Role Perversal

After 19 years together, my husband and I have finally managed to have a really good conversation about our desires. We both struggled to nail down what it is we want — he is a long-term Catholic guilt sufferer — but got to talking about what porn he likes. Turns out he’s into these coercive type scenes, things like, “I caught your shoplifting, eat me out or I’ll call the cops!” and “You can’t make rent? Let me fuck you and we will call it even!” type stuff. He says it’s less about what the action actually is (the sex acts themselves) and more about the power exchange going in either direction (sometimes he fantasizes about being coerced, sometimes he fantasizes about doing the coercing).

Now that sounds hot as hell to me — I’m more of a reader of erotica and I tend to go for free use / MFM stories — but we have a few issues to deal with:

1. He doesn’t find the idea of treating me badly hot because he loves me, whereas in the fantasy situation, he doesn’t care what the other party thinks. I hate the Madonna/whore thing, so that was frustrating to hear.
2. Neither of us enjoys role-play. We’ve tried it but the effort of playing a character and improvising really takes us out of the moment. Obviously, it’s hard to play any of the types of scenes we’re talking about without getting into role-play.

Is there anything we can do to take this dynamic and play with it as ourselves? We’ve got two young kids at home so our time for anything spontaneous is very limited.

Recently Exploring New Things

“It takes a lot of guts to express a new sexual desire nineteen years in, and I want to congratulate them for putting it all out in the open,” said Claire Perelman, a licensed therapist who works with couples seeking to improve their sexual connections. “The possibility of feeling rejected by our lovers — or ourselves — can make it so challenging to be that vulnerable. RENT and her husband are a great reminder that you never know how excited your partner might be about trying something new!”

I agree with Claire because Claire’s right: It’s great that you two are finally having this conversation… but I gotta say… this was a conversation you should’ve had six months into your relationship, RENT, not nearly twenty years in. (I checked with Claire about this, and she agreed with me.) You’re not alone in putting this convo off: a lot of us avoid having honest conversations about our desires and/or kinks early on because we fear derailing a promising new relationship. But these conversations get harder the more time passes, not easier, because being rejected by someone we’ve fallen love with is scarier than being rejected by someone we just met. Very few people wanna be with someone who blurts out all of their kinks on the first date/hookup — not even other kinky people — but by the six-month mark (ideally) those kink cards should be face-up on the table.

Okay, RENT, so you’ve finally had this conversation — you now know about your husband’s kinks (does he know about yours?) — but these aren’t fantasies you can realize together. Not just because your husband has one of those annoying Madonna/whore hangups, but because realizing his fantasies would require you to engage in role play, and that’s not something either of you enjoys. And since this is a fantasy scenario that can be ethically explored through role play, your husband — who can’t do role play — has hopefully accepted that he can never realize his fantasies with anyone, like, ever.

So, where do you go from here?

“When engaging in kink, it’s helpful to understand what about the kink excites you,” said Claire. “RENT’s husband identified that it’s not about the sex acts, it’s about the power exchange. There’s lots of ways to play with power dynamics outside of role play, degradation, and humiliation.”

In other words, RENT, you can’t explore your husband’s very specific “but you must pay the rent!” fantasy scenario, but you might be able to explore and enjoy other sex-under-a-mutually-agreeable-degree-of-duress scenarios that work for both of you.

“First, RENT and her husband could try watching the porn he enjoys together,” said Claire, “playing with the fantasy before playing with each other. They could also negotiate ‘free use’ scenes that include both their interests. If they agree on a set time frame where RENT’s husband can make sexual demands, they could incorporate the transactional nature of the sex he fantasizes about while accommodating the scheduling constraints of parenthood. For example, they could agree that after RENT’s husband helps the kids get to sleep, RENT can’t refuse her husband’s demand for a blowjob that helps him to get sleep. There are a lot of creative avenues for this couple to take that aren’t Madonna or whore, but an entirely third path that they can figure out together.”

Follow Claire Perelman on Instagram and Threads @sexclarified.

I’m a 28-year-old woman who reads your column out loud every week with my 24-year-old hottie Italian boyfriend. We feel like you’ve been answering a lot of grim questions lately about sad relationships! So, we’re writing in with something fun! I love to be tied (don’t use “tied up,” Dan, it’s just “tied”), and my vanilla boyfriend encourages me to get that need met in our rope community. I’m a yoga instructor and have the stamina required to endure really elaborate Shibari suspension scenes. I want my boyfriend to get suspended with me sometime! We would make a beautiful and very sexy work of bondage art! While I engage in some light sexual play with the men who tie me (“forced” orgasms mostly, sometimes oral service), bondage doesn’t have to be sexual! Which means, my boyfriend doesn’t have to pretend it’s a turn on for him or do anything sexual if he were to get tied with me — but if he was inspired to do something sexual (or allow something sexual to be done to him!), that would be great! — he just has to hold (or be held in!) the position (which he’s good at! he practices yoga too! it’s how we met!) while photos are taken. He says he’s “indifferent, not opposed,” but has refused to give me a definitive yes or no answer. But he said he would do it if you told him to! So, Dan, please tell him to!

Boyfriend Only Needs Dan Amazingly Gentle Encouragement

P.S. We also listen to your podcast!

My first impulse was to ask why your boyfriend didn’t treat your request like an invitation to play?

Not “play” in the sense of an adult sexual game (not role play, not kink play), but “play” in the sense of childhood games like Cops & Robbers or Cowboys & Indians. But then it occurred to me that adults your age didn’t grow up playing Cops & Robbers (with plastic handcuffs) or Cowboys & Indians (with improvised lassos), as those aren’t games kids with helicopter parents would be allowed to play. They’re also not games kids should play (pernicious copaganda, racist tropes), and they’re not games kids who grew up with smartphones and those far less problematic first-person shooter games were even interested in playing.

Anyway, in the spirit of play — and in the spirit of indulging his girlfriend — I think your boyfriend should get suspended with you, BONDAGE, provided he doesn’t have an unstated aversion to being slowly hoisted into the air with hemp ropes by a man with tattoos and a topknot wearing Peruvian draw-string pants. (I follow a bunch of Shibari practitioners on Instagram, BONDAGE, I know the look.)

But you have to promise — once your boyfriend is off the ground — that you won’t try to initiate anything sexual. Even if you think your boyfriend is aroused. You will also make sure the person doing the tying understands that this is a non-sexual/non-sensual session, which means no avoidable touching in your swimsuit areas and no suggestive banter. You’re clearly hoping your boyfriend might find that he enjoys bondage in the same way you do, BONDAGE, but if you don’t want his first bondage experience to be his last, you won’t try to upgrade from bondage + photo shoot to bondage + “forced” orgasms. If your boyfriend winds up enjoying finding the experience arousing, you can explore that the next time he agrees to get tied with you. But if you initiate something sexual the first time — even if he becomes aroused — he may feel manipulated and/or violated once he crashes out (refractory periods can be unpredictable), BONDAGE, and then there won’t be a second time.

P.S. Your boyfriend — a regular reader alouder of my column — had to know what my answer would be. So, either your boyfriend secretly wanted to get tied (just tied! and suspended! not tied up!) or there’s something about a gay man ordering him to get tied that appeals to him. Either way, your boyfriend is getting tied!

P.P.S. Thanks for reading and listening!

I was on the verge of having an affair. We didn’t actually do anything. We only talked about it. And the talking about it was glorious. We were each other’s dream partners. But he got cold feet, as he didn’t want to cheat on his wife, and we never went there. We gave up our dream of being together and settled into being close friends. And while that friendship has endured for many years, the hope that maybe someday we could be together is still there. The hope that one day we could be happy.

But there are too many obstacles in the way of our happiness. First and foremost, our obligations to our spouses, both of whom we love, even if things aren’t going well, especially because those things are not their faults. On my end, I’ve been caregiving for a partner who is very ill. I love him, but he’s not the person anymore, mentally or physically, that I first fell in love with. Sometimes I feel like I’m more his mother than his wife. It’s still a kind of love, though, but one you would call companionate. I can’t leave him. He needs me. But I have needs, too. (I already hear your voice in my head, telling me to do what I need to do to stay married and stay sane.)

I sometimes fantasize about this friend, who won’t be leaving his spouse, either. But I desperately want to fantasize together again, even if we still never act on it. Fantasizing together would be enough for me, I think. The dream is enough for me. But even dreaming makes him feel like a bad person. How do we go back there in a way where we don’t act on it, don’t feel guilty, but can at least have some happiness in our otherwise dreary lives?

One Often Frustrated Dreamer Asks

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