And nearly all of them talk about the bitter stigma of being in the adult industry. A number of the former performers link their entry into the industry to child sexual abuse and/or to drug addiction. There's certainly a fair bit of evidence in After Porn Ends, available on iTunes now and on DVD later this month, to support such suspicions. The antipathy and contempt porn workers face is more intense, but the stories here could confront any non-former-porn-star in the swelling ranks of the lower middle-class.
The natural conclusion to leap to, of course, is that the neediness and the porn career are inextricably intertwined: that Carrera entered porn because she needed to be loved, and/or is so unsure of herself because she's ashamed of her porn career. For someone like her to need the approval of someone like them is an apocalyptic admission of neediness that's depressing to think about. Yet, despite all of that, what she wants is validation from some random group of self-declared smart people. This after all, is Asia Carrera, a woman who ran away from home at 17 and pulled herself together to become a successful businesswoman and a world-famous name and face. Eventually, though, the society did feature her in an issue of its magazine devoted to Mensa celebrities-a big moment for her, she says. She explains that Mensa links to all its members' websites, but that they wouldn't link to hers because. Whether this was just a bit of fun, or is likely to turn into something beyond that one kiss, is really the question but the fact that several weeks later you still don’t feel comfortable with it can’t be ignored.The most heartbreaking scene in the documentary After Porn Ends, about the post-porn lives of 12 adult stars, may be when Asia Carrera talks about her membership in the high-IQ society Mensa. Your girlfriend kissed a woman she already has a friendship with – so now that relationship has turned sexual. There is, as sex and relationship counsellor Murray Blacket ( ) pointed out, “a difference between having a sexual relationship with your regular partner and bringing others into it by choice and agreement, and a situation when one of you splinters off independently to be with someone else”.īlacket added: “I think you need to have the conversation about whether your relationship is polysexual – you have sex with others, either together or separately, usually just once or twice, but there is no relationship – or polyrelational – when you also form a sexual relationship with someone outside the dyad.” That she willingly told you about kissing her friend is a good sign, but she has taken things into a different arena. Why was that? It seems that the elasticity of your relationship accommodates your girlfriend more than you.ĭid you open up your relationship to include others from the beginning, or is it a recent thing? Are you doing it because you both want to – or because she does? It sounds as if you’ve never really discussed ground rules, and that you and your girlfriend have different ideas of what is permissible. I notice that immediately after it happened you warned your girlfriend to be careful not to ruin her friendship with the other girl – not your relationship. At least part of your struggle seems to involve you trying to quash your feelings.
When you have an open relationship, one that allows other people in, it doesn’t mean you have to be OK with everything that happens. It has been a month or so now since it happened. She also told me she only kissed her because she thought I would be OK with it, and that the lines were blurred. I told my girlfriend my fears she understood, and guaranteed it would never happen again. This is hard for me, though, because it’s easy to think it will happen again – or that their friendship will evolve into something else. My girlfriend doesn’t have a lot of friends and it would be unreasonable to object to them seeing each other.
The fact that they were close friends meant I was put in the position of hav ing to be OK with them “just hanging out”. My girlfriend and I had a falling out I was angry and felt cheated on. Over the following weeks, my feelings bec ame clearer. When she told me, I didn’t know what to feel : I warned her to be careful not to ruin her friendship. Recently, she came home from a party (without me) and told me she had made out with a woman who is a close friend of hers.