How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Jessica and Rich here. It’s anonymous!
Dear How to Do It,
My wife and I have been married for 14 years. When we first got together, she said she had a certain condition, but was in remission at the time.
She suffered from inflammatory bowel syndrome. Over the years, she has had periodic flare-ups during which we abstained from sexual activity. However, last week, I learned that all these years she has feigned having the illness to have an excuse to avoid sex with me.
The proof came when I arrived home from work early and found that she had been eating tortilla chips with hot salsa (she had previously claimed to be unable to eat anything spicy due to her “illness”). When I demanded to know why she had lied to me all this time, her excuse was that she thought it was the only way I would respect her wishes if she wasn’t feeling up to having sex. It really hurts to think that she would feel the need to stage this elaborate ruse because she automatically didn’t think I’d respect her right not to have sex if she didn’t want to. Now I don’t know whether I even want to continue being married to her. Is it possible to get over this sort of deception?
—Upset Over a (Fake) Upset Stomach
Dear Upset Over a (Fake) Upset Stomach,
Ah, yes, the old reveal-via-salsa. It’s practically a plot device at this point. Look, the fact of your wife’s deception is understandably upsetting, but I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere without empathy. You need to invest in the why. Why did your wife feel that she needed an excuse to get out of sex with you? Is she generally indirect and non-confrontational? Is there anything you’ve done or in your general tone that could have informed her wariness of giving it to you straight? Did something in her past, perhaps another partner, make her hesitant to turn anyone down for sex?
Don’t take this so personally. Use it as an opportunity to investigate and get to know your wife on a deeper level. Look beyond the principle of her deception to the root causes. You can immediately tell her that she doesn’t need to invent excuses to refuse sex—she can turn you down at any time, and that’s OK (which absolutely should be the truth, by the way). It seems unlikely that she would devise such a ruse for sport. Involve yourself in the reasons behind it.
—Rich
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