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Looking back now, it feels like it was so long ago when we made our first #realworldsex video for MLNP. Make Love Not Porn. We were nervous, excited, and dealing with a ton of emotions around the idea of socially sharing our sex life. For us, just watching people have sex, porn, was extremely taboo, and now we were going to be making it?
Sex is good, but it should always be private and never shared. Sharing makes it bad.
We grew up in the church. We couldn’t wait to get married. One of the reasons we couldn’t wait to join ourselves in lifelong holy matrimony? The sex. The glorious day when all of our sexual sins would be washed over and no longer be sins, but in fact, we could participate without guilt or shame. Well guess what? The guilt and shame didn’t just disappear overnight for us.
Our first night together was fantastic!
Fantastically not what we expected. We had no sex education, no good lube, no idea of what the fuck to do other than we were supposed to fuck. Thank you, Christianity for giving us so much insight to marriage and relationships and sex. Christianity, you suck, and you don’t suck clit or dick very well. We had a rough couple weeks and a lot of conversations with other newly married friends our age about sex. We had to know more.
Fast forward 12 years
I had been struggling with “porn addiction” and was in a state of depression. I wasn’t actually addicted to porn, I just really enjoy sexual things. It took me 10 years after leaving the church to figure this out. I had some long conversations with Lynn. I had shown her some of the porn that I had been watching, and she was super into it too. How could this have been so wrong for us? This is a very human thing, sex. Why can’t we enjoy others enjoying pleasure? Why should we feel bad for enjoying these same pleasures? So many questions we asked ourselves and so many of our new answers no longer lined up with our brains. The Church and us were struggling.
Enter in Cindy Gallop and Make Love Not Porn!
I had been watching some TED talks and this woman was doing a TED Talk on porn. Of course I had to watch, right? She was intelligent, used beautiful language, she talked about liking to have sex with younger men, she talked about porn. My mind was being blown and reworked in one short TED Talk session. I would never be the same again. She was developing something new, something ethical, something educational, something that I didn’t realize until that moment- she was developing a safe space for people like me.
Our First MLNP video was made and uploaded.
We recorded our first MLNP video a couple years after we had seen that TED talk. It took a little bit of time for us to be able to match up in our hearts with the cultural situation that we found our lives in. We were still a part of the church when we recorded our first video. We were in the process of leaving, some of the last soul connections to our community were being severed and we were exploring new ways of thoughts and doing things. One of these new things happened to be the recording of our first MLNP video.
We uploaded and we kept recording.
After that first upload, there were many more to follow. Usually each video was a solid marker in our life, or some kind of emotional milestone we were passing with each other. I don’t think that it was done purposely that way, but looking back at our MLNP video catalogue, it definitely has a historical feel for us.
We genuinely enjoy making every video and every video is 100% real and not faked or edited in any way to be better. The basis for the edit are to offer different angles so that more can be seen or experienced.
We are thankful for the journey we have been on together. MLNP has been a catalyst for us to grow in our sexual journey- both individually and as a couple. It has given us the safe space we needed to explore and we have been growing and learning ever since, becoming more free along the way. Thankful for the journey, thankful for the progress- it isn’t easy, but it is a beautiful story.