Advice for Our Sexual Culture: Part IV

Answering your questions on keeping your fantasies hidden, the problem with men's sex toys, online crushes and whether a better sex life will really improve our relationships.

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Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.

I am back again with another round of your intimate questions. This week, I considered how open we need to be about our hidden desires with our partners, the reality of online crushes, whether a happy sex life means a happy relationship and why it’s still kind of weird for men to have sex toys. Yippee!

And while I’m not totally done with the previous set of submissions, I’ve created a new submission form for anyone who’d like to share now. Here’s the link. I’d love to read what you have to say.

As with previous weeks, the majority of this column will be reserved for paid subscribers. Thank you so much for being here.

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My bf of 3 years has some kinks that he holds very private and near to himself. We’ve had a lot of conversations about me being open or willing to experiment with him but he had a previous relationship where they had some failed attempts. Not only that but he super easily feels shameful or like “he’s making it too one sided” if we are to explore something from his fantasies. We’ve incorporated things but he never explains any of it before/after. We had a long convo recently where he said in his perfect world he would meet someone who has analogous fantasies. I pushed him on this a bit and asked why he never used Feeld or Fetlife to meet people and his response was that it could all crumble if meeting someone who “just knew” was to happen— then it would be too real and no longer just for himself. I really dont know how to feel about any of this. Obviously people are allowed their right to private fantasies but it makes me feel odd and like set aside. We have a really great sex life and I want to see those freakier sides of him because I also want to experiment more myself. But his response to that is usually more about encouraging me to listen to/find my own versus sharing in his with him. — 29, fem, NYC

I’m often torn on whether all this deep introspection and litigation of our sex lives we’re encouraged to do is productive. A lot of the time, we’re probably overthinking things to the point of discontent. But it seems to me that your boyfriend has already done that introspection and litigation, and is now leaving you out of it. And maybe that’s fine. Maybe these kinks and fantasies are not important enough to him to seriously pursue. Not every sexual urge needs to be acted upon.

Nevertheless, you are probably right to feel excluded. It doesn’t sound like these fantasies are something he feels compelled to act upon, especially not with you, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t harboring them in a way that contributes to emotional distance between the two of you. I do actually think it’s fine for one partner to have their own private desires, but why even suggest that they exist if you’re unwilling to dig into them further? It strikes me as an intentional method of keeping you at arms’ length.

His framing also gives me pause. There is something about a partner’s knowledge (and perhaps, by extension, maybe consent) that ruptures his fantasies. He says it would become “too real” if it was something planned and discussed with another person who explicitly shares in these desires, but I imagine he actually thinks the opposite: it wouldn’t be “real” enough.

At the same time, I may well be overthinking it all. It’s just as likely that he doesn’t understand his own fantasies here well enough to even articulate them to you. Perhaps rather than trying to incorporate those kinks specifically, whatever they may be, it is better to focus on continuing on with a sex life that is satisfying for you both. Does he feel that something is missing by leaving these fantasies to the side? He could be perfectly content without them. In that case, you might be happier leaving it that way, too.

I have a fleshlight. I've never told this to anybody and I do feel a little ashamed about it. I bought it after I was single for about a year. I like it more than I thought I would. I don't think I could even tell a girlfriend I have one and I think she would look down on me for having one. Even though I wouldn't be bothered at all if my girlfriend had a vibrator or something like it. Why are male sex toys still bad when female sex toys are everywhere now? — Guy, 20s, Arizona