I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for about a year and a half. It’s amazing. We’ve never had a real fight and we’re very patient with one another. However, I have a problem that I can’t seem to get over: I’m addicted to dick pics. I love receiving them and flirting to get them. (For the record, I never send pictures of myself. I use pictures of amateur porn stars I find on the web and pretend it’s me.) I like everything about a dick pic. It’s sick. I’ve even saved them in a folder on my iPhone for years. I’ve never told anyone about this habit – not even my close girlfriends.
Recently, I let my boyfriend use my phone to look something up. He stumbled across the folder. We got in a huge fight and he accused me of cheating on him! I tried to argue that it’s not cheating because I don’t know these guys or meet up with them. I tried to explain that I just like receiving dick pics. I need it to feel desirable. He was not accepting any of my explanations.
Is my boyfriend right? Is this a form of cheating, even though there’s no physical contact with these men? How do I convince him it’s just a thing I like to do? I’m scared he’s going to break up with me. Help!
Reading this question made me feel like I was watching the first five minutes of Intervention. You know, when the addict is shown happily gardening in the sunshine, while her voiceover explains how much she loves tending to her rose bushes. Then the background music changes, the shot zeroes in on the addict, and she’s suddenly in a hotel room, the bags under her eyes visible and black. “My name is Sandy and I’m an alcoholic.” Cut to Sandy pouring straight gin into a thermos before taking the kids to school and chugging it like water.
Dick pics are your thermos filled with gin. So what? It could be worse. It could be a thermos filled with gin.
Phone-sharing in a relationship is dangerous ground and should be reserved for couples over the age of 50, or those who have been dating so long they’re basically married. There has to be an element of privacy in a relationship. Smartphones have become our most important appendage; they hold our bank information, credit cards, contacts, emails, photographs, social media, grocery lists, work deals, clients, maybe even our ovulation calendars.
Your mistake here is twofold. First, you made the error of keeping your secret available in the most obvious place: your iPhoto folder. I remember years ago, when my husband was my boyfriend, and he lent me his clunky, cum-stained laptop when my screen broke and I was on deadline. I ended up using it until I could buy a new one. He told me I could delete all the photos on it that were taking up space and making that annoying rainbow ball spin every time I typed a word. Obviously, I wasn’t going to just dump the file without taking a peek. Big mistake. The first 20 photos were nude selfies of the chicks from his skank-o-licious past. I didn’t need to know what happened before I came along. I’m not in the business of making myself feel like shit when I don’t have to.
Second, you were being naive. Of course your boyfriend took a detour while he had your phone in his hands. You should have known. I can’t tell you the number of times friends of mine have busted their cheating partner breaking into their phone. When you carry around a secret, best not to literally hand it over to the one person it could hurt.
Now, your addiction to the dick pics: Personally, I don’t get it, but I respect your need for the peen. Moreover, I understand that this addiction is about desirability and fantasy. You’re not even you when you’re flirting with these men. You’re pretending to be some random aspiring porn star. Fantasy is healthy, but cat fishing is cruel. You are catfishing for dick pics. Would you be disappointed if you found out that the pics you were receiving were pulled off of Google, and that the “man” flirting with you was actually a 34-year-old woman? Did you ever see that HBO documentary, Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop? Gilberto Valle, a young, married New York City police officer spent his evenings on sexual-fetish forums talking with strangers about how he planned to abduct, rape, murder and cannibalize women. His wife eventually busted him. Valle claimed it was fantasy, even though he had accessed a federal database to gather information on various women. He was just indulging virtually in something he would never act on in real life. In court, he claimed he had no intention of murdering his wife or deep-frying her nipples, but once the case became public, he found himself at the centre of a moral argument for the modern age. Are the things you say online, behind an alias, still considered real?
I don’t know if your boyfriend will forgive you. You broke his trust and, for most people, that’s what kills a relationship. It takes a lot of work to build back trust and sometimes you never do. You may have completely blown this; however, there is a point in trying. If you really want to be with this guy, you have to prove you can kick the dick pics. Give him space for a few days. In the meantime, wean off the peen: delete your online profiles and transfer your dick-pics folder to an external hard drive. (I’m not saying you have to completely get rid of your stash; just put it on a device that’s far out of reach for a while.) And lastly, ask your boyfriend to hear you out. Explain your deepest, darkest insecurities and why you needed this. If he agrees to give you a second chance, delete the iPhone photos (that you already saved on an external drive) in front of him. Look to him for the confidence you desire instead of from the deep, dark web.
He may never forgive you. But at least you tried. And you’ll still have your thermos of dick pics hidden in that external drive.
