Here's What It Means If You Catch Your Man Watching Gay Porn

And how to talk to him about it.

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As a sex and couples’ therapist, I have often seen the seismic reaction that occurs in a relationship when a woman discovers that her man has been looking at or searching for gay porn sites.

For the woman in the relationship, this is a particularly distressing discovery because now she suspects that their sex life — which until now she may have thought was quite healthy — has been a sham and that he is either gay or bisexual but unwilling to acknowledge that fact to himself and/or to others. 

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And the worst part often is that she is now deeply afraid this means he will leave her and that he may not ever have loved her.

"Well," I explain to her, "I don’t blame you for now thinking he’s gay or bi. Through the eyes of our cultural conditioning, it certainly looks that way ... But the truth is that our fantasy lives often are radically different from our actual sex lives, in much the same way that our dreams are different from our waking life ..."

Because what we get off on is not necessarily who we are.

When you delve into the world of sexuality, things get messy and labels don’t always work. There can be thoughts and fantasies that activate our core sexual desires that we would never act upon or would we truly want to if we were offered the opportunity to do so.

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For instance, I’ve met plenty of lesbian and hetero women who watch gay male porn (men having sex with each other) but this in no way means they are secretly bi or straight. In truth, many women, lesbians included, are turned off by much of what they’ve seen in straight porn such as the woman obviously acting or faking it, a hyper-focus on the man and his pleasure, and the woman’s role being simply to get the guy off.

What these women find in gay porn is more overtly power-balanced sexuality and this turns them on.

I explain to the female partner that many straight men (and women, in fact) watch porn that has nothing to do with who they are or who they want to be.

It might be gay porn, rape fantasy porn, porn showing men being dominated and/or degraded by a woman, medical porn or school-room porn. Each of these genres of porn is based on circumstances and things people eroticize throughout their life based on countless interactions and experiences.

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In order to examine sexual fantasies more closely, it's crucial to explore their non-sexual meaning crack the erotic code, so to speak. For instance, someone who had a mad crush on their third-grade teacher might have a school-room fantasy.

Fantasies are like dreams. They do have meaning but those meanings aren't perfectly literal, nor do they mean you will do (or even want to do) those same particular things.

Here are some statistics from a study published in 2016 that may blow your mind: 

In a survey of more than 800 men of various sexual orientations, researchers found that approximately 20 percent of self-identified heterosexual men said they watch gay male porn and a shocking 55 percent of gay men said they watch heterosexual porn.

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Here are just four of the possible reasons a straight man might enjoy watching gay porn:

1. He may be worried that he isn't capable of pleasing his woman/wife.

Many straight men have fantasies about giving blowjobs to a faceless, nameless, bodiless person — basically, just a disembodied penis.

Does that make them gay? I believe that interpretation would be far too simplistic, as it would imply that being gay is simply about a behavior ... that if you never actually give a man a blowjob, then you’re not actually gay, which could be very far from the truth.

Straight male clients have told me they’ve masturbated to webcam porn of another man masturbating, in which they could only see the other man’s crotch. One client told me that as he watched, he was imagining that man's penis going inside of his own wife.

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The likely non-sexual meaning behind this is that there may be a part of him that worries he can’t please his wife, so for him, imagining that this penis can is highly arousing.

RELATED: Slut-Shaming Men Over Porn DESTROYS Love And Sex For Everyone

2. He may be attracted to gender fluidity.

Some straight men masturbate while watching a genre known as “shemale porn". It's important to note that this is an offensive term to people who are transgender, but the fact remains that this is the name ascribed to this particular type of porn.

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In the genre, men are seen giving or receiving oral and/or anal sex with someone who has the appearance of a woman from the waist up — including highly feminine features such as long hair, large breasts, and dramatically painted nails and makeup and has male genitalia below.

Gay men do not typically watch porn of this kind. Men who do watch it tend to be attracted to the notion of gender fluidity. If the person opposite him was female he’d be attracted, and if the person was a "shemale" he’d be attracted ... but if the person was a cisgender male, he would most likely lose his erection.

3. He may have a desire to be dominated by his woman.

There’s another genre of porn called “forced bisexuality” in which a woman forces her man to perform oral sex on another man.

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The guy in this scenario is not at all attracted to the other guy. Rather, what turns him on is the idea of being forced into sexual acts by his girlfriend, in turn making her feel happy and sexually fulfilled. Of course, this could possibly indicate some feels of bisexuality, but it may also be that he’s just into being dominated by his woman.

 

Related: What The Kind Of Porn A Guy Watches Says About Him

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4. Have may have a desire to be dominated by his woman — with another man present and sharing her control.

Then there's the type of porn that portrays kinky sex known as cuckolding, hotwifing or eroticized cheating, in which the woman is no longer satisfied by his small penis and brings home a bull (a guy with a big penis) and the cuckolded husband is made to arouse them both, watch them have sex, and then clean them both up afterward.

If the woman was left out of this fantasy, both men would be left cold and unaroused. As above, this is another theme of eroticized power exchange, also known as Dominance and submission (i.e., BDSM). 

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In essence, finding a hetero man watching gay male porn can mean a variety of things.

It could be that he’s gay or bi, or that he’s just turned on by gay sex in a way that has nothing at all to do with his sexual orientation. There are also some men who were sexually abused as children and then find themselves “returning to the scene of the sexual crime” so to speak by watching porn that re-enacts what happened to him.

The major distinction to keep in mind is that while sexual orientation has to do with the specific people we're each attracted to, our erotic fantasies contain the abstract concepts that turn us on  and the two don’t often line up perfectly.

What you enjoy sexually does not make you who you are.

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In our culture, when a man experiments with one "gay"-associated behavior, people automatically believe he’s gay. Try not to do this.

And notice that the same doesn't generally hold true for women. Anne Heche had a long-term sexual and romantic relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, for instance, but now that she is married and has children we just refer to that as having been an isolated phase within her life.  

Men don’t get to have "phases" —​ they get put into a box. One label fits all.

Essentially, finding your man watching gay porn doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s gay, bi, or going to leave you.

Stay calm and consider exploring together what it is about gay porn that turns him on. You’ll gain a deeper trust between you, and you may even find your sex life enhanced by the deepened openness and honesty the two of you come to share with one another.

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