Real Married Sex :: Don’t Watch Porn, Watch Netflix

I don’t know about you, but occasionally watching porn with my husband is a fun, novel turn on. Why watching two random people having sex {badly} get us all hot and bothered, I’m not exactly sure. But it’s fun foreplay every once in a while.

But that is really all that porn is good for. An accurate representation of sex it is not. It’s an ESPECIALLY inaccurate representation of married sex. No one has the time or energy to spend that much time and energy on sex (sorry, teenage boys, it’s just not how it really works). This is not to say that married sex is BAD or BORING. Quite the opposite. It’s just so much easier. My husband and I know each other so well, that we can have foreplay, climax, and cleanup done in 15 flat. And it’s all amazing.

The problem is expectations. In a New York Times article from a few years ago discussing Google searches relating to sex, men’s second most common question was how to make their sexual encounters last longer. For women, on the other hand, “there are roughly the same number of searches asking how to make a boyfriend climax more quickly as climax more slowly. In fact, the most common concern women have related to a boyfriend’s orgasm isn’t about when it happened but why it isn’t happening at all.” There is a definite disconnect here, and I’m sure a lot of it is related to watching porn and thinking sex needs to last forever. And be all extra. Mind blowing sex doesn’t actually have to take all that long.

A few weeks ago I, like every other woman in America, watched Bridgerton. And during all those “soft core porn” scenes (but really, they weren’t even all that racy), I just kept thinking how true to real sex they were.

• Fast? Yep.
• Opportunistic? Gotta squeeze it in whenever you can.
• Done in places OTHER than a bed? I mean, how do you think co-sleeping families make more kids?
• Half undressed? Who has time to get naked every single time? Not me!

And Bridgerton is not the only “real” depiction of sex to be found on Netflix. It’s just currently the most talked about. There are plenty of lists of other sexy scenes and shows on Netflix.

At the end of the day, I’m terrified of the time in my kids’ lives where I will have to have frank discussions with them about sex. BUT, I’d rather have honest talks than have them turn to porn, thinking that is what sex is really like, or what sex SHOULD be like. And if they watch a show like Bridgerton and giggle at the sex scenes (I mean they show nothing), then I’d rather THAT lead to a discussion of sex. Let’s set our kids up to have realistic expectations; it will serve them better in the long run!