I Made Peace With My Husband’s One-Sided Decision About Our Sex Life. Then Last Week, It All Changed.

How to Do It I don’t want to do this again. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Jacob Wackerhausen/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, My husband (a 54-year-old man) and I recently had sex after a long dry spell. It was a complete surprise, and it was … nice. But my feelings about this are very complicated. Why? The dry spell was 19-and-a-half years. I am a 71-year-old woman, and I had accepted that the sexual part of my life was over. That was a decision made unilaterally by my husband after his mother died. After years of doing everything I could think of, I finally just got tired of being rejected and of his refusal to discuss it, and just accepted it. We’ve had separate bedrooms since I made that decision, and I have become comfortable with the status quo. So, what changed? Over a period of several years, I’ve lost 145 pounds. He has also lost a significant amount of weight recently. In the past few months, he’s been trying to initiate sex, but nothing has interested me. I have been very frank about my feelings about the situation and my lack of libido. That’s why it was such a surprise that I responded to him last week. Afterward, I asked him if this was going to change our relationship. He said that was his intention. But nothing has changed in how he behaves. He talks as if we have an active sex life, but he’s been doing that for the entire time. He’ll say he wants to have an encounter, but when the time he mentioned rolls around, he either says nothing or has an excuse. I had made peace with this before, and I have no interest in going through the whole process of hope and rejection again. How do I deal with this? —On or Off? Dear On or Off, Your options are near endless, and the most important question is how you want to deal with this situation. Whether you’re introspecting silently, talking out loud in the shower, journaling, or leaning on a friend, spend some more time with your emotions and how you’re likely to feel in various possible scenarios before you make any major statements or moves. If you can get a sense of what you absolutely won’t bear moving forward, and what would make you happier (or at least allow the same level of contentment you’ve had for the past near-decade since you made your decision to accept your husband’s behavior), that’ll serve you really well. Those moves might include requiring conversations that help you understand, at minimum, why your husband won’t discuss this issue and why his words are consistently at odds with his actions. If he’s willing to finally fill you in on what’s been happening on his end for the past 19 years, even better. Or you can give him a blanket rejection of your own, if you decide that returning to the previous status quo is ideal for you. You can also set your expectations at “my husband may never make a serious sexual overture again” and see what happens, knowing that you have the right to accept or decline as you please in response to any future attempts to start a sexual interaction. Divorce is another path you could pursue, whether the motivation is more to end this dance you’ve been locked in for decades or to seek out potential partners who are more interested, consistent, and communicative. It all comes down to what you, in your specific and complex situation, want to try for, and what you’re willing to continue accepting. 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. Dear How to Do It, My partner, a 36-year-old man, and I, a 44-year-old woman, have been together for almost nine years. We’ve always had a good sex life, though it’s become less frequent since our daughter was born. I’ve long suspected he’s bisexual, and I’ve discovered he’s kept a friendship with a gay man secret from me. I also found messages and nude photos exchanged with a local trans woman, including plans to have sex. While the secrecy and betrayal hurt, I don’t necessarily see his attraction to men as a deal breaker. I love him; we still have a good relationship and sex life, and I don’t want to break up our family. I’d even be open to some form of ethical non-monogamy if it meant he could explore openly instead of hiding it. The problem is that he refuses to discuss any of this with me. How can I support him—or even figure out what’s really going on—if he won’t talk about it? —We Need to Talk Dear We Need to Talk, It is great that you don’t see your husband’s attraction to men as a deal breaker. Similarly, that open non-monogamy is something you’re open to. I do have to point out that trans women are not men, in part because lumping them in with men may be putting extra pressure on whatever is preventing you and your husband from being able to talk about this (although, sometimes, in a way that is deeply unfair to trans women, men who are working through repressed desires for other men think of trans women as a way to touch penises without stepping into homosexual activities). You’re already pretty clear on your priorities and what you’re willing to offer as compromises, which is more than fair. I want to emphasize the fact that you’re being generous here and exhibiting quite a bit of pragmatism. Your husband did go behind your back and engage in sexting and planning of actual sex with other people without your consent. Unfortunately, you can’t know what’s really going on if your husband refuses to participate in a discussion. You may have to start by understanding why he’s against talking before you can tackle all of the other information that you deserve to know and any negotiations about relationship structures moving forward. He might be willing to, and even need to, talk things through with a friend or a professional before he’s open to having these necessary conversations with you. Weigh your priorities and consider your boundaries all over again in a potential scenario where he continues to refuse to talk to you about his desires, actions, and future intentions. Whether you escalate all the way to an ultimatum or lay out consequences in a slightly softer manner, make it clear that his lack of communication is a serious problem, and be direct about what the ramifications will be if things continue this way. Even don’t ask, don’t tell relationships require some kind of explicit agreement about the general way the relationship will function and the level of detail that will not be asked for or told. You have a right to demand that your husband address his infidelity, and to require transparency around anything that affects your body and your marriage this significantly. Share Your Story With How to Do It! 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. Write to us! Dear How to Do It, I have a question about etiquette. I’m a 31-year-old male, and I live in a polycule house. But I’m not actually a member of the polycule. I joined about five months ago, on a date that didn’t go well, and wound up staying, even though I’m not intimate with any of the housemates and don’t really find any of them appealing. But while it’s a little crowded, it means that the share of the rent is easy to afford, it’s in a very good location, and I’m on reasonable terms with the folks I do interact with. I just feel a lot of the time I’m here on false pretenses, that I’ll be asked to leave once it kind of filters through that I’m not sexually active, which is definitely part of the vibe here. Do I need to disclose this to the others? —It’s Been a Weird Year Dear It’s Been a Weird Year, Yes, you do need to tell the polycule you’re living with that you’re not on board with the norms of the home. You feel like you’re there on false pretenses because you are. The way you’re feeling squeamish, and trying to minimize those feelings and your own responsibility and autonomy in this situation (and the “weird year”), are fairly solid cues that you’re hiding something you shouldn’t be, and that it’s worth considering why, at 31, you’re contorting yourself to avoid doing what you already know is the right thing to do. —Jessica More Advice From Slate My wife and I have been married for a year. I grew up in a great household as far as talking about sex was concerned. All three kids in the family are bi, though my brother and I are in hetero marriages. My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a very conservative environment and didn’t really do much sexual exploring. I’ve been doing all I can (comfortably) to encourage her to think about what she wants out of her sex life. We moved in before getting married, so we’ve been living together for two years, though we’ve been dating and sexually active with each other for much longer. 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