I’ve reached the point of asking other women on Reddit to send me nude photos. That’s the part I have the hardest time putting beside the other thing I know about myself: I love my girlfriend, and I keep saying I’m committed to her.
We’re both 23, and we’ve been together for three and a half years. She makes me happy. She cares about the person I’m becoming and wants me to grow. When I describe our relationship, those aren’t things I have to struggle to find. They’re what makes my behavior so difficult to explain.
We don’t have a safe, private place to have sex. Last year, we managed it three times; this year, twice so far. Those numbers sound like a problem between us, but that isn’t how we understand it. We both recognize the limits of our living situation. I’m not describing a girlfriend who won’t have sex with me or a disagreement about whether we want each other. We lack somewhere private to be together.
About a year and a half ago, I started watching porn again. At the time, I connected it to that lack of an outlet. There was desire and very little opportunity for us to do anything about it. That was the explanation I gave myself for going back to something I’d watched before.
It didn’t stay there. I began looking at women online, then saving pictures of women we both know, women from my college, and influencers. Those aren’t all the same thing to me. Once familiar people were involved, it became harder to keep describing what I was doing as something separate from my everyday life.
Now I’m contacting women and asking them for nudes. I’ve moved from looking at what’s already online to asking someone to send something to me. I can see that difference clearly enough to feel guilty about it. Seeing it hasn’t been enough to make me stop.
Roughly every week, the guilt catches up with me. I question what I’m doing and why I keep doing it when I care so much about the woman I’m with. In that moment, the contradiction feels impossible to ignore. Then the feeling fades, the urge returns, and I go back to looking at naked women.
The lack of privacy explains something about our sex life. It doesn’t explain every choice I’ve made since. My girlfriend and I share the same practical restriction, but the pictures I save and the requests I send are my actions. The practical problem is shared; these decisions are mine.
I still think of myself as someone who loves her deeply. I don’t want to lose that relationship. But feeling guilty once a week hasn’t changed what happens in between. I’m asking how to stop, with no honest claim yet that I have.
