Five Seconds Into Sex, Something Aggravating Happens to My Wife. I’m Sick of It. - Slate

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous! My wife and I go months between attempts at intercourse. Last night, we tried again. And failed.  She can lubricate naturally for five minutes or so, then the pain becomes too much for her. We’ve tried artificial lube, but that becomes sticky and painful after a couple of minutes. She won’t see a doctor about it because she feels like she’ll just be dismissed and told to lose weight. We’re in our forties, married for 15 years. It wasn’t always like this. Is there some other way I can help her? I understand that many people feel like your wife does about the medical establishment, but given that she’s in her 40s and this is something that wasn’t always occurring, there is reason to suspect that perimenopause may have something to do with her vaginal dryness. A condition called vaginal atrophy, in which the walls of the vagina thin and dry, often as the result of lowering estrogen, may be affecting her. For this, there are both topical and oral hormonal treatments, which would certainly require a doctor’s prescription. Any decent gynecologist would most certainly not dismiss her concerns. Pain during sex is not something she needs to endure. In the meantime, I would switch lubes. In my experience, water-based lube is prone to stickiness, whereas silicone can provide a thin layer of slickness for a good amount of time (reapplication is sometimes necessary). My favorite is Swiss Navy, but I’ve had luck with Gun Oil, Uberlube, and even Replens. She may also want to try suppositories like Foria’s Intimacy Melts or Evvy’s hyaluronic acid suppositories, which can provide extended hydration and lubrication without having to reapply as much. I feel that these are solutions that are more on the short-term side, but hopefully they’ll provide some relief nonetheless. Keep on her to see that doctor—there are conditions associated with dryness like yeast infections, vaginitis, ureaplasma, mycoplasma, and more, which may be affecting her if hormones aren’t the culprit. Or maybe it’s a cluster of things. It’s much, much better to get it checked out than maintaining the mystery. Additionally, you mentioned her weight. This is obviously sensitive, but if she isn’t particularly active, increased blood flow and pelvic floor toning may help with her vaginal pain, as it often does. If this might apply, approach the topic with the gentlest of loving suggestions. Focus on her pleasure and your intimacy as a couple as opposed to her weight. Thanks! Your question has been submitted. My hookup buddy has genital herpes. I’ve decided life is short, the stigma is wrong and cruel, and I don’t want to use condoms for oral. I’m active on the gay scene so my calculation is this: I could picking it up from a bar snog at any time given that roughly 60 percent of people have it, most of them don’t know they have it, those who do know don’t always tell you, you can transmit it without symptoms, and there are no condoms for kissing. Your risk of transmitting herpes goes down the longer you have it and my pal is on meds, so it might in fact be the least risky oral I’ve ever done. But now, what am I supposed to be disclosing to other hookup buddies? I’m not (to my knowledge) a HSV carrier. My risk isn’t actually higher because it’s a known risk (compared to doing barrier-free oral with people who don’t know/haven’t discussed their status), but saying nothing feels like a lie. I know some people are immunocompromised, in poly networks or prefer to minimize risk for inner reasons, and I want to be loving and kind—even to a stranger—about that. All the same, I’m sometimes having these conversations in bathhouses with people who have literally just watched me suck a stranger’s dick. They’re down until I initiate an opt-in-consent conversation about STI risk, and then they’re not. It feels a little silly. Should I be trusting that any adult knows-but-doesn’t-want-to-know that any given kiss is a biohazard? I’m also worried about inadvertently outing my buddy in a small community, because while everybody knows I’m putting it about, there’s only one person for whom I’m this proudly and totally besotted. Refer to this previous column regarding HSV-2 transmission specifically as it relates to oral sex. An expert told me that genital herpes “doesn’t take very well to the oral cavity.” He estimated a 1 in 1000 sexual acts transmission rate in during condomless vaginal sex (without antiretroviral use but also not during an active outbreak) and said oral conctact would probably be “tenfold less than that.” That means that it’s unlikely that you will contract herpes from your buddy if you’re giving him condomless head. Yes, it’s possible, but so is contracting herpes from another hookup buddy who doesn’t know that he’s infected or the guy you just blew at the bathhouse whose name you’ll never know. Your reasoning for not disclosing is sound, though do note that while the shedding/reactivation of HSV-2 has shown to decrease after the first year following the initial outbreak, the authors of a study on such finding noted that “HSV-2 shedding frequency, clinical recurrences, and HSV-2 shedding quantity remain at high levels for many years following infection.” Regardless, you don’t have herpes to your knowledge, so you have nothing to disclose. As you point out, doing so would risk outing your bud, and this health information is his to disclose. People who have casual sex are either acknowledging or ignoring the tacit risk, which is on them. If you happen to encounter someone who is immunocompromised or openly risk-averse, you may want to mention that you are in regular contact with someone with HSV-2 (I’d add the caveats in your letter about the relatively low risk there, as well as the information provided here from the past column). If someone flat-out asks you if you are hooking up with anyone with active infections, by all means disclose. But offering that information upfront is cautious to the point of fear-mongering. Not disclosing an STI that you don’t have is way more in line with being truthful than offering up hypotheticals. Those are inherent to the fast and free sexual ecology, anyway. Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point our How to Do It writers make, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each month, Jessica and Rich will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site for Slate Plus members. Write to us! I am a bisexual woman in my late twenties who has never had sex. I’ve gone out on dates with both men and women but never met anyone that I was attracted to and honestly find the whole kissing experience to be pretty meh. My friend suggested I might be asexual, but I do like using vibrators and reading erotica (both gay and straight) by myself. There are also a few celebrities I find aesthetically pleasing. I want to be in a relationship but I’m still figuring things out with my sexuality. How do I broach this with a potential new partner and how early should I bring this up? Enjoying sex toys and erotica does not exempt you from the asexuality spectrum. Hell, enjoying sex doesn’t even preclude you from the identity. Generally being ace is defined by a lack of sexual attraction. This does not mean you won’t find anyone aesthetically pleasing. I am as gay as a lavender ketamine nasal spray, and there are plenty of women I find gorgeous. I just wouldn’t want to have sex with them. Are the celebs you fancy ones you imagine having sex with, or are they just nice to look at? There’s a difference there. Of course neither your friend nor I can tell you that you’re asexual—you have to figure that out for yourself. Not everyone who experiences sexual attraction enjoys kissing, so while that data point is suggestive, it isn’t definitive. I would do more reading if I were you to really turn over the ace thing in your head and just how much it applies to you. Cody Daigle-Orians’s I Am Ace: Advice on Living Your Best Asexual Life and Angela Chen’s Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex are great places to start. They may help you further figure out the as-yet elusive aspects of your sexuality. When it comes to new partners, you don’t have to lead with your attitudes about sex, but they’re bound to come up early in most configurations that you find yourself in. That is, if you’re not talking about sex, your potential partner will likely start asking. “I’m still figuring out my sexuality,” is a fair answer. If you want to move slowly, you can ask for that and the other person can decide whether or not they’re down. If you do come to the conclusion that you’re ace, know that plenty of asexuals date—apps like Feeld cater to a broad spectrum of sexualities, and there is even a subreddit called r/asexualdating that facilitates ace matches. It is probably too soon for you to go there, as you’re still working out if you’re on the ace spectrum and where exactly you may fall if so, but know that this is an option should you eventually identify as asexual. I am an obese woman in my early-30s. I’ve had some sex, and it’s been OK at best. Part of the problem is that I take a very long time to feel attracted to someone (akin to getting crushes with long build-ups) before I can feel a sense of trust and comfort in the bedroom. The bigger part is the immense fatphobia out there and the automatic rejection before anything can even begin. I just don’t know what more to do—just resign myself to a life without good (or any) sex? Triple my efforts to lose weight, even though it feels like it would be for the wrong reasons? What if I never find a partner?