The Guardian on relationships

[kaberett]

NSFW text!

My partner and I are both in our 30s and have loving and fulfilling sex a few times a week, although he doesn’t come as often as I do. Recently, he told me that he has been having wet dreams for the past year. I wondered if it was maybe stress or hormone related, as he has been pressured at work lately. Is there anything we can do to stop them, as it is upsetting him?

Encourage him to enjoy his nocturnal, unconscious sexuality. It is normal and – to some degree – most people have similar experiences at different points in their lives. It’s never easy to accept that, as creatures with different levels of consciousness, we are mysterious to ourselves. Nocturnal emissions may be more likely to occur when there is less “awake” sexual frequency, and your partner’s work stress could be responsible for the latter.

Maybe his body is de-stressing him, for which he should try to be appreciative, rather than rejecting. Being critical of our own natural bodily or psychological processes isn’t helpful. Far better that we try to simply accept that there are many human functions over which we have little conscious control.

You can help by showing acceptance yourself. But, at some level, people are also strangers to their partners, and he may actually be more worried about his anorgasmia during sex with you than he is letting on. That may be the most important conversation to initiate.

Comments

[kaberett]

... so the reason I'm staring in bafflement at this, right, is the responder's apparent total failure to consider that reasons to find it distressing might include "waking up in discomfort, thus disrupting sleep" or "needing to do laundry more often". I. What.

[synecdochic]

The reason I'm staring at the response in bafflement is that anorgasmia with partner + nocturnal emissions is, like, textbook "go to a doctor and get the plumbing checked out" territory. Seriously, no mention of a checkup with a urologist to rule out all kinds of stuff? Wtf!

[kaberett]

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS BAFFLING.

[sathari]

...wow, the possibility that that combo meant possible medical issues was not a thing I knew was a thing--- yay new knowledge for me!

[cereta]

YES, PLEASE!

[recessional]

. . . especially since it's upsetting HIM.

Like I was sort of braced for this to be the partner being Problematic and having a weird emotional hissy about him not managing orgasm with them but having the wet dreams blah blah blah (people can get weirdly hissy jealous of partners' bodily/sexual functions in the WEIRDEST ways) - but no, it's bothering HIM.

Which, you know, fair! I think it would bother me too! But from an advice column, not what I was expecting, and GIVEN that, homg wtf is that answer.

[kaberett]

RIGHT. That is also where I was expecting it to go! It instead appears to be "he's really upset about this but can't bring himself to talk to anyone about it so here's me doing that", to which the appropriate response is SURELY "obviously this is something he's finding difficult or embarrassing, but he really does need to talk to a doctor" or whatever, not... this.

[recessional]

I mean you at least talk to the doc in order to rule OUT any body weird! Because it might not be body-weird. It might be mind-weird, in which case you do mind things but like SINCE this can kind of be a sign of REALLY BAD BODY THINGS and/or be a body thing that a pretty simple round of drugs/whatever will make Disappear . . . go talk to doc about body things possibility first.

[vass]

And even if it IS mind-weird not body-weird, that response is so lacking in empathy. Your partner is upset about a thing? Tell him the thing is perfectly normal and natural so he's wrong to be upset and should stop feeling the way he is feeling! Solved! This will certainly not only compound his shame and discomfort.