Pornography is nothing new. It has existed since long before the Internet made it easily accessible day or night without leaving the house or using your credit card.

Years ago, it was silently accepted that your husband or boyfriend watched porn, but your wife or girlfriend did not. Watching porn was something men did. Women were too busy being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and they didn’t ask questions about the Hustler magazines in the garage or hidden under the bed.

Thank goodness things have changed, but not everything has changed for the better. Rather than ushering in a new age of acceptance and understanding, some couples have instituted a spoken, or unspoken, pornography ban.

Watching porn isn’t cheating. So what’s the problem?

In some cases, it’s about jealousy. In other cases, it’s about control. I can speak with authority about control because my last failed relationship was with a man who was an overbearing control freak. I am ashamed to say I let him get away with it, but I have to speak my truth no matter how much it hurts. I just might be able to help someone else.

A decade ago, my ex-boyfriend and I worked at the same hotel, on opposite shifts. When I arrived to my job as a housekeeper every morning, his third-shift stint in the laundry room had already ended. Our paths never crossed, but his influence was everywhere.

One of the perks of the job was being permitted to keep all the flotsam and jetsam our departing guests left behind. Half-used bottles of shampoo and conditioner were the norm. Some housekeepers kept discarded booze and frozen Hot Pockets abandoned in hotel room refrigerators. I always took the Hot Pockets but never the booze.

By far, my most interesting find was a pair of porn DVDs minus their plastic cases. I’d never owned a porn DVD, and these were free albeit a bit scratched. So I hid them atop the stack of hand towels at the back of my housekeeping cart along with a small black toiletries case I found with the intention of bringing them home at the end of the day.

The last time I’d sat down to watch a porn video, it was on a rented VHS tape. I was interested to see what was on the two DVDs that I’d scored, but I accidentally left them at work. It wasn’t a problem. The manager and all my fellow employees were on board with our unofficial finders keepers policy. I knew it would still be on my housekeeping cart the next day.

To my surprise, when I arrived at work the following morning, both DVDs along with the black toiletries case were missing from my housekeeping cart. The cart was kept inside a locked closet. Only another employee could have accessed it and taken my items. I had a good idea of who it was.

When I confronted my then-boyfriend about the DVDs and the toiletries bag, he readily admitted that he had taken them. I wasn’t surprised. He’d always had an entitled attitude. His motto seemed to be: “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is also mine.”

“I want them back,” I told him in no uncertain terms.

He returned the toiletries case, but he refused to return the DVDs. Furthermore, he refused to discuss them beyond asking me why I wanted them in the first place.

“Because I do,” I said.

Over the course of the next several weeks, I asked for the DVDs every time I saw him. While he admitted to having them in his possession, he still wouldn’t budge. Once again, he refused to tell me why I wasn’t permitted to have them back.

I even offered to watch them with him but to no avail. He wouldn’t budge.

Have you ever seen a video of a dog being asked why they used the remote control as a chew toy? The dog will look from side to side or up at the ceiling without making eye contact with the person holding the decimated remote control. It was like that, silent and stubborn avoidance, minus the remote, every time I asked about those DVDs. Eventually, I let it go. I let it all go, boyfriend included.

The moral of the story is this. I did not require my partner’s permission to watch porn. He could take away my porn DVDs, but he couldn’t take away my rights as an adult woman to consume any form of legal entertainment that I choose.

Is your partner allowed to watch porn? That’s a trick question.

Your partner does not require your permission to watch porn. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy and honest mutual discussion about your pornography watching habits, but in the end, the decision is yours. Anything else is a violation of your autonomy, or theirs. It’s not the 1950s anymore. We shouldn’t act like it.