My Boyfriend Masturbates to Photos of My Friend. What Do I Do?

Recently on the blog we’ve been answering a few listener and reader questions, including topics such as how to navigate sex when one partner is paralyzed and how body modifications have been historically linked to queer signaling. For today’s blog, we’re going to respond to someone who wrote in with a question about sexual fantasies, kink, and trust in relationships. Here’s a summary of the question at hand: 

The listener starts by telling us that although she is pretty “vanilla” sexually, her boyfriend of several years has always been kinkier than her. However, she had not really asked about her partner’s kinks previously, worrying that she would likely not be able to relate to it or might feel insecure about it.

Recently, the listener inadvertently caught a glimpse of her boyfriend’s camera roll on his phone (it opened while he was taking pictures). He had saved a photo of one of her close friends (a photo she recognized as having recently been posted to social media). When the listener asked her boyfriend why he had a picture of her friend, he seemed uncomfortable but later disclosed that he had masturbated to the photo and that he has a kink related to “size queens,” which he said emerged in response to something that friend had mentioned in casual conversation about her own sex life.

The listener feels heartbroken and betrayed that her boyfriend is masturbating to pictures of one of her friends, but at the same time, she feels like they have become closer because she now understands his kinks better. In short, the listener is looking for some perspective on how to navigate this situation in a healthy way and how to move beyond it.

To answer this question, we’ll first discuss how common it is to fantasize about people who aren’t your romantic partner. Then, we’ll provide a quick overview of the “size queen” kink for some additional context. Lastly, we’ll discuss some advice for moving forward in this kind of situation. 

Sexual Fantasies About a Non-Romantic Partner

It is not uncommon for people in monogamous relationships to feel betrayed when they discover that their partner has fantasized about someone else. This is actually a quite common reaction. However, it is important to recognize that most monogamous folks fantasize about people other than their partners from time to time, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re unsatisfied in the relationship or thinking about cheating. To the contrary, fantasizing about other people is often just an outgrowth of the Coolidge Effect and our drive for novelty.

The other partners we fantasize about are often “forbidden fruit,” in the sense that they might be people we know we’re not “supposed” to lust after because adding an element of the taboo to a fantasy can amp up the excitement. Case in point: when Dr. Lehmiller studied the sexual fantasies of over 4,000 Americans for his book Tell Me What You Want, he found that over 50% of men and one-quarter of women had fantasized about having sex with their partner’s best friend. Many had also fantasized about other taboo partners, such as their best friend’s spouse or their partner’s sibling. 

Based on this and other research, it appears that men are more likely to fantasize about people other than their romantic partner compared to women. But it’s important to reiterate that these types of fantasies are not linked to infidelity or in-person cheating. Recognize that a fantasy is often just that–a fantasy. It’s not necessarily always something we want to do or try in real life.

The “Size Queen” Kink

Put simply, a “size queen” in general is someone who prefers their sexual partners to have an above-average sized penis. This particular listener told us that her boyfriend’s kink is such that he is turned on by the idea of a woman being a size queen and being pleasured by a large penis.

Size queen kinks can manifest in multiple ways, such as specifying a particular penis size on a dating app or searching for porn that depicts extra large penises. These kinks sometimes have a racialized element to them, reflecting racial stereotypes about penis size and masculinity. For example, in cuckolding fantasies in particular, it’s often (but not always) the case that white men will fantasize about their partner having sex with a well-endowed Black man (for a deeper discussion on this, check out Dr. David Ley’s book on cuckolding).

In short, the size queen kink can be about having sex with partners with large penises, or being aroused by watching other people who are engaging sexually with a large penis.

Navigating Trust in Relationships and Different Kink Preferences

In our podcast episode What to Do When Your Partner is Kinkier Than You, Stefani Goerlich explains that “the way that you get [information about your partner’s kinks] is going to influence how you receive and process it,” and some ways are more distressing than others. She mentions that it is totally normal and okay to be upset when we find something out by surprise, such as by accidentally stumbling onto a partner’s search history or seeing a browser tab they forgot to close. For our listener, seeing her friend’s photo on her boyfriend’s camera roll definitely falls into the category of surprise, which is probably part of the reason it was so distressing.

So how do you navigate a situation like this? Different people are obviously bound to have different opinions because people are all over the map when it comes to how they define cheating. For example, the internet is replete with articles and videos proclaiming that fantasizing about someone other than your partner is a form of “micro-cheating.” We don’t find “micro-cheating” to be a particularly helpful concept because it involves labeling a lot of very common behaviors and tendencies that may be harmless as inherently pathological. Given the research findings discussed above, it’s important to recognize that it is common for people to have fantasies about someone who is not their current romantic partner and this, in and of itself, is not an immediate reason to break-up. If we hold the expectation that our partners are never allowed to fantasize about or feel attraction to anyone other than us, it’s going to make it difficult to sustain any relationship. 

But if you find yourself distressed by the fact that your partner has attractions to other people or that they had a kink you didn’t previously know about, we need to look at the root of those feelings to determine whether it is possible to move beyond them. In this case, discovering that your boyfriend fantasizes about your friend seems like it has created an attachment rupture. There’s now a trust issue in the relationship due to feelings of betrayal. There may also be some feelings of insecurity because, as Goerlich mentions, the discovery of a partner’s kink can often make us question whether we’re “enough” for our partner.

If you feel as though this has crossed a firm line or boundary for you, you don’t think you’ll ever be able to trust in this partner again, and you imagine your boyfriend is cheating every time he looks at his phone or says hello to your friend, you probably have your answer–that’s not going to be a healthy or sustainable relationship dynamic for anyone. But if you think there’s a possibility of working through this (and it sounds like you’re open to it), here are some recommendations to consider:

• For navigating a relationship where one partner is kinkier than the other, check out our podcast episode with Stefanie Goerlich as well as her fantastic book With Sprinkles On Top for practical tips and solutions on bridging the divide.
• For navigating trust issues, check out the book I Love You, But I Don’t Trust You for tips on healing and restoring trust.
• Armed with these resources, practice open communication with your partner and discuss healthy sexual boundaries in your relationship.
• Learn to accept that we can’t control or police our partner’s sexual fantasies and that getting rid of or changing sexual fantasies is extraordinarily difficult. As much as we might want to, we can’t force our partners to change their fantasies, but we can set boundaries around them in terms of how the partners discuss or explore them.
• If you find yourself continuing to struggle with any of the above, consider speaking with a certified sex and relationship therapist who can help you navigating the process of repairing the attachment rupture, rebuilding trust, and navigating the kinky-vanilla dynamic. Check out this page for our recommended list of therapist locator tools.

If you have a sex question of your own, record a voicemail at speakpipe.com/sexandpsychology to have it answered on the blog or the podcast.