How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!
Dear How to Do It,
I am a 50-year-old guy married to my 48-year-old wife for the last 19 years. She came out to me as bisexual and has expressed a desire to explore sex with other women. I am so grateful she chose to share this with me and want to honor her needs.
Where it gets tricky is that she says she wants me to be a part of it—a threesome. The thing is I don’t want a threesome. She says don’t all guys want a threesome? Not me. I’m good. It’s just not something I want. Never mind the fact that means she would be unicorn hunting. I am not interested in being a third dynamic. Do you think this setup has a chance to be successful? I am not looking for sex with anyone besides my wife. I am supportive of her exploring her bisexuality and understand her desire to do so.
—Three’s a Crowd
Dear Three’s a Crowd,
I’m not sure which setup you’re referring to here. Is it the one where you’d be having a threesome that you don’t want to participate in? Or the one where your wife is having sex with women without you, when she’d prefer you be involved? Both do have a chance to be successful. However, there are also several possible negative outcomes.
You might go ahead and have a threesome, and find that you actually enjoy it. You also might find that you feel awful afterward, or even during, and the whole thing becomes a dramatic mess. Think about how “good, giving, and game” your boundaries and desires allow you to be here, and stick to that. Meanwhile, your wife’s desire to have you involved has more wiggle room. Maybe you help her swipe around on dating apps. Maybe you’re in the room but not participating physically. Maybe you arrange some very special moments as she’s leaving for her dating, and to welcome her back—that sandwich of care might help her feel like you were there in spirit.
Get more detail about why she wants you involved. Have the big, long talks so you know what her motivations are, and you’ll be in a better position to figure out a healthy overlap between what you both want.
Dear How to Do It,
The biggest takeaway for me having read this column for several years has been that “normal” in regard to sexuality is on a massive spectrum. I (female 70s) could have used that particular insight many years ago when I was in my 20s and felt like I didn’t have much of a libido. I felt unhappily very far from “normal” as defined by the teen/girl/women’s magazines of the time. In my 30s I met my (male) husband and discovered I had a fairly strong libido after all! I sailed through a first pregnancy in my 40s and a late menopause, with scarcely any (I know I was lucky) symptoms. My libido never went away and actually seemed to ramp up in later years.
Now in my 70s, I have the libido I thought I should have had in my 20s. I am certainly not complaining (nor is my husband…) and couldn’t care less now where I am on the “normal” spectrum. However, I am still interested in older female sexuality, and nothing I can find in books or online seems to address this in anything other than quite dire medical terms. Most online search results tend to lead with “vaginal atrophy” and “libido decline,” for example. I really just can’t find anything positive out there. You have such a wonderful range of commentators you call on as “friends of the column.” Are there any writers or content producers you could recommend who cover this topic in positive terms? I would love to read something which would relate to where I am now.
—Livin Libida Loca
Dear Livin Libida Loca,
I did some digging for you. I was able to find a nonexplicit comedy called How to Please a Woman, about a woman in her 50s, but that age group is well-tread ground compared to the paucity of material available outside of medical contexts on women in their 70s. Nina Hartley, grand dame of adult films, is only 64. Morgana Muses, who is also not quite your age, makes and performs in beautiful erotic films outside of the “milf/gilf” framework. I also dug up an article published on Man Repeller, which includes conversations with three women in their 70s who you might relate to. And this article from the New York Times includes some beautiful images by Marilyn Minter (a personal favorite of mine as far as artists go). In the category of erotic fiction, friend of the column and editor of the Best Women’s Erotica of the Year series Rachel Kramer Bussel recommends Joan Price’s Ageless Erotica.
Mostly, though, you’re right and you’re pointing out a valid issue. When we’re talking about sex and eroticism, seeing or reading about people who look like us—or are the same age as us, have the same difficulties, and enjoy the same pleasures—has a way of soothing, bringing joy, or simply increasing our ability to connect with what we’re seeing on screen sometimes. If I was still publishing erotic content by other people, I’d be asking you to write, direct, pose, or perform for us—whatever you’d have been comfortable with. When it comes to portraying women older than the “cougar” category on camera, the biggest issue is finding people who are willing to perform. But I’ll be sending this column to a couple of producers to see whether your particular demographic is on their radar. Thanks for writing in.
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Dear How to Do It,
Let me start off by saying I know brains are weird, but I really don’t like what mine keeps doing! I work with kids, only want to have professional relationships with these kids, and don’t want to keep having this problem! Over the last year, I’ve started struggling with intrusive thoughts when I’m having some “personal” time. Everything will be chugging right along when suddenly, my brain will inject the name of a student or just bring someone up in the middle of whatever scenario I was thinking about. (Sometimes, it’s that I’ll suddenly think about work, but that’s less common.)
I violently shove the thought away when it happens, but now I think I’m so anxious about it happening that it has become a negative feedback loop. As Emily Nagoski says, it’s really “hitting the brakes” for me. I would like to not have random intrusive thoughts like this, but I don’t know what’s causing it or how to actually get them to stop happening. Once again, I only like grown men, NOT kids, so I really, REALLY would love to know why my brain keeps doing this to me.
—Intrusive Thoughts Don’t Bother Me
Dear Intrusive Thoughts Don’t Bother Me,
Sometimes our brains do really screwed up things, and this is the kind of screwed up that a professional can probably help with. Here at How to Do It, we generally agree that there are no thought crimes. But this is weirding you out for very valid reasons—you work with these kids. You are a trusted caretaker of kids. I imagine that this disturbs you because it is so out of alignment with your ethics, as it should be.
While intrusive thoughts are something I experience, they’re above my pay grade. So I reached out to licensed mental health counselor, and friend of the column, Lucie Fielding for some insight. Here’s what she had to say:
Intrusive thoughts come to us out of nowhere, uninvited, and typically in contexts that are wholly unexpected. And they can provoke significant distress and anxiety, precisely because they implant in our minds the fear that we might desire or wish to engage in the acts that the thoughts visit upon us. Allow me to be unequivocal: Unwanted intrusive thoughts of the disturbing variety you have lately experienced are common, and they do not speak to unconscious desires or translate into either impulse or behavior. Given all of the moral panics focusing at present on what students are being taught in schools (especially with respect to sexuality, gender, and race) and how many educators are being tarred with terms like ‘groomer’ for even broaching subjects in the classroom (I think of so-called parental choice bills modeled on Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law), it is no wonder that anxiety is manifesting in disturbing and unwanted intrusive thoughts like those you are experiencing.
But, again, you are not your thoughts, friend, and I am so sorry you’re going through this! As a therapist and a sex educator who works with a ton of clients around discharging shame and dealing with unwanted intrusive thoughts and feelings of a vaguely sexual nature, I would encourage you to seek out a therapist who specializes in working with unwanted intrusive thoughts. Many sex therapists know how to distinguish between thoughts, fantasies, impulses, and behavior and I might start with one of them.
Dear How to Do It,
How do you ask who your casual sex partner is also having sex with, without making it weird? My primary partner and I have been open for about two years now and live in a large city with many transient folks. We’re trying to figure out our exit plan as well, but that’s probably another three years off. We communicate actively about who we’re casually having sex with and where the relationship stands, and are both looking for friends with benefits (emphasis on friends). Through some trial and error, we’ve figured out our joint boundaries. For instance, if we’re dating solo, for it to be sustainable, we need at least one degree of separation so no one is a true hinge, hooking up with both of us independently.
My question is about how to communicate with casual sex partners. I do check in with folks about their relationship configurations to get a sense of their capacity at the start, but now there are some people I’ve known for two years, and things change. I try to ask questions about their partners/friends and share dating horror stories, because I’m honestly interested in their lives, but some people are more likely to drop a name or identifying details than others. One of my casual partners recently mentioned a friend who I think I have one degree of separation with, but I’m not sure it’s them and I’m not sure if this is a platonic or sex friend for my casual partner. It felt nosy in the moment to ask while we were on our little date, but if it’s the person I think it is, I would like to know so I can work through potential feelings of weirdness.
I don’t really think it’s my business to have a list of who everyone is sleeping with so I can triangulate every relationship, but I was wondering if you had some general advice on how to approach this. Is the recommendation just to care less, even if this is a friend I love and care about? Are there any rules of thumb you’ve found helpful to navigate overlapping sexual communities?
—Ambivalent About It
Dear Ambivalent,
My biggest rule of thumb for navigating nonmonogamy, sex work, or many other things that deviate from what society deems normal, is to get comfortable with weird. People who walk off the path set by the template of what most people do have weird lives. Weird things tend to happen in our lives at a higher rate than those who follow the script. Decide whether it’s worth having this lifestyle, and act accordingly.
There’s a difference between someone being a hinge between your primary partner and yourself and between you and a casual sex partner. So take a minute to ask yourself whether “no hinges between me and my primary” has turned into “HINGES equals BAD” in a way that might be unnecessary.
Once you’re clear on whether you want to deal with the potential for weirdness inherent to open relationships, and whether a hinge between you and a casual partner is a problem, you’ll know whether you need to broach this subject at all. If you do, boil your desire to know down to the simplest, most broad strokes explanation possible. Then tell your partner, like you would anything you need to disclose. A potential script: “I’ve got this thing about hinges—people who are hooking up with myself and a partner independently—so I want to run some names past you and see if any of them are in your sexual orbit.” Your casual partner will let you know whether that’s a nonstarter for them or not, and you can go from there.
—Stoya
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