Why is watching porn better than being with me?
Dear Reclaim Your Beauty,
I’m a 24-year-old pre-med student who’s been in a relationship for eight months. We recently moved into a shared place together. He’s four years older than me and an investment banker. We’re both very busy.
Last night, I came home while he was showering. His computer was open, so I looked at the screen and saw he was watching porn. I couldn’t help myself… I checked his history. He watches a lot of porn. I mean hours a day, even on days I know we had sex.
I have so many feelings about this… but the deepest is this crushing sense of rejection, like I’m not beautiful enough.
How do I reclaim my beauty after this?
- Why Is Porn Better Than Me?
Dear Porn Is Not Better Than You,
First, breathe into the ache. That knot in your belly, the hot rush behind your ribs is your body speaking betrayal’s language. You’re not crazy. You’re human. You witnessed a secret that cracked trust, and your nervous system roared: Danger.
Your pain is real. Feeling rejected or “not enough” in the face of a partner’s hidden sexual behavior is a deeply human reaction. Many women, across every age and culture, have felt this same sting. And you are not alone.
Let’s slow down and honor that wisdom together.
Why This Cuts Bone-Deep
We are raised in a world that equates desirability with worth. From early adolescence, girls are taught that being wanted is being valuable. So when a partner turns away, even toward a screen, it can pierce that conditioning and feel like proof of unworthiness.
But it’s not.
Let’s pause here and name what you’re not: You are not less beautiful, less worthy, or less lovable because of what someone else chooses to do.
Your beauty isn’t measured by someone else’s attention span or browser history.
What the Research Says
In truth, porn use often has little to do with a partner’s attractiveness. It’s typically about stress, coping, fantasy, or numbness.
Studies from the Kinsey Institute (2018) and Cambridge University’s Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute (Kraus et al., 2016) show that habitual pornography consumption activates the same reward and stress-regulation centers in the brain associated with addiction and avoidance.
The dopamine spikes are temporary and, sadly, the emptiness afterward, enduring.
In other words:
It’s stress anesthesia for high-pressure lives (yes, especially in investment banking).
It’s numbness disguised as desire.
It exists in a separate world from real love, real bodies, real connection.
Your nervous system detecting emotional distance and signaling, something’s off here and your brave enough (feel safe enough in your body) to give voice to it!
The Systemic Part
The roots of this conflict extend beyond your relationship into the culture that shaped you both.
Kyriarchy’s Blueprint
From day one, women are trained to find safety through desirability. His secrecy weaponizes that conditioning and it echoes the larger system that says men’s pleasure matters more than women’s truth.TL:DR
Women: Trained to seek safety through desirability.
Men: Taught that pleasure trumps truth.
His secrecy? Just following patriarchy’s “hide your coping mechanisms” memo.
The Porn Machine
The modern porn industry thrives on extraction! It commodifies intimacy, detaching emotion from embodiment. Research from The Journal of Sex Research (2020) found that over 70% of mainstream porn portrays aggression or lack of consent. It’s a $100-billion global business built on algorithms that rewards the scripts of men taking instead of relating.
No one wins in that economy… not you or your boyfriend. So, the betrayal you feel isn’t just personal… it’s ancestral, cultural, systemic.
The good news in all of this cluster? Your body is where the healing begins.
How to Reclaim Your Beauty After This
Our work at RYB is founded in our bodies holding the key to reclaiming our beauty, power and sovereignty. So, rather than the work being top down (your mind convincing you of something), we work bottom up and middle out.
Because trauma, betrayal, and shame don’t live in logic, they live in tissue. When we begin from the body with breath, sound, movement, sensation, we’re not just talking about transformation; we’re doing it. Bottom-up and middle-out means we include your whole nervous system in the conversation: from the primal root that holds your fear to the heart that feels bruised.
Here are some suggestions…
Feel Your Feelings
You are allowed to grieve, rage, cry, or go numb. There’s no “right” reaction. Let emotion move through you, not bury inside you.
Somatic Practice: Lie on the floor. Feel gravity hold you. Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly. Whisper: “I am safe to feel this storm.” Let tremors, tears, or sighs come, they’re your body’s way of metabolizing betrayal.
Remember: His Choices Are Not About Your Value
His porn use is about his coping, not your beauty. Research in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2022) shows that partners of frequent porn users often experience “secondary trauma” or lowered self-esteem, but it’s rooted in misattributed meaning, not actual inadequacy. So: this isn’t an evaluation of your desirability, it’s evidence of his disconnection from himself.
Reclaim Your Holy Gaze
Your reflection doesn’t belong to anyone else.Light a candle. Meet your eyes in the mirror. Trace the place on your skin where “not enough” tried to live. Say softly: “You are home. You are mine.”
Pleasure as Sanctuary
Let your body remember softness. Walk barefoot on grass. Taste something dark and sweet (chocolate, berries) slowly. Feel the earth under you, the breath in you, the pulse that’s still yours. This is how your body learns that safety and sensuality can coexist.
If You Choose to Speak With Him
You might say: “Seeing your porn history shattered my trust. I need to understand… is this how you escape stress? And what do I need to feel safe again?” If he’s willing to face this pattern, invite accountability and support.
For him: Sexual Addicts Anonymous (SAA): a compassionate, non-shaming space to examine compulsive patterns.
For you: S-Anon: a community for partners healing from betrayal and relational trauma.
Neither is about blame. Both are about finding your footing again.
Reclaiming your beauty begins the moment you stop asking, “Why am I not enough?”
and get curious about, “Why wasn’t he present enough to see me?”
With fierce tenderness,
Ruby
Reclaim Your Beauty™… returning to the pulse beneath the programming.
P.S. Healing comes in waves. Rest in the troughs. Your body knows its own rhythm.
References
Kraus, S. W., Voon, V., & Potenza, M. N. (2016). Neurobiology of compulsive sexual behavior: Emerging science. Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 3(3), 181–193.
Garcia, J. R., Reiber, C., Massey, S. G., & Merriwether, A. M. (2018). Pornography consumption and its associations with sexual satisfaction: A review. Kinsey Institute Research Review, 14(2).
Wright, P. J., Tokunaga, R. S., & Kraus, A. (2020). A meta-analysis of pornography consumption and sexual aggression. Journal of Sex Research, 57(6), 709–722.
Dhuffar, M. K., & Griffiths, M. D. (2022). The impact of problematic pornography use on relationships: A review of empirical research. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 11(3), 854–870.
Ask Ruby Your Question
If there’s a question alive in your body.. about beauty, power, rest, pleasure, or reclamation, write to me below. Examples of questions that Ruby answers:
“Ruby, I don’t feel beautiful anymore. What can I do?”
“Why do I still collapse around men?”
“How do I rest when my body feels unsafe?”
Your story may become the next Letter to Ruby, offered anonymously, with reverence. We move from performance to resonance. First with ourselves and then radiating out to others. Here, women remember that their bodies hold the blueprint for liberation.
You’ll also receive the first five letters in the Reclaim Your Beauty series, written for the woman awakening from overwork, overgiving, and over-polishing, and a 19-minute walking meditation called She Walks In Beauty.
We will only use your first name and last initial. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, please let us know in the question.