Never enough in this week’s Savage Love

I think my husband is addicted to porn. I find porn in his browser history almost every single day. He says I’m the only one he wants, but I find that hard to believe knowing he watches nonstop porn before fucking me. He also parties every time he goes on a business trip. Needless to say, I also suspect he cheats. He says he would never cheat on me because he “doesn’t need to.” But what does that mean? I think he is a liar. Every time I even try to bring anything up with him, it is flung back in my face because I cheated on him. He has the ultimate trump card. In his eyes, he can do no wrong because it will never be as bad as me having slept with someone else early in our relationship. Anyway, my question is mostly related to porn: Why does he watch it? I feel as though I am not enough. I am 29 and attractive. What should I do?
Wife Is Feeling Entirely Yucky

You should stop looking at your husband’s browser history.

I have no way of knowing exactly what your husband means by “doesn’t need to [cheat],” WIFEY, but here’s the best-case scenario: You’re his only sex partner, he’s totally into you, but like all humans—including wife humans—he’s wired to desire a little variety and some novelty. No one is “enough” for anyone, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. Which is not to say that everyone cheats (because not everyone does) or that cheating is okay (because it rarely is), but cheating is common enough that forgiving an isolated infidelity (or two) should be our default setting, not immediately lawyering up and filing for divorce. (And truly forgiving someone for cheating means not flinging it in her face during subsequent disputes.)

Back to the best-case scenario: Your husband wants to have sex with other people (and so do you) but he doesn’t (and neither do you). Instead of cheating, WIFEY, your husband scratches that variety itch with porn. He pops into his favorite sites once or twice a day, just like millions of other people, but he’s not cheating on you. (Unless you define viewing porn as cheating—in which case, good luck finding a man who won’t cheat on you.) I would advise you, again, to stop scouring his browser history for evidence of what you already know to be true—your husband is attracted to other people and sometimes looks at porn—and make up your mind to enjoy the effect porn has on your husband—it revs him up and stokes his desire for you.

Now here’s the worst-case scenario: Your husband is cheating on you, perhaps during those business trips, and “doesn’t need to [cheat]” was an insincere blandishment. But absent some other compelling evidence of cheating—incriminating text messages, mysterious credit-card charges, brand-new STIs—you’re just going to have to take him at his word.

Pick someone else, WISH, but only if getting oral back in your life is more important to you than having this particular girlfriend in your life. She was up-front about her disinterest in oral sex—maybe she had early and unpleasant/traumatic experiences with oral, maybe she tried it and doesn’t like it—and just getting her to talk about it is unlikely to result in long sessions of passionate and mutual oral sex. If you can’t see yourself going without oral for the rest of your life, WISH, either get permission from this girlfriend to get oral elsewhere or get yourself a new girlfriend.

Let’s say you went to the beach to lie out because you get a secret thrill from getting checked out, WINDOWS, and then you took that sexual energy home and plowed it into your husband. That wouldn’t be a problem. Strangers at the beach make you feel attractive, feeling attractive makes you horny, feeling horny makes you want to fuck the shit out of your husband. You win, your husband wins, and the strangers at the beach win. Everybody wins.

There are two big differences between what’s going on in your kitchen and what went down on my hypothetical beach: proximity and regularity. You’re not going to see the same people at the beach again, WINDOWS, but your neighbor lives right next door. What happens when you finally and inevitably meet him face-to-face? Hopefully nothing, but the odds of something are much higher. And running into your neighbor and not being able to resist the temptation is not the only risk you’re running: You don’t know anything about this guy. Your innocent flirtation could be his dangerous obsession—and one day, you could wake up to find him standing at the foot of your bed.

But perhaps the minimal risks—you should be able to keep your hands off him, he’s unlikely to show up at the foot of your bed—are worth the very real rewards, i.e., an improved sex life with your husband. This whole thing might seem less like “cheating lite” if you could tell your husband about how much you enjoy teasing the neighbor and how hot it makes you—for your husband. Then instead of retreating to masturbate alone in another room after showing off in the kitchen, WINDOWS, you can retire to your bedroom and fuck the shit out of your waiting husband.