Bootleg Therapy: An Advice Column #7

STRAIGHT DUDE EDITION! On an OnlyFans habit, and avoiding girls with baby fever

Welcome to Bootleg Therapy: an advice column for wayward hearts. Think of me as your virtual stranger at the bar with a raspy voice and a weird scar on their cheek; the truth is in the worm at the bottom of the mezcal bottle. Submit your questions anonymously on brokebutmoisturized.com for a chance to be featured.

Enjoy an audio reading of this piece, or scroll down to keep reading. Sorry for the sound quality and tongue clicking. Idk what to tell you:

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Before we get into it, I just want to say that I’m thrilled to present my first column responding only to cis, straight men. (Maybe you don’t think that’s something to be proud of, but maybe you’re part of the problem. Anyway…) I have a lot of friends and readers within this demographic, and it’s important to me to help build a culture of emotional openness among them. So, I made a call for submissions. Each submission was compelling in its own way, but these two stoked certain urgency and compassion in my heart. I hope you enjoy.

Go Forth and Multiply

Greetings! I hail from the male contingency of your readership. Men love female centric advice columns because it helps us more often than not when navigating social relations. I'm a 29 year old man who is starting to run up against a common problem in his dating life: Why is it that most women in my age range are starting to get baby fever? Maybe that's not the correct question. Maybe the better question is: can you please help me understand the emotions and urges and the feelings of possessing a womb that craves? Through differences in biology, no amount of empathy has ever allowed me to glimpse into this conundrum of femininity. It's not that I don't want kids, I just can't fathom having them right now. But women I meet (ages 25-30) have that question lined up sometime after the first drink but before dessert arrives. And my "not right now" is too vague and causes their eyes to glaze over as they chock up another failed dating experience. What escaped institutionalized man is running around picking out baby names on the first date? Am I doomed to be the man fast approaching his 30's that only dates 20 year olds, and replies with a wry and unsettling "they're not complicated" when asked why?

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Dear Go Forth and Multiply,

If I wasn’t a troll, I’d launch right into the grave particulars of your situation. But unfortunately, uh…

Don’t take it personally. I’ve been sitting on that one for years.

In 2021, my partner and I weren’t doing so well… to the point that we actually broke up. Now, one might wonder how we ended up engaged mid-2022 to which I say love doesn’t wait but that’s another story. Anyway, there was a point during that rough patch when I thought I was pregnant. I sat in the bathtub crying one night, confessing to my notebook the heartbreak of being 30 years-old and perfectly fine with having a child, while dating someone who is 27 and shudders near the diapers in Target. Our three-year age gap felt like painful eons that’d never close. And in the moments when you’re examining your belly under tepid water, searching for any degree of protrusion, that disconnect can render you strangers. You start to think, “I’ll do this on my own if I have to.”

I didn’t actively want to have a child then and I don’t actively want one now. We want to start a family down the line, but neither of us are ready. The thing is, though, many women, myself included, are innately ready to be ready. Meaning: we have lived a lot of life and seen a lot of shit and thus, should the day come, we can easily rise to the occasion. The second we’re ringing up tests in the CVS self-checkout, we’re already considering budgets, sleep schedules, and names. You wouldn’t get it, and I totally get that. But it is my job to make you get it.

You ask why women in the 25-30 age range are starting to get baby fever. For one, it would behoove you to find empathy for the biological clock. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a woman’s peak fertility is between her late teens and late 20s. Women over 30 are often forced to endure expensive, emotionally exhausting fertility treatments in order to conceive. So it’s kind of a logistical thing! Psychologically, though, baby fever is an instinct in both men and women that actually goes down with age in women, and increases with age in men. So mid-late 20s, you can figure a woman is at the height of her maternal urges. And while you struggle to relate now, you may have a different story in five years when your 21-year-old babywoman drags you to another nightclub, charges the Uber to dad’s plastic. You may find that old sources of meaning have run dry, and a family doesn’t sound half bad.

The “procreation as wellspring of individual meaning” phenomenon is complex. Women in their 20s are figuring out who they are, which can be a deeply harrowing process. Some think having a child will provide a soundness of identity that has otherwise proven elusive. They cannot imagine anyone nobler than a mother, any feeling greater than being needed. It’s easy to be repelled by that. It feels pathetic in some ways, selfish in others. Some women’s dreams of motherhood are so pathological, they’ll even go as far as trapping men via “forgotten” birth control and the like. Let’s try and avoid them!

But, on the contrary, consider other observable sources of meaning among 20-somethings: money, status, intellectual superiority, fleeting beauty, getting drunk (all fun things, but you get where I’m coming from). The girl who just wants a family to share her life with has unsung depth. It’s simple in a way modernity has conditioned us out of grasping. 

You’re in a tough position because you don’t necessarily not want kids; you just probably have other things you want to do first. That’s an incredibly fair stance—one that most people our age-ish (I’m 31) share. Still, it is imperative that you learn to see this as a fundamental determinant of compatibility. Compatibility isn’t all hot sex and deep conversation and knowing glances over candlelit pasta. It is also the practical stuff, like financial goals and—you guessed it—babies. You can’t blame a girl who’s dreamt of being a mom her entire life asking early on how you feel about kids so she can know if she’s wasting her time. Your non-committal response may be enough for some women to roll the dice, but some might want a clearer answer, and that’s fine. You may just need to accept that those women aren’t for you. And in your defense, having children is a huge fucking deal, and it’s not always an easy yes or no on the spot.

Speaking of it being a huge fucking deal, should you fall in love with a woman who desperately wants children here and now, you two must compromise. Compromise is maybe the most important skill in a relationship, right after giving head making each other laugh. And it sometimes means making hard decisions sooner than you’d like. When Andrew and I first started seeing each other, I told him we should only “keep things going” if we could see ourselves getting married. He never had a reason to carefully contemplate marriage before me. But he did it, because he’s an adult who wanted to be with another adult. Adults know what they want. I wanted to get married. I probably would have gotten engaged sooner than we did, but he wasn’t ready. I compromised.

My recommendation for you, Go Forth and Multiply, is to take a page out of their book: be just as shrewd in finding women who aren’t obsessed with motherhood as these women are with finding their sperm donor. Look for women who’ve found deep purpose in their communities, their interests, or even their professional lives, for whom family is, perhaps, a lovely thought—just at a comfortable distance. 

And if that doesn’t work out, there’s always some uncomplicated 20-year-old.

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Support the Working Girl, Spoil My Conscious

Male, almost 30, single, straight. Sometimes when I am drunk, lonely, and horny, I spend money on internet girls (TikTok, Instagram, OnlyFans). Then after a day or two, I get disgusted with myself and delete those accounts or the apps and swear off giving my money to strangers for nothing in return. But yet I keep doing it. Now, it's not a lot of money, and it's not often. 5, maybe 10 dollars every couple of months, but always in moments of weakness or boredom or after the second drink or a combination of those conditions. I'm in a rut in my life where I have a lot of time to kill, and few friends, so these brief moments of transactional human connection give me fleeting feelings of affection and someone's attention. I don't blame these young women for doing what they do and getting paid, it's probably a nice line of work for them. And it's better than supporting the violent and exploitative male-dominated porn industry. In a year I will be moving and have a lot more to do with a different living situation, but how do I reckon with this impulse in the meantime?

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Dear Support the Working Girl, Spoil My Conscious, 

The line between impulse and calculation is often blurry. We dissociate momentarily, watching our bodies from above as they succumb to circumstances of desperation (“a rut”). We question our self-control. Construct some charitable justification (“it’s better than supporting the violent and exploitative male-dominated porn industry”) to offset the consequential shame (“I get disgusted with myself and delete those accounts…”) Such vicious cycles are spiritually depleting, and yet we find ourselves there time and time again—slack-jawed, hand down our pants.

Platforms like OnlyFans and Twitter “after dark”—what I refer to as social porn—have helped democratize sex work. While creators enjoy their independence, social porn offers a user experience wholly unique from the mainstream. According to Men’s Health, thousands of Redditors remarked on the appeal in a 2021 thread, citing factors like ethics (as you touched on), and personalization. 

What guy wouldn’t be enticed by the perceived intimacy that comes with a custom video moaning his name? Even crude, half-naked selfies feel more like stumbling upon your crush’s hidden iCloud folder, rather than some gaudy, scripted porn. And while sites like PornHub can evoke a never-ending McDonald’s dollar menu—decision fatigue for the lowest common denominator—social porn feels intentional. Like we’re all in control, and the ecosystem is somewhat symbiotic, dare I say virtuous.

All this is to say, my friend, that your situation is so normal. That you are so normal. One would be hard-pressed to find a millennial guy who hasn’t paid for e-girls, if only out of curiosity. Even I shelled out $11 to see some influencer’s boobs once. (Spoiler: her “premium content” was no spicier than her Instagram pics, and I could have spent that $11 on a decent sandwich.) 

Notwithstanding the obvious mundanity, you are ashamed of your social porn habit. That’s partly because we ascribe this behavior to the unflattering simp archetype. He is in a dark basement, pale against the glow of his phone, entering his credit card number with Cheeto-dusted fingers, mindlessly devoted to women he’ll never meet. A key difference between you and the simp, though, is that you can cogently articulate your why, and it goes beyond merely being horny. Your living situation is temporary. You want a little fleeting affection when you’re lonely. There’s nothing inherently dirty about that. The dirtiness lies in the secrecy. And therein lies your shame.

One of the shadier aspects of the male relationship to porn is that we tend to find out about it versus having honest conversations. If a guy were to tell me, with his full chest, that OnlyFans feels realer than porn, or that it was his alternative to meaningless dating app sex, I’d think, “that’s respectable.” Of course, privacy is paramount, but it does go a long way to admit vulnerable decisions with confidence. It’s why women love a guy who’s open about going to therapy; the candid declaration of something done in the dark, without feeling deficient, is sexy. I’m not saying you should randomly confess to your group chat, or even tell the next girl you date without being asked. I’m just saying the first step toward addressing the problem is confronting your shame around it. 

Shame can be regulated via deep introspection, journaling, therapy, talking to a friend, meditation/mantra, whatever works for you. This will help you find self-acceptance in a difficult context, which can catalyze behavioral change. One of my missions as a writer is to prove that shame sustains our unsavory habits. For example, when I’m depressed about my body, I cope by bingeing, gain more weight, and become even more depressed. When I accept my body for its natural fluctuations, I’m able to stay healthy and happy. By that logic, the less shame you feel toward using social porn (or toward your rut as a whole, really), the less you’ll find yourself down bad enough to use it. The more empowered you’ll feel to stop yourself when the urge hits. When people exist outside of their shame, they execute on their passions, become better versions of themselves.

Still, you must know that your social porn habit is not without risk. One major risk is distorted reality. Let’s go back to that concept of personalization and perceived intimacy. Simps exist because social porn has a special ability to make men feel close to women, like the intimacy of their exchange is more than just financial. You get a peek into their bedrooms and bathrooms. You see them naked doing ordinary things, like eating breakfast, or playing video games. Having this source of “closeness” in your life can slowly erode your need for IRL connection. When your needs are being met for nothing but a few bucks, why would you bother trying to meet someone? Even if finding love isn’t a priority, your reality is still distorted, and that is unhealthy.

Porn, in general, is only healthy insofar as it doesn’t negatively impact our relationship to ourselves and others. Social porn functions like mainstream porn in that it warps men’s concepts of sex and beauty. When airbrushed hypersexuality becomes your normal, you might be put off by the realness of a woman in front of you. Women who aren’t paid to make you cum have cellulite and wear pimple patches and sleep in raggedy ass pajama pants they got for Christmas in seventh grade. Being horny isn’t their job; it is a natural resource of their humanity, tapped in moments of passion. When your idea of women is filtered through social porn, again: distorted reality.

So, how is your sex and dating life? I try not to speak in such absolute “should”s, but if there’s one thing I know to be true, it is that real life should trump online life. People whose online lives are totally inextricable from reality are usually troubled. This compels me to encourage you to get out on the scene a bit. Experience attraction and connection and sex with all five senses. Paying for e-girls can be a cop-out from pursuing women in real life. Even if you have no intention of dating, or don’t have the funds, or hate the idea of sex without love, or whatever, I think it’s important that you flex this muscle in order to keep your reality intact. That way, when you do use social porn, it won’t be your primary source of women, and can do what porn should do: supplement.

The other big risk of social porn is losing a sense of discipline. Say you are able to shed the shame, and you start to feel better about your usage. Maybe you’ve even gone on a couple dates! That is step one. Step two is setting boundaries with those apps and accounts. Practice self-control in moments when it’s easy to lean on social porn, and reserve it for special occasions, or even set a particular frequency. Porn is addictive. One of my favorite quotes about addiction comes from Dr. Andrew Huberman: “Addiction is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. Happiness is a progressive expansion of the things that bring you pleasure. The former emerges passively. The latter takes work.” Healthy is he who experiences pleasure broadly, who can walk away when satisfied. Do not underestimate the power of discipline.

As you work through this process, you will stumble. You will back yourself into corners of grueling interrogation. Questions like, “Am I in control here?” or “Is this who I want to be?” or “Would I feel comfortable sharing this information with a future partner?” will arise, and I hope you can answer them kindly, earnestly, through a lens of self-acceptance. If you come up with more nos than yeses, then I think it’s time to pull the plug—delete those apps for good, invest in a fleshlight.

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