Some of us really, really enjoy porn and want to share it with our partner. But hold your horses—this needs to be approached carefully. Show your partner something she or he isn’t ready for, and you’ll be watching your porn alone for good. Start gently and move on up to the harder core stuff when your partner indicates she or he is intrigued by the idea.

Find out what your partner is interested in watching. Pick something that hits her fantasy buttons instead of yours. Let her know that you don’t expect her to do the same stuff that the porn stars are doing, you just want to get turned on watching it with her! If you and your partner haven’t tried anal play yet, don’t pick a video of fast and furious butt sex with multiple partners—unless you want to scare her off anal sex for good.

Women take longer to get turned on than men do. If you are introducing your female partner to porn, you may have better long-term results by picking women friendly porn—a bit more story line, a focus on female sexual pleasure and orgasms, and catering to female fantasies. Not too many women fantasize about come in the face or girl on girl scenarios but a hunky pirate “forcing” pleasure on his captive, a hot cowboy using his lasso creatively… she’ll probably find that hot.

Don’t freak her out by picking porn with women who look too young to be legal or whose body-types are totally opposite to your partner’s. She might be okay with it once she gets into watching porn and has watched a bunch of them, but if this is her first intro, she’ll be wondering in you only like young girls, or fully-shaved pussies, or super-skinny with huge breasts and so on.

Be realistic. There is some stuff that your partner will probably never enjoy watching. Reserve it for private masturbation time. This goes both ways. A lot straight women love watching gay male porn (maybe because the guys are always so good-looking) but watching an all-guy orgy may not turn you on. Hopefully, you and your lover will find porn that turns you both on and that you can watch together as part of a great sex life, and you will respect each other’s right to enjoy solo viewings of porn that is not your partner’s cup of tea.

Before you pick the porn you plan on watching with your partner, minimize the risk of bringing home something she’s not interested in by asking her a few questions about what she thinks might interest her more:

• Real plot, dialogue, and storyline.
• Natural bodies with pubic hair and no silicone enhancements.
• Good production values (look for porn that was shot on film instead of straight to digital).
• Female directed with straight couples in mind.
• Handsome men—most straight porn is made with men in mind, and the male porn stars just aren’t that good-looking. Find out what she considers handsome in a porn star.
• Kink—is she interested in mild bondage, costume scenes, other ethnicities, etc.?
• Amateur Look—although most of these are shot commercially, there can be big erotic charge in thinking that you are looking at regular people caught having sex on camera.
• Celebrity sex tapes—there are a few celebrity tapes out there for legal consumption. Maybe her curiosity at seeing a star have sex will act as a way into the two of you watching porn together.