Men of a Certain Age All Seem to Go Through the Same Change in Bed. It’s the Ultimate Dealbreaker.

How to Do It Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Deagreez/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 62-year-old woman. I got married at 26 when my husband was 41, and we had a blissfully harmonious sex life and three children. He died of a stroke at 76 almost two years ago. I’m now seeing a 63-year-old man, also a widower, whom I dated back in high school. Most aspects of our relationship are great, except one part. What kind of dark trickster God designed things so that men stop being able to come in five or 10 minutes and need to screw for 30-plus minutes, right around the same age that women stop wanting to screw for 30 minutes and start feeling raw after more than 10? My husband was already getting there when we got together, and by the time he took as long as my current boyfriend, I was in my 40s and loved it. By the time I started to dry out, my husband was slowing down to the point where even if it took longer, he only wanted it once or twice a month, so I was fine. But my boyfriend is still at the point where he wants it every couple of days, if not every day, and that frequency plus duration is just more than my aging hooha can take, even on hormonal supplements. I have seen a lot of couples close in age who had previously had good marriages get divorced in their 50s and 60s, either because of this kind of growing sexual mismatch or infidelity caused by it. How do those who manage to stay together deal with this? Particularly in a monogamous relationship, since I am not interested in any other kind. —Close Yet Far Dear Close Yet Far, Couples who stay together through long stretches of having significantly different levels of desire for sex, or specifically for penetrative sex, either have one partner who is miserable or are composed of two people who care more about the other person than they do about having partnered orgasms at the rate they would prefer, and are both approaching the issue as a team with a desire to work out what’s best for each of them and the relationship as a whole. Based on what you’ve written here, my concern is that you avoid being the miserable partner. That means considering whether your partner is able and willing to bring even half of the consideration and thought to this subject that you demonstrate in your letter. This isn’t to say that your mate needs to completely match you in effort, skills, and capacity when it comes to finding a way through this. If he’s willing to talk things through with you and is otherwise generous, thoughtful, and a pleasant partner who brings something to the relationship, it’s fine to decide to take on the bulk of the heavy lifting on the subject. Trading off who takes the lead on a specific issue is common and often perfectly functional in relationships. I imagine your life with your late husband had several good examples of this kind of division of labor, and can help you calibrate what’s reasonable and what might be weaponized incompetence or other poor treatment. Either way, though, whether your current partner is able to respect your boundaries, hear and want to be cautious of the limits of your body, and at the very least, have open conversations about what might work for the two of you will be a big factor in whether this relationship is sustainable—for your heart and your hooha. The main ways of navigating these situations involve speaking to your doctor about whether adding a particular kind of supplement (such as vaginal estrogen) might help, looking for ways to have sex that is pleasurable for both of you and doesn’t rely on genital penetration, and using copious amounts of lubricant. You’ll probably need to layer a few tactics, and the question of which exact ones will help depends on your particular body, your own sexual preferences, and the preferences of your partner. So you’ll have to experiment a little. As long as you’ve got a partner who is up for it (and therefore worth it), you’ve got this. 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, I’m a 29-year-old cis woman who is only able to orgasm in one particular way: through clitoral stimulation with my finger rubbing in a very specific, circular kind of way, over and around the clitoral hood. I’ve never been able to enjoy vibrators, and while I enjoy penetration, I have to add manual stimulation if I want to come. On the one hand, hurray that I know how to orgasm! On the other, this really bothers me, as I’d like to be able to allow my fiancée (also a woman) to make me orgasm without me having to do the work. I’d also like to see what the big deal is about vibrators! I’ve tried the Hitachi Magic Wand, the Womanizer, and multiple other generic brands, but while some of them feel nice, I can’t ever quite hit a peak. Is there a way to allow myself multiple ways of orgasming? Could this be a control thing? If it’s relevant, I’ve seen diagrams of different clitorises, and I know mine is more of a hooded type and that it tends to stay hidden. Also possibly relevant: I have been sexually assaulted in the past and have a low body image. (I’m starting therapy for that tomorrow!) It’s also really hard for me to relax and let my partner, say, perform oral on me. Please help. —Meh About Vibrators Dear Meh About Vibrators, I’d prioritize making sure your therapist knows about two of the thoughts you’ve written here: questioning whether control is part of the picture, and your desire to allow your fiancée to give you an orgasm. I’d also consider why, since you don’t mention having tried this in earnest, teaching your fiancée how to do that specific, circular work isn’t something you’ve explored. Most people who enjoy having sex with women as equals whose pleasure is important for its own sake have had at least one partner where a very specific set of techniques at one precise pace has to be applied to bring them to orgasm (for clarity, plenty of men’s bodies work this way too), and know that this can be par for the course. Some women absolutely adore all vibrators, some are super into one type and are left hanging by all the others, and some have tried everything vibrator technology has to offer and found it isn’t for them. I do wonder whether pulling your hood back (and involving the appropriate amount of lubricant to avoid giving your clit a friction burn) might change your experience, and also whether anything in the pattern of how you stimulate your clit with your finger might point you toward more effective use of the vibrators. If you haven’t tried the very slim or pinpoint vibes, they might be worth a shot, especially on a low setting and using the same movements you typically do with your finger. Mostly, though, our bodies and preferences often change over time in ways that seem to have to do with hormone shifts, life experiences, and time. The layer of stuff you’re starting therapy for might be part of the life experience category, and your work with that therapist might shift something. You also might (like myself) find that in your mid-30s vibrators are suddenly way more fun than they previously were for no discernible reason. There might be other ways of making yourself orgasm that are out there for you to stumble upon now; you might find new avenues open to you as you work through therapy or your body continues to change. There might even be some new invention on the horizon that blows your particular world open in the same way that the Womanizer did for many women. 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 am an intersex individual, although I present as male. My problem is that there have been numerous times in my romantic life when partners have freaked out and left when our clothes come off. At this point, I’m beginning to worry that I’m going to have to go with some fetishist if I want companionship. Can you offer any advice on how to break it to partners about my condition before the moment of intimacy arrives in a way that won’t send them running? —Not the Best of Both Worlds Dear Not the Best of Both Worlds, Your instinct to start giving your partners this information about your anatomy before clothes are being removed as a precursor to sex is a good one. The ideal is to wait until you’re comfortable sharing personal information, and then directly state what you want the other person to know in as neutral a manner as possible. When we’re talking about aspects of our bodies that are only relevant to a person we might be taking our clothes off with, it’s also best to wait until you’re reasonably confident that there’s interest in becoming physical. The statement of what’s unexpected about your body also needs to be tailored for your specific audience—where you almost certainly have familiarity with the medical terminology that describes the type of intersex that you are, and the ways that that has shaped your body, very few people in the world outside of specific specializations within medicine or sexuality will have that same vocabulary. Generally, after checking that the vibe is indeed sexual, you might try something like, “Before we head in that direction, I want you to know that I’m intersexed, which means my body is [succinct and simple description of what looks different from what people usually expect].” The calmer and more neutral you are, the less you’re setting them up to have a larger emotional reaction than they inherently would. Your date might have questions; they might reveal that they had a long-term partner or close friend who was also intersex, or studied this in the course of their education. From there, you answer whatever questions you’re comfortable answering in whatever language is appropriate for their level of knowledge. This process—stating the thing fairly early and simply, seeing how they immediately react, and observing the kinds of questions they’re asking—can help you get a sense of how they’re likely to treat you in a sexual or more significant relationship. This is true across every category of details a person might want to disclose, from neurodiversity, through salacious parts of one’s past, to physical differences. Some people prefer to have these questions in a public place, others in private. You’ll want to balance your desires for privacy against any need for safety. When I was disclosing (and disclosing, and disclosing) my work as an adult performer or writer who specializes in sexuality, I preferred as public and populated a venue as possible and within the first 90 minutes of a date, because I very much wanted to be able to safely leave in case their reaction was particularly judgmental or excited in a concerningly objectifying way. People with physical aspects that are not perceivable when clothed often prefer more privacy to prevent the chance of being outed to an entire room. You also might find that people who are intersex themselves, trans, or significant allies in the trans or intersex communities are accepting without going so far as to fetishize you and your body. If the idea of being celebrated and worshipped for a part of your body that you didn’t choose feels like it might be good, fetishists are an option, and sometimes those dynamics do work well for people. —Jessica More Advice From Slate About 15 years ago when I was in my early 20s, I dated a woman who I’d known previously as an acquaintance. We were never that serious, but we did have sex multiple times over the course of a few months. Looking back on this, I am mostly embarrassed by my lack of ability to be a decent sexual partner. I was pretty inexperienced sexually (it was maybe my fourth sexual experience) and a little terrified. During one of our sexual encounters, we had sex once, and I came with a condom on. Advice Sex