It’s Supposed to Be Men’s Preferred Way to Have Sex. But Doing It With My Wife Fills Me With Dread.

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so we’re diving into the How to Do It archives to share classic letters with our readers. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear How to Do It, I’ve been married for nearly eight years and prior to that both my wife and I were virgins. We also grew up with very little useful sex education beyond the typical threats of STDs or unwanted pregnancy, so I can still recall our first night together when we failed miserably to “get it in” and were both left pretty frustrated. Luckily, we discovered the power of lube and were able to figure it out. However, I’m still having a major problem. It happens whenever my wife wants us to have sex without a condom. I certainly like the idea and obviously see the need to when we start trying for kids, but whenever we “go for it” unprotected I feel very uncomfortable and queasy. The first two times we did this, earlier on in our marriage, I passed out immediately afterwards, which has led to very few attempts since, yet I can’t seem to determine the issue. Multiple online searches make it seem like this is not an issue any man has ever experienced before, but actually what men prefer, and it’s incredibly frustrating. In most situations I would say I have an average amount of sensitivity in my penis, but when it comes to “going at it” without cover, for some reason I’m fully aware of every little thing and, despite the lube, it feels rough and uncomfortable, and even thinking about it now creates this feeling of dread and discomfort. I feel terrible about this, and worry that telling my wife about it has made her self-conscious about her body. I don’t understand why I have this issue, but would really love to find a solution so I could be normal and finally give my wife the experience she desires with a less concerning outcome. —Every Man’s Dream Is My Nightmare Dear Nightmare, My hunch is that the root of your apparent anxiety has to do with the way sex was presented to you from a young age: as something to be feared. Yours is a strong response, but it is not without rationale. You are perhaps an extreme example of what believing deeply that condoms are a cure-all can look like. I don’t see you overcoming this without therapy, but I think the process somewhere down the line will probably involve you facing your fears. I think you’re actually primed to do so. If you’re fully aware of every little thing during condomless sex, you’re actually practicing mindfulness. If you could during those moments turn your mind to how good things feel, the wonders of the human body, how sexual intercourse is such an ingenious and effective method of bonding and emotional expression, perhaps you can reframe the experience. Something to keep in mind is: You already have a solution. You are squeamish about sex without condoms, and so having sex with condoms is for you. I understand that you want to be on the same page as your wife here, but unless there’s irritation or other health issues deriving from the condom use, the “problem” here is one of principle and failing to live up to notions of “normalcy.” If “most” guys prefer condomless sex, well, you aren’t like most guys. Join the club! If you’re worried that this is making your wife feel self-conscious, explain to her that it seems to be a force beyond your control that she should not take personally. And talk to a sex therapist about it. This seems workable to me. —Rich Juzwiak From: Most Men’s Favorite Way of Having Sex Is My Personal Nightmare. (June 27th, 2021). Get advice—submit a question! Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear How to Do It, My girlfriend says I’m coercive in wanting to have sex with her when she wants to have sex with me. She says she doesn’t want to have an orgasm, it takes too much of her energy, but she wants to pleasure me only. I find this hard because in the passion of the moment, I want to be able to touch her too. She says I’m “acting like a man” in wanting reciprocity in the bedroom. I stopped asking for sex and let her take the lead in frequency, hoping that if she initiated sex, I would have more freedom in being able to touch her sexually. That didn’t seem to help. I have explained I know I have a higher sex drive, and I’m willing (and do) take care of my own needs outside of her needs, and I’d prefer that to feeling unable to touch her when all she wants is to touch me. She says my desire to touch her is inappropriate and coercive and I’m making her do things she doesn’t want, but she should be able to pleasure me when she wants. Is it wrong to get pleasure from touching my partner sexually? Am I wrong in how I feel? Am I being abusive? Please explain. —One-Sided Dear One-Sided, Without being privy to these conversations, it’s hard to make a precise call … not that that’s ever stopped me before! I think what this comes down to is that it’s totally OK for your partner to have a hard boundary, and your working on her to cross it could constitute coercion. That said, because mutual touch is extremely common and a routine part of the sex script of Western society (and beyond), she owes you more of an explanation. This is especially so if she once was willing to accept your touch and has since changed her tune. Keeping your partner in the loop is, at minimum, a way to avoid conflict and misunderstanding. It helps to facilitate harmony. I would think she would want to give you an explanation for the purpose of getting you off her back, but maybe this is too delicate a subject for her (which could very well be the case if her disinterest in being touched is a result of trauma). I disagree with her that you’re “acting like a man” for wanting reciprocity—the prevailing stereotype is that of a selfish man who only wants to take and has no real interest in satisfying or even touching his lover. But ultimately, how much and where she is touched is her call to make. It is her right to be unbending here, just as it is your right to assess a doomed situation and run in the other direction. That might be best for you. —R.J. From: Quarantine With My Roommate Sparked a Hot New Habit—but I’m Worried About What’s Happening Now. (September 19th, 2021) Dear How to Do It, I’m a bisexual man, married to a wonderful woman for a few years now. About a month into dating, I admitted to being bi to my wife, and told her I had experimented with giving oral to another man once. She was fairly accepting of my past, but it became clear that she was not interested in discussing my experiences further, and that it was a big turnoff. (I’m a very large and traditionally “manly” kind of guy, which she loves me being, and she said she didn’t like picturing me in a submissive role for another man.) The topic has not come back up since then, which is fine by me since while desires obviously remain, our sex life is amazing, I’m monogamous, and don’t want to do anything sexual with a man OR a woman. The problem is that I lied. I had given oral to somewhere between 12-to-20 men, and bottomed for two of them as a teenager. Gloryholes in public parks were my science labs of choice in my teenage experimentation, though a handful of anonymous encounters occurred into my 20s. Aside from cringing over the stupidity of those encounters, I don’t regret them and I’m not ashamed of them outside of the riskiness. I proudly and loudly support LGBTQ causes, but no one has ever asked if I’m bi, and it’s no one else’s business so I don’t go around shouting it. I don’t have any desire to cheat, or further experiment (hypothesis: confirmed, dick is good), I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, and I am completely committed to my wife. Do I owe her the truth? I don’t like hiding things from my partner, but at the same time I cannot think of anything good that could possibly come from an out-of-the-blue confession. I waited for a few years for the topic to come back up so I could confess, but it’s clearly a topic that she avoids, so I have to assume it’s not going to happen. I want to be honest and have complete communication, but I also want to respect her fairly clear boundaries of not discussing this topic that she doesn’t want to acknowledge. Should I just let the past be in the past? Or rock the boat for no better reason than clearing my own conscience? — Need a Recount Dear Need a Recount, When you told your wife about your past sex with men, you were coming out to her. Coming out can be an extended process, and a messy one at that because of the lies some people tell along the way to make their lives easier. I don’t advocate lying, but I understand it particularly in this context, and I think compassion for queer people means forgiving the lies they feel they have to tell when they are in situations in which they don’t feel comfortable being their full selves. In this case, you calculated correctly: The woman who would become your wife was “fairly” accepting and uninterested in hearing more. If you told her the truth she may have unfairly judged you and you wouldn’t have the wonderful life you share now. She would have been wrong for doing that, and so in this respect, lying to her about the details of your sexual history was a useful correction. I think as it stands, she has enough information. She knows about your sexuality without being vexed by the array of cocks you’ve had in your mouth. You’re just as bi after sucking 20 dicks as you would be if you had indeed only sucked one. She gets the gist. It’s wonderful when you have a partner with whom you can share your full truth, but some partners can’t handle the truth. There’s a difference between actively lying and engaging in deception, and leaving out details to make everyone’s life easier and happier. We all have thoughts and things in our past that go unspoken. Full disclosure will be virtually impossible until we have a way of transplanting our running monologues into other people’s heads. (And when we get there, who will actually want to do that?) In this case, you know where your wife stands here. Only tell her about this if keeping it secret seriously stresses you out or if you’ll be actively lying by withholding it. I give you a pass for passively lying here. —R.J. From: Our Open Relationship Has Revealed Something Disturbing About My Husband’s “Preferences.” (November 28th, 2021). More Sex Advice From Slate ’m a woman in her mid-20s. My boyfriend is 40. Everything is marvelous and we’re engaged. We talk a lot with each other whenever something’s bothering one of us, and I think we’re a great team and a really good match. We are both very kinky, with fetishes that go accordingly and a total trust for one another. So where does that go wrong? At the beginning of our relationship, I would spend hours tied up at his mercy, and more. It’s been about a year now that I feel sexually deprived.