My Ex Wanted Something Dangerous in Bed. She Found Someone Who Would Do It—and It’s Not Pretty.

Pay Dirt Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Ranta Images/Getty Images Plus and Antonio_Diaz/Getty Images Plus. Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so we’re diving into the How to Do It archives to share classic letters with our readers. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear How to Do It, A while back, I was hooking up with this girl. She had some pretty extreme BDSM fantasies, and in general I was happy to play with her in that fashion. But she started getting into a particularly dangerous fantasy…. In this one, she played at being “raped” at knifepoint. I only tried it once. It was awful. Care always needs to be taken with BDSM, but when you have a bare Yawara involved, making sure I didn’t cut her in half occupied the overwhelming majority of my attention, which just made the whole experience an unpleasant task to get through. For me, anyway. She loved it. We argued about that, and wound up stop seeing each other sexually, although we still keep in contact as friends. Well, I recently found out she’s in the hospital—for a knife wound on her throat. Two guesses as to how she got it. She said she doesn’t appear to have any permanent tracheal damage, which is good, but I really think she’s slipped off the edge into wanting a sort of sex that could actually and immediately kill her. I’m not much more than a casual acquaintance these days, and I’m wondering what I could be doing to warn her about the extreme risks of her lifestyle. —Knives Out Dear Knives Out, Having just landed in the hospital with a sex wound, I suspect she’s quite aware of how risky her enactments of her desires are. And giving her a lecture is likely to drive her away. I’d check in on her general mental state. How’s she feeling about life? How are her social relationships? How is she handling this massive pandemic we’re all still navigating through? Is there any way you can support her self-care skills? Basically, how can you meet her where she is and help her feel good enough about life that it becomes more important than this one, deeply dangerous, sexual practice? There are probably limits to what you can do here, but starting there might help. —Jessica Stoya From: My New Boyfriend’s Penis Had a Big Surprise for Me. Please Advise. (December 8th, 2021). 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 44-year-old woman who is having a lot of sex with men again after ending a 14-year monogamous marriage. I’ve always had a sky-high sex drive and consider myself very sex positive. I had tons of wonderful sex in my 20s, and it is even better in my 40s on many levels. But I’m having an issue that I’ve started to perceive as recurring and it’s messing with my head: For whatever reason, the men I was with in my 20s were all uncircumcised. I know this is at odds with the average, but I’ve done the math, and about 90 percent of men I’ve been with were uncut and the handful of circumcised guys were not great matches. My ex-husband, with whom I’ve had the most lifetime sex, was intact. I know my way around foreskin and the oh-so-sensitive parts of uncircumcised dick. And I LOVE it. There are no words to convey how much I love the look, feel, smell, reaction to touch, and growth trajectory of uncut dick. I’ve always taken a strengths-based approach to life. I loved giving oral and I was good at it. I loved hand jobs and I was good at it. Chicken-egg. The “problem” is that all of the partners I’ve had as part of this new phase of my life so far are circumcised, and I’m starting to feel a bit inept! I am having trouble getting these men off in the same ways I could always map and understand the particular contours of each unique dick (and brain controlling it) in my 20s. There could be a lot of things going on here that are not attributable to circumcision. But I’ve begun noticing that the men I’m having sex with now are much less sensitive to touch or flicks of the tongue or even when I swallow them. I’m having sex with men my age and older, so maybe some of this could be from normal aging and it takes older guys longer to come? I’m used to being in control and edging men up to mind-blowing orgasm (before I knew it was called edging). Now, I’m sometimes getting to the point where I’m frantically trying to achieve the “goal” of orgasm. This does not feel good! I’ve asked two of my trusted recurrent partners to show me how they make themselves come in the spirit of learning. It seems that they both use so much pressure and are rough with the head of their cocks and around the frenulum in a way that have a hard time imagining myself pulling off. I’ve done some Googling about cut vs. uncut dick, and all the resources I can find seem to be reassuring people that uncircumcised cock is OK and not gross and how one might handle it. Not helpful for me. I want to like circumcised dicks, and I want to develop skills with it that make me feel like the sexual rock star I’ve always been. Am I making too much of this? How do I get back to a feeling of sexual competence when I seem to not know what I’m doing? I’ve thought of announcing a preference for uncircumcised men in my profiles, but that isn’t what I want. I want to be as good at pleasuring circumcised men as they all have been with me. I don’t think that the men I’m with are reading me as having an issue. They all seem satisfied, but I’m used to a higher standard of pleasure. Reading back through this I also think I might need to let go of my idea of myself as a sexual performer and just lean enthusiastically into fumbling around like a teenager again. But how do I do that? —Cocksure Dear Cocksure, I absolutely love that you read back over your letter and came to a possibly helpful conclusion yourself. Bravo for that initiative and introspection. There’s a really beautiful—and heady—feeling of power in executing sexual contact in ways that give our partners pleasure and goosebumps, and that can definitely become part of our identity in the same way that success at anything can. I think it’s smart to give yourself permission to experiment a little again, because that’s how you’ll get back to where you want to be. The other factors you describe are likely in play too, but in my own anecdotal experience, yes, circumcised penises are less sensitive. Far less. On the other hand, they have zero foreskin tangling issues in condoms, and may have lower susceptibility to some sexually transmitted infections, so there are upsides as well. While an uncircumcised penis can sit in your mouth as you swirl your tongue around and explore everything, I find most circumcised penises require more aggressive stimulation and more lubricant. Here’s how I do it. I always try flicking my tongue around the head, especially under the ridge of the glans and the wrinkly part on the bottom where the edges of the glans come to a point, to see if they respond well. If so, I’ll keep spending time there. If not, I’ll try one last thing—gently nibbling with my lips on the aforementioned wrinkly area—and then move on to more up-and-down motions. I’ve never found a lube I like the taste of, and while I’d prefer not to do so, I’m not afraid of vomiting on someone’s dick, so I go for the thick-spit inducing deep throat to generate enough slidey liquid to protect them from friction. Once they’re lubricated, it’s about finding the squeeze pressure they like and the up-and-down pace they prefer. You can also do a motion similar to tapping your fingers but with them wrapped in a fist around the shaft of their penis. Adding the mouth is usually appreciated, and I’ve found much success with sucking as I pull up. Another tactic that seems to help is spending extra time on the non-genital erogenous zones they’re comfortable having touched. The more worked up they are, they more sensitive they seem to be. Good luck. —J.S. From: I’m Having Great Sex Again in My 40s. But the Penises Are … Different Now. (November 17th, 2021). Dear How to Do It, I’m a stay-at-home mom of three kids: a pre-schooler and infant twins. I spend most of my day holding one or both babies, and sometimes, after school, I end up holding both babies, the big kid, and our dog. More often than not, at least one kid ends up in bed with me at night. (We’re working on it.) I feel like I’m never not being touched by someone. By the time my husband gets home, I don’t want to be touched anymore. What I’d really like is to get into a sensory deprivation tank for a couple of hours. We still have sex about once a week or so, which I think it pretty good considering that we have three little kids, but right now I feel like it’s just another thing to check off the to-do list. I feel badly that I’m giving all of myself to my kids and there’s not much of me left for my husband (or me). Do I just have to accept that this is how life is until my kids are a little more independent, or is there a way to get over this feeling and enjoy my husband’s touch again? — Hands Off Dear Hands Off, In this specific case, I think you’d benefit most from listening to your body over the nagging voice in your head. You state it quite clearly: You don’t want to be touched. In any scenario, this is enough justification that you not be touched, but in your particular case (as a mother of infant twins), you have two squirming bundles of justification. Couples who have kids frequently see their sex lives disrupted, at least for a while—not just for physical reasons (vaginal intercourse is recommended to resume not until six weeks after giving birth) but also as a result of things like fatigue. Cut yourself a break—you are doing well, and you can only do so much. Right now, your primary task is to take care of your new babies. Your concern indicates that you’ll find a way back to regular sex with your partner when it feels right. Maybe a few sessions in a sensory deprivation tank would actually help get you back on that path sooner than later. In the meantime, in a piece about post-childbirth sex on Psychology Today, Sarah Hunter Murray shares some suggestions for reigniting the spark after the arrival of a new baby (or babies). Taking time for yourselves, sharing intimacy that doesn’t necessarily qualify as sex proper, and even counseling could all prove beneficial. Understanding that you are human with finite time and energy may help as well. —Rich Juzwiak From: My Fiancé Felt Humiliated by Another Man in Our Strip Poker Game. I Think He Deserved It. (October 3rd, 2021). More Sex Advice From Slate I’m a married man in my 30s. Back when I was in my teens and in college, when I’d engage in foreplay before hooking up, my body would do some strange stuff (leg shaking, teeth chattering, hands going cold). It was clearly nerves. Well, now my body does something much stranger. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Dating and Relationships Sex