“Talk dirty to me,” he said on our one year anniversary…

We were in bed, making love. I felt a rush of panic in my chest.

Fear.

“Tell me how you feel…,” he grunted again.
And I felt my mouth go dry. My heart racing as I panicked and my mind went totally blank.

What did he want me to say?

What did he want me to do?

Finally, awkwardly I opened my mouth and whispered
“Your penis feels really good”…
Silence.

Like a tumbleweed rolling across a street in the Old West.

He didn’t ask again. He closed his eyes like he was concentrating.
And I wondered what he was thinking of. I wondered where he went.
But the worst part happened later that night…

It was a little after 2 in the morning when I woke up and found the bed empty.

I pulled on my robe and padded out to the living room…

thinking he’d gone to get a drink of water or something.

And then I heard a sound that sent a chill through my whole body…

A female voice. Moaning.

My palms sweaty, I crept around the corner and saw him…
The man I loved, Kevin…
Sitting at the computer naked… Touching himself.
We’d just made love a few hours before but here he was masturbating and watching PORN…
I’ve always wondered why guys do that…
Why would you need to watch porn when you’ve got a real woman right there?
On the screen was a girl… not much prettier than me…
Touching herself and moaning and saying the dirtiest, naughtiest, things…
Things a “good girl” like me would never think of…
Things I thought I could never make myself say…
Even though I felt devastated and betrayed
I just couldn’t look away… And then I looked at Kevin’s face and saw…

A smile like I’d never seen before.

In a year together I’d never seen him look so happy and masculine and satisfied
I know I don’t have to tell you how worthless and ugly I felt…
How I felt like I could never measure up to his fantasies I never even really knew he had…
And I thought of the times we’d tried to “experiment” and I’d wanted him to try new things and he just grumbled like a sad puppy.

I acted like I was asleep when he came back to bed.

Like I’d been asleep the whole time, burying my face in the pillow so he wouldn’t see the tears.

He spooned me and I shuddered and had to bite my tongue so I didn’t tighten up.
And I lay there for hours thinking and making a decision. I thought of how I looked in the mirror
I’d never be a supermodel. I’d never be 22 again (thank God.) I’d never be a pornstar and never wanted to be. And lying there, feeling his breath on my neck

I knew I could do one of 3 things…

1.I could ignore that this ever happened…
bury my head in the sand and pretend we were happy.

2.I could confront him. I could get
MAD at him for looking at other girls
and thinking about other girls…
I could be furious and yell at him
and FORBID him from ever looking
at porn again…
and end up pushing him further away.

3.Or I could make the choice I did…

I could learn the secret fantasies of my guy… of all guys.
I could learn the sexual psychology of men (why men want what they want)…
And I could learn to play his secret desires like a violin…
And inspire him to give me everything I’ve ever fantasized about too…

I fired up my laptop the next day excited at what I was going to learn…

But quickly I got frustrated… And then disgusted…

All over the internet all I found were books and articles and Youtube videos by sleazy, pick up artist type guys and 22 year old bimbos telling me that I had to act like a slut or a nymphomaniac teenager to make a man happy…

And I knew that couldn’t be the truth.

I knew that getting what I wanted didn’t have to mean giving up who I was.