When I walked into my husband's office to talk to him, the first three suggestions on his computer were women in pantyhose. A few months earlier, I had already told him what seeing those women everywhere in his feed was doing to me. He had said I didn't deserve to feel that way and promised to make sure they stopped appearing.
Now there they were again. Then they appeared while he was sitting right next to me, scrolling through Facebook. I didn't have to go looking for something to be upset about. It was coming past on his screen while we were together.
The first conversation hadn't been an abstract argument about whether married people should ever look at anyone else. I was comparing myself with the women he kept seeing, and the comparisons were making me feel worse about myself. He likes pantyhose and asks me to wear them. Instead of feeling like something he wanted to enjoy with me, that request had started to feel like an instruction to resemble the women on his phone.
At the time, I was also asking him to have sex with me more often. That is the part I can't separate from the videos. I wanted more of his attention in our actual sex life, while his feed kept showing women wearing exactly what turns him on. Putting on pantyhose under those circumstances didn't feel like joining in a shared preference. It made me wonder whose image I was being asked to fit.
He said he would mark the videos as things he wasn't interested in. I don't know what he did after that conversation. What I do know is that the same kind of content returned, and that this time I looked through his history. I'm not proud of getting to that point. I wanted to know whether these were simply suggestions appearing in front of him or things he was choosing to watch.
His history showed that he was clicking on them a lot, often around six in the morning, before I was awake. That doesn't tell me everything he does while watching. I hate imagining him masturbating to those women, but imagining it isn't the same as knowing it happened. The clicks themselves were enough to make his earlier reassurance feel very far away.
Strangely, I think I might find it easier if he deliberately went to a porn site. At least that would feel like something he sought out for a particular purpose. With the feed, other women can catch his eye during ordinary scrolling, including when I'm beside him. What bothers me is how little separation there seems to be between that sexual interest and the rest of our day.
There is also the embarrassment. I remember what I believe was one of those women appearing on his phone when he was showing someone something, with me there too. I can't be certain of every detail of that moment, but I remember feeling exposed by what was on his screen. I don't like wondering what will appear when he opens his phone around other people.
I haven't worked out what to say to him now. I already explained the comparisons, the pantyhose, and how unwanted I was feeling. He understood enough to promise a change. This time, I also have the history of what he kept clicking on.
