I Tried to Make a Joke About a Change in Our Sex Life. Now My Wife Is Staging a Strike.
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,
My wife and I have a healthy sexual relationship and historically haven’t had many challenges when it comes to our intimacy or connection. Recently, sex has become painful for her, I think from dryness, but possibly something else.
I casually asked her if it could possibly be an STI, thinking sometimes these things can lie dormant. I tried to laugh it off when it didn’t land well, and commented to the effect, “You know, ‘cause I don’t want to get it on my face.” Basically, I’m an idiot.
The thing is that I love going down on her. I get off on it so hard. However, now that I’ve said this and offended her, she is closed for business on oral. She’s super serious about my not getting in there, and she won’t engage in conversation about it. It’s been about a month. I don’t know what the right thing to do is here. I respect her boundary, and I haven’t pushed the issue, but I’m really hoping this is temporary. I don’t know how to bounce back. Any advice?
—Hungry for the Kitty
Dear Hungry for the Kitty,
How often do you make jokes that offend your wife? If this happens a lot, I’d apologize for the whole pattern and let her know in very direct language that you want to work on it. If this is a one-time issue, consider whether you’ve clearly apologized. Ideally, an apology contains a direct acknowledgement of what you did, an accurate description of how that hurt the other person, and some fairly feasible statement of what you’re doing to prevent recurrence of the same issue. Justifications, excuses, attempts to point out where the other person is contributing to or exacerbating the issue, or discussions of how the consequences of her reaction to your words are negative for you are distractions at this stage from the main point, which is, “I know I did this thing that hurt you in this way, and I regret it. Here’s what I’m doing to decrease the chances of hurting you again.”
From there, you’re going to have to continue to be patient. My instinct is that you hit on something your wife was already sensitive about (most of us do factor sexual prowess into our identity in some way, she probably misses sex without pain, and the idea that vulvas are dirty is a tired groaner she’s likely had leveled at her more than once since she her youth—any one of those things could increase the intensity of her reaction to your joke). Where we often turn to our partners for comfort and a place to process things we’re emotional about, it’s hard to do that when your partner has hurt your feelings with a flippant comment regarding the exact issue you’re upset over. Your sense of humor hasn’t allowed you to be a source of support for your wife on this subject, and it’s put a barrier between you and her ability to help you understand everything that’s coming to bear on the situation.
Think back on previous tensions in your relationship, or similar situations with others in your wife’s life, that can give you some sense of how long she usually needs to get to a place where she can talk through something of this magnitude. Mark your calendar, tell yourself it might take that long, and reevaluate if you’re still stuck in this limbo when that date comes around.
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