography itself has changed too, it's a lot more explicit and a lot more extreme. Young guys today wouldn't be interested in some 70s porno mag or the big name adult movies of that era. I feel that it is important to put porn addiction into the context of social change for people of your age. Porn addiction became a problem with unlimited access to high speed HD movies that could be watched in real time. That was the tipping point when people started reporting these addiction-like behavioral changes ? needing more porn or more extreme types of porn to get the same 'fix' as well as having an impact on real life sexual relationships.

As female partners, we are not trying to make our men into something they are not or deny them pleasure and happiness. We don't have a problem with our men noticing attractive people, but there's no doubt that watching porn for years habituates men to go beyond appreciation and admiration into sexualising the women they notice, as if the women have some kind of porn fantasy potential in their imagination. It's actually not particularly pleasant for young women to become aware that they are being observed in that way, especially if it's by a man at least old enough to be her dad. It's certainly not very nice to be in the company of a man who is doing this in your presence.

That's not the same thing as you being a young single guy meeting a pretty girl who might like you, and maybe you might approach her, get talking, ask her out on a date or whatever. It doesn't rule out "boy meets girl" or any of the normal, healthy things that young people should be doing. What we are talking about re ogling is about what is and isn't acceptable. Obviously there are different boundaries for different people, or life stages, or situations. And whether porn addiction subverts any of this.

I hope you can see this is not a question of male versus female, but about having healthy and happy relationships. It's about the lives and relationships we want to have, at any age.
 
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NwaltRed

Guest
Yeah I get it.
As a currently unemployed IT guy I spend most of my time in front of a computer, certainly easier than ever before to get sucked into anything, porn, internet, videogames.

Certainly I enjoy many of the convenient pleasures of life, but nothing that I would call happiness.
The tipping point for me was watching women in tears getting whipped and beaten in the "enlightened" bdsm category of porn.
I don't want to get off on a woman's pain anymore, I can't believe it is becoming normalized/mainstream, particularly in the form of 50 shades of grey.
 

Emerald Blue

Well-Known Member
I'm sorry to read that you're out of work at the moment. Unemployment can be very isolating and you can miss out on so much human contact if you find yourself home alone most days. I can understand why the computer can play a big role in alleviating the isolation.

Getting off on someone's physical pain is just too weird. I don't get the appeal of BDSM, or rough sex and being verbally abused, hair pulling or whatever. This is very probably the influence of internet porn and the proliferation of all the different genres. You are right, this kind of behavior is becoming more "normal" or at least more acceptable.
 
N

NwaltRed

Guest
True enough. The goal i've worked out with my therapist is one of moderating porn use/minimizing harm, and more contact with other people would be helpful in that goal.

At the moment I am open to exploring bdsm in my life, but it can be very stressful trying to figure out where the line is drawn for me personally, and porn is all to often happy to cross that line :p

For example, few people would have an issue with spanking during sex, or a firm grasp around the neck in the heat of the moment, but taken to the extreme, those activities can become very uncomfortable, and dangerous.
While I don't gravitate toward the s&m (pain) activities, the bondage and domination side is fascinating. Something about getting tied up and losing all control or taking control is a very strong turn on for me. Of course finding porn that only focuses on bd without the sm has been quite a challenge :p

I have found a website that seems to be fairly ethical in their production standards, I am ditching the unpaid tube sites for the foreseeable future as they always lead me down a path I don't want to tread. If I'm going to watch porn the least I can do is support those who are producing it ethically by actually paying for it.

In any case I've learned a lot from this back and forth. I still don't know if monogamous relationships will be right for me in the future, but I can say that I will be honest every step of the way. I've seen too many porn addicts with broken relationships as a result of trying to have their cake and eat it too. If whomever I meet in the future isn't into porn I will just need to decide if they are worth more to me than porn, and be as upfront and honest with them as I can.

Just to be clear I'm not going to get into a debate about whether porn is right or wrong, everyone has a different opinion on that. However I do understand that it is wrong to commit to a long term relationship and hide porn use, why commit to a ltr if you don't intend to be honest with your partner!

Best of luck to all of you :)
 

forgotten

New Member
I noticed how my husband was looking at women and young teens; Ogling, so it is said! The difference of noticing someone attractive and admiring their beauty and ogling is the type of concentrated stare and actual dismissed acknowledgement of a human being. The stare goes to the extent of eyes looking glazed over and in a trance like state. The staring lasts way too long for it to be remotely acceptable. The look my husband had was like he was a predator and this is not a normal observation of a female.  When I called him on it, he had no idea he was doing it and he was doing this in my presence.  This is how out of touch this ogling can be.
Admiring is totally different than what the term ogling is describing, as this is how I am understanding it from my own experience. So please do not make it sound like this term is male bashing as it is not. It seems to be one of the symptoms of the brain having been rewired to PMO. 
 
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