Q My husband and I are a straight couple in our early 50s, and we’ve been married for more than 30 years. We were raised to wait for sex till we got married—this was back in the early 80s—and we did. Our wedding night was pretty disappointing, since neither of us knew what we were doing. He got off, but I didn’t. We both assumed that there was something wrong with me, because he didn’t have any problem coming, right? We were both raised to believe that sex was something men took from women, that it was difficult for women to orgasm, and that no woman wanted sex as much as a man did. We read books, we went to counseling, but nothing changed. This went on for a couple of decades. He’s a great guy—funny, loyal, faithful, great dad to our kids—so I figured I was lousy in bed and I was lucky he put up with me. Recently, I got my hands on a vibrator. OH. MY. GOD. There’s nothing wrong with me! Now I think my libido might actually be stronger than his. But even with what I now know about my sexuality, we have been unable to figure out how to get me to orgasm when we are together. I’ve suggested some milder forms of kink, but he isn’t interested. I suspect we’re just incompatible in bed, which has made me a fairly vocal opponent of the “waiting for marriage” garbage, much to my husband’s consternation. He thinks it’s so sweet that neither of us has ever had sex with someone else. So you can probably see my dilemma. Neither of us has ever been unfaithful, and neither of us is OK with being unfaithful—I know he isn’t. Even though I’m intrigued by the idea, I don’t think I could pull off the lying and deceit required to do it behind his back. We also live in a small town where it would be nearly impossible to have a discreet affair. I don’t really want a divorce, because it means losing the entire life we’ve built together, which is no small thing. But when I think about never having good sex in my entire life, I can hardly stand it. What would you do? —Bored in Bed for an Unbearably Long Time
But that’s me, BIBFAULT. What should you do? I really couldn’t tell you.
A I had sex with someone in his mid-20s when I was 15—I had sex with two mid-20s someones at the same time when I was 15—and I regard that encounter as consensual and I wasn’t traumatized by it. So you can take this question to some other advice columnist, TUT, or you can stop policing your wife’s feelings about her own sexual history.
