I’m frustrated. I’m transmasc and use silicone “attachments.” My partner is assigned male at birth. Also relevant: We have very old hardwood floors, non-laminated.
For years, I have expressed frustrations about the careless ways my partner handles silicone lube. Multiple times, he has created dangerous slippery spots on the floor by spilling it. Our old hardwood floors absorb it; I have slipped while getting out of bed because it’s now slippery there. Also mildly annoying: stains on sheets, blankets, etc., including the brand-new sheets that we began using a month ago. Also, even more frustrating, I have repeatedly pointed out that my (very expensive) silicone parts can be damaged and have a shorter lifespan if silicone is used directly on them.
I have gone to great lengths to make sure we always have an assortment of silicone, hybrid and water lubes, as well as non-lubricated condoms that can be placed over my silicone dicks with the option to put silicone lube on the outside. I am at my wit’s end. I completely lost my libido recently because he was about to put silicone lube directly on a new silicone vibrating butt plug and then accidentally spilled it on the living room floor. Instead of feeling turned on, I was imagining the next time one of our elderly mothers walked into the living room and fell down.
This is no longer just about lube. This is about a total disregard for things that aren’t that difficult to manage. Advice?
— Sexy Partner Lacks Listening Skills
If your partner can’t be trusted to use the right lube for the right toy and/or the right lube for the right act, SPILLS, and if your partner can’t manage to get the lube out of the bottle and onto a toy and/or hole without getting the lube all over the floors and the sheets and the furniture and your moms, then your partner shouldn’t be allowed to handle the lube. You shouldn’t have to apply the lube every time you have sex — you shouldn’t have to do all the lotional labor in this relationship (forgive me) — but for your peace of mind and the safety of your elderly mothers, SPILLS, you might wanna do it.
There are really two different issues here. The first is practical: Your partner is staining the sheets, creating safety hazards and damaging expensive toys. The second issue is symbolic: he’s not listening.
He’s not taking your concerns seriously, to say nothing of your sheets, and that makes his inability — or refusal — to do something ten times more upsetting. Calling off sex when he can’t remember might do the trick, but if it doesn’t, SPILLS, I would suggest making the silicone lube less handy. Keep the water-soluble lube on top of your nightstand and the silicone lube in the drawer.
I’ve been with my partner for fifteen years. We are in a May/December relationship, as he’s about a decade older. We both wanted a monogamous relationship at the start, which was a likely product of our similar religious upbringings. My perspective on this has greatly shifted, especially over the course of the last few years. Our bedroom is essentially dead, unless you count mutual masturbation sessions once a month that might include a few minutes of oral. My partner gets excited when we watch porn featuring threesomes and finds DP in porn sexy, but he has vehemently expressed his opposition to nonmonogamy even though I’ve never brought the subject up. I’ve tried to get him to open up about his fantasies, but he’s super guarded.
How can I go about bringing up this conversation and my desire to open our relationship up with a better chance of success?
— Enjoying New Models
No risk, no reward — forgive me for tossing out a cliché, ENM, especially one that doesn’t capture the stakes here. You can’t get the reward you want (some allowance for outside sexual contact) without risking everything you have (your loving but sexually stale relationship). I suspect your partner knows you’re unhappy with the state of play, ENM, which is why he keeps expressing — seemingly out of nowhere — his opposition to nonmonogamy. You could take a mini-risk and make a neutral statement of fact, ENM, in an attempt to gauge just how adamantly he’s opposed to nonmonogamy. (“Nonmonogamy works for a lot of couples, especially gay couples, and I don’t think those couples are any less committed.”) But seeing as your partner is already arguing with you in his head about monogamy means he’ll most likely interpret any neutral statement you might make as a disguised request to open your relationship… which isn’t entirely irrational on his part, seeing as that’s what you would be doing. So, if you’re going to risk upsetting your partner by addressing the subject at all, ENM, you might as well risk asking for what you want.
It might comfort you to know there are lots of couples out there who were once monogamous but are now in happy, healthy open relationships because one partner took the risk of asking and the other reluctantly agreed and eventually came around… and it might discomfort you to know there are lots of single people out there who got dumped after they risked asking their partners to open their relationships. But even if you don’t get the reward you want, ENM, I think your relationship will survive the inevitable argument you need to have about nonmonogamy. Because if he was going to break up with you for not feeling the same way he does about it, ENM, he probably would’ve broken up with you already, seeing as he kindasorta knows already that you want an open relationship.
Good luck, ENM, and here are few more clichés that might give you the courage to ask for what you want directly: no guts, no glory; nothing ventured, nothing gained; fortune favors the bold; he who hesitates is never double penetrated, etc., etc., etc.
I’m a 42-year-old white cis woman. I own a small business and I’ve been living on credit cards since the pandemic. My business is struggling, and I may have to close it. The thought of going back to work for someone else after being my own boss for so long is too sad. Here I am, in middle age, contemplating bankruptcy and the possibility of losing everything. When trying to find a silver lining, I remember I am not married and do not have children. I’m don’t even have nieces or nephews. So, when I think about things from a different angle, I am free to start a totally different life. In weighing my possible options, some unexpected things have come to mind.
Since I was a teenager, every woman I have ever been with — every single one — has remarked on my oral sex talents. I don’t get bored or tired, and I seem to be better than most at reading subtle physical cues and responding correctly. My current lover is an OB/GYN in her late sixties and has told —over and over through the years — that the majority of women do not ever experience the pleasure I give her when I go down on her. And this woman had many lovers, men and women, before I came along.
I’ve never had a moral problem with sex work, but I can’t envision a life fulling the fantasies of men. I have no interest in men at all. However, going down on women for cash sounds like the best job in the whole entire universe. When I was a pervert teenager, looking in the back of free papers for colorfully worded personals for jerk-off fodder (which is also where I first found you), I saw ads that men placed to give oral sex to women. Is there a market for this? I live in the San Francisco area. Should I just place an ad somewhere? Can I visit a resource center for sex workers to ask some basic questions about safety as a potential sex worker? Or are these questions moot because this — women servicing women for money — isn’t a thing and there’s no market?
— Screwed After Pandemic Harms Income Chances
People argue about why there are so few sex workers out there serving women exclusively. One reason frequently mentioned: Women are paid less than men and therefore don’t have the expendable income needed to pay for sex. Other reasons: Women are socialized to feel less entitled to the sex they want; the negative consequences of sex — from pregnancy to STIs to sexual violence — disproportionately impact women, which makes women more risk-averse than men; women are likelier to have moral and/or political problems with sex work.)
But while the pay gap remains a fact of life (and the orgasm gap remains a fact of life for straight women), the pay gap has narrowed significantly over the years. One result of the growing economic clout of women: the closing of the infidelity gap. While we used to think women were less likely to cheat because women were better people — because they were better at honoring monogamous commitments — we now know women were more vulnerable. It was the devastating financial consequences of divorce that kept women who from fucking around and not a lack of desire. But even as the infidelity gap has narrowed along with the pay gap, the paying-for-it gap doesn’t seem to have narrowed at all.
Which is a long way of saying… you’re gonna need a different backup plan, SAPHIC. And I have idea: You’ve been dating a doctor for years — you’ve been going down a doctor for years — so close your business, declare bankruptcy, and tell that doctor she’s gonna have to marry your ass if she wants to keep eating her pussy.
P.S. Really sorry about your business going under — that sucks.
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