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,
This is going to sound comical, but I swear this is a real dilemma I’m having. I (a straight female) just got out of a five-year relationship with a very well-endowed man. Before dating him, I lived a kind of wild lifestyle, so I’ve had my fair share of sexual partners. Most men I encountered were average in penis size or slightly below, with just a few standouts bigger than the rest. Here is my problem: Guys with smaller penises … don’t do much for me. How can I get over being such a size queen? I like to really feel something substantial inside of me. I’m also a big fan of blowjobs, which also feel sexier mentally with a sizable dick in your mouth. I know this is super judgmental, and I wouldn’t wish to be on the receiving end if the roles were reversed about something I physically couldn’t change, but this has become almost a bit of a complex for me. I am worried that I’ll meet the love of my life, and that he’ll have a small dick. Help.
—Reluctant Size Queen
Dear RSQ,
I think the answer is … more dick. Look, I know intimately the draw of a fat slab—a dick with so much mass it has its own gravitational pull—but sometimes that kind of fixation can start to drift into the territory of dehumanizing. You dissect someone into body parts with your mind, and that can inhibit the ethical treatment of the full human being you are spending time with.
I don’t think you need to slay your inner size queen, but growth in this realm will mean keeping yourself open and not relying on a fat dick to do that work. Maintaining a preference is understandable and probably unavoidable (people love big dicks!), but there’s a lot of good, average dick out there. It’s time to tune into those not particularly hung guys who are talented and in possession a diamond-cutting hard-on that spends little time, if any, at rest. They’re fun too! Try to expand your definition of what good dick is. Perhaps meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his minuscule dick would, ironically, be a great thing for you.
Dear How to Do It,
My wife and I are poly, and she’s been in a committed relationship with a married couple for about five years. We used to live about an hour from them, but because of financial hardships incurred by the pandemic, we had to move across the country to a cheaper location. Since then (almost a year now), she has split her time between where we live and their house out west—two weeks with me, two weeks with them. And the arrangement has been pretty good. She’s able to work in both places and she actually sees them more now than when we were living nearby.
Except there’s a problem. Since we decided to move (again, a decision we didn’t want to make but had to), the couple has completely turned on me, encouraging her to divorce me and berating her whenever she goes there with accusations of abandoning them as well as telling her that they preferred when she would only come over for sex on the weekends, instead of living there two weeks out of the month. They say she’s messy—she isn’t—and that they don’t like having to deal with her being stressed about work. In short, they want her to move back to be near them, but be with them less than she is now. They have a propensity to yell at her and say really ugly, abusive) things to her.
Recently, there’s been more acute strife in their relationship, and I believe it would be best for my wife’s mental health for her to break up with these people. But it’s not because of some kind of jealousy or anything like that. I don’t even hold any resentment toward them; I just hate how they treat her. How do I remain a supportive husband and offer heartfelt advice without coming across like I just want her to myself? It’s not that she’s poly, it’s that she’s with assholes. I hate to see her suffer like this.
—Fourth Wheel
Dear Fourth Wheel,
Excuse me for answering your question with a question, but I must: Why should your wife suspect any ill intent on your part? Ideally, romantic relationships are also friendships, and when your friend is being mistreated, it’s natural to want to support them. If someone is berating your wife and you say, “Hey, I don’t like that,” or even agree along as she tells you about it (“Yeah, that’s messed up!”), there should be no reason to suspect that jealousy underlies your ostensible compassion. Unless, of course, you’ve given her a reason to suspect that. Have you? Or are you just being extremely careful here? I know that in polyamory, cross-relationship feelings can get thorny, and jealousy is like a short-tempered Yorkie that might start biting your ankles at any moment, thus requiring constant vigilant restraint. But I don’t think any lifestyle requires you to abandon your perspective-sharing duties. I, for one, rely on my partner as a sort of safety net for when my self-awareness fails or my emotions threaten to sweep me up beyond the kind of rational and fair manner that I like to present to the larger world.
I’ll give you an example. Not long ago, I found out I had chlamydia. I had no reason to suspect I did—I received no word from a previous sex partner that he had tested positive, and I had presented no symptoms. I had been tested as part of my routine quarterly panel. The night before I got my results, I hooked up with a longstanding friend with benefits. When I notified him immediately after hearing from my doctor, he didn’t take it well. He threw attitude at me and abruptly ended the exchange, which surprised me because as someone who clearly enjoys casual sex with other people’s boyfriends, I thought he was aware of the inherent STI risk. His reaction disappointed me so much that I needed to get my feelings out by talking about it, so I told my boyfriend what happened. “Yeah, I don’t think you should hook up with him again,” he said. This was good, affirming advice. I knew at that moment he wasn’t trying to shit in my pool of sex partners, just to make me think about whom I was giving my precious time.
Ideally, your wife would be willing to give you such benefit of the doubt, and if she has reason not to, that’s probably an even more pressing issue than the married couple who’s been pissing in her cornflakes. When she tells you this stuff, how are you reacting? How is the conversation going? Are you telling her, “I hate to see you suffer”? That is 100 percent a thing someone would and should tell someone they love. If she has no reason to suspect ulterior motives, support her by sharing with her what you just did the readers of this column and me.
Dear How to Do It,
My partner and I have found that we have more sex when we take edibles and have begun only having sex when we’re high. We took a small break from this because we’ve been sluggish from working long hours recently, but this past weekend, I decided to take an edible to relax, and my partner decided not to take anything at all. For the first time in a while, my partner initiated sex with me when I was high. In the middle, I felt strange, like maybe we shouldn’t be doing this if we were of such different states of mind, but I didn’t say anything. Do you think it’s OK for the completely sober partner to have sex with the inebriated partner, or does consent get too murky for it to be acceptable?
—High and Low
Dear High,
I think when sex gets to the point where you’re feeling weird about it, it’s probably time to call quits on that particular encounter. At the same time, marijuana can make you feel weird about, oh, everything. It’s not so much a truth serum as it is an overthinking bush. Typically, weed doesn’t obliterate a person the way that alcohol can—it’s probably not going to make you black out or pass out. But personally speaking, I’m actually not a fan of mixed-consciousness social arrangements in any capacity. It can be hard enough connecting with another person without having one party’s mind beamed to another planet via drugs. I recently attended a party where at least half of the people had taken ecstasy. I had not. Talking to them was like talking to benevolent, sensation-responsive walls.
I have also found that having sex while high on weed can go one of two ways: hyper focus or complete distractedness. In the latter instances, I have felt strange, like you did. For me, that was less about the politics of consent and more about intentionally scrambling the signals in my mind so that everything feels murky or, at the very least, incomprehensible.
I think everyone needs to determine their own limits (within reason, of course) in terms of how inebriated is too inebriated to make sex enjoyable. To preach sober sex for all, all the time, would be to deliberately turn one’s back on the reality that people like to get messed up and screw. It’s a timeless tradition that I don’t imagine is going away any time soon. I think that there are very clear violations of consent that can take place when inebriation extends to the point of incapacitation. But there are certainly people who use weed not just a sex enhancement but as a life enhancement, and for them, it would be much less comfortable to have sex without marijuana, regardless of the state of their partner. It’s not that the scenario that you put forth is by definition unacceptable for all, but your wariness suggests it’s probably not right for you. Or maybe you’re just paranoid! You have to decide.
Dear How to Do It,
My husband and I (both men) have had a close friendship with a straight married couple for almost 20 years. My husband was their friend first, but I’ve long been close with them too. Fast forward, COVID happens, I lose my husband, I hit rock bottom, and this couple rushes to my side to take care of me in quarantine and give me all their shoulders to cry on.
The husband in this couple is very touchy-feely and truly sweet. As comfort for himself and me after the death of his friend, he kisses me often, hugs me and cuddles me and tells me he loves me. And because I ache for the random touches and kisses my husband used to give me, I love when my friend shows affection toward me. And then I crash.
He’s doing nothing wrong. But if he was gay and single, I would fall in love with him. So I cry a lot. Part of me would like to take a break from my friends, just to try to find someone of my own. But walking away from the only people left who love me just because I don’t like the longing I feel when I’m touched seems like an overreaction. What would you do?
—Touched
Dear Touched,
You could own a bowl of plastic fruit that is stunningly lifelike. It may make you happy every time you look at it. Maybe it’s even realistically scented. But no matter how much you love that bowl of fruity ringers, when you sink your teeth into one of its apples, you’ll be tearing through plastic and not flesh. By design! You shouldn’t have any illusions about that, nor does owning such an arrangement preclude you from going out and getting a real apple. The two can sit next to each other in harmony, in fact.
You just need to understand what exactly is on top of your piano (or in your bed…spooning you). I’m going to take you at your word that this behavior of your straight married friend constitutes no wrongdoing—platonic affection among men is needlessly rare in our culture and it’s so nourishing that I actually just want to believe that nothing is amiss and his wife is fine with it. If he were gay and single, you would fall in love with him, but he’s not either, so you won’t, so why even mention that unless … you are falling in love with him? That would be a problem and only make things harder and messier. So if that is the case, I would detach. If not, don’t. You have two extremely supportive people on your side and you are still in mourning. You’ll get out there when you’re ready and they’ll understand when you have less time for them if they’re indeed as compassionate as their current behavior suggests. And then when you do get out there, you can find yourself a man while retaining these wonderful friends. You can grow from here, and the nurturing of two caring people will help, not inhibit.
More How to Do It
I am a straight lady in my mid-30s, and over the past year, I’ve gotten close to a 40-ish married man. For a variety of other reasons, this sexual relationship appeals to me at the moment. I don’t believe it will be long term, and it’s quite hot. We’ve had conversations about discretion, but I’ve never explicitly asked what his wife knows or doesn’t. Should I? I can’t decide if it matters. Should I have figured this out, or is it his business?
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