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, Babydoll Set
My husband has a fetish for wearing ladies’ underwear. I found this out by chance, via some not-particularly-well-hidden photos of him in feminine clothing on his computer. I also found a poorly hidden box of women’s underwear in a very large size and a bag of various anal sex toys that wound up being his.
As you can imagine, I was amazed. His behavior and appearance are not particularly feminine. At first, I thought he was leading some kind of secret double life, so I asked him for an explanation. Here’s what he said: 1) It used to be a kink for him in the past, but he hasn’t been interested in it for a long time. 2) He used to pursue this, but only privately, for himself. 3) I shouldn’t worry because he can just “unlearn the fetish.”
I’m not so sure about that. I also found out that it hasn’t been that long since he’s ordered toys (2021—we started dating about the same time), and that he joined special online groups dedicated to meet-ups and online video chat arrangements with like-minded people. I have also never heard of anybody with a kink just waking up one day and no longer finding it attractive.
We have had a lot of conversations about this and we also saw a counselor. But I just can’t get over two things. First, I actually don’t find the sight of a guy with an American football player frame like him wearing fine lingerie to be sexy. (I don’t even like wearing lingerie myself, as I think it’s not comfy and I never really understood the fuss about it. I’m attracted to naked skin when it comes to sex, not by something someone is wearing.) Second, he obviously didn’t tell me the truth, and only came clean after I confronted him. There are still some details that don’t really add up.
How can I ever trust him fully again? He says he never told anybody in the past, not even his ex-girlfriends, who were sexually much more open-minded than me. Consequently, I think he’s used to keeping secrets and even lying about certain things. I don’t especially like this. What do you think?
As in many cases of exposed secrets among partners, the lying is the biggest issue here. I think we agree on that. We could give him a pass for saying he hasn’t been interested in the lingerie kink in “a long time”—that’s a subjective term, and he might feel far away from it if it did indeed predate you, even if it just predated it. Typically, we don’t see kinks blinking in and out, as if connected to a light switch, but people do occasionally move on from things they find sexually exciting. He may have been actively attempting to extinguish this part of himself and hoped that a new relationship could help him stick the landing. But yeah, you caught him pants down and panties out regarding his claim that this was just a solo activity. It’s understandable that you don’t feel that you can trust him, and you’ll have to rebuild trust over time. It’s also understandable if you don’t have the patience.
But as you’re weighing this, try to keep in mind that his lies may be rooted in shame over something that is inherently ethical—it’s not wrong for a masculine-presenting dude to dress up in lingerie. Can you understand how the fear of judgment or rejection might prompt him to obfuscate such an interest? He might have received some deeply painful (and probably false) messaging about what this kink means, and he may have hidden it from you because he’s scared to lose you. This doesn’t excuse lying, but it explains why an otherwise honest person might resort to it.
Depending on how you’re feeling, you may want to give him the option of continuing to engage in this kink on his own time and within your boundaries. Maybe there’s a happy medium to negotiate—he gets to do his lingerie thing as long as he doesn’t interact with others while he’s doing it, for example. (It seems like ideally for him, he would get to do it amongst others but if you’re not interested in opening up the relationship, you shouldn’t.) Letting him know that you accept this part of him may be key to the continuation of the relationship. And being able to welcome his truths without judgment may help build the trust he needs to be totally honest with you. So really the first question to ask yourself is: Do you accept this part of him?
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Dear How to Do It,
Recently, I’ve noticed the sexual undertones in my boyfriend’s friend group more so than usual. They’re a big group of your typical straight dudes, but they also like to make jokes about “wanting each other” and several other sexual things pretty regularly. This also isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this among the straight guys I’ve dated. What is up with that? Should I be asking my boyfriend if this is something he actually wants to try? (I’m not opposed to having threesomes, etc.) Is it just a sort of bonding thing? Am I completely missing something about how male friend groups work?
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but I think in general we can chalk this kind of linguistic horseplay up to grownups acting like kids. In response to a similar question to this column a few years ago, I brought up the notion of “fag discourse” that sociologist C.J. Pascoe wrote about in 2007’s Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. In the book, Pascoe writes:
Boys invoked the specter of the fag in two ways: through humorous imitation and through lobbing the epithet at one another. Boys at River High [where the book’s fieldwork was performed] imitated the fag by acting out an exaggerated ‘femininity’ and/or by pretending to sexually desire other boys.
Pascoe says this behavior is “central to boys’ joking relationships.” Further, when asked, many of her subjects claimed that such joking was not anti-gay (even when they used what is widely considered an anti-gay epithet). From this we can surmise that guys become socialized to this kind of joking and may continue it into adulthood, regardless of egalitarian social imperatives, because they don’t see their behavior as oppressive. I suspect that for some, there is a degree of sexual tension that it reflects/possibly relieves in a way similar to wrestling, which isn’t gay but … is also kind of gay (especially when boners are involved).
I don’t think we can say for sure that your boyfriends’ friends all want each other, nor could we say that they don’t. It might be useful to ask your boyfriend about it, though temper your expectations when approaching such an inquiry. Often when people of a privileged status haven’t been made to question or pay much thought why they do what they do, they aren’t very good at analysis (or are too lazy to perform it). A better strategy for finding an in might be to jokingly mention how obvious it is that your boyfriend and his buddies all want each other, which may inspire some quick introspection on his part to refute your claim.
Incidentally, the findings a study that was published in the journal Sex Roles in 2017 suggested that men who present as more sensitive and responsive to perceived threats on their masculinity “express amusement with sexist and anti-gay humor because they believe it reaffirms their masculinity.” However, the jokes tested were disparaging, setup-punchline fare and not quite the same thing as the ongoing, congenial teasing as you describe. Still, there could be something to that as well.
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Dear How to Do It,
Could you recommend some good reading material about ethical non-monogamy? All my relationships so far have been monogamous, and I’ve always felt like I wasn’t wired for anything else. However, recent conversations with my partner have made me wonder if I am just used to monogamy because it’s a cultural norm. I wonder if there is another way of experiencing relationships, and how I could go about finding out whether that works for me. Any suggestions?
Of course! Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton’s The Ethical Slut is the classic book about ethical non-monogamy. It has plenty of philosophy and theory in it to get your wheels turning. For something more practical (and a bit less flowery), I always recommend Tristan Taormino’s Opening Up, a really good guide to conducting and staying in an open relationship. There are a lot of smart quotes from interviews of non-monogamous people in there that give you a sense of what this kind of life looks like on the ground.
I also recommend Eli Sheff’s The Polyamorists Next Door, which is more sociological in nature than how-to, as it’s the product of a long-term study conducted by the author. But it will give you a lived-in sense of what polyamorous open relationships can entail—including the down sides. Jessica Fern’s Polysecure sharply applies attachment theory to the subject of ENM. It’s probably most useful when you’re already in such an arrangement but you could certainly read it as prep.
As an extremely well-endowed man, I’ve come to accept the idea that I would never serve more than one purpose to a woman and that a serious, committed relationship was just not in the cards for me. I feel like nothing more than a novelty act for curious women, and I’m starting to lose hope that anyone will ever see me as a legitimate partner and not just a fun story to gossip to their girlfriends about. How should I approach the subject without scaring off a potential partner?
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