What Do I Do When He Wants Me To Act Like a Porn Star

Don’t.

Ok that sounds too simple, right? But let’s just take a moment to consider the character of a porn star (in film). What is her role? It’s really rather trashy. She is not a person, she is an object. She has no strings attached; she requires nothing of her partner emotionally or spiritually. He doesn’t have to love her or even like her as a person (like I said, she’s an object). She doesn’t offer genuine intimacy or desire intimacy. She doesn’t even need to know his/her name. She simply does whatever to whomever and allows them to do whatever to her all the while with a face of blissful pleasure. She degrades herself willingly and seemingly ecstatically in order to pleasure the one(s) she is with. She is apparently never tired, never a mom, never in need of comfort or friendship. She doesn’t even require any effort from her partner, he/she can just watch. She has no other purpose in life but to offer and receive sexual gratification. There is no love. There is no connection. Only sex.

If your husband is asking you to (or just hinting around about it) act like this type of woman in the bedroom, there is definitely something wrong. Only two scenarios play-out here.  1) Your husband is not currently dealing with a porn addiction openly and you suspect that he is looking at porn, or 2) Your husband is in the midst of dealing with and healing from a porn addiction and is relapsing into old impure thoughts and desires. Either way, it’s a heart issue that must be confronted. If you’ve come to the point where you’re asking the question, “what do I do when he wants me to act like a porn star?” then you must admit that your relationship is lacking in intimacy both emotionally and spiritually. If these two elements are being fulfilled, sex is not just sex, it’s a connection. It’s give and take. It’s not this one-sided sexual objectification and selfishly seeking gratification that we find in pornography.

If this is what you are experiencing I highly recommend confronting the issue and seeking open communication with your husband. Whether that is something you can do together without the assistance of a counselor or support group is completely up to you. This is my experience…

I have never really watched porn. In middle school at a sleepover my “friend” showed me one of her dad’s porns and I was so embarrassed to be watching it with her because I knew, even then, that this was not appropriate. I couldn’t finish watching it. Maybe I was scared my parents would find out. Nonetheless, those images stayed with me; even today I can call them up in my mind if I try. When I married my husband, we had already been sexually active before marriage.  Big mistake. And once we were married, things changed drastically. He seemed disinterested in sex and when we did have sex, he seemed to be disconnected, and would say things that seemed strange. I recognized some of his behaviors as what I saw in that porn that I watched in middle school. So, naively, I began acting like the woman I had seen in that porn. And when I got a good reaction from my husband, I assumed that’s what he “liked.” So for eight more years I took on that role. I no longer felt like a person, just an object. I didn’t feel loved or cared for. There was no intimacy, just sex.  My husband was not a monster; he was just blinded by his sin. Once his addiction was found out and we began dealing with and healing from the pain of it, the issue of how to act sexually was HUGE. For so long I had trained myself to move certain ways, sound certain ways, etc. and now I felt like every time we had sex that I was invoking pornographic thoughts in his mind. For so long my husband had soaked his mind with images of what he thought was genuine intimacy but turned out to be all lies. And now we were both starting from scratch trying to figure out how to have God-honoring sex. After a few months of crying from insecurity and angry fights and accusations after sex, I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him that we needed to have a very honest and open conversation about our sex life.

So we sat down and talked about everything. I told him certain things that we did that I was not comfortable with. He told me certain things that we did that were causing him to be reminded of his porn addiction. And we came to a wonderful agreement of things that we both liked to do and things we enjoyed. And from that day on, our sex life has been about intimacy, connecting, and love. We haven’t struggled with this issue much since then (give or take a time or two when I have allowed my insecurities and fears to run wild). In the end, it all comes down to communication. Confronting the issue and working together to find a place that you are both comfortable and feel fulfilled. Whether you’re suspecting a porn issue with your husband or you’re already dealing with one, the concerns in the bedroom will come up and you can’t just sweep it under the rug. There is no room for timidity when it comes to rescuing your marriage bed from defilement and shame.  It’s not your role to be a trashy porn star; it’s your role to be his wife.