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Savage Love: husband refuses to spice things up in the bedroom
I’m a 43-year-old woman, married for 19 years, and I need your help! Like most middle-aged moms, I read Fifty Shades Of Grey. I understand that it is fiction. But it has motivated me to spice things up in the bedroom. The problem is that my husband is a dud. He’s not open to trying anything that isn’t missionary or doggy. That’s the extent of it. I feel as if I’ve tried everything. He’s happy with the way things are. Period. What do I do?
Woman Has Interesting Perversions
Here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go warn your younger self not to make the same mistake that so many women make in their 20s. That is, dumping guys with relatively harmless, easily indulged kinks—the foot fetishists, the guys who wear panties, the guys who want their girlfriends to wear superhero costumes while they peg their ass—because kinky guys are “weird,” “not normal,” or “probably gay.”
Backing way the hell up for a moment: I’ve been writing about sex and relationships, men and women, kinky sex and vanilla sex for 20 years. It is my informed opinion that men typically become aware of their kinks—they typically become hyperaware of them—when they’re teenagers. Many women, on the other hand, don’t seem to become aware of their kinks until they’re in their 30s or 40s. Maybe it has something to do with the sexual peak, which men are believed to hit in their teens and women in their 30s (and which many people believe to be bullshit), or maybe it simply takes women longer to overcome the misogynist slut-shaming that they’re subjected to as girls and to openly embrace their sexualities and sexual interests.
Whatever the cause, I’ve seen it happen again and again: A woman tosses aside a series of decent but somewhat kinky guys until she finds a guy whose sexual interests are “normal,” e.g., missionary, doggy, and no-hands-on-the-back-of-the-head oral. And that’s the guy she marries. Then, 10 or 20 years later, she develops some “weird,” “not normal,” “probably gay” sexual interests of her own. Now she wants to spice things up, but—fuckadoodledoo—20 years ago, she dumped a nice kinkster and married a total sexual dud instead.
So here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go tell your twentysomething self not to dump someone because he’s kinky, WHIP, because one day you’re going to come into your own kinks. And when that day comes, you’ll want to be able to say something like this to your husband: “So, hey, you know how I’ve been jerking you off with my feet/letting you wear my panties/dressing up like Aquagirl and fucking your ass for the last 19 years? It’s been a lot of fun, honey, and you know I love you and you know I love your kinks. But it’s payback time. I just finished reading this book, and it really turned me on and now I wanna get canned and you’re going to can me.”
If you don’t have access to a time machine, WHIP, tell your husband that while he may be happy with the way things are, you’re not. Which means things have to change.
Woman Has Interesting Perversions
Here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go warn your younger self not to make the same mistake that so many women make in their 20s. That is, dumping guys with relatively harmless, easily indulged kinks—the foot fetishists, the guys who wear panties, the guys who want their girlfriends to wear superhero costumes while they peg their ass—because kinky guys are “weird,” “not normal,” or “probably gay.”
Backing way the hell up for a moment: I’ve been writing about sex and relationships, men and women, kinky sex and vanilla sex for 20 years. It is my informed opinion that men typically become aware of their kinks—they typically become hyperaware of them—when they’re teenagers. Many women, on the other hand, don’t seem to become aware of their kinks until they’re in their 30s or 40s. Maybe it has something to do with the sexual peak, which men are believed to hit in their teens and women in their 30s (and which many people believe to be bullshit), or maybe it simply takes women longer to overcome the misogynist slut-shaming that they’re subjected to as girls and to openly embrace their sexualities and sexual interests.
Whatever the cause, I’ve seen it happen again and again: A woman tosses aside a series of decent but somewhat kinky guys until she finds a guy whose sexual interests are “normal,” e.g., missionary, doggy, and no-hands-on-the-back-of-the-head oral. And that’s the guy she marries. Then, 10 or 20 years later, she develops some “weird,” “not normal,” “probably gay” sexual interests of her own. Now she wants to spice things up, but—fuckadoodledoo—20 years ago, she dumped a nice kinkster and married a total sexual dud instead.
So here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go tell your twentysomething self not to dump someone because he’s kinky, WHIP, because one day you’re going to come into your own kinks. And when that day comes, you’ll want to be able to say something like this to your husband: “So, hey, you know how I’ve been jerking you off with my feet/letting you wear my panties/dressing up like Aquagirl and fucking your ass for the last 19 years? It’s been a lot of fun, honey, and you know I love you and you know I love your kinks. But it’s payback time. I just finished reading this book, and it really turned me on and now I wanna get canned and you’re going to can me.”
If you don’t have access to a time machine, WHIP, tell your husband that while he may be happy with the way things are, you’re not. Which means things have to change.
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Also, I'm not well up on DCU outside of the Batverse. Is there actually an Aquagirl?
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In the follow-up, will he tell a reader it's their own fault for marrying their first lover without pre-negotiating what to do if one of them discovers a kink interest in time for the silver anniversary?
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Not to mention, yeah, a) victim-blaming and b) he has no idea what her actual history is, from the letter.
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Victim blaming, per his usual. Casting sex in relationships as obligation and commodity, per his usual. Being entirely creepy about the sex in hetero relationships, per his usual.
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Dan's diatribe aside, the pithy final paragraph is good advice: the couple needs to have a frank discussion about how sex can meet both their needs. If it turns out that they simply are no longer sexually compatible, the LW will have to think about her priorities in life and whether her husband is worth keeping.
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Savage is equating "into something kinky" with "into the kink I like." This is wrong. Excruciatingly wrong. There's no reason to expect a bondage enthusiast to have any interest in painplay, or dominance, or roleplay, or dressup. It's not binary. "You're kinky? Great, me too!" (like "You're religious? Great, me too!" and "You care about politics? Great, me too!") is a recipe for frustration unless it's the beginning of a much more detailed conversation.
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