How to do it is Slate’s sex advice column. I have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. This is anonymous!
Dear How to do it,
My wife and I have been married for 18 years and together for 22. We are happy, successful, have children, the white picket fence, everything. I had a dream a while ago that unlocked something for me.
I saw her kissing another man and I woke up not feeling jealous, not turned on but somehow at peace with the idea. It slowly evolved into the idea of offering her a ‘hall pass’. I don’t want it to be reciprocal, I don’t even want to know if she’s using it or with whom (I’ve also chosen some other rules that don’t need to be listed here) — but the idea that she could be in a situation that would lead to to her pleasure and can take advantage of it with my consent (if not my knowledge) is attractive to me. I’m not sure how she’ll react if I make the offer, though. I can’t think of a way to even casually joke about it to gauge her interest. She’s not an overly sexual person and probably won’t even be interested, but she’s a human with human desires. I need help deciding if it’s a gift worth giving or just a stupid idea that I should forget about before I accidentally ruin our marriage.
“Dream or nightmare?”
Jessica Stoya: I was just doing a column about a guy who told his wife of 17 years about his longtime cuckold fantasy, and she was so weirded out by it and thought he didn’t love her. The writer didn’t elaborate, but I assumed there was an element of shock because they’d been together for so long and then all of a sudden he said, “By the way, I’d like to have sex with other men.” That can be really disturbing. So check out this first-person narrative column about how this could go wrong, just to include it in the overall risk assessment.
Rich Yuzwiak: The dynamic in this question is interesting because usually these questions are, “I want to have sex with someone else. How do I do that?’ says, “I don’t want anything in return. I don’t even want to know about it.” It seems like the main event for the writer would just be the conversation where he bestows the ability of this passage on his wife and then he’ll just live knowing that he’s allowed her to have her freedom.That seems like a low-stakes conversation to me , but I know people have different sensibilities.
Jessica: In heterosexual relationships, there is a strong historical framework of love as jealousy—of jealousy and possessiveness as the language of love. And this is, I think, why the wife of the writer I mentioned earlier thought that sharing his fantasies was a sign that he did not love her. So that’s something I think is worth considering here as well. Maybe the way to feel it is not to joke. Because if you present it as a joke, it will be taken as a joke. Instead, why not start a conversation about what the expectation of fidelity means in their relationship?
Rich: yes Because while what you just mentioned is the idea that fidelity equals monogamy, in a consensual non-monogamous situation those things are not equal. Faithfulness would be adherence to an agreement. This does not necessarily mean not having sex with other people. It means we have sex with other people on our terms. One could be dissuaded from the notion that monogamy and fidelity are the same thing, but that can be hard to force on someone.
Jessica: Every now and then I wish I could turn on a visual aid. I will draw this in the air and try to describe it. A conversation tree might start with, “Hey, all this talk about sex positivity in the media lately just makes me wonder what faithfulness means to you in our relationship.”
The wife might respond with Option A, “It just means honoring the agreements we have.” To which the letter writer might say, “Great. I have this fantasy…”
Or option B: “It means monogamy.” To which the writer might respond with, “Where does that come from?”
Follow-up questions to this should be done carefully to avoid a potentially explosive scenario, but there are ways to be like, “Oh, we never talked about why we chose monogamy. When we got together 22 years ago, the thing we had to do was just work out all these assumptions, and I’m genuinely curious. So coming from a place of curiosity and caution can help our writer figure out if his proposal will destroy his marriage. And also, these conversations, even if he chooses to keep his fantasy to himself, can be a really good way for people in a relationship to rewrite what they mean to each other and what their roles and expectations are.
Rich: I’ll just be careful to really make clear the fact that they don’t offer this so the LWs themselves can have sex with other people. You have to stand in front of that conversation and really bring it home because I think a lot of people would suspect that when their partner comes up and says, “You can have sex with someone else,” that means, “I want to have sex with someone else and I’m ahead of this conversation.
So you have to unravel it a little bit and go, “No, really, it just came to me mainly from a philosophical point of view.” It feels like there’s an aspect of generosity, but it also feels like the writer is just like, “This it must be something that is allowed. I don’t ask for anything in return. I just think you can basically have that if you want it. You just have to be really specific with your words and really emphasize those points. This is a nuanced proposition, so you have to respect the nuance of what you want.
Jessica: And the other thing that people tend to assume is that their partner is no longer interested in having sex with them and therefore wants them to do it somewhere else. So do the sandwich maneuver. When it comes to bringing up the actual subject, “I find you so attractive. I love you very much. Here’s the situation, and I want to remind you how much you turn me on and that I want this because the idea of it is interesting to me.” Then just reinforce the point with one more: “I think you’re so cool. I find you a lot attractive.”
More tips from Slate
I’m a procrastinator; my partner is “do it yesterday”. Earlier this year I was wondering how to do my taxes. My partner said “Finish them and I’ll blow you” as motivation. Since my partner is very good at this, I immediately got to work, but I was stopped by some missing documents. Fast forward to now and the missing form is in hand. Pleased with myself for submitting, I mentioned to my partner that I would take this BJ at their next earliest convenience. They mocked!