I Accidentally Sent a Risqué Text to the Wrong Person. That’s Not Even What My Boyfriend’s Upset About.

How to Do It I’m mortified. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Iryna Melnyk/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 was sexting my boyfriend and texting one of our mutual guy friends about something completely unrelated. Think: “This is what I want you to do to me when you get home tonight” versus texts to our friend about a recent movie we’d both seen. I had been telling my boyfriend that I was using his texts to masturbate, but I wasn’t really. I was just doing something we both find fun, even if I technically wasn’t all that horny in the moment. I was just multitasking! I can sext and clean the kitchen at the same time; these are not mutually exclusive to me. In my back-and-forth with both the boyfriend and the friend, I got my wires crossed and accidentally sent a sext to the friend and immediately apologized and explained it was meant for boyfriend. He took it well, but the conversation died. Then I went to freak out and tell my boyfriend, and he’s still mildly upset about it! He said it was kind of rude that I “wasn’t really in it” and that if I wasn’t feeling it, I shouldn’t have entertained the sexting. He’s also embarrassed, as am I, that our friend got an unwanted look into our messages. How can I reassure him that this is not some grander statement about being bored with sexting and is just something people do? Is it? Also, how can I face my friend again and make it as minimally awkward as possible? —Should’ve Probably Slowed Down 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. Rich Juzwiak: It seems like we’re dealing with a white lie here, and the severity of it to me doesn’t seem all that bad. If you’re actively lying and saying, “I’m masturbating,” when you’re not, then sure, that’s a bit worse, though maybe that’s deception for the service of your partner. But if the scenario is like, you have been masturbating to these texts from time to time in this kind of unidentified, vague way, so that the assumption could be that you might be masturbating when you’re doing this sexting, I don’t see much of a transgression here, especially if the language was, “This is what I want you to do to me when you get home tonight.” That’s just a sexy conversation that can get you into the mood. Then you see whatever happens later. So the explanation to the boyfriend is easier if our writer didn’t say, “I am currently masturbating,” because then that’s a lie, though it’s still not a big deal. Whereas if there was simply a general understanding that masturbation had been happening, then you can say, “Well, actually this time it wasn’t. I was turned on anyway. I was doing other stuff.” Jessica Stoya: The dynamic here interests me because the letter writer comes in hard with “I was just” twice in the explanation of their own actions. Then what we’re actually told, as far as the description of the boyfriend’s feelings and his statements, is that he’s mildly upset. He said it was “kind of rude.” Is the writer underplaying what the boyfriend was saying and doing as far as reacting, or is the letter writer maybe sort of overreacting and attempting to minimize things? Maybe because they have a tendency to want to always get an A-plus grade on every social interaction or whatever it might be. Take a second to think about what’s actually going on there because that’s an opportunity to either correct course within the relationship in a way that reduces more problems in the future, or to do a little bit of personal work, which can also reduce problems in the future. The only thing I’m seeing here that I would criticize on the boyfriend’s end is framing the situation as if she weren’t feeling it, then she shouldn’t have done it. He could’ve come from a place of curiosity instead: If you weren’t aroused and masturbating the way that he probably enjoys sexting, why were you participating? Rich: Sexting does not have to be this kind of ceremonial event where everybody is very serious and has one hand on their phone and the other on their genitals. If you have a culture with your partner of being very open about sex and having the possibility of any conversation turning there, you can just have this kind of ambient horniness that doesn’t necessarily involve physical arousal or physical manipulation. I think this is an easy thing to explain to somebody by saying, “Look, I’m generally horny for you. I’m down to talk about this stuff. At the moment, I wasn’t as turned on as I have been previously or will be when you get home later, but I still think it’s part of our dynamic to engage in this kind of talk. Can you give me a little bit of a break here?” Jessica: Or, “I was turned on in a slow boil, anticipating when you get home. Do you want to, moving forward, incorporate some kind of communication outside of sexting/fantasy talk about how each of us is approaching this activity that particular time?” Rich: Right. If I were in that situation, I’d feel a little bit suffocated by the need to announce exactly what’s going on, but if it’s going to preoccupy him, something like that would probably be more useful than just leaving it to guessing. You don’t want to turn what is supposed to be a fun thing for both of you into tension. Jessica: Also, it’s so confusing for me when people jump to the conclusion that active consent has to sound like filling out a human resources form or something. “I’m having such a good time. Oh, I really like that” can absolutely be what is serving as vocalizing active and ongoing consent. So it could be as simple as a totally not sexy time conversation where they sort out what’s going on with him, what’s going on with the writer, and then the boyfriend can walk away with the understanding that “this is what I want you to do to me when you get home tonight” is more of a literal statement than he interpreted it as. Rich: Exactly. Jessica: But is sexting, while not masturbating and doing something else, a thing people do? Totally. Rich: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it’s kind of a compliment that you don’t have to be in the throes of sex brain to be talking about what we’re going to do sexually. You actually have your facilities, and you’re going about your day, and you are still making time to say that about me, as opposed to being so turned on that you just have to do something about it. To be able to multitask and shuffle me into your busy day is somewhat flattering. Jessica: Something people do sometimes is start having sex when arousal isn’t really part of the picture, but there is willingness and desire for some of the other things that sex can do for a person. Or, in this case, anticipating during sexting what can happen once the other person is home. Some straight men can get stuck on this basic headline version of: But are you wet? Are you masturbating? Did you come? There’s a lot more wiggle room and flexibility there. So that might be part of where this feeling of being mildly upset is coming from. Having a conversation about why the writer was participating in the sexting is another way of deepening communication and either discovering unnavigable disparities in values or preventing future problems. Rich: Right. As for the friend, I feel like you just move on, as they seem to have. It’s a mistake that happens. Luckily, I’ve never had anything quite on this level, certainly not with a family member or anything that would be completely mortifying, but I find that if I’m texting from my Messages app on my computer, I will often be in the wrong window. And it’s just the thing that happens. People understand this is a thing that happens and that sexting is a thing that happens. So when they intersect, yeah, it’s embarrassing potentially for the person who sent it and received it, but it’s just part of modern technological life. Don’t dwell on it. Jessica: Well, and whether the friend felt awkward in the moment because they’re like, “Oh, God,” or because maybe they’re a little attracted to you and they’ve managed to behave appropriately, and then they’ve gotten a bit more of a glimpse than they really want to deal with, moving on is how you avoid bringing it up over and over again and making them more uncomfortable multiple times because you keep trying to apologize. Again, it just happens, and I suggest the total opposite of my advice with the boyfriend: Never speak of this again. Never. Rich: Nothing wrong happened. This was not an intentional violation of consent. To have sex with your partner is not shameful or wrong. You weren’t caught doing anything that you shouldn’t have been doing. Either this person could relate, or they have no idea what this world is like because they don’t talk to people like this, but either way, you’re fine. Jessica: So maybe change the boyfriend’s profile picture on your phone to something that is really obvious, or make his name kind of the only one with some kind of fancy emojis or fonts. Even if they ultimately decide that they’re not going to be texting multiple people at once while they’re sexting, just make it really easy to distinguish between your boyfriend and other people on your phone. More Advice From Slate I am picky about my sex toys. I like a specific size (and yes, I am a size queen!) specific shape, specific texture, specific firmness… and while the material isn’t on my list of dealbreakers experience-wise, it’s definitely on my priority list in terms of safety. So here’s the problem… Advice Sex