I’m a Porn Star with a ‘Civilian’ Partner. Here’s How We Navigate Sex.

Contrary to anti-porn crusaders’ claims, most experienced adult performers say they don’t struggle with systemic on-set abuse, sexual burn-out, or other supposedly common porn world woes. Instead, they point to widespread stigmatization, objectification, and misunderstandings around their jobs from those outside the industry as the biggest headaches of working in porn. These issues can affect every facet of their lives—including their dating and sex lives.

Civilians, an industry term for porn outsiders, often treat porn like a documentary film rather than a sexual fantasy. So they assume porn stars are always turned on and that if they hook up with or date one, they’ll be perpetually down for any of the wild sex acts they’ve seen on a screen. Even those who don’t outright objectify performers may still feel intimidated by their apparent experience, or self-conscious about getting involved with someone in a stigmatized industry, and allow those feelings to color sexual encounters. Most civilians also struggle with jealousy when they think about their industry partners having sex with other people at work—feelings often exacerbated by the odd hours, frequent travel, and physical intensity of the job, which can strain the time or energy many performers have to be sexually intimate with partners off-set. These issues are so common and tricky that some performers will only date other industry insiders, or take long breaks from off-set relationships altogether. 

In reality, while porn stars often have more sexual experience and knowledge than the average person, most of their intimate lives look more like anybody else’s than civilians might expect. Over the last decade, prominent performers such as Buck Angel, Jiz Lee, and Stoya have spoken openly about their actual preferences and their experiences with the challenges of dating civilians weighed down by stigmas and assumptions. They’ve shared details about managing issues like setting boundaries between their on- and off-screen intimate lives, addressing partner jealousy, and managing common civilian misunderstandings. 

Yet there are surprisingly few public accounts of how adult performers and their civilian partners navigate the nitty-gritty specifics of off-screen sex. (Several performers suggested to VICE that they avoid sharing intense details of this part of their personal lives because they don’t want to puncture the sexual brands or fantasies they or their fans have built around their porn personas.) 

To help people understand more about the differences between porn and reality—and what sex and dating look like for adult performers moving through the wider world—VICE reached out to industry veteran Alison Rey and one of her current outside-the-industry partners, Jack.*

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. At his request, VICE has changed Jack’s name to protect his privacy. 

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Alison Rey: When I started performing eight-and-a-half years ago, I was dating someone. We were sexually non-monogamous only for the purposes of my work. Then I started hanging out with another adult performer a lot. My partner said he felt jealous about that at first but didn’t anymore after a while—and he thought that was a problem. So we broke up, and I started dating someone inside the industry. We were polyamorous, so I pursued various relationships—mostly flings, no serious boyfriends—with a few men I met organically outside the industry. 

I quickly noticed that all those men from outside the industry treated my job like a novelty and fetishized me in ways that didn’t feel good. They saw me as a conquest—a name they could drop: I fucked Alison Rey. I think they had expectations of what it would be like to be with a porn star, too, because they tried to fuck me like someone would on a porn set. Some of them seemed to assume that, because this is how I have sex on camera, it must be what I actually like. They didn’t feel like they needed to check in with me. And they felt like they could skip foreplay and jump into things like they see people do in porn. But I give off don’t fuck with me vibes, and I’ve always been very communicative with my partners, so I was like, ‘This is not pleasurable for me at all.’ So they understood from the get-go that I was still in the driver’s seat. 

None of those guys prioritized me, either. I don’t know if that was because they weren’t ready to commit in general, because of me as a person, or because of my job. But I got sick of them being wishy-washy. Then I met the man who became my (now ex-)husband on Bumble. He’d only had more traditional relationships before and had never been non-monogamous, but he liked me and wanted to give it a shot. But we struggled to navigate things like telling his friends and family about the nature of our relationship and my career. I knew I’d have to deal with stigmas when I got into the industry, and I thought I could handle that in general. But it was just different dealing with that within the context of a relationship, and it affected us. 

He also wanted me to do things like brush my teeth and shower after a scene—which weren’t unreasonable things to want! But one time I didn’t brush my teeth after a scene because I was in a rush, and I came home and gave him a kiss without thinking about it. I was like, “Oh gosh, I just did this, and I’m sorry,” because I was always honest with him about everything. And how he reacted to that, for example, brought some of that stigma home for me as well. 

Then I met Jack at a bar. He was the first person who was enthusiastic about my job in a non-fetishistic way, and I felt an energy from him I hadn’t felt from other people before when I talked about non-monogamy. We’ve been dating for about five months now—and here we are! 

Jack: We met on a bar crawl while Alison was with her then-husband. We chatted a bit and made out, but she made it clear that she was married and that if we did anything, it would just be dating and nothing too serious. So I didn’t approach this relationship with any assumptions in general. I also don’t think I had any preconceptions about what being with someone in the porn world would be like. I think that’s because, while I started consuming porn on Pornhub like a lot of teenagers do, I eventually moved towards Reddit, where I followed people posting their personal content. They’d comment on their posts so that you could interact with them. That helped me understand early on that people in this industry are just people, and this is what they do for work. So when Alison mentioned what she did when we met, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool! I can’t believe I’m actually meeting someone who does this sort of thing in the wild!”

As we got involved, I did struggle a bit with jealousy. But it helped that I met Alison while she was still married, so it was clear from the start that this was a non-monogamous relationship, that I wouldn’t be able to spend all my time with her like I might with someone else I’d just started dating, and that I’d have to deal with any jealousy I was feeling right away or it wouldn’t work.  

Early on, Alison told me something that helped me to rewire my brain to really understand that having sex on stage is just a job for her: She said that porn sex might be fun, but for her, at least, it’s not really pleasurable. It’s not necessarily the sex she wants or that feels real or intense for her.  

“Porn sex may be fun, but for her at least it’s not really pleasurable. It’s not necessarily the sex she wants, or that feels real or intense for her.” —Jack

Alison: When I’m on a porn set, I’m thinking about so many things: Where are the lights? Am I opening up enough for the camera? Have I moaned or dirty-talked enough? Am I making a double chin, or do I need to suck in my stomach a little more? I need to be able to relax and allow sensations to wash over my body to feel pleasure. I can’t do that when my mind runs a million miles a minute while on set. But at home, my only focus is on my partner and there’s no audience, so I can be more present in my body, experiencing sex. 

Jack: Now, when I hear Alison is shooting a scene one day, rather than feel jealous, I just hope that it goes well—because that means more work for her and maybe some industry awards, too. 

I also never expected people in the industry would want to have sex in any particular way. But I remember that early on Alison told me the type of pounding you see in porn scenes is something you need to build up to, and it obviously shouldn’t happen right away. She also told me that if she had a scene, I maybe shouldn’t do the same things she did for it because she might be sore.  

Alison: That was a strain on my relationship with my ex-husband because he always wanted us to physically reconnect after I had a work day, but because I was tired and sore and I often just felt an obligation to be physically intimate with him, that sex could sometimes feel transactional. That was part of how, in trying to level the playing field to make him feel more at ease as a civilian partner, I think we both started feeling a little resentment towards each other. Don’t get me wrong, we had amazing sex, and our relationship was good a lot of the time! But that struggle colored our overall sex life. On the other side, though, men in the industry work all the time, and people with penises often have a limited amount of energy—a limited number of loads [laughs]—to give at any time. So when I was with my partner in the industry, and he was too tired to be physically intimate with me, I did feel like I wasn’t getting enough sex at home. 

Jack: Alison being sore after work was never an issue for me because it comes with the territory. I can take care of myself, or we can be intimate in ways that are comfortable for her. 

Alison: This wasn’t something any partners asked for, but to this day, I’ve never done a creampie on camera for a porn studio because having someone cum inside me feels like such an intimate thing. It’s something I reserve for people in my private life who I have real feelings for. 

I have gained skills working in the adult industry that I enjoy bringing into my off-camera sex life. For example, before I got into the industry, I was not really good at dirty talk, but now my ability to improv on the fly really helps me in roleplay scenarios. I like roleplay because I like fulfilling people’s fantasies—that’s part of why I got into porn in the first place. And Jack is very into fantasy and dress-up, so I’ve been able to really enhance our sex life with my career skills. 

Jack: Yeah, but beyond all that, I don’t know if Alison’s career really affects our relationship. 

Alison: Well, traditionally, I have shot my own content—for clip sites, fan-commissioned custom videos, or OnlyFans—with one of my partners. It’s super common for performers’ partners of any background to act as ‘stunt cocks.’ But Jack and I are still figuring out if and how we want to approach that possibility. One issue is that, while POV filming helps by hiding a partner’s face, I personally hate those videos because my brand for my content is all about authenticity and capturing as much real chemistry and pleasure as is possible for my partners and me while we’re still aware of the camera and thinking about how to make things look good. We also have to consider that if Jack participates in anything, that could have long-term implications for his life—and this is still a relatively new relationship. Nothing between us is guaranteed, of course. 

Jack: Alison’s been very clear that once something’s on the internet, it lives on the internet forever, so getting involved in the industry is usually something you can’t just undo. She’s told me that I should seriously think about whether or not I want to get involved with her content creation, and so I have. For now, we’ve come to the conclusion that, even though Alison isn’t a fan, we’ll try to do a POV or maybe blur my face out in the content we make together. Then, as we get more comfortable and our relationship progresses, we can revisit those decisions later. 

Alison: From my experiences, I’ve learned that anyone in the industry getting involved with a civilian needs to be ready to have a lot of conversations—including some difficult ones. If you haven’t worked on your own insecurities and learned to communicate your emotions and state your boundaries, for example, through therapy, those conversations could be hard to deal with because you’ll be dealing with feelings like jealousy and all the insecurities, issues, and wounds they can bring up. You need emotional maturity and to be ready to advocate for yourself.  

Jack: Most people are raised to think sex is the most intimate thing two people can do. But being with Alison has taught me that, no, that’s not true. Sharing emotions with someone—connecting on that deep level—is the most intimate thing you can have with someone. So emotional intimacy is the most important element of my relationship with Alison, not sexual intimacy.