I Know Men Are Always Worried Women Are Judging Them for This in Bed. Well, I Am.

How to Do It Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by 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, This is going to sound comical, but I swear this is a real dilemma I’m having. I’m a straight female, and I know this is super judgmental, but I’m a size queen. I wouldn’t wish to be on the receiving end if the roles were reversed about something I physically couldn’t change, but this has become almost a bit of a complex for me … I just got out of a five-year relationship with a very well-endowed man. Before dating him, I lived a kind of wild lifestyle, so I’ve had my fair share of sexual partners. Most men I encountered were average in penis size or slightly below, with just a few standouts bigger than the rest. Here is my problem: Guys with smaller penises … don’t do much for me. How can I get over being such a size queen? I like to really feel something substantial inside of me. I’m also a big fan of blowjobs, which also feel sexier mentally with a sizable dick in your mouth. I am worried that I’ll meet the love of my life, and that he’ll have a small dick. Help. —Reluctant Size Queen Dear RSQ, I think the answer is … more dick. Look, I know intimately the draw of a fat slab—a dick with so much mass it has its own gravitational pull—but sometimes that kind of fixation can start to drift into the territory of dehumanizing. You dissect someone into body parts with your mind, and that can inhibit the ethical treatment of the full human being you are spending time with. I don’t think you need to slay your inner size queen, but growth in this realm will mean keeping yourself open and not relying on a fat dick to do that work. Maintaining a preference is understandable and probably unavoidable (people love big dicks!), but there’s a lot of good, average dick out there. It’s time to tune into those not particularly hung guys who are talented and in possession a diamond-cutting hard-on that spends little time, if any, at rest. They’re fun too! Try to expand your definition of what good dick is. Perhaps meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his minuscule dick would, ironically, be a great thing for you. —Rich Juzwiak From: I Judge Men During Sex in the Worst Way Possible. How Do I Stop? (August 18th, 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 have recently begun to be plagued by relentless guilt about past sexual exploits and don’t know how to move past it. I have had an interest in light bondage content since I was a teenager, and am now in my mid-30s. (I should say I have reason to believe I have undiagnosed issues on the autism spectrum.) I have been married for more than 10 years, and my wife does not share my interest in bondage sex or agree with my looking at bondage content, so I have enjoyed that part in secret, operating on the belief that it’s an open secret that neither of us acknowledge. There was a time years ago where my wife would burst in on me in the shower almost trying to catch me in the act, so I became extra secretive. I am feeling horrible for keeping my habit a secret. I recently became a father, and the guilt has washed over me as to what kind of person I am. Most troubling to me, I have brought this habit to work; I have read that 40 percent of people masturbate on the job or at the office, but my office is a middle school, and while my sexual acts were done in private, it just makes me feel like a pervert. I have prayed for forgiveness and have cut back on my bondage content at home and deleted my online storage account. How do I ever forgive myself, because I can’t share this with my wife—it would break her—and I could lose my job, my wife, and my child? —Guilty Dear Guilty, Firstly, stop masturbating at the middle school where you are employed. You’re putting yourself in legal and employment jeopardy. You’re better off finding a single-stall public restroom with a locking door and doing your thing there. If you refrain for enough time, it’ll be much easier to look back on what you were (someone who jerks off in a middle school bathroom) and forgive that person in light of what you’ve become (someone who no longer jerks off in a middle school bathroom). You’re dealing with unresolved shame that I think has been unfairly foisted on you.Ideally, your wife would accept your kink as part of you, and understand why you masturbate to bondage material. She has effectively sentenced you to at-home conversion therapy without even so much as a pseudo-scientific rubric, and look at how miserably said therapy has failed. Assuming that the porn you’re watching was made ethically and with consent, there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching it or having a general interest in bondage. If having a partner who enjoys that sort of thing was a hard no for your wife, ideally you would have discussed breaking up when that line in the sand was drawn. Given what you have to work with, I think therapy is the best course of action for you. It can take people years to get over shame, and in the meantime, it can cause utter chaos. Helping you through processing your shame is beyond the means of an advice column, and since you suspect you may be on the autism spectrum, that’s even more reason to talk to a therapist who can start working with you through this. With the right help, you will achieve clarity that is, at this moment, eluding you. —R. J. From: A Drunken Threesome Has Left My Wife and Me With an Unexpected Problem. (September 12th, 2021). Dear How to Do It, I am a 35-year-old male who has never had an adult relationship. I’ve only ever dated one person, and that relationship exploded 17 years ago, after I found out she was cheating on me while I was caring for my dying father. Obviously, it was a pretty big trauma for me, and I don’t think I ever recovered. I spent a few years being a misogynist, and then even more time pretending to be asexual so I wouldn’t have to explain my perpetual single-ness. (Mistake: Most people think asexuality isn’t real and that I was just a closeted homosexual). I even came up with some pretty convincing ethos to block off inevitable feelings of attraction. (Sexual desire/pleasure is an evolutionary leftover from a less densely populated planet, and being controlled by genetic imperative is a sign of weakness.) I eventually smelled my own bullshit, and tried using dating apps, to absolutely no avail. After years of silence from “matches,” and continuously losing my IRL crushes to more attractive/confident men, I feel hopeless and bitter. I deleted all my dating profiles out of a feeling of pointlessness. (How many times can one stand being ignored by anonymous strangers before going apeshit?) I do not want to feel like an “incel,” but all of my romantic platitudes have been rejected by everyone other than my long-ago ex. I don’t feel like I deserve to be loved just for being alive, but something’s got to give. How do I forgive myself for being unattractive and unhappy with my lot in life without spending all my money on therapy? —Involuntary Incel Dear I.I., Don’t forgive yourself for being unhappy; pursue happiness. More than anything, your attitude is the constant thread here, and while it would be impossible to sort out how much of your situation stems from self-defeat and how much has to do with outside rejection, you can certainly optimize your outlook. Confidence and kindness are attractive to people; bitterness is not. If your worldview is currently being shaped by events that happened when you were 18 (presumably as a result of transgressions from someone around your age), you’re effectively allowing teenagers to define your adulthood. I sympathize with you because I think you would rather that not be the case, but clearly you’re going to have to do something about it if you want things to change. It is my suspicion that you are wearing your trauma, and people are not digging the outfit. Trauma often isn’t something that just evaporates; you have to work on it. Therapy is one way. Self-help books are another. Fitness, meditation, volunteering, religion are still more ways. How many of these things are you actively engaging in? How much are you actually trying versus sitting around and assuming that your situation will improve itself by itself or, even worse, accepting what you perceive to be your fate? I have no idea what your approach is, or what your app profiles look like, or what apps you’re using. If you have a friend whose honesty you trust, ask them for a no-holds-barred assessment of what you’re putting out there in the world. Do you need a haircut? You might need a haircut. While certainly, some people luck out in the conventional-attractiveness lottery, you may have noticed that “average” abounds because, well, that’s how average works. You don’t have to look like something grown in a Petri dish in some Hollywood studio in order to attract a mate. Look at families in any major shopping center for proof. You wouldn’t be writing if you didn’t feel deserving of love. You would have given up. Maybe bringing that thought to the forefront of your mind will suit you well. Say it right now: “I deserve to be loved.” And now act like it (though stay respectful, with your self-entitlement in check). As someone who spends a lot of time looking at men’s pictures on apps and then seeing them move in real time, I can tell you that the way a man carries himself can make or break his attractiveness. Carry yourself like someone who deserves to be loved and you may convince other people that this is, in fact, the case. —R.J. From: The Things My Boyfriend “Punishes” Me for Have Gotten Really Weird. (June 21st, 2021). More Sex Advice From Slate My husband and I have been happily married for 16 years and together for 17. We have four amazing children. Our sex life has always been amazing, never boring. We have worked to keep things interesting and make intimacy with each other a priority. Within the past year he has revealed to me that he has fantasies about dressing up as a woman in the bedroom. 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