My Ex’s Closest Guy Friends Are Now Reaching Out to Me. I Can’t Believe What They Are Asking For.

How to Do It Well, this explains a lot. 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, My ex constantly accused me of cheating on him. I didn’t even innocently flirt with anyone else. He was insecure about a lot of things, but this part was the worst. It seemed worse when he hung out with his friends. I chalked that up to him comparing himself to these guys who are in long, happy relationships. I don’t think he was cheating on me, but you never know. After a year together, I finally realized his insecurities would never stop, and I broke up with him. He was shocked and convinced I was leaving him for another guy. It’s really nice to enjoy my life without having to soothe him anymore. But within a few weeks, the three guys I’d consider his closest friends all individually reached out to me, trying to hook up. I left them on read. I want to tell the girlfriends. Part of me wants to tell him too, because it seems like his friendships are trash and are all feeding his insecure behavior, and I want him to get out. But most of me knows that’s messy and not worth it. He can figure this out by himself over time, right? —Not Gonna Sleep With His Friends Dear Not Gonna Sleep With His Friends, Taking your letter at face value, I absolutely agree that your ex’s jealous behavior is a result of insecurity (which is almost always the case, regardless of whether the jealousy is about fearing the loss of a person in our lives or wanting some personal attribute or professional opportunity someone else has). I also think that insecurity stemmed from his friend group, but there might have also been a culture of infidelity which, whether he was aware of it or not, was encouraging him to think that straying or constantly attempting to is a norm across humanity. The same disloyalty his friends show to their partners may be apparent in how they treat their friends, including your ex, in a way that added to his insecurity. There also may have been an aspect of believing all (or all “normal”) women require a romantic partner behind his assumption that you were leaving him for someone else, which would have thrived under a tendency to compare himself to other men. The ranking of, and categorization of self as chads, betas, etc. that runs rampant through Red Pill and men’s rights rhetoric is an extreme example of this, but men and young men were comparing themselves in more subtle ways for decades (maybe centuries) before those ideologies appeared, and, from that foundation, were viewing women more as prizes to be won and keep possession of than partners to build and maintain mutually supportive and respectful relationships with. If any of those themes ring a bell, they were probably at least some part of the whole drama. I’m laying this out so you have a more robust set of warning signs to use when evaluating dates in the future, because based on what I’ve seen, supported friends through, and experienced myself, you’ll almost certainly encounter another form of this archetype, and I want you to have all the possible tools so you have a better chance of dodging these kinds of men early. I would also examine where your statement that you “didn’t even innocently flirt with anyone else” is coming from. If you’re naturally flirty, look for very secure partners for your own sake. You can ask your own friends to give you their perspective on how flirty a person you are in various social situations to help gauge this. If you aren’t generally flirty with friends and strangers, this line suggests to me that you might need some time to decompress after this relationship. Did you change your mannerisms over the past year out of a desire to avoid baseless accusations? I am completely certain that showing the messages to your ex’s friends’ girlfriends would bring almost nothing other than heaps of drama. Untold levels that could only be approximated by an entire season of a teen TV drama played on fast forward. Hold tight to what you mostly know to be true: This is not worth it. Not only is what would play out unlikely to help your ex understand the effects his friend group is having on him, but helping him grow is not your responsibility. You weighed whether you wanted to keep him in your life and stay in his before you broke up, and decided against that. The only possible benefit from revealing all the subterfuge and sneaking around in this group would be catharsis, and there’s a far less combustible way to achieve that. Write a story. Imagine everything you would want to see from everyone involved—the emotional journeys, the character arcs, the suffering, the liberation. Revel in it, and put it all down on the page. Writing fiction has a well-documented way of helping people process and transmute their emotions. If it’s any good, make significant changes to the identifying details and consider publishing it. The experience of spending a year (or more) with a jealous partner is so widespread that it’s almost guaranteed to resonate and give some of that catharsis to readers. 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 finally agreed to my husband’s insistence that we visit a sex club and am glad I did. The thing is, I had a great time and a lot of fun with half a dozen guys. However, not one woman approached him, and now he’s angry and has been sulking for days. It’s almost like he thinks I’m to blame! What am I supposed to do here? —Careful What You Wish For Dear Careful What You Wish For, I’m left assuming that your husband did absolutely zero approaching himself. Unless this is club policy—a sort of Sadie Hawkins dance for adults—what did he think was going to happen? How invested was he in a particular fantasy (which was obviously significantly different from how things turned out)? I’m pretty sure there’s been some patently absurd thinking on his end, but scolding him isn’t going to help matters. Nor is constructive criticism likely to be useful while he’s in a semi-permanent sulk. How much time did the two of you devote to discussing boundaries and expectations beforehand? Depending on what was agreed on, you might very much owe a particular apology. If the two of you, together, neglected those talks, you still made a mistake of your own by failing to check in with him and notice that he was sitting on the sidelines in a way that was obviously bumming him out. Ideally, this would have happened after your first guy, or at least some time before partner number six, and given both of you the opportunity to correct course. Instead, you were oblivious, and that’s almost certainly compounding his feelings of rejection. You are not to blame for the sex club excursion that your husband insisted upon, or the lack of interest he received from the other women in attendance. But you did hurt him. There’s nuance here. Think through why you behaved the way you did, and apologize for your part and only your part in how the evening played out. If he’s able to approach the evening with the same amount of nuance, great. If not, continuing to visit group sex events is probably a very bad idea. 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, My husband has recently become fixated on getting one of those sex swings. I’ve never used one before and am concerned about it giving out during use and one or both of us getting injured. Are these things generally safe? —It Certainly Looks Complicated Dear It Certainly Looks Complicated, Sex swing safety depends on the relationship between the weight the swing will be supporting and the strength of the swing itself, any attachment hardware, and the structure it is attached to. If the idea is to get a cheap swing, attach it to a closet door or hook meant for hanging decorative house plants with the kind of carabiner meant for keeping keys on belts, and go to town, some part of that setup is likely to fail, and resulting injuries could be quite serious. The general wobbliness tends to undermine the main appeals of the swing itself, too. If the setup is sturdier, they can be just as safe as something like aerial acrobatics or rock climbing. This is relatively expensive, however, and is usually a little more complicated to stow away than it is to stash a vibrator or pair of cuffs in a drawer. Find a sex club that has a swing and test it out first. One or both of you might strongly dislike the concept in practice. If having a swing at home is something you want to pursue, ask for advice—a venue with a swing installed almost certainly knows the qualified contractor who installed it. If either of you has experience with work or sport that uses equipment carrying kN ratings, you can have more confidence in your own ability to evaluate safety; otherwise, I’d hire a professional or choose a different spicy device rather than risk tearing holes in your walls or damaging your tailbone. —Jessica More Advice From Slate My husband complains that I don’t perform oral sex enough and he is right. Ever since I was a child (apparently) I have had a “hair” thing. I won’t call it a phobia because it isn’t. I will say though, if I see a hair in my food, I will never eat at the place serving it. If I see a hair floating in my bath, I will get out or use something to remove it before getting back in. With that said, my husband is a very hairy man. 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 Sex