Dear Sasha, I’m a straight man in my mid 20’s and have been dating the same girl since high school. Everything is great, except I feel like we fell in love too early in our lives. I’ve only ever had sex with my girlfriend and, aside from a couple of teenage fumblings, I’ve never fooled around with anyone else. I often feel like I missed out on being with other women in high school and university before finding refuge in the amazing woman that I’m dating and plan on marrying. I don’t hold any assumptions that university is a single man’s sexual playground but I’m a reasonably attractive, bright and charming guy.
I’m sure I could’ve had at least a few girlfriends/sexual encounters along the way. I couldn’t have asked for a better girlfriend, and I know she should be enough for me, but I’m constantly hounded by the desire to know what it’s like to be with someone else. Threesomes have been discussed but I don’t expect it to come to fruition. I’ve considered Craigslist, escorts and even massage parlours to try and get this out of my system, but never did any of it for fear of being outed or catching something (tough to explain when you lost your virginity together).
I’m also afraid that this could be a slippery slope. I don’t want to get skilled at cheating and find myself unable to stop. My other fear is that I don’t do it and end up five years into my marriage with two kids, give in to urges I never satisfied, get caught and then really ruin my life. What’s a guy to do?
-Settled at Seventeen?
Dear Settled,,
If everything was great, you wouldn’t be trotting out deadly clichés like, “she should be enough for me,” knowing deep inside that is a ludicrous standard for any relationship—girlfriend, friend or work colleague. In fact, the only relationship model I can see one person adequately fulfilling is the enemy. I think we can all agree that it’s pretty fucking satisfying having one lone nemesis.
You’ve thought a lot about this, Seventeen; you have all the potboiler themes carefully storyboarded (slippery slopes! STIs! Sex addiction!), yet distil them into one panel and your greatest fear is not hurting this amazing woman you’ve found refuge in but losing her and ruining your life. If that’s all you’re worried about, rest assured, people cheat all the time and don’t get caught. This is especially easy to do with a sex worker, someone who has a professional interest in discretion, detachment and their own good health.
Whenever I get this letter (and I get it a lot, almost as much as threesomes—oh wait, you want that too…), Mitch Hedberg comes to mind with his quote, “I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.” Could anything be a more perfect description of the almost compulsory lack of communication and the huge, unrealistic expectations imposed by coupledom?
Sex is not something you can just get out of your system—in a way, that’s like wondering how you can drain your body of its blood and still survive. Sex hormones are produced habitually by your endocrine system and even suppressing them chemically has proven difficult and unpredictable. If you’re afraid to talk to your mate about your true desires, marriage should be the last thing on your mind, unless you’re looking, to paraphrase that other old adage, to make an enemy and keep her close.
Dear Sasha, I read your column every week but it’s getting easier to skip over it as it’s always about prostitution and stripping. Mix it up a bit, will ya?
—Chris
Dear Chris,
Looking at the last several months, I see many topics addressed, for example: loss of sex drive, anal sex, clitorises and grammar, dick size, Asperger’s and sex, toy toxicity and pornography recommendations.
Intermingled with all of these topics is the very relevant issue to a sex column of sex work. This occupation remains stuck on the fringes because of unreasonable laws, and poorly understood since it’s so often conflated with trafficking, so naturally people are very curious about it. Still, instead of taking the time to complain about its regular occurrence in my column, why not write me something I can research that doesn’t involve sex work?
Got any questions for Sasha? E-MAIL: POULEDELUXE@YAHOO.COM
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