Sex advice: I brought a priceless work of art into my sex life. Now everything is falling apart.

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,

I (46m) work in historic art preservation, a relatively small field, so I have obscured some details of this letter for privacy. A co-worker and I began having an affair at work (she is married and chose not to disclose our secret to anyone) about six months ago. She is incredibly talented, attractive, and sexual. We would wait until after work hours to sneak back into the storage areas of our workplace, where we would engage in all sorts of sexual fantasies, many involving art, which is a career and passion for us both.

About a month into our trysting, I was receiving an excellent blow job behind a somewhat famous neoclassical marble statue, which happened to be in our workshop being serviced. Right before I could orgasm, I had a sudden bout of dizziness, which occasionally happens to me, so to steady myself and without thinking, I reached out and grabbed the statue. To be more specific, I grabbed the larger-than-life marble ass cheek of a Greek goddess. The cold hardness and sensual curves of the statue combined with the hot (real) woman sucking me off, and overwhelmed my sensory brain. It was a good orgasm. My partner noticed, and we began incorporating the statue into our sex game, at one point having pretend threesomes, and even a crisis when bodily fluids needed emergency cleanup on a priceless work of art. I even found myself fondling this artwork while I masturbated alone late after hours.

Unfortunately, the work on our love statue was completed about two months ago, and the project was packed and shipped back to its museum home, leaving me unable to be aroused. I have not been able to get erect since the statue has gone. I considered commissioning a replica, but a full-size marble and place to put it is beyond my modest means. My partner has been upset with my newfound erectile dysfunction and doesn’t believe that I am sincerely love-lorn over a piece of sculpted rock. She tried to tempt me with an offer to find a woman to dress up and participate in the same pose as our sculpture, but I can’t imagine hiring a person to do something so silly. This is the longest I have gone in my adult life without being aroused.

—Marble Mania

Dear Marble Mania,

There’s something about the formal tone and painstaking attention to detail in your letter that makes me wonder whether this is an embellished tale, but I’m willing to play along regardless, as the issue described has much potential to be worked through.

Who says marble is key here? Try commissioning a statue that looks like your beloved out of a more affordable material. Or go shopping for one that already exists—if nothing, it would be interesting to see if you respond to a similar but decidedly different sculpted body. Or try a mannequin or a sex doll. There is, after all, an upside to all of this: There will be no need for you to be putting your hands (or anything else) on a priceless piece of art any longer. For the ED, look into PDE5 inhibitors, and/or a cock ring. Sometimes things that are important are taken from us, and that can be disorienting or even cause certain deficits, but I think it makes more sense to try something, anything here rather than to admit that a marble statue straight up took you down.

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Dear How to Do It,

I’ve (27F) struggled with my mental health for years and, despite many years of therapy, it has recently started to interfere with my life in a way I couldn’t brush aside anymore. As a result, I decided to start taking an SSRI in addition to maintaining therapy. However, one of my biggest fears about taking an SSRI is the potential sexual dysfunction side effects. I know that both SSRIs and the sexual dysfunction they can cause are exceedingly common, but there’s not much out there on how to cope with them—especially as a woman!

My sexuality and my sexual relationship with my husband are very important to me, which is one of the reasons I’ve put off starting an SSRI for so long. I’m also wary of being on such high alert for adverse sexual side effects that I’ll create them simply through having stress/anxiety about it. Nothing makes it harder to orgasm than worrying about not being able to orgasm! How can I both talk myself down about this and also make sure I’m supporting my sexual health as I adjust to this new normal? A new normal that is hopefully happier and more balanced even if it does mean putting up with sexual side effects I’d rather not have.

—Prozac’d in the Sack

Dear Prozac’d in the Sack,

Indeed, the anxiety has already hit—you’re worried about something that hasn’t yet happened and may never. Still, your fear is not without justification—a substantial proportion of people who take SSRIs experience sexual side effects. Because of this, clinicians are well-equipped to combat these effects. Not every effort will be successful, but there are a ton of documented options that will allow you and your doctors to tinker. You could, for example, drop your dose. Or add bupropion to your regimen (that drug is known to have lesser side effects than other antidepressants and in some patients has even boosted libido). Scheduling sex for a time when your SSRI is less effective (if you find that it wears off over the course of the day, for example) could help, and so could a “drug holiday,” or a temporary abstinence from your dosage when you think you may have sex.

As of now, obviously, these options are all theoretical. You won’t know what you need until you understand the full impact of the SSRI on your system, and then what works to counter its potential side effects will be trial and error. It’s a long process and, yes, may even signal a new normal for you. But you’ll go through it all one step at a time, hopefully with the support of your husband and that of your therapist. In the worst-case scenario, you may have to choose between a sense of balance/happiness versus a robust sex life. I hope you don’t, but at least then you will have options and the agency to navigate them.

Dear How to Do It,

I’m wondering how to go about communicating with a partner who, to be honest, just isn’t that good at sex. My partner of three years and I are both in our mid-20s, and we are both trans/nonbinary people with vaginas. When we started dating, I topped almost exclusively, which worked well since they have always identified as a bottom. With time and hormone replacement therapy (HRT), I have come to enjoy being touched during sex, although I still spend the majority of the time topping. I don’t enjoy being penetrated and stick to clit rubbing or clit-focused oral when I am the one being pleasured. The problem is that my partner struggles to get me off even though it doesn’t take much to make me come.

I find that I am always telling them the same things when they are touching me (go lower, grab my clit instead of rubbing it, etc.) but it never sticks. They will sort of do what I am saying when I direct them, but they stray from it pretty quickly and have to be reminded again. The next time we have sex, it’s as if the information has left their brain. It seems that they either have a hard time remembering what we’ve discussed, or they simply don’t care that much. They have ADHD and are somewhat forgetful in general, so I’ve always thought it could be a memory issue, but this level of forgetfulness after repeated reminders is unusual even for them.

They also don’t really have a good ability to make repetitive motions for an extended amount of time. They often make one motion repetitively for five seconds or less before moving onto a different one. I am not sure if this is a mental or physical issue. I think there is a good chance that they are simply bored with doing the same motions for more than a few seconds at a time, but they have never admitted it. And as a top, I know what it’s like to become physically tired from repeating motions over and over, but I’ve always thought of it as a necessary part of pleasuring someone. I love to lean into the physical difficulty of topping, and I get that my partner isn’t so naturally inclined, but I wish they would do it for me!

The bottom line: I wish my partner was more invested in making sex better for me, especially since I feel like I do so much to please them. It really doesn’t take a lot for me to come. I both love them and am really turned on by them, and I just want to come once during sex to relieve my horniness and then get to topping them. I often don’t come when we have sex, and on particularly bad days my partner gets tired and feels “out of it” from trying for too long, and we have to stop altogether. I’ve faked it a couple of times, which I’m not proud of. How can I talk to them about this in a way that is gentle yet firm? How can I emphasize that if they follow the guidelines I’ve laid out, things will surely improve? And how can I figure out if their difficulty getting me off is out of apathy or genuine mental/physical limitations?

—It’s Not Rocket Science

Dear It’s Not Rocket Science,

I don’t want to lean too hard into any binary structure as clearly you and your partner are living beyond that and I think there’s way too much emphasis on a top/bottom schism in queer discourse, given that, in my anecdotal experience and per lots of data, versatility is extremely prevalent. Buuuut, you’re asking someone who has “always identified as a bottom” to top you, and you’re getting frustrated with the results. Talk about things not being rocket science! Based on the information you’ve provided, your partner may be showing signs that they’re uncomfortable in the role that you’ve assigned them. Sometimes people approach obligations half-heartedly merely to suggest that they’ve tried.

Do you have any sense of what your partner makes of this switching? I’m going to guess no. You seem mystified about a few things in your letter: You mention that “it seems” like they’re having a hard time remembering and/or don’t care, and that there’s “a good chance” they’re getting bored with repetitive motions. A conversation, conducted when you’re both feeling good about each other and the world that takes place in a non-sexual scenario, could help clear this up. I’m not suggesting that you go right into “gentle-yet-firm” instruction. I think you need to first understand how your partner feels about doing this stuff and hear from them as to why it’s so difficult. You should prepare yourself for answers that you don’t want to hear: “I’m just not into topping you,” being one of them. Perhaps your partner prefers to stay in one lane.

I know that you wrote a letter to an advice column to help you with your issues, but I’m urging you to go to your partner to find out what’s up with them and their relationship to the sex you’re both having. There’s too much supposition and guessing here, where there should be data. You could also consider showing your partner exactly how you like to be done, bringing yourself to orgasm in their presence. If they don’t join in, doing so could nonetheless be a good way to get you over the hump and into topping—there’s no shame in getting yourself off in front of your partner, provided that your partner’s cool with that.

—Rich

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