Me & Your Vibrator Will Never be Friends

Image courtesy of theelephantgraveyard.blogspot.com

When it comes to sex toys in a relationship, is there a fine line between friend and foe? Are you down with OPP, or as our Thinking Off columnist Benjamin Mann asks, where are you at with PCC? 

Jealously is a funny thing. If I were to honestly compare myself to the male population with whom I am familiar, I would say that I fall somewhere in the middle of the jealousy spectrum. I don’t hire private investigators to follow my girlfriends into public washrooms but I also don’t hesitate to throw around the “oh no you dih-ehnt!”s if some leg-humper gets too cozy with my lady, or vice versa.

I’m a pretty “conservative” fellow when it comes to relationships and good or bad, I derive a certain level of confidence from my success in convincing a girl to pretend that I have the only penis in the universe. So I would never tell a girlfriend or wife that she’s “not allowed” to have a Hitachi Magic Wand. I can’t rationally call it cheating and realistically, it’s super funny that Hitachi makes vibrators and power drills. But while the elephant dick in the room can stay, it sure as fuck is not invited to my birthday party.

In my unqualified psychological opinion, jealousy, or romantic frustration that feels a lot like jealousy, comes from a perceived breach within 3 notions:

1. Possession – I have earned exclusive rights to a prized item and those rights have come to represent a valuable piece of my identity.
2. Commitment – I have agreed to a socio-romantic contract within which certain rights and liberties are waived and obligations are assumed to ensure the preservation of a happy, intimate, long-term partnership.
3. Confidence – I have achieved and maintained the skills necessary to make my partner happy in all areas they deem important and relevant to our relationship.

In case of a battery-powered pecker, it’s the last 2 notions that are attacked; commitment and confidence. If a woman gives her vibrator a name and starts buying it ties for Christmas, the Possession alarms might start sounding and I probably won’t let her watch The Muppets anymore. But for now, I am comfortable assuming that a stake in genital property can only be challenged by something that has at least one functioning lung.

The Commitment breach can be summed up by the concept of being “ripped off”. If I have agreed to keep my wiener in a private museum, I expect the curator to be a dedicated specialist in preservation. Assuming that I am always on display and that I am generally quickly accessible, I should be the first and last exhibit she checks out during business hours. If I find out that the museum was open on a Tuesday night but she spent the entire time in the Industrial Revolution wing, it’s only a matter of time before some rich widow finds me at an auction. In my archaic world of romantic commitment, there is a very thin line between “complement” and “substitution”. If that line must be drawn, then I’d obviously prefer it to be done with a prosthetic. Ideally though, we can just use an old-fashioned pencil.

The Confidence breach is pretty straight forward. While admittedly a sign of weakness, it can’t help but sting when a girl essentially tells me, “I wish yours was more like that.” If it was a comment about my eyebrows or my breakfast omelets, I wouldn’t give a shit. I can tweak those pretty quickly. Unfortunately, I can’t install GPS and a Ferrari engine in my dick. It’s sort of like being explicitly told that you’re not someone’s physical type. Do I think that all my romantic partners see me as the perfect man? No. Odds are, I’m not exactly what they asked Santa for. Especially given that I’m Jewish and Santa is one of our top competitors. But do I lie to myself a bit and assume that whatever ground I am missing, I make up over time? Damn right I do.

It’s important to my confidence that I retain the capacity and opportunity to keep my partner satisfied in the majority of areas. Can I concede a few fields of dominance? Absolutely; I’m not delusional and ultimately I want my partner to be happy. But if I’ll just never be able to pull something off, I don’t want the alternative waved in my face. Like, I REALLY don’t want it near my face.

Performance enhancement technology is everywhere. It’s in our nature to want to maximize efficiency results. Millions of people drink coffee, more than 5 automobile companies make cars that park themselves and Donald Trump wears a wig made of pubic hair and cotton candy. It’s kinda cheating, but it’s kinda ok. Baseball has been swarmed with HGH and other performance drugs and everyone knows it. The problem is, they work exceptionally well. As much as I am a purist, I love watching people hit monster home runs and throw comets for fastballs. Those players do such awesome stuff, help or no help, I keep buying tickets and tuning in. But at the end of the day, they’re just outside the rules. So unfortunately, I can’t let them into the Hall of Fame.

What are your thoughts about sex toys in your relationship?