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 girlfriend and I have always had a vanilla sex life and it’s been great, we’re both happy with it. She went through a short terrible illness last year and came out healthy on the other side. She was fine one week hospitalized the next. It was heart-wrenching and terrifying to see her so sick. I was scared she would die.
There was a window after where we had aides at home doing the hardest care, and then when she was almost well it was just me showering her, feeding her, and helping her dress. It was hard, uncomfortably intimate, and weird to be doing things for her that she usually does herself, but also it unlocked something for me.
I think about doing those things with her and I associate it with the euphoric feeling of knowing she was going to be healthy soon and everything was going to be OK. Watching her be more independent every day was the biggest relief of my life. But also carrying her around, washing her hair, feeding her—I felt so close to her, and by the time she was healthy again something about the control and knowing I could make sure everything was exactly right for her body without her doing anything turned me on. I started going harder at the gym even after she was healthy because I wanted to be able to pick her up and carry her more, even though I haven’t since.
We came out of her illness having more sex than before, and I want to respect that she’s relieved to be doing everything by herself normally now. But I want to see if we can explore this together and I’m not sure how to bring it up. Am I a Dom now? How do I do this without being too controlling? I want to do this in bed but also being able to shower her and feed her feels like foreplay I want now and I don’t know how to tell her. I don’t have a fetish for her being sick and I’m so relieved she’s healthy but I feel kind of gross that I want to pick her up, pick out her lingerie and dress her, and move her around like a doll because it feels hot. I don’t want to do this in daily life—it’s definitely a sex thing, but I do crave it. I’m 32 and thought I knew what I liked. How do I figure this out? And how do I talk to her?
—Relieved But Confused
Jessica Stoya: I feel like addressing the, “I’m 32 and thought I knew what I liked” first. So, sometimes, people seem to develop kinks. Other times, there’s a kink that’s been there the whole time that people don’t notice until they run into a situation that shows them what is possible. But it’s not abnormal to, in your late 20s, 30s, or 40s, realize that there’s a type of sex that now turns you on.
Rich Juzwiak: Yes, and it’s through sheer exposure sometimes. As you live more life, you’re exposed to more things, and you have more options. You just come upon things that you didn’t know would make you come or turn you on. I don’t think the letter writer had experienced this scenario yet. That’s just life. Part of the point of being a human is to keep growing and learning, and that shouldn’t be confined to just your non-sexual life. It certainly can be. People find the thing that they like, and they run with it, and that’s totally cool too. But it makes sense to me to evolve and change.
Jessica: At the core of so many of the things that our LW’s interest seems similar to is caring for another person. Right? High BDSM protocol, the love language acts of service, daddy doming, other kinds of submissive worship that involve cleaning, pedicuring, lotioning, etc., it all boils down to the intimacy of care.
Rich: And anybody who’s experienced with BDSM will talk about the importance of aftercare. It’s kind of baked into the situation. Even if it’s not in the scene, it’s still so important to its completion. So I understand the trepidation here, but it really does seem like this is a reasonable thing for someone to discover in the process and can be talked about in a non-explosive way. This conversation isn’t necessarily going to lead to, “Oh my God, you want me to be sick again.”
Jessica: Yeah and that concern can easily be addressed by starting with, “I don’t have a fetish for you being sick” as they’ve written here. I do think it’s probably going to involve more than one conversation.
Rich: Yes.
Jessica: We often, as this letter illustrates, don’t know exactly what we want until we’ve tried stuff. So our LW is likely setting themselves an impossible task if they want to come into this discussion with a detailed explanation of what they want to do, what turns them on about it, etc. Those are things we often have to discover in the process. We can do some introspection around it, but often have to discover through experience.
Rich: They haven’t had this conversation yet. The girlfriend could very well be like, “I love that too. I mean, I was sick and everything, and maybe it wasn’t an erotic thrill, but that’s something I would like to try.” Certainly, it doesn’t sound like any of the negativity attached to that situation, like the illness, is something that’s coming into play here.
Perhaps the kind of behavior the LW wants to replicate was the highlight of her day, for example, as she was experiencing this illness. Maybe this was one of the nice things about a really bad situation. So again, trepidation is natural, but I think that there’s a lot of potential for this going in the LW’s way, as long as they handle it with the care that they’ve been handling their girlfriend with.
Jessica: Yes and the LW mentioned that the girlfriend is relieved to be doing everything herself normally now. Have you ever done hot yoga?
Rich: I only did it once in Colorado, when I was still getting used to the altitude. About 10 minutes in, I was like, “I think I’m actually going to pass out.” But I didn’t.
Jessica: So, you know that once you’re out of that situation and your body returns to baseline, you feel incredible because of the contrast.
Rich: Exactly.
Jessica: It’s possible that this big contrast of being unable to take care of herself and now, once again, being able to take care of herself and feeling that sense of relief—and I also imagine a sense of return to autonomy and individual power over oneself—is something that might be fun to experience again in a controlled microcosm. Maybe she’d want to turn over control of her body, limbs, and movements for a short period, and then have that control restored.
Rich: Totally. Because now she has agency and can choose it. One thing that we talked about very, very early on in this column was female submission. I brought up the point, “Isn’t it kind of buying into patriarchy to have men be dominant and women be submissive in a scene? Isn’t that somehow reifying the bad stuff about culture?” And you pointed out very astutely that, no, actually replicating that on your terms allows you to get close to it and understand it and work with it in a way that you can’t when it’s being foisted upon you.
So maybe there’s something about that here too, that the agency combined with the good feelings can create this kind of eroticism that’s really exciting. Of course, we don’t know, but that’s just one scenario in which this could work out.
Jessica: And there’s a flip side of this that is worth the LW considering since the dynamics of care are a new interest. They might consider putting themselves in the cared-for position. Some people are switches. Sometimes, we’re attracted to a power and balance dynamic in one way because that’s the first way that we encounter it. And then it turns out that, actually, all the different spots in the power system are intriguing.
Rich: In terms of how to bring this up, some people are very explicit in the pre-talk. “This is what I want. Here’s a list. This is what I don’t want.” Hard boundaries, safe words, all that kind of stuff. I think as long as the LW is articulate that could work well. And also, as you said, this could be part of an ongoing conversation, so prep for a series of conversations as opposed to just one. So just make sure everything is kind of spelled out and then you won’t have guesswork. The LW has a very clear list of things they’re interested in. Float them by her before you do them that way she can say yes or no.
Jessica: Yeah. And if our LW can be more succinct than they were in this letter, that is probably better. Because when you’re on the listening end of someone explaining something sexual that has to do with you, you really want the headline. Write it or say it like a newspaper article. Put the basics in the first paragraph, and then you can unpack things and add more detail later. So I would say establish that this is not a fetish for her illness and state that also something about the caretaking was erotic to our LW. They’re now fantasizing about it, and they’re feeling confused like they say in their sign-off. And then give the partner some opportunity to process and then respond because if it’s four paragraphs like this, it might be overwhelming.
Rich: Great point.
More Advice From Slate
I’m a woman in my 50s. Until three years ago, I lived my life with a general aversion to illicit drugs and alcohol, and a sex life that wasn’t exciting, let alone enjoyable. Three years ago, my ex-husband left me, and I began using illicit drugs recreationally, as my life “spiraled out of control” (or so my family described it). Although others were very judgmental of my behavior during that period, I personally found it incredibly liberating. I was able to safely discover things about myself that were important to me, and I really valued having the sense of freedom that came with it—particularly when it came to sexual expressiveness. During that time, I discovered aspects of my sexuality, and fantasies I hadn’t previously recognized.
