Netflix Sex Scenes / Q’s for PA

- is this safe?

• Honestly, this is up for you and your partner to decide. It sounds like your goal is to get to a point where TV shows and movies are not triggering, because there's a lot of sexual-related stuff even in PG-13 rated content, so it sounds like you guys want to get to a point where you can enjoy this media / art together as a couple. That's totally valid. Everyone's journey is different, though.

- how can we be safe when watching tv shows?

• I always advise using parental content guides. Pretty much every TV show and movie will have a parental content guide that will give trigger warnings on sex, violence, etc. Common Sense Media is a great source for this as it breaks down trigger warnings by categories (including Sex, Romance, Nudity). Here's an example for Iron Man (2008) https://commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/iron-man

- are shows / movies triggering like porn was?

• Everyone is different. It could be possible that your partner is so far down that rabbit hole that even the mere image of a woman who is scantly dressed in a crop top could trigger his mind to wander towards thoughts of PMO. If he's at this point, then he still has a lot of healing to do, because the goal should be to get to a point where you view these characters as people, not objects of sex - which is often why this imagery can be so triggering for some people because they are still stuck in the phase where they are objectifying every woman they see on screen as mere sex objects instead of actual people / characters in a story. It's actually quite misogynistic if you think about it, and a lot of people on this site have deeply rooted misogyny that they must recover from in order to heal properly. I'm glad you are helping your partner and being patient through this. I hope he appreciates you because it takes a lot of patience and time.

- what are safe tv show / movie recommendations?

• See my note above about Common Sense Media. There's tons of shows that don't have any sexual content whatsoever.

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- is this something that just happens?

• Yes, it happened to me, actually. I still get the itch to PMO every now and then, but it's not as strong as it used to be. See my note above about objectifying women. I started viewing porn as kind of gross, because a lot of it is unethical and fake, and I'm in a happy relationship much like you and your partner (hopefully.) So this created a big identify conflict within myself, because watching porn highly conflicted with the person I was becoming and eventually thoughts of PMO started to fade as I continued to practice a lot of the strategies and routines on this site.

- how do I trust this?

• How do you trust your partner? You have to. If you don't trust your partner, then you don't have a healthy relationship. ALL healthy relationships are built on trust. If you don't have trust, you don't have anything worth committing to.

- what does this mean for y’all?

• See above

 

By the way, I see you are new. So welcome to the site!

I want to warn you: A lot of people here are struggling with very serious problems of addiction. Just keep that in mind whenever you read some of these forum posts. Not everything you read here is going to make sense, be factually correct/rooted in science, or be what's right for your partner. Everyone's road to recovery is different and don't take what you read at face value, including from me.

 

I soft recall The Magicians as being tame relative to porn. There's an extended rape scene, I think in season 2, that was disturbing, but how your boyfriend reacts to it would perhaps depend on the kind of porn he finds compelling. My recommendation is to first determine what he is comfortable with. If he has any misgivings, don't push him. Then take it one episode at a time. First episodes usually have some kind of strong sexual content, so you can either scout it and help him skip it, or if he's okay with it, let him watch and see how it goes. If he seems to have problems, take some time to talk about it and reestablish attachment and care.

You can scout parental monitoring sites to see what they have to say. Of course different sites have different criteria for saying something is "sexually explicit." Some will call bared shoulders or a cleavage shot "mildly explicit," others will claim GoT isn't especially gratuitous. It's a spectrum.

It definitely helps when you get more distance from porn, but I think it strongly depends on what kind of porn a person uses and why. Since porn often lacks context, though, and sex within narratives (usually) is contextual, it's easier to process. It also helps that TV shows typically are less visually explicit, though some scenes can be strangely erotic without technically showing much. It's all about what is implied. In conclusion, usually not but it depends. I apologize if that isn't particularly helpful.

In the urban fantasy genre, or recs in general?

Yes. This isn't to say he's invincible, that he can never regress or that he's "cured," but distance from porn does help reduce the tendency to objectify women. There is of course female objectification endemic in Western culture, which encourages both men and women to go along with it. Companies use bodies to advertise, and women objectify themselves in exchange for validation. There's also evidence that men have a biological impulse to objectify, not that it's an excuse, but it does indicate that it's not a conscious decision we make, gives us an idea of what we're up against. However, time spent away from porn does bring that tendency to objectify way down. This is an extremely common experience. Furthermore, attachment to you is a big help. You are not responsible for his recovery, but it helps him to have a real, immediate person to attach to instead of a nascent concept of a relationship he might have one day.

Time, I think, is the biggest component. I think it also helps to forgive, by understanding that his addiction or dependency or however we want to frame it, is not entirely his fault. Nobody has ever understood how a certain behavior was going to become a compulsion and negatively affect them and their loved ones, and decided to get started on that anyway. Porn, specifically Internet porn, is not understood and has been normalized for us, similar to how smoking was not understood and normalized back in the 1930's. Your boyfriend got into a hole, now he has to find his way out.

Exactly what he says. I think he's deprogramming from porn brain and prioritizing more appropriately. This doesn't necessarily indicate a permanent change, and it's not all of the work. There's a lot more to do. He is engaging in the process, though, and that is very good for you. In aggregate, this means he's capable of identifying a problem in his life, in his behavior in particular, and he's making personal sacrifices to address that. It means he's prioritizing his long term well-being (and you) over short term gratification, which is something you need in a mate. It would be amazing if he and all men were perfect from the outset and they didn't have to do any work on themselves at all, but that's not who we are, or who any human is. The fact that he's able to identify, and willing to adapt, is a solid testament to his character. One of the best things you can do is honor that in him. Not his abstinence. You want to honor his commitment and his adaptability. If your honor his abstinence, he's going to learn your attachment to him is contingent on his abstinence, and he's not going to be willing to share if/when he's struggling again, which he almost certainly will because porn dependency is a coping mechanism for some other form of distress. Eventually, something bad is going to happen in his life, something he would have used porn to cope with, and his brain is going to suggest going back to that poisoned well. You'll want him to feel safe confiding in you, no matter how far down that path he's gone. If you honor his commitment to being a better man for himself and a better partner to you, you'll show him your love is contingent on his honesty.

Everything else you've described out of the OP is completely normal. Wandering eye is the brain looking for porn, and porn adjacent things, the compulsion does fade. Disgust with all things sexual, at least for a period, is also normal. I strongly advise against forcing the issue. Focus on strengthening the relationship with normal communication, light physical contact, actual bonding as opposed to using, so his more primal side can put sex back in its proper context. Hopefully you're going to be ok.

 

I watched it for some time and don't remember anything sexual in it. Then again I got bored of it in the end and didn't even complete season 1.

 

I don't really understand what you mean by the "biological impulse to objectify". Is it the fact that men are horny all the time ? The fact that when they spot an attractive woman on the street they immediately think about f*king her ? Or simply the fact that men like looking at, and fantasize about being with, attractive women ?

Because if it's the latter, I perfectly understand that men would like looking at attractive women the same way I also understand the fact that women would like looking at attractive men.

These are attributes that each sex possesses albeit displays differently, since each sex has it's own relation to sex because of differences in involved risks, and therefore involved stakes. A Man is more likely to prioritize a woman's looks because there (almost) aren't any competing risks would go through would he chose to mate with a woman, which would mitigate his intial sexual attraction to her. For women it's the exact opposite, there are additional competing requirements a man needs to meet before the woman decides it's safe to go for him, and since the price women would pay for sex is higher, both in terms of pregnancy and personal safety, they can't bring themselves to deprioritize their additional requirements just for a man's attractiveness.

 

@CareAboutHim I really understand that you seek to help your partner, but if I may ask, is he on this forum ?

 

You don't understand mostly because you aren't male, and you don't try to understand because you are more interested in pathologizing men and masculinity than in relating to them as they are. I have zero interest in fueling your misandrist fantasies, or your half-baked pseudo social science theories about how men are innately evil and the patriarchy enables/encourages it. However, others may be interested in more detail for this comment so this is for them.

Trans men, regardless of their sexuality, almost universally report a strong increase in libido upon taking supplemental testosterone. Some are surprised and disturbed by it, having not experienced anything similar as a woman, or expected this to happen. Others accept it as part of being male, and embrace it as a condition of being male. Regardless, they mostly say they learned something new about the male experience. The researcher I am referencing, Dr. Carole Hooven, reports frequently hearing the phrase "I get it now."

Objectification is not a concept that is easily tracked by objective means, and this wasn't the object of her research. However, Hooven reports something very much inside the anecdotal realm that resonates, at least for me. She says while she was intensely researching testosterone and its affect on male cognition and behavior, she had a dream where she saw a woman, and was immediately, powerfully attracted to her body. She was aware the woman was a person, but viewed her as an obstacle she had to negotiate to access her body. Hooven knew it was wrong, but she had to have the body, she was hungry for it.
I believe this matches my experience. Not quite in the same way Hooven reports it, because I have decades of discipline and coping mechanisms to circumvent this impulse. This is, however, the background noise I live with on a daily basis, and what I think most men live with on a daily basis, and I didn't even know I was hearing it until Hooven said "that's not normal." At least for a woman, that's not normal. Further, this is why I am at a complete loss when I hear that "society" conditions men to be hypersexual and aggressive. No; sexual and aggressive, not violent but aggressive (in a mostly non-sexual sense), is my base layer, that's my default, and it's cultural conditioning that pulls me back from that instinct.

That cultural conditioning is 100% appropriate. Having that impulse to objectify, using behaviors like catcalling, wolf whistling, cold approach, or more frequently, that creepy dead-eyed stare at a woman's body, none of those behaviors are justified because we know how socially disruptive they are. They make women feel uncomfortable, and despite that impulse, most men are also empathetic so we choose to protect the women around us, even strange women we will never see again, from ourselves. It's the men that give in to the intrusive thoughts, the unbidden thoughts we all experience, that create the reputation we have as a gender.

Men have no idea what it is like to inhabit a female body. We can hear about it, we can read about it and study it, but there is no way, even if we transition, for us to experience or even fully understand what it is like to be in a natural female body. Neither can we fully understand what it is like to be cultured as a woman, and how girls and women are cultured is beyond their control. They didn't choose to be born female, they didn't choose to be treated as female. The exact same is true for the other side of the gendered coin. Women can never comprehend what it is to be inside a male body or be cultured as boys and men, a thing we do not control. I can guarantee you, though, both the physical and cultural experiences of men and women are different. It is invalid for a man to say, ""I feel this way, so a woman must experience the same," and it is equally invalid for a woman to say "I don't objectify or want to have sex, therefore men don't either so when they do it, it is because they are evil or because they were taught to do it." Neither is it valid for a woman to say, "If I were a man, I would be different." No you wouldn't. You'd fall somewhere in the spectrum of what men in your current social context are. You'd probably struggle with porn. You'd probably be frustrated by your career prospects. You'd probably be irritated and bewildered by the term "toxic masculinity," struggling to understand what is is exactly that is expected of you, what you have to do to be socially accepted.

Nobody taught me to be this way. They taught me to not be this way, and I am that anyway. Given statements I have heard from men basically my entire life, I think this is the most common experience of men.

 

-Is this safe?
- how can we be safe when watching tv shows?

It can be, it depends on what he's done in practice to deal with urges. Given your partner is open with you about his porn addiction, letting him know that it's okay to face an urge and he can tell you when it arises. Perhaps in that moment, pause the show, talk for a bit until the urge vanishes. It all comes back to bringing him in the present moment with you.

- are shows / movies triggering like porn was?

They can be, even when I was 1 year into a long streak, I would get a spark of an urge in certain scenes, of course not as strong as it was when I had first started said streak. The idea isn't to run away from TV/Movies, rather to learn how to bring yourself back in the present and call out the urge for what it is. However, if he is just starting to quit PMO, i'd say maybe being cautious. Also, keep in mind that the urge may not necessarily be initially triggered by the movie, rather by the day he had prior to the movie. I.e, if he use to use porn to cope with stress, anger or anxiety, seeing a sex scene after a stressful day may build on the initial emotional trigger.

- is this something that just happens?

With time the desire to watch porn weakens, of course there will always be random triggers, usually in the face of difficulty and strong negative emotions.

- how do I trust this?

You trust and support your partner until he gives you a reason to doubt what he has said.

- what does this mean for y’all?

I'd tell him not to get overconfident and complacent in the practices that have gotten him however far along he is in recovery. The complacency in practicing our positive habits is what strengthens a possibility for a relapse. One must continue to sharpen his tools throughout his journey. This complacency is what lead to my relapse after a long streak. If he is still practicing his habits, I'd say he is on the right path.

 

Vidangel is a service you can use to take sexual/suggestive scenes out of a show/movie altogether. I am an ex partner and I just no longer watch shows with that stuff in general, so vidangel is how I still manage to watch pretty much anything.

 

Sorry bud, this is some pseudo-intellectual BS and you aren't intellectual just because you found some doctor that corroborates your own worldviews and behaviors. I had never heard of Dr. Hooven and you're right, she does say these things. However, her basis are not based on any sound research. The trans men finding themselves objectifying women after transitioning and being on T therapy are all based her own anecdotal account of people she has talked to. I could not find any paper that she's published with any methodology of how she's gotten to this point, even in her book she states that the evidence she found for the trans men is based on anecdotal evidence she collected through talking to some people - not through any formal study with a methodology, control group, and peer-reviewed verification. This is not to say I don't disagree with everything Hooven presents. She seems very smart, articulate, and it's important to have nuanced discussions about our biological differences because I do feel that people who are born male have physical advantages over people who are born female for things like weight lifting and football. There's data to prove this.

I find it ironic how Hoover is trying to present herself as being inclusive but is still looking at things within a very strict binary. I couldn't find much about how her stance on when trans men (who are gay) transition if they objectify other men more. She uses stereotypically female anatomy like breasts and butt/hips as places for objectification, but I don't think gay men are looking at other gay men's nipples and being like "wow I need me some of that because it's in my biology." Also, there are some African cultures like the San of Namibia and Masaai of East Africa that do not consider exposed breasts nudity at all. Women literally walk about tits out and nobody bats an eye because it's no big deal. Then you have other African cultures that mandate breast-binding because they view breasts as a menace to society. Western society views breasts as sex objects for sure. Some women can't even get by breast feeding in public places like the train without getting flack, even though that is not even a sexual act - it's literally feeding their child in the most natural way possible. These are different ways our environment can impact how we view each other's bodies.

Objectification of anyone is a cultural discussion just as much as it is a biological one. And yes, you are impacted by it. Assuming you've grown up in western society, our culture objectifies women all the time and regardless of whether you're aware of it or not, you're an active consumer of this objectification through media, conversations, interpersonal relationships, family dynamics, and so on. We're literally on a website for helping people with porn addiction. That is peak objectification of women, dude, and something that is severely embedded in our culture because A LOT of people in our culture think porn is generally okay, which most of the times it is not (not just because can be addicting.) The sexual objectification of ANYONE can lead to negative psychological effects like eating disorders and depression. Look at male body builders. These dudes are ripped, and most folks on the street would look at this person and be like "wow, this guy is buff" and call it healthy. But so many are so obsessed with objectifying each other's bodies that many of them openly admit to having eating disorders and anxiety because they've reached an unhealthy point of objectification due to their environment. Both men and women can be objects of sexual objectification (especially gay men to other gay men), and both can have negative consequences for the receiver on both ends. Women also objectify other women ALL the time.

I'm so sick of all these "boys will be boys" arguments like yours because it strips away so much nuance that is inherent in all of society and is used to justify abhorrent behavior. There's literally another thread on this forum where people are arguing that being a peeping tom is normal because it's also inherent in men's biology to objectify women, so I guess it's ok to be an illegal creepy perv because "it's in our biology" ? No, dude.

In summary - everyone objectifies everyone. Men objectify men and women objectify women and each other and everyone in between. All sexual objectification means is treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire. And we are constantly surrounded by objectification of people all the time.

In Western cultures especially, women tend to get the crappy end of this, and that's why it's such a contentious discussion - because men also typically hold more power in society, so power dynamics also play into this as well. This is such a complex topic, my friend. We shouldn't be simplifying this to a "boys will be boys" because it's really not that simple.

Being on a site for porn addiction, you're going to find a majority of users here like yourself abnormally inclined to objectify women because you've been doing it by being such an active consumer of porn for so long. Part of recovery and unscrewing your brain is learning how to view people (women, men, anyone in between) as actual people, and not objects of sex.

 

is this safe?

I think it can be. From my experiences I find many men compartmentalize things in ways that honestly don't make much sense logically. I can watch a pretty risque scene from a movie in public and feel nothing, though when feeling a certain way alone could be triggered from the exact same scene.

- how can we be safe when watching tv shows?

I think most of it comes from his ability to be aware of his mental state. You can probably facilitate healthy responses by being present with him, but ultimately he's the one with the control to make sure things are safe. Open honest communication with him, making him feel heard, understood and love can help a lot.

- are shows / movies triggering like porn was?

They can be, for me, they are the most triggering when my "Affect" (your moment by moment experience of your internal bodily sensations - Adam Youngs definition). Is not regulated, there are lots of things that can disregulate someone, and how we handle that differs. Understanding your partners attachment style can help you understand their natural way of handling stressors and disregulated affect.

is this something that just happens?

Yes, however an addiction cycle isn't linear. There are very good days, and also hard ones. On the path to recovery. He can say he feels a certain way and fully mean it. Yet still screw up.

- how do I trust this?

I'm not sure, but I hope ultimately he's able to prove he's worth trusting.

- what does this mean for y’all?

Similar to what I've said before, you can't force him. It's something he can only do for himself. If you try to control his recovery, he will find ways around it if he wants to because only he can make the changes needed.

As far as these scenes, and what your partner has said. I think he probably can handle some of it, watching it with you or others. However, he needs to be aware of how he feels about it when he's alone. Feeling hurt, rejected, lonely, unfulfilled etc. Whatever his struggles are. If he can be open about those feelings with you. And remove the compulsive behavior to escape it with Psubs PMO or whatever escape he has used in the past. He will continue to improve.

Best wishes.

 

I LOVE VIDANGEL!
I’ve had it for years. Some movies are really good but I don’t love some of the content. Nice to be able to edit them. It’s great that you mentioned it on this forum. I’m surprised I’ve not thought to do it.

 

As a PA one of my boundaries/limits is no sex scenese in shows/T.V. Personally, I think there is no point in them as you can imply sex without showing it; Sex scenes add nothing to a plot and are only there to pander to the base passions of viewers.