Signing you in

My wife has a ridiculous hang up that I’m sick of: She insists on never having sex when we are guests in someone else’s home. Her claim is that it’s “rude.” We’ve had people over who definitely boinked while under our roof and we survived. Next week we’re leaving to stay with friends at their vacation home in Jamaica through July and I don’t think I should be forced to go that long without getting laid. How can I convince my wife she’s being unreasonable?

I don’t think she’s being unreasonable. Overcareful? Maybe. But her reasoning is sound. Sex can be messy and loud. It sometimes leaves a residue. Not wanting to sully someone else’s space with your debauchery detritus is fair. If other people have banged in your living space, it doesn’t make that any less rude to people who feel that it is so; it only means the rudeness is coming from inside the house. The only reason this fact would be relevant is if you’re staying with the people who had sex in your space. In that case, they have already set a tone that you couldn’t possibly be fairly faulted for continuing. But notice that for whatever reasons, you were able to detect the sex that was happening in your place amongst your guests. Your wife may feel self-conscious or embarrassed about leaving such a mark in someone else’s space, regardless of what was done in hers.

I knew my husband was bi when I married him five years ago. He said he was willing to give up men for me, but for the past year, he’s had to masturbate to gay porn for at least 10 minutes before we have sex. He claims it’s just to help him “get going.” I really don’t want to open up my marriage, but I want even less to end up losing him if I’m not enough for him. Is it time for a serious conversation about letting him see guys on the side?

It’s very generous of you to even consider opening up the relationship to satisfy your husband, regardless of your personal preference. But you should think about that preference more. You’re already uncomfortable about the idea in the abstract—how will you feel about it when the relationship is actually open? Fine, maybe, but potentially way worse. Maybe you’ll realize it’s actually a lot easier than you feared; maybe you’ll realize it’s destabilizing to have your husband out there feeling on dicks. You must advocate for yourself here. The general rule with open relationships is that you defer to the more sensitive party. That’s you here. Don’t make an offer unless you’re sure you can handle it. You can theoretically scale back at any time, but in this particular case, it may be practically harder to go back to monogamous after what you’ve offered.

I think before you get to that point, a more general conversation would be useful. That he has “had to” masturbate to gay porn before sex with you is a red flag. That warrants a conversation about his sexual response generally but more specifically how it applies to you. Does he absolutely need the images of gay sex in his head in order to have sex with you, and why? It’s a tough subject to take on, as there is a possibility that his attraction to you has diminished, but clarity there might be a good thing for everyone.

Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point our How to Do It writers make, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each month, Jessica and Rich will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site for Slate Plus members. Write to us!

I just got married a month ago to a wonderful man I’ve lived with for almost four years, and while I think our relationship is in a good place, I think it could be even better if we improved our sex life. I just ordered a custom sized chastity cage for myself for this purpose, but I’m not sure if it will help, and if that doesn’t work I don’t know what to try next.

The problem I would like to solve is that I have trouble getting hard and even more trouble climaxing. I don’t have this problem nearly as badly when I masturbate, only when someone else is involved (either him or one of the people we’re open with). While we’re both happy being sides 90 percent of the time (oral, frotting, face sitting, etc.), it would be really nice to be able to top him, or to be able to climax more than one lucky time every few months or so in a way that doesn’t involve closing my eyes, painting a vivid mental picture, and death gripping my way to the finish.

If I’m not mistaken, the standard narrative of how sex is supposed to go is something like this: There’s a certain amount of chemistry that causes low-level arousal for the length of, say, a date night, followed by a short period of foreplay that causes high amounts of arousal, followed by the actual sex. For a couple of gray-asexuals like us, it looks more like this: We send each other furry porn (and occasionally gifs and videos of human porn) throughout the week, on some nights we do text-based erotic roleplay with any of a number of anthropomorphic characters we’ve created, and then at some point we end up having sex. I think part of my problem is that after hours of writing erotica, I’ve been hard for so long that I’ve lost a certain amount of sensitivity in my penis, especially if I’ve been idly fiddling with it. Another problem is that, while we’re both fully OK with each other jerking off from time to time, sometimes we try to have sex too soon after I’ve jerked off, which means I can technically fool around but I don’t quite have the same drive for it. A chastity cage would solve both of those problems by functioning like a productivity blocker app but for my junk.

At the same time I wonder, because as I was researching cage manufacturers and taking careful measurements of myself, I wasn’t able to find anyone else doing long-term chastity for the same reason as me. The chastity kink is neither appealing nor unappealing to me; I just want to have better sex, and my brief teenage no-fap phase taught me that the standard “quit porn and masturbation” advice is not only nearly impossible to follow but runs counter to a healthy relationship with sexuality. Do you think there’s an easier way?

My boyfriend has a thing for women’s arms. Well, it started getting warm where we live, and with the warm weather come, the sleeveless tops. He’s definitely noticing, and it’s kind of embarrassing to be outside with him as he keeps getting erections in public. I’m half jealous and half angry at how overtly he’s doing it. How do I deal with this?

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