I Came Home Early to Find My Husband’s “Guest.” Then I Found Out What He’s Been Quietly Doing for Years.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

Two weeks ago, I returned to my apartment building at an unusual time for me due to a kid emergency that scrambled plans for the day. A man was waiting for the elevator in the lobby, and greeted me with a pat on the back and a side hug. I figured I had met him before and engaged in polite chitchat for the short ride. He followed me to my apartment, and when we got there, I pulled off my hat, and he looked right at me, and we both realized he had mistaken me for my husband.

Long story short, the guy is an erotic masseur whom my husband has been seeing about twice a year for five to six years. Apparently, he didn’t see my husband’s text canceling their session.

Though I’ve been spinning ever since, I haven’t confronted my husband and need to provide some context as to why. My husband and I have been together for 11 years, and have two children. I was raised Catholic, as in I spent most of my youth in Catholic schools, and nearly joined the seminary. It took me a lot to get through all that conditioning, and so, while I am openly gay, I still struggle with feelings of guilt and shame around sex. When I feel stress, of any kind, the first thing to tank is my ability to have sex. I suddenly just can’t fathom the idea of all the physical effort, cleanup, and mental soothing I need to do to remind myself that I’m not going to hell for wanting it/doing it.

As a result, my husband and I have been intimate maybe five times in the last nine years. Before he stopped asking, I used to turn him down all the time for many reasons, though my main excuse was general stress. Two years after we met (one year after we married), my mother was diagnosed with dementia, then my father, and then my husband’s father. We adopted two kids, and both of us advanced to bigger and harder jobs. While he made it clear that he loved and missed sex, I just couldn’t mentally handle it the vast majority of the time. (He never pressured me, and never made me feel bad.)

So now I don’t know how to think about what my husband has been doing. Primarily, I feel an immense amount of guilt. We had plenty of (side) sex for the first two years we were together, which was already a compromise for my husband, who was very much a penetrative type guy, and then it just vanished. I can see where it would seem like a bait-and-switch situation. We were already in the adoption process at that time, so I get that maybe he felt he was preserving our marriage and our family by stepping out quietly and under the radar. I have to be honest, I’ve only recently had therapy to delve into my upbringing, so had I found out—or if he had even asked me if he could participate in extracurricular activities—I would have left him immediately. Partially from reading your column and other work on sex and shame, I feel like I’ve grown in my understanding of monogamy, sex, long-term relationships, and desire, but I still feel possessive, betrayed, and very angry. How should I approach my husband about all this? Despite the guilt, my first impulse is to pack a bag.

Dear Guilty and Betrayed,

The amount of grace you’re extending to your husband, by thinking through his perspective, is a great instinct. If you can bring that desire to understand into conversations with him, and he is able to be as honest as you are curious, the two of you have a solid chance of laying everything on the table and making real, informed choices about where your relationship goes, rather than following impulses or letting emotions dictate the direction.

If you’re still in therapy, or can schedule a couple of sessions with your therapist, that’ll give you a space to consider the strong feelings you describe. If that isn’t an option, journaling, thinking in the shower, or talking with a trusted friend who is outside of your husband’s social circle are all good strategies that work well for most people. If you can access all four of these tactics, even better—go for it. Do know that sometimes even experienced polyamory people feel possessiveness or jealousy in scenarios that have been negotiated and they’ve consented to. Regardless of any possible reasoning on your husband’s part, you were betrayed. You didn’t agree to his outside activities. Anger is a very common response to this type of situation. You very well might arrive at packing a bag and filing for divorce. You also might decide that you want to work things out and renegotiate the terms of the marriage. The more that your decisions are grounded in facts and reason, the less room there is for regret and angst later.

Maybe this period of consideration gives you a strong answer—if that’s the case, that’s OK. If you are leaning toward divorce, you may want to consult a lawyer about what you need to do to protect yourself. Whether you’re coming into the conversation saying, “I met your masseuse and I want a divorce,” “I met your masseuse and I want to be monogamous again,” or that you aren’t sure what you want but the two of you need to talk, be as calm and direct as you can. Face your husband at a bit of an angle or from slightly to one side to avoid squaring off with him. Pick a time when the two of you have privacy (where the kids won’t hear you) and time to delve into whatever needs to be discussed.

Get sex advice—submit a question!

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.

Thanks! Your question has been submitted.

Dear How to Do It,

I’ve been going out with a wonderful guy, “Zack,” for several months now. The only problem is that Zack is hung like a horse, and I’m five feet and two inches tall and petite. Suffice it to say, penetration is … difficult to achieve. It’s great once we get going, but even after four months, more often than not, I feel like I’m going to explode for the first 30 minutes. Is there anything I can do to make it so I can have an easier time in the beginning?

—Trying to Be a Size Queen for Him

Dear Trying to Be a Size Queen for Him,

Length and girth are two very different measurements to navigate. The problem of length can be easily mitigated with the OhNut (Rich dug this device up years ago, and I’ve road-tested it myself with a few people—it really is as good as advertised, though combined with condoms can be a bit much for the person wearing all of that). Girth is trickier to handle.

What’s happening in the course of those first 30 minutes that you’re describing as “getting going”? And how can you do more of that earlier in the interaction—maybe even before insertion? Usual factors are time and patience, lubrication, and orgasms for the woman.

Here’s one ideal scenario as an example: The woman has at least one solid orgasm from clitoral stimulation. Extra lubrication is applied. The penis is inserted slowly, with pauses as needed, to allow her vaginal canal to adjust and relax. She breathes at a normal speed and depth throughout. Then, and only then, thrusting becomes more rapid. This is far from the only way, but it may be useful to compare this to your current status quo.

If applicable, you can acquire the OhNut yourself. But Zack is going to have to wear it. And you can give yourself that clitoral orgasm, and apply lube, but Zack is going to have to exercise patience when it comes to the pace of penetration. My point here is that this is a collaborative effort. The only thing I know of that you can do entirely on your own is visualization, which may not work for you at all and can only take you so far, even if you do find it helpful. That’ll look like imagining your vagina widening and lengthening. You might picture your parts as an anatomical drawing, or as anything more metaphorical that tickles your fancy, as long as it’s in the theme of expanding. This can help relax your muscles. At the end of the day, though, you’ll need to talk about this with Zack. The good news is that “your dick is so huge” is hardly ever a difficult place to start a conversation.

❄️ ☃️ Need Advice? ☃️ ❄️

Our columnists want to hear from you! Write to us with a question about parenting, life, sex, money, and work. No issue is too big or too small!

Dear How to Do It,

When I masturbate, I don’t think of anything except how it feels. My mind is just blank. I can try to make myself think of something, or someone, but it doesn’t work. So I stopped trying. For this reason, I was confused about my sexuality for a long time—everything I read or saw on TV made it seem like I would know if I was gay, straight, or bi based on the people I thought about when I touched myself. But I never thought of any people!

I had crushes outside of this, of course, but the fact that they weren’t in my head when I came made me wonder if I was just pretending to have crushes. Eventually, I started having a lot of sex and realized I was attracted to and enjoyed sex with a lot of different kinds of people and stopped worrying about the fact that I don’t think of anyone when I wank as a sign of anything. I haven’t had sex in a while, and am not really interested in dating right now. I’d hope to have sex with people again, obviously, but it’s not a current priority, so I’m back to wanking a lot, but with my blank brain. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever heard of this or think there is something wrong with me.

Justin Lehmiller, who wrote an entire book on sexual fantasies, writes that 97 percent of the 4,175 Americans he surveyed in his research reported having sexual fantasies. That leaves three percent who don’t, or at least wouldn’t describe themselves as doing so, and this figure is fairly consistent across his other studies. Being in a group of people that makes up that small a percentage can feel complicated, so let’s contextualize it further. Natural redheads are less than 2 percent of the world’s population. According to the BBC, it only takes 3.5 percent of the population engaged in nonviolent protest to “ensure serious political change.” To put it most broadly, 3 percent of the world population is a little under 250 million people. And aside from not fantasizing, having red hair, or being prone to civil disobedience, lots of folks have at least one aspect of themselves in which they are an outlier.

Wrong is a pretty strong word. From my perspective, you’re able to enjoy masturbation and sex with partners, and have gained an understanding of who you like to have sex with and how you like that sex to be through experience. Unless you’re consistently bothered by not fantasizing, I’d chalk this up to being one of your quirks and enjoy your life.

More Advice From Slate

I’m a 44-year-old woman who is having a lot of sex with men again after ending a 14-year monogamous marriage. I’ve always had a sky-high sex drive and consider myself very sex positive. I had tons of wonderful sex in my 20s, and it is even better in my 40s on many levels. But I’m having an issue that I’ve started to perceive as recurring and it’s messing with my head: For whatever reason, the men I was with in my 20s were all uncircumcised…