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A long time ago, in a relationship far away...
12 years ago
Recently I came across a post on [adjective][species] written by Phil Geusz, aka Rabbit, entitled Of Rabbits and Rayguns ( http://adjectivespecies.com/2012/12.....s-and-rayguns/ ), in which he discusses the comments his work has received on amazon.com. While the majority of the comments have been overwhelmingly positive, a vocal minority find the notion of a story told from the viewpoint of an uplifted rabbit utterly repulsive and impossible to stomach. One of the responses to that post was from an anthro artist going by the name of Scale, who describes a similar reaction to his anthro art at public showings. As I read this, something clicked in my mind, something to do with my ex-wife and the issues that led to our getting divorced.
My ex had no particular problem with anthropomorphism in general. She liked many of the same animated films I did, including several classic Disney films and some others that featured anthropomorphic characters. She was well aware of my interest in The Lion King, which lasted from 1995 to 1998 before morphing into an interest in furry works in general. I read a lot of published furry literature and became interested in several webcomics, such as Kevin & Kell and Faux Pas. I ordered print editions of some of these comics and related works, which were circulated around the family.
I was also reading non-published works online, and some of these works were decidedly very adult-oriented. I had to do so discretely, in large part because we had a single family computer at the time and at least one of our children had figured out how to go snooping in the web browser cache. This also somewhat inadvertently resulted in my wife not being exposed to this activity. Now any of you who have been in a long-term relationship know that you need to trust one another implicitly; you can't expect your significant other to report back to you on every little detail of your time and activities. But that only goes so far, and beyond a certain point it becomes obligatory to keep your significant other apprised of what you're involved in. Failure to do so amounts to keeping secrets and hiding things. I admit fault on this score. I wasn't that heavily into adult works, but it was enough that I should have made her more aware of it.
At times during in our marriage, we experimented with ways to spice things up. Among the things we did on occasion were reading and sharing adult stories, watching adult videos, and so forth (nothing we tried involved third parties, as we both agreed that was strictly out of bounds). We didn't do any of these things frequently - for example, I could probably count on one hand the number of adult video rentals - but it was either because they didn't do much for us, or due to other practicalities. She did not, as far as I know, find these things to be morally wrong or inherently objectionable.
Thus, between our past experimentation and her acceptance and occasional sharing of my interest in anthropomorphics, I had good reason to believe she wouldn't find anything wrong with adult anthropomorphic works.
Boy was I wrong!
When it finally came out, I admitted being in the wrong about keeping too much hidden from her, and for that I did my penance. But her reaction to the material itself caught me completely by surprise! Remember that [adjective][species] post mentioned above? Her reaction to the idea of anthros in adult situations was a lot like the reactions of people discussed in that post. It was disgusting and revolting to her to such a degree that she could not stand the thought that I actually liked some of this material. She said that to her, it was bestiality. I explained to her at some length why it wasn't and what set it apart from bestiality, and she basically dismissed my arguments and said that to her it was the same thing.
To give another example, among my other favorite works of furry literature was Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance series. While I knew my wife wasn't that interested in most of the (mostly non-adult) furry literature I was reading at the time, I convinced her to read this series in the hope that it could become a topic of mutual interest. To give a bit of a spoiler, the storyline involves a human female and an felinoid alien male who unexpectedly form a mind link that includes a sexual compulsion. To my wife, it seemed obvious that this was a problem for which a satisfying resolution must surely include the characters being freed from this link, and she found it distasteful that the characters instead learned to accept the mind link and ultimately come to regard it as a good thing. She stopped reading partway through the third book.
Over time after the issue arose, the scope of what she found distasteful gradually widened. Even mildly suggestive works became offensive. She didn't like me visiting furry websites, even relatively safe ones where I might only occasionally be exposed to more adult material, and she was very reluctant to allow me to attend a furry convention. Eventually she wanted me to give up furry fandom altogether.
There were other issues I believe were far more substantial that led to our divorce. Parenting, money, and whether to relocate are three of them that come to mind. But the furry issue continued to be the most inflammatory up to the time we gave up attempts to reconcile the relationship. We were married for more than twenty years, and one of the things I've said many times is that we had many good years together before the marriage went bad. I still love the person she was when I married her. I don't love the person she had become by the time I divorced her, and based on the limited interaction I've had with her since then, she has since become even more unreasonable, more controlling, and more difficult to deal with. Looking back now, several years later, it's more obvious that this personality shift over time, played out not only in her handling of my furry interests but over several other conflicts, was primarily what drove me to decide I was better off getting out of the relationship than trying to make it work. If furry stuff, adult or otherwise, hadn't been the flashpoint, something else would have been, and it's probably a good thing for my sanity that I got out when I did.
My ex had no particular problem with anthropomorphism in general. She liked many of the same animated films I did, including several classic Disney films and some others that featured anthropomorphic characters. She was well aware of my interest in The Lion King, which lasted from 1995 to 1998 before morphing into an interest in furry works in general. I read a lot of published furry literature and became interested in several webcomics, such as Kevin & Kell and Faux Pas. I ordered print editions of some of these comics and related works, which were circulated around the family.
I was also reading non-published works online, and some of these works were decidedly very adult-oriented. I had to do so discretely, in large part because we had a single family computer at the time and at least one of our children had figured out how to go snooping in the web browser cache. This also somewhat inadvertently resulted in my wife not being exposed to this activity. Now any of you who have been in a long-term relationship know that you need to trust one another implicitly; you can't expect your significant other to report back to you on every little detail of your time and activities. But that only goes so far, and beyond a certain point it becomes obligatory to keep your significant other apprised of what you're involved in. Failure to do so amounts to keeping secrets and hiding things. I admit fault on this score. I wasn't that heavily into adult works, but it was enough that I should have made her more aware of it.
At times during in our marriage, we experimented with ways to spice things up. Among the things we did on occasion were reading and sharing adult stories, watching adult videos, and so forth (nothing we tried involved third parties, as we both agreed that was strictly out of bounds). We didn't do any of these things frequently - for example, I could probably count on one hand the number of adult video rentals - but it was either because they didn't do much for us, or due to other practicalities. She did not, as far as I know, find these things to be morally wrong or inherently objectionable.
Thus, between our past experimentation and her acceptance and occasional sharing of my interest in anthropomorphics, I had good reason to believe she wouldn't find anything wrong with adult anthropomorphic works.
Boy was I wrong!
When it finally came out, I admitted being in the wrong about keeping too much hidden from her, and for that I did my penance. But her reaction to the material itself caught me completely by surprise! Remember that [adjective][species] post mentioned above? Her reaction to the idea of anthros in adult situations was a lot like the reactions of people discussed in that post. It was disgusting and revolting to her to such a degree that she could not stand the thought that I actually liked some of this material. She said that to her, it was bestiality. I explained to her at some length why it wasn't and what set it apart from bestiality, and she basically dismissed my arguments and said that to her it was the same thing.
To give another example, among my other favorite works of furry literature was Lisanne Norman's Sholan Alliance series. While I knew my wife wasn't that interested in most of the (mostly non-adult) furry literature I was reading at the time, I convinced her to read this series in the hope that it could become a topic of mutual interest. To give a bit of a spoiler, the storyline involves a human female and an felinoid alien male who unexpectedly form a mind link that includes a sexual compulsion. To my wife, it seemed obvious that this was a problem for which a satisfying resolution must surely include the characters being freed from this link, and she found it distasteful that the characters instead learned to accept the mind link and ultimately come to regard it as a good thing. She stopped reading partway through the third book.
Over time after the issue arose, the scope of what she found distasteful gradually widened. Even mildly suggestive works became offensive. She didn't like me visiting furry websites, even relatively safe ones where I might only occasionally be exposed to more adult material, and she was very reluctant to allow me to attend a furry convention. Eventually she wanted me to give up furry fandom altogether.
There were other issues I believe were far more substantial that led to our divorce. Parenting, money, and whether to relocate are three of them that come to mind. But the furry issue continued to be the most inflammatory up to the time we gave up attempts to reconcile the relationship. We were married for more than twenty years, and one of the things I've said many times is that we had many good years together before the marriage went bad. I still love the person she was when I married her. I don't love the person she had become by the time I divorced her, and based on the limited interaction I've had with her since then, she has since become even more unreasonable, more controlling, and more difficult to deal with. Looking back now, several years later, it's more obvious that this personality shift over time, played out not only in her handling of my furry interests but over several other conflicts, was primarily what drove me to decide I was better off getting out of the relationship than trying to make it work. If furry stuff, adult or otherwise, hadn't been the flashpoint, something else would have been, and it's probably a good thing for my sanity that I got out when I did.
I truly do sympathize man