Okay, River, thanks for educating. I think you have a healthy approach to this--even though your thoughts about sex seem to want to dwell on romantic love only, you don't expect the same of your partner.
That is not quite right. I choose to focus my thoughts on sex towards the romantic channels. That is a choice.
One of the ways I implement that choice is by not looking at porn, which tends to direct them in another direction. This does not entirely stop the process of sometimes thinking about objectising sex, but over time it makes it happen less often, and for two reasons.
Firstly, by not looking at porn, I do not get those porn-provoked sexy thoughts, which in my experience never involve loving relationships
Secondly, the less often my thoughts go there by my direction (looking at porn), the less often my mind drifts that way at random.
I think that's good, because nobody can or should expect to control their partner's thoughts.
No, but on areas where we feel there is a moral issue we might expect a partner to take responsibility for controlling their own thoughts, as far as is possible.
If Mrs. Cheesehead really is asking that Mr. Cheesehead keep all his "thinking about sex to the context of loving relationships, with her and with others," (we'll have to ask her if that's what she meant) then she is asking something impossible.
Mr. Cheesehead can't keep all his thinking about anything to the context of anything. We can't control what we think about, and if we try, we're just pathologizing perfectly normal brain processes.
Again, only partly true. We cannot control the thought that comes out of the blue, but we can do a huge amount to control what kinds of thoughts we have over a period of time. If the wife believes that sex outside of love is wrong (as opposed to simply being a choice), then it is entirely consisent with that if she says "I prefer you not to use porn because it encourages inappropriate thoughts".
To feel the force of this, suppose (contrary to what we are talking about here) that what was being looked at was child porn, for example. One reason some people object to its existence is that they feel it encourages inappropriate thoughts, and that in turn those thoughts encourage inappropriate actions.
We can have boundaries about what kind of actions we will tolerate from our partners in relationships, but it is not reasonable to have boundaries about their thoughts.
Again, if you mean casual thoughts, I agree.
If you mean thoughts that are actively encouraged by the partner seeking after those thoughts then it can be entirely reasonable. Again, think about the position with child porn, if you believed it made the corresponding actions more likely.
And now think back to the mainstream internet porn we were discussing. Many people (some feminists and some others) believe that porn objectises women, by which they mean that looking at porn makes the viewer more likely (in their opinion) to treat women as objects in future. Someone who honestly believes that would be quite reasonable if they said to a partner that it was behaviour that was unacceptable to them.