Bleachable moments
I’m a 27-year-old elementary school teacher. My boyfriend wants to film us in bed, but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I can’t help but play out some nightmare scenario that we break up and he does something awful with the footage. He’s a good guy, and I trust him, but this still seems like a reasonable fear to have. Should I just calm down and go with it, or should I tell him my fears?
— Ms. Anonymous
Your willingness to appear on video doing dirty hot yoga and making wounded animal noises should be directly disproportionate to how big you are on, say, keeping your job as a first-grade teacher.
No matter how careful your boyfriend swears he’ll be, the reality is that any day can be turned into Casual Privacy Elimination Friday.
Consider that “Oh, no…they hacked our cloud!” gets blurted out at major health care institutions with gazillion-dollar IT security. Also, as you note, today’s “I love you” can shift to tomorrow’s “I will ruin you!” and whoops, how did your sex tape get posted to 65 different websites in under an hour?
If you’re like many women, you find it hard to say no to requests from a person you love. Women tend to have more helpings of the personality trait “agreeableness,” which manifests in being kind, generous, warm, and cooperative. Research by psychologists William Graziano and Nancy Eisenberg suggests the underlying motivation is maintaining smooth, positive relationships with others.
However, just because you’re motivated to act in a certain way doesn’t mean you should, like when the cost of being “cooperative” could be potential career ruin.
Steel yourself, and explain to your boyfriend that you really want to say yes, but you just can’t risk your students answering the question, “So, what did you learn in school today?” with “Teacher Likes It Kinky.”