I Know Many Married Couples Ditch This Part of Sex After a Certain Age. Not Us.

How to Do It Should we revisit this? Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by LightFieldStudios/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 wife and I have been together for many years and have decided we’re done having children. She’s since gone through menopause, so pregnancy is no longer a possibility. However, my wife has expressed a clear preference for continuing to use condoms—not for contraception, but because she prefers them for practical cleanup reasons. She finds them less messy than other methods and simply feels much more comfortable with this approach for sex and other acts involving my, ahem, ejaculation. I won’t lie, I sometimes wonder if I’m missing out on a different intimate experience, or if this is something we should reconsider now that pregnancy isn’t a concern. But I also recognize that her comfort and preference matter more than my assumptions about what sex “should” be like. My question is: Is this actually that uncommon? And if my wife is genuinely happy with this arrangement and our sex life is otherwise good, am I overthinking it by even wondering if we’re doing something “wrong”? Should we revisit the conversation, or should I let go of the expectation that we need to change methods just because we technically could? Any wisdom would be appreciated. —Wrapped Up in Raleigh Dear Wrapped Up in Raleigh, I’m a gay man living in Brooklyn, so people opting to use condoms, or even preferring them, reads to me like science fiction. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of data about married people using condoms after reproduction becomes impossible, but a 2017 study of people aged 18 to 44 found that just 15.7 percent of married/cohabitating men and 13.1 percent of women reported using condoms, which was less than condom use among unmarried or single respondents. That’s a considerable minority, and the subjects in question were younger than typical menopause age. Presumably, condom use goes down as it becomes less essential for birth control. Assessing imprecisely, I would say that yes, what you describe is uncommon. But that doesn’t at all mean it’s not worth doing. If it’s working for your sex life, that’s a positive. If this is what it takes for your wife to feel comfortable, it’s helping facilitate sex that you describe as good. There’s nothing wrong with that. At the same time, there’s also nothing wrong with discussing this further. You’ve been doing things one way for many years; it makes sense that you’re curious about how alternative methods could feel. Maybe your wife would be open to experimenting with condomless sex, with certain provisions. Maybe it’s a once-in-a-while type of thing, with you continuing to use condoms most of the time. It is reasonable for you to want to explore other sensations with your wife, especially if you are monogamous and you really don’t have the option of exploring with others. Definitely check in, especially if you haven’t voiced your interest in condomless sex. Then make sure you respect her response and whatever boundaries she asserts. 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 have a crush on a woman around my age. She has a couple of kids and has been dealing with some health issues from alcoholism. She has since stopped drinking and is doing great in her personal and professional life. I had seen a post she made about being depressed a few years ago and said something privately to her to try to lift her spirits. She said she appreciated it. A year or so later, she had written about being six months sober and recovering from liver disease due to alcohol consumption. I wrote to her privately after reading her post because my mother suffered from alcoholism. She appreciated that as well. My problem is that I want to ask her to dinner sometime. I haven’t yet, because I’m worried it would appear very manipulative of me to attempt to solicit her for a date after my first two messages were for such platonic reasons. I don’t want her to think I said those things just to get in her pants. That would be both horrible and untrue. Is it wrong to ask her out on a date, or is it OK? —Torn (he/him) Dear Torn, You’re talking about someone who is basically a stranger to you. You’ve exchanged a few messages, and that’s the extent of your association. When you reached out to this person, sure, it was about something she posted, but hitting someone up out of the blue often carries subtext. It’s not always exactly romantic or sexual, but there is often the sense that you want to get to know them better or connect on some level. So it shouldn’t be a shock in the event that you ask this woman to dinner. Obviously, it’s her right to accept, deny, or ignore as she sees fit; maybe she won’t like your approach, and your fears will be realized. She may deal with this kind of thing a lot—many women do, and many are annoyed by it. But I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with engaging someone and then requesting further, deeper engagement. If people had to signal their interest/attraction immediately, there would be even more bad pick-up lines in the world, and more immediate rejections. Easing in makes sense. Shoot your shot. If you don’t, you certainly won’t have a date with this person. If you do, you might. 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 a virgin in my late 30s who was recently diagnosed with autism. The diagnosis recontextualized everything about my nonexistent love life. To show my baseline: My only date was in high school, and I only realized it was a date halfway through, thinking we were just hanging out as friends. I understand sex intellectually, but I hit a wall with flirting, unspoken cues, and emotional vulnerability. I want to change my virginity status, and while I am open to a relationship, I’d prefer something low-commitment. I’d prefer an independent dynamic where we keep separate lives, have our own evenings, and meet roughly once a week for connection and intimacy. How can an autistic guy find partners open to this unconventional balance? More importantly, how do I bridge the gap between knowing sex in theory and handling it in practice? —Late Bloomer, Fresh Perspective Dear Late Bloomer, Fresh Perspective, You can absolutely find someone for a casual, sex-based relationship, though I am going to caution you to temper your expectations. It’s wonderful when you can find someone whose vision for your connection and scheduling is perfectly aligned with yours. But say you meet someone who wants to keep separate lives and evenings, but their speed is more like once a month? Still seems worth doing. The point is, you can’t really predict how your life will fit with someone else’s. Flexibility is key. You may have to put serious effort into letting a situationship breathe and exist as it needs to. It sounds like you’re looking for a chill, friends-with-benefits situation, and that’s fairly common and doable. You can at least start looking for something along those lines via apps. In your profile, you can say that you’re looking for something casual. Literally using “FWB” in your profile will get the message across. I don’t know how open you are about your neurodivergence, but you can also add that to your profile if you think it would be useful information for people to have upfront. You’re only going to be able to bridge the gap between knowing about sex in theory and handling it in practice by actually experiencing it. Until then, it’s all in your head. Again, try not to impose too much on how things should be. It’s bound to be different with different people, and outside of the core basics like respecting your partner and honoring consent, there’s really no set of rules to follow. Don’t think about getting it right; think about personal expression. It’s probably going to be especially useful to have a conversation ahead of time about what you’re all interested in doing, and especially what you’re not interested in. This might help you navigate those pesky cues—try to get them all out upfront so that there’s less guesswork. A lot of people have a hard time with flirting; you might just do better being straightforward. That won’t be to everyone’s taste but, really, nothing is. It’s better to be yourself than to try to conform to the constantly shifting field goal of other people’s preferences. Sex is a vulnerable thing in general, but emotional vulnerability, per se, is not necessarily required in casual encounters. Some people like to skip the emotional stuff altogether, preferring to share that with more established/trusted partners. Once you have a rough outline of how you both want things to go, you improvise. You can definitely encourage your partners to be verbal with what they like during sex or choose people who pride themselves on being verbal upfront (like in their app profiles). It’s OK to talk and ask questions during sex, and you should if you need clarification. The goal is to have fun, so if you’re not, that’s a good indication that you need to change things up or find a different partner. Unfortunately, there’s no foolproof guidance to share here; all sex is trial and error. You don’t really know how you’ll vibe with someone in that way until you’re this close to them. —Rich More Advice From Slate My husband of eight years and I have a fulfilling, if somewhat routine, sex life. We know one another’s bodies well. I finish at least once virtually every time. But every time he’s made this request I clam up… Advice Sex