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I'm an early-30s hetero women in a monogamous relationship with my mid-30s hetero guy. We've been together for about ten years, married for seven, no kids. We have a lot of fun together—traveling, shared hobbies, mutual friends, etc.—and get along really well. We have sex fairly regularly. It's not bad. Nothing mind blowing, but definitely on the good end of things. However, his primary sexual fetish is getting in the way of things for me.

His main turn on is furry porn. Namely cartoon images. He doesn't self-identify as a full-on furry; he doesn't have a fursuit or fursona. To his credit, he was upfront about this with me once we started getting more serious. However, I think at that younger age, I conflated the emotional openness and acceptance of his sexuality (people like what they like, no judgment here) with actually...

Vivamus dui velit, vehicula non sodales a, aliquet sit amet orci. In lorem nulla, porttitor a nibh ac, auctor sodales libero. Phasellus sit amet consectetur urna, sed congue neque. Mauris a commodo arcu, sed commodo libero. Nam vel orci sapien. Pellentesque ac magna hendrerit, efficitur purus dapibus, facilisis est. Maecenas tortor ante, lacinia eget ante vitae, aliquet interdum tortor. Suspendisse potenti. Morbi quis bibendum arcu.
...being satisfied with the sexual component of our relationship. He only seems marginally attracted to me, and it bums me out that his more intense sexual drives are funneled into furry porn. I feel somewhat helpless, as his fetish doesn't have much of a real world analog for me to meet him halfway. Real life furry action (fursuits and the like) does not interest him (I've offered). As stated earlier, we have sex regularly, but I always initiate, and his enthusiasm is middling until we really get going, at which point I think we both enjoy ourselves. But I've found that this turns into a negative feedback loop, where his lack of initial interest leads to me being less attracted to him, and so on.

I'm not sure what to do. I consider myself a fairly sexual person and I get a lot of pleasure out of being desired. I love him dearly, but this is an issue for me. We're talking more seriously about starting a family, and I'm scared that the pressures that come with parenthood that would only make this worse.

Fretting Under Relationship Shortcomings

Nothing I write here is gonna fix this—or nothing I write here is gonna fix him, FURS, not that your husband is broken. He is who he is, and he had the decency to let you know who he was before you married him. But certainly nothing I write here is gonna put you at the center of your husband's sexuality or his fantasies. Nothing I write here is gonna inspire him to initiate or be more enthusiastic about sex.

Basically, FURS, nothing I write here is gonna make your husband want you the way you wanna be wanted, desire you the way you wanna be desired, and fuck you the way you wanna be fucked.

The question you need to ask yourself before you make babies with this man—the question I would've urged you to ask yourself before you married this man—is whether you can live without the pleasure you derive from being desired. Is that a price of admission you're willing to pay? It once was, it seems, but is it still? Because if he insists on monogamy, FURS, or if monogamy is the relationship model you prefer, then choosing to be with this man—choosing to be with someone you enjoy spending time with, choosing to be with someone who's "not bad" at sex but not great at it, choosing to be with someone whose passions will always direct his most passionate sexual energies elsewhere—choosing to be with that man means going without the pleasure of being desired the way you wanna be desired, wanted the you wanna be wanted, fucked the way you wanna be fucked.

Your husband was upfront with you about his sexuality before you got married. Everyone should be upfront with their partners about their sexuality before committing, of course, but so few people are—particularly people with niche fetishes—that we're inclined to heap praise on people who manage to clear what should be a low bar. At the time, you mistook "emotional openness" and your willingness to accept his sexuality for sexual compatibility and sexual satisfaction. I think you owe it to yourself to be upfront with your husband before you have kids. He's getting a good deal here—decent sex when the wife initiates and the freedom to take care of those needs the wife can't meet—and you are free to ask for a similar deal: decent sex with your husband and the freedom to take care of those needs the husband can't meet.

There's a far greater degree of risk involved in you going outside the relationship to feel desired, of course; you seeing another man or men, now and then, discreetly, comes bundled with more emotional and physical risks than your husband having a wank over his furry porn. This isn't an apples-for-apples comparison. But if the goal is to make sure you're both sexually fulfilled—and to head off the very real possibility that you will become so frustrated that you make a conscious decision to end your marriage or a subconscious decision to sabotage it—then opening up the relationship should be a part of the discussion.


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