I Fell for Someone Who Wants the Same Thing During Sex as I Do. Yikes!

How to Do It Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by LSOphoto/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 recently started dating someone, and they’re amazing, but there’s a problem. What do you do if two bottoms fall in love? We’re both assigned female at birth and both bottoms. I can entertain the idea of having sex with them while I wear a strap-on (they seem much more reluctant to entertain the idea of being the top), but I also very much enjoy the idea of bottoming (or at least being eaten out/fingered). I don’t want to pressure them into anything they don’t want to, but I also don’t want to get them off and then have to get myself off. Is there a way for both of us to get pleasure without necessarily topping (my friend recommended something like 69 or fingering each other), or any tips for talking to them about potentially topping? —Bummed Bottom (he/him) 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: Right now I’m thinking about the moment in “The Princess Bride” where the character Inigo Montoya says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Not in as strong a connotation that there is a correct definition and the writer is using it wrong. But I think there might be a generational gap in language use, and I am really unclear on what bottoming means to these two people. Rich Juzwiak: Well, I think that sometimes with this stuff, people become so invested in the identity of it all. Recently, gay X and gay Reddit were talking about a Sex Diaries from the Cut, where a guy was cruising his way around New York. And he talks about how he and this guy he’s interested in are both tops. And then in the next sentence he writes, “I finally bit the pillow a few weeks ago, and it was … fantastic.” So my reaction was to think, OK, well, you’re vers, which means you’ll do both. So it’s common. This is a reflection of how people think about this stuff. Jessica: Yeah. I do not think that word means what I thought it meant, the way people are using it now. You’re a gay man in the same age group that I’m in. Can you remind me what top and bottom meant in the era we came of age in? Rich: Well, it still does for some, signify insertive and receptive partners. Many years ago, I kind of did an inquiry into versatility and wrote an essay about it, and every single piece of data that I could find that asked gay men what their sexual positioning was found that often, the overwhelming majority were versatile in some way. And I think that that’s generally true. You have the outliers who are ardently just into the one thing, but in general, people, because of opportunism, circumstance, or because they’re being giving partners, or whatever, are kind of flexible in that way. I think that that’s happening here. I think the more accurate way to say it is that at least the letter writer prefers to bottom as opposed to is a bottom. Label yourself all you want; it can be useful, but it has its limitations. If I had to diagnose our writer with a position, it would be: Sounds like a versatile bottom. Somebody who’s mostly interested in bottoming, but is now willing to top, given the situation. It seems like their partner is less flexible. For the first question, it reminds me of the times I interviewed novelist Edmund White, and he talked about how his partners were often bottoms, as he was. And their workaround was that they were in open relationships. So that is a viable kind of option, and he liked being in a relationship with bottoms because, in his words, they’re sweeter. But sexually, obviously, there can be compatibility issues because they both want somebody inside of them, and neither of them was particularly interested in being that someone. But apparently, very peacefully, they were able to bridge that gap. I think the difficulty here is that this sounds like it’s a new relationship. So you want to have that kind of honeymoon period, and it seems like that’s not really happening. So the question is, OK, what are the workarounds? What do we do? Or are we just detrimentally sexually incompatible? It could be. Jessica: When I was working in front of the camera in adult entertainment, I have been in situations created by poorly thought-out casting, where even though I’m pretty flexible and exploratory, just the energy dynamic between the other performer and myself wasn’t there. Like, I think they’re gorgeous, and they think I’m gorgeous, and unless somebody gives us directions, which then introduces its own sort of thing, we’re just going to be sitting here going, “You’re so pretty, and you’re so pretty,” and it’s not getting off the ground. It may be that whatever inspired the dating was really a friendship and appreciation for that person, and the sex spark—the things fitting together—isn’t working. There’s no shame in that, right? Early on in a relationship, you’re figuring out: Does this function? Do we work together, or is it such a heavy lift that it’s not really viable? Rich: Exactly. This is the period in which to do that. They write this parenthetical, “My friend recommended something like 69 or fingering each other,” and to me, the fact that you didn’t come up with that yourself is a little bit worrisome in terms of what’s going on sexually. Because people usually figure it out. Life finds a way. Jessica: Where there’s really a will, you’re going to find untold depths of creativity. Rich: Now, we could be dealing with inexperienced people, and I don’t say that derisively; I say that with compassion, so that could be part of the confusion. But part of my own considerations when entering a new relationship is whether we can just do, and there’s no question about it, and everything just seems to work. When things just fall into place sexually with compatibility, that, to me, is a sign of a really strong potential sexual relationship, as opposed to “I don’t know, what are we doing?” And sure, sometimes you need dialogue to get there, but that at least should go smoothly, with everyone being heard clearly. So the entire impetus for the letter could really be a warning sign. Jessica: The letter also gives the impression that the conversation, and the sharing of emotions, facts, thoughts, experiences, and desires that give you the foundation of romance and problem-solving, is also not quite clicking. There seems to be a perception on the part of the writer that the partner also wants to be passive. They’re the opposite of a stone butch. Rich: Yeah, it sounds to me like if you think your partner doesn’t want to top you, they probably don’t. I mean, people could be shy about certain things, but generally speaking, with this stuff, the letter writer can see where this is going. Jessica: Assuming that they are both fairly inexperienced with sex and maybe pretty young to boot, open a conversation to see what can be learned about whether the partner wants to lie back and doesn’t want to do any doing because that’s what’s erotic for them. Is there some element of anxiety from being unsure about what to do or how to ask what to do that maybe is worth working through if they want to? But if the partner doesn’t get anything arousing out of giving pleasure, or is really self-conscious and stressed out about the idea of trying to do that, 69-ing or fingering is going to flop just as hard. Rich: Also, to address this part: “I don’t want to get them off and then also have to get myself off.” Sometimes you have to get yourself off. Sometimes that’s how it goes. Jessica: Sometimes it goes sideways because one of you got hit in the cervix, or a pigeon comes falling through the ceiling, or who knows, and then nobody’s getting off. You’re not getting yourself off. They’re not getting you off. You don’t even want to get off anymore because something has occurred that you have to deal with. Rich: So I think, to return to the start of the conversation, a kind of flexibility in general is something that’s going to help you mesh with a partner. You want to leave the door open for the kind of magic and spontaneity that can happen during sex. And there are worse things than getting your partner off and then having to get yourself off. But if you don’t want to be with somebody who’s not going to get you off, then again, maybe this isn’t the partner for you if they’re not willing to do that. They may very well find somebody who is completely OK with them not getting them off. Jessica: Yes, there are still people in the world who have no interest in being done to and only want to do. Rich: So the point is that if you are going to be rigid in your sexual identity, then you just have to be really precise with your partner choice. Unless you’re interested in having open relationships where you can have your primary partner, and they fulfill certain needs, but sexually, maybe you go outside the relationship, and everyone’s OK with that. And that’s great because you love each other so much, and that’s really what matters. Jessica: I say this with 40 years of life experience under my belt and quite a few gray hairs that life experience has earned me: People can be so certain that they need things a certain way. They think they are only OK with a specific relationship structure. Or they can be flexible, but they will never be interested in that structure. Or they are a bottom or a Dom, and that is who they are, and that is how they have sex. Sometimes the larger context of your life completely shakes that up. Other times, the right person walks into the room, and none of the things that you thought were super important to you matter anymore. I’ve seen this happen with BDSM roles, with top/bottom, with polyamorous people, monogamous people. Rich: Sexuality. People will say, “I’m gay,” and then they fall in love with someone of another gender. Jessica: Or they identify one way, and their partner transitions, and they’re like, “Oh, guess that wasn’t as important to me as I thought it was.” And also geography. People are like, “I’m a New Yorker. I will always be a New Yorker.” You turn around, they met someone, they dated them for a year. Then they picked up and moved to another city. So, again, presuming youth, part of the encouragement to consider sexual flexibility, at least on my end, is coming from the knowledge that eventually the universe is just going to send you spinning, and you’re going to have to be flexible. Rich: That’s just adaptation. I think a serious conversation needs to take place about what each partner is willing to do. And the writer needs to clarify just how reluctant the partner is to being a top and what they can expect. It just might not be a match. But maybe it is, and maybe they’re willing to make it work. Jessica: Also, what exactly do these words mean to the people involved, and what’s underneath them? Because that lets you know where there’s actual wiggle room. Sometimes you start digging, and it’s like, “Oh, person A wants to feel like they’re not in charge because person B has taken the responsibility.” So then they can perform whatever actions are required to achieve the getting off, as long as they’re given those instructions and they’re actually happier than they were otherwise, or something like that. More Advice From Slate My husband of four years and I have an open marriage, which is going well. We have had quite a few threesomes or more-somes together, which have been awesome, but mostly we see other guys separately, usually from hookup apps. We live in a big coastal city, so there are lots of other gay men around online. When I meet up with other guys, it’s usually after a lot of chatting online, establishing trust and generating a rapport. These are just hookups, no date beforehand, and while they’re all friendly, fun hookups, there’s no emotion involved. I’ve met something like 20–30 guys this way… Advice Sex