I pay for porn on OnlyFans and hide it from my wife. Should I feel guilty? VICKY REYNAL has a VERY surprising answer…

Dear Vicky,

I feel guilty about hiding from my wife the fact that I spend a small amount from my personal account on the pornographic subscription site OnlyFans. We have agreed that we don’t need to know everything about each other’s spending and she knows that I sometimes watch free porn – but this feels different. Is it financial infidelity?

Vicky Reynal replies: I think there are two questions here: one about sexual infidelity, and one about financial infidelity.

There are key differences between watching free porn versus OnlyFans – one has to do with the ‘product’ and the other the ‘price.’

The fundamental idea of OnlyFans is that, rather than consuming a variety of pre-recorded videos featuring different people or actors, you subscribe to one or more specific creators – people you have chosen to follow and with whom the interaction can go down various levels of ‘digital intimacy’.

While there is still a screen involved (and is therefore different from paying a sex worker for a physical exchange), this form of engagement can feel quite different from scrolling through anonymous videos on a porn site.

Ask yourself: if your wife were subscribing to a specific male OnlyFans creator, how would you feel?

I suspect that your guilt could be in part due to the fact there hasn’t been a discussion examining how you both feel about this – and whether it’s crossing a boundary that breaches the trust in your relationship.

You might at one level believe ‘this doesn’t count as infidelity’, but on another you may feel uneasy because you recognise that it provides a more ‘personal’ experience than free porn. In other words, if either you or your wife feel this has crossed a line, then it is infidelity – regardless of the price tag.

The financial aspect is also worth considering. Couples will have different views on what is fair to spend money on. I have seen some in which one person views Ubers as unnecessary and indulgent while the other doesn’t mind paying for comfort.

But if you and your wife have agreed that you can each have some discretionary spending which doesn’t require full transparency (i.e. you are free to make your own choices with this money), then OnlyFans should fall within that agreement – particularly if it’s parting ways with a small amount.

Think of it like this: if this wasn’t about the sexual/digital infidelity, then it should be no different than the £20 spent on poker night. So long as it remains a reasonably small amount and within your discretionary spending, it doesn’t really need to be addressed or talked about.

However, there may be more than just the financial aspect triggering your guilt. Spending money on one particular creator may feel like choosing someone and expressing a concrete desire for them in a way that feels quite different from a non-committal viewing of an anonymous porn video which you might watch, shut down and never go back to.

By subscribing to someone’s OnlyFans account, it might feel like you are committing to them – particularly if you make use of features that permit conversations or personalised content in this ‘digital relationship’.

Being on the same page about where, as a couple, we decide to draw the ‘infidelity line’ – both in sexual and in financial terms – is key to avoiding guilt, conflict and to preserve one of the most important aspects of a relationship: trust.

One last point to consider – you might not be feeling guilty because of the infidelity. It’s possible that entering a dynamic of paying for sexual content doesn’t align with your values.

It’s easier to depersonalise sex workers and not feel like a real ‘participant’ in an industry when you consume free, anonymous porn – but you might feel more ‘involved’ when you are paying for the service out of your pocket.

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