Every Time My Long Distance Boyfriend Comes to Town, Something Strange Happens. My Body Might Be Trying to Tell Me Something.

How to Do It Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Prostock-Studio/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous! Dear How to Do It, I’m a 32-year-old woman in a newish long-distance relationship with a man I knew back in high school, who I reconnected with when he was on a work trip in my city. We live about a four-hour drive apart and have been seeing each other for about seven months now. We’ve seen each other in person about three times over that time, and all visits have been for extended periods of time, like a long weekend and a week. I really see a future with him; he’s everything I’ve been looking for, and we’re very much on the same page about that. Something weird always happens the first day he comes to visit me, though. Every time, without fail, that first day and the first time we have sex feel awkward. It gets progressively better as the days go on, but those first 24 hours are kind of weird. If I jump in the shower and he comes in to join, I can feel myself not really wanting him to touch me, which he’s respectful of. When we kiss, I feel nervous about it, and it doesn’t come as naturally. I almost see us having sex that first day as “breaking the seal,” and things gradually get better. The weird thing is, we’re so deeply intimate in sexting and just in general life stuff when we’re apart. I feel like maybe my brain and body can’t catch up fast enough when he’s finally in front of me. The first time it happened, I figured it would get better with time. But after our third visit, I’m noticing a pattern. Is this a long-distance relationship quirk? Am I overthinking a good thing? I wonder if I should come clean to him about how those first few moments have been feeling to me. —LDR First Timer Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Jessica Stoya: She really nails part of it when she writes that maybe her brain and body can’t catch up fast enough because the intimacy through the phone, especially sexting, doesn’t always immediately translate. The shift to being in person in the same space can take some catching up. It’s a pretty common long-distance relationship quirk. Some people don’t have to deal with it at all. Other people naturally develop a ritual for reuniting in person that works for them without ever really thinking about it consciously. You’ve got to broach the subject out loud and collaborate on the question of, “How do we think we want to play this?” Rich Juzwiak: I think the sexting and intimacy via text when they’re apart is probably easier or feels different, at least, because that’s still in your head; you’re still filling in blanks. That person’s not in front of you, so you’re creating a lot of the dynamic in your head. Obviously, you have prompts from the other person, but it’s not the same as being in the same place together and getting all of the verbal and physical cues. So it makes sense to me that that transition isn’t always seamless. I think that listening to your body in this case is a good idea. It’s OK that this is happening, and I don’t think it bodes negatively for the relationship because your body eventually does catch up to your feelings. It just takes this long transition, and that’s OK. As long as you get there, you get there. She opens the letter certain that she has a future with this guy. Her body just needs to catch up. So if you give yourself the patience that you require, you can absolutely navigate this. Jessica: And it’s really important to clue him in on what’s going on, partially just so he’s not left without that information and stressing out about whether he’s doing something wrong. He might be trying to figure out what he might need to do differently, and then maybe doing things that are compounding the strangeness of the transition moment. A caveat before I give my next suggestion: I am definitely not trying to say anyone who wrote this letter has ADHD or a touch of the ‘tism whatsoever, but I have the neurodiversity stuff myself, and a good number of the clients that I’ve worked with over the past couple of years since I started coaching are neurodiverse in some way, which is relevant to benefiting from being precise and purposeful about transitions. So I have a strategy that might help. There may be a clue in the fact that having sex that first day is breaking the seal. It might be that the way to transition most efficiently is to power through it head-on. But it also might help to lean in the other direction entirely. For example, you might make an agreement that when you pick him up from the airport or train station, or he gets to her door, you two are going to have some period of time before there’s kissing. Let your body adjust to that, to where it gets to the point where you actively desire that kind of contact. See if waiting until you actively want that makes it smoother from that point. But if faking it to get over the hump is actually helpful for her, I don’t see a problem there. Rich: I think the bigger picture is that there is no real template for this. You don’t have to jump into bed immediately. You don’t have to feel this kind of wave of emotions that completely matches how you conceive of this relationship when you’re not in the same place. This is about finding what works for you, and it’s completely OK as long as you’re getting there, which she is. So just do what your body’s telling you, and you’ll be fine. Right now, it’s not ideal. It’s kind of awkward. Even with that, you wrote a bunch of effusive things about this guy and your relationship, so you’re doing great. Jessica: Plus, right now, he has no idea why she doesn’t want to be touched when he comes into the shower on the first day, and he’s still respectful of that. There’s a lot of good stuff to work with there. I will add that, as much as routine can lead to boredom and stagnation, especially within the context of long-distance relationships, and wanting to make the most of the stretches of days that they do get together, having an actual routine helps. If I try to do my dental hygiene in an order I’m not accustomed to, it will take 45 minutes, and I will somehow miss one quarter of my mouth. But if I stick to my routine, then it takes me six minutes. It all got done. Even if it takes some experimenting, like, “Let’s try this, let’s refine it,” having an actual routine, once it becomes familiar, can make the transition go faster. More Advice From Slate I need advice on how to broach the subject of opening the relationship. My boyfriend tore some cartilage in his chest in a sporting accident. His life isn’t in danger, but it’s hard for him to move and he has pain in his chest if he breathes too hard. The doctors say it will take him about six to eight months to heal. We tried to have sex post-injury twice, and it went badly… Advice Sex