What Guys REALLY Think Of Your 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Obsession

We've all read the books and seen the movie trailer—and if you haven't, at least you've witnessed about the Fifty Shades craze. But are Christian's mouthwatering bad boy ways and Ana's submissive sexcapades really what your guy wants to hear about? We asked, they told (and it wasn't all pretty!).

Christian And Ana, Who?
To start things off, I called a friend that I knew had read the books for work. She's an entertainment writer so reading the series cover-to-cover was important for work-related articles. Her husband, however, could not have been less interested when she'd talk about it.

When I asked him to tell me what he thought of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, Jakes, 32, jokingly said, "Are those real people?" So I prodded a little more and reminded him what the books were about and how his wife, Amy, spent the summer reading, writing and obsessing over them. "I never bothered to ask her why she was so into those books — it was a work thing that I definitely wouldn't (and didn't want to) understand," he said. I tried to pull more out of him by saying that Christian was a dominant and Ana was his sub — and all Jake could say was, "Ha! Sounds like it'd make a good porno." Err, not so much.

And Jake wasn't the only guy who didn't care to tune in to what girls were raving about.

"I never read the book and I don't think I've ever had a conversation with someone whose read them, either," says Chris, 25. "I have no clue who Christian and Ana are — but I can tell you one thing: if a girl I'm with is trying to make a book come to life or pretend that sh*t like that happens in the real world, I'd laugh in her face. I'm sure it's some Twilight-y saga too, isn't it?"

Stop Talking About It!
Some people, as is in 36-year-old Justin's case, are very angry with E.L. James, and the cult she has created with her book. "Obviously, it's hot when a girl reads, but when she can't get through a f*cking session without referencing that f*cking book 15 times, it's the scariest thing in the world. It's also a boner killer." Does this happen a lot? "I count once as a lot, so yes."

Phil, 27, agreed: "No joke," he told me, "I was sleeping with this girl and when we were done, she asked me if I wanted to do things like they did in 50 Shades of Grey. I've never read the books, but I've heard about them. When she said that, I was so turned off. Why do you want to base our sex life on what happens in a fantasy sex series?”

"Ugh, here we go again," Brendan, 31, said, "I’m so tired of hearing about those books and the movie. It's on the news, it's everything on the Internet — what don't people get: those aren't real people, it's a fake story, it's not what real sex is based off of."

The most honest answer came from 36-year-old Tyler, who said, "I've heard all about the books (how could I have escaped it?!), and it just annoys me that girls actually want to emulate that. [Ana] was such a damsel in distress; no matter how badly or how bossy he was to her, she came running back. To me, that's not real life. And any girl that I'm with who wants to 'act out' those parts of the books can start dating another guy. I’m not saying I'm not into the kinky things, but I don't want to a girl who's going to drop everything to chase me around, dying to change me into the 'good' guy I am on the inside."

The Sex Was Better!
"I didn't read the books," says Victor, 22, "but my girl did … and she was a totally different person after reading them. She wanted to try more things during sex, which was obviously really cool. As long as she didn't call me by the characters name, ha ha, I'm cool with it."

"This might be a total generalization," Timmy, 26 says, "but I slept with two girls who'd read the books (I know because it came up both times in conversation) and they wanted to try more things out when we were intimate. They were nervous, but I remember [one of the girls saying] that she wanted to open herself up that kind of pleasure. I guess the books gave her the idea that this way of intimacy might mean more pleasure for her … and I was definitely ready to try it."

Here we go, again …
A lot of people think E.L. James just got lucky with her multimillion dollar read and feel that it was more about the hype than the actual words on the pages. "Every few years," Kyle, 24, says, "there's another book or series that totally captivate the female population. I guess this time around it was Fifty Shades of Grey. I was like, 'Oh, here we go again … another book that tells girls what they should want instead of letting them explore for themselves.' I was bummed that it was so popular and it gained so much traction in the sex community. It's not real!!"

"This is going to look so rude on paper," Pete, 26, tells me before answering, "but I think those books are really pathetic and I hate when girls think they're real or truthful or hold some magical secret to making their sex lives mindboggling. I read them. I hated them. How could you think that's real love or real sex? She let him spank her because she was scared of losing him? It didn't make sense to me. I don't want to date someone that buys into that at all — or even wants to talk about it. There are more important things to discuss, don't you think?"

Hm, though they're split on whether or not they think it's made their sex lives better (or worse), it sounds like all guys can agree that they don't want unnecessary Ana and Christian references thrown around in the bedroom — or outside of it.