Have you ever been watching porn (be honest!) with a title like, ‘Real Couple Having Tender Sex in the Morning’, and thought: Are these people really a couple? And, if so, is this really a tender moment? (No? Just me?)
Obvs we (should) all know by now that what we see in porn is a fantasy and doesn’t necessarily reflect what real-life sex is like. That includes the fact that often when you’re watching a ‘real’ couple in porn, especially if you’re perusing free tube sites like Pornhub, they’re actually just, y’know, actors pretending. But sometimes what you’re sold actually is what you’re getting.
While real couples have long been starring in porn together (at least since porn’s so-called ‘Golden Age’, starting in the 60s), the rising popularity of subscription sites like OnlyFans have seen the category boom. Not to mention the arrival of subscription platforms, like Lustery and Make Love Not Porn, dedicated to porn made by real couples. All of which have given a growing number of porn-curious couples the chance to try things out on their own terms.
But what’s it really like to make porn as a couple? How does on-camera sex differ from private sex? What benefits does making porn bring to relationships, and what challenges does it pose? We sat down with four adult creator couples to find out.
Lights, camera, action
Lucy Huxley, a full-service sex worker and content creator, had already been making porn for years before she met her boyfriend. He doesn’t work in the industry, but a little while after they started dating, he asked Lucy if they could make a sex tape together. “He said he wanted to see what it felt like to film it, without any intentions of publishing,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “I was obviously up for it, and I told him that if he ended up enjoying it, we could make videos together for my OnlyFans.” Lucy says she “wanted him to take time and think about it seriously”, acknowledging that “entering into porn is a significant decision that can have lifelong consequences”. “I didn’t want him to jump into it just because he was dating me,” she adds.
Ultimately, he was up for it, and so the pair have been making X-rated videos together for a little over a year. As their content lives on Lucy’s OnlyFans — which she self-manages and markets — Lucy is, as she puts it, “the boss when it comes to deciding what we’ll shoot”.
Everyone's clicking on...
Lucy usually has specific things she wants to incorporate into each video, whether that’s a particular sex position she’s been getting requests for from subscribers or a sexual act that she thinks will fit well with the location and theme she’s chosen. Her boyfriend handles the tech side: filming, managing the cameras, and editing, so he’s in charge of making sure shots look good (with Lucy’s final approval). “We don’t plan every detail,” Lucy explains. “We like to leave it open enough that it can still feel natural to us. We record everything — all of the foreplay happens on camera — and only stop if we need to adjust a camera or lighting.”
It’s a similar story for Cedric and Sofi, a polyamorous couple who make content for subscription service Lustery and who recently starred in the platform’s ‘Cutest Porn on the Internet’ series (think: couples vlogging their Valentine’s Day, including, yes, the sex side of things): Cedric is the tech lead, while Sofi greenlights content and oversees marketing. “We usually have a rough plan of positions and some ideas before we start shooting, but then we improvise in the moment,” they explain. “It’s important for us that we genuinely have a good time together and so we adapt the shots accordingly.” Before the camera starts rolling, the couple says they always share a big hug and check in to make sure they’re ready to go — something they do a lot during filming, too.
In Cedric and Sofi’s case, though, they were both working in the adult industry when they met (on a photo shoot where Sofi was a sapphic fairy and Cedric was the photographer). “We actually shot porn together before we became a couple, but quickly realised our chemistry transcended the content,” they explain. “We talked a lot in the beginning about the potential risks and extra pressure that being business partners could put on a relationship, but it’s been worth it. Making porn has been a long-time desire for each of us, so it felt amazing to meet someone else just as dedicated to pursuing it.”
That’s a fair thing to worry about, though. What if you centre your whole pornography empire around you as a couple, only for things to go sour? This is something that Lustery creators Divine Rae and Godis Meaux were actually asked as they were preparing to shoot their first ever couples scene. “I felt like the sex we were having was so hot that it needed to be captured,” says Divine, who was already working in the industry (Godis had done nude modelling when the pair met, but not yet video porn). And so, after three months of dating, the couple decided to collab with BlkTouch, an adult entertainment platform that celebrates Black intimacy, for their debut. “[Before the shoot], Brian [Dwayne, the founder] asked what would happen if we broke up,” they recall. “But to me, it just felt like a documentation of such deep passion and a beautiful love that was building that I don’t think I would have had any regrets had the relationship ended.”
Still, Divine admits that “the risk of building a platform as a couple is that it’s one of a kind and the chemistry between us could never be replicated”. Both Divine and Godis say it’s “highly unlikely” they’d have sex with anyone else on camera if their relationship did end.
Break-ups aside, does jealousy ever come into the mix? Couples don’t necessarily just film content together — many shoot with other stars, either together or separately. It’s one thing to be involved, but how does it feel watching your partner having sex with someone else from the sidelines? Well, for Yasmina and Brady, another Lustery couple, it’s actually still work. “Yasmina is always my fluffer,” says Brady, referring to a porn role that involves keeping male actors aroused on set. “If I’m shooting a group scene and my penis starts going down, I’ll go straight to Yasmina for words of comfort. She doesn’t even have to touch me to get me [hard again] and ready for the scene.”
The pair were both working in the industry before they met and are, by their own admission, obsessed with each other, getting engaged after just five months of dating. “We have a lot of trust for each other,” they say, adding that their favourite content to film is threesomes. “From the start, we’ve communicated exactly how we’re feeling and if we don’t like certain things. We do have our boundaries, and one of them is to not do stuff off-camera [with other people].”
How to have sex like everyone’s watching
But if sex with your SO becomes your job — your livelihood — surely there are times when it becomes, well, a job? According to all the performers I spoke to, surprisingly not.
“Honestly, it doesn’t affect our sex life at all,” Yasmina tells Cosmopolitan UK. “We still have sex all the time, even though we have sex for work. We’ll have filmed three to four scenes in one day and still go home and have sex for hours. Sex off camera is super special for us — and Brady is a different level of horny [in private].”
And how does the sex real-life couples are having on camera tend to differ from the sex they have in private? “Off-camera sex is the sex I wish was on camera,” say Yasmina and Brady. “Obviously we’re enjoying ourselves on camera, but we have to think about angles and what to say/do to make the scene [look] amazing [for our viewers]. Without the camera, it’s more intimate and passionate.”
All the performers agreed that having to think about how their sex looks on camera often means it’s harder to get lost in the moment when filming, whether it be adjusting positions for camera angles or adding narration. But that doesn’t always equate to ‘better’ or ‘worse’ sex in either scenario. Divine and Godis say their passion doesn’t differ between public and private — in fact, Divine says the camera is an added turn-on. “The passion is so deliciously matched, whether a camera is there or not. It’s just like what we already did in private, now we get to share that with the public.”
The ups and downs of, er, in and out
Of course, shooting porn as a real-life couple poses its own unique challenges. In any relationship there will be times when you just don’t want to have sex with your partner. Maybe you’re in the midst of an argument; maybe one of you is feeling a bit grumpy; maybe you’re just simply not in the mood. What then?
“We are a real couple and, as such, we have our disagreements,” admits Divine. “We have our times when lovemaking is not necessarily on our minds. But we created our platforms and committed to working in this way, and so sometimes it just becomes a job. Though it does allow us to reconnect, and can help us move past [negative] feelings.”
For Lucy, choosing to start shooting content with her boyfriend came with another, slightly awkward, challenge. “I had to figure out how to compensate him,” she says. “Normally when I work with co-stars, we each sell the video on our own platforms, but my boyfriend doesn’t have any of his own (or a desire to make one).” It didn’t seem right to give him a 50% cut of the video he stars in, Lucy explains, because she markets and manages everything herself and, after all, her fans pay for her content because they want to see her. But she wasn’t comfortable with not paying him at all (which, she claims, “is a common approach for girls on OnlyFans who have boyfriends participating in their videos”). He was happy to leave it up to her, and she’s settled on giving him a 30% cut of sales on the videos they make together.
“I firmly believe that working in porn should always be compensated appropriately,” she continues. “No matter how much [my boyfriend] enjoys it, it is work and it does come with risks.”
Beyond sex, Cedric and Sofi say many of the challenges they face as a couple making porn are the same as for anyone who’s self-employed and passionate about their work. “In periods when we’ve taken on a lot of projects or collaborations, it can be hard for us to slow down and prioritise rest,” they tell Cosmopolitan UK. “We’re both a bit workaholic, so we sometimes struggle to remind ourselves to take it easy and to say no to exciting opportunities if they come at the cost of alone time or downtime together.”
Still, all the couples affirm that, for them, the benefits of making porn together outweigh these hurdles. “It’s a great feeling to create something with your partner that you’re both proud of, and to see your business — ‘our baby’ as we like to call it — grow,” say Cedric and Sofi. “This has been the first time either of us has felt so unconditionally supported in our professional lives. We’re both deeply grateful for and don’t take that for granted.”
It’s also had, as they put it, huge benefits for them sexually. “It’s kept our sex life feeling fresh and playful because we’re always thinking of new things to explore (and shoot) as a team,” they explain. “Discovering what excites other people inspires us to experiment too, which has made us more open, curious, and communicative with each other in our private sex life as well.”
And, although we should remember that porn is always a fantasy — and that even real couples are planning the sex they film in a way for it to look good on camera — watching actual couples having sex is as close as we’ll probably get to real sex on screen, which, given the dire state of sex education, is definitely something to strive for.
“It’s amazing that people are interested in how we connect,” concludes Godis. “And they’re always so complimentary. People feel we’ve set a great example of how you can have a relationship in private and share beautiful, true, and intense parts of it publicly.”
