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’ve been happily married to my wife for 26 years, and we have two grown children. Our sex life is pretty good, but there is one thing, at least for me, that would make it so much better. My wife does very little, if any, pubic hair trimming. I prefer a nice, freshly shaved vagina to go down on and have intercourse with. Truthfully, it really turns me on. But my wife refuses. She says she’s lazy and it takes too much time. I’ve spoken to her in the most sensitive ways possible—I’ve told her it’s like kissing her lips when I go down on her, etc. I’ve never been forceful about it and I’ve told her I would reciprocate and otherwise do anything to my appearance anywhere if she told me it turned her on. But alas, nothing. Just looking for some advice to see if there is any other route I can take to try and get somewhere with her on this topic.
—Too Much Hair
Dear Too Much Hair,
It’s going to be hard to change your wife’s habits this far into your relationship based on your preferences. In fact, at any point, doing so would be a challenge, and not generally one worth taking on, but it’s especially so now, when you’ve had 26 years of “pretty good sex.” You’re convinced that her shaving would make it “so much better,” but barring extramarital sex, you don’t have a point of reference for such certainty. Seems like this is just your fantasy that you’re trying to impose on your wife’s body. So far your gentle suggestions have not been taken up, and since you pride yourself on not being forceful, it seems like acceptance is in order. Your wife doesn’t feel like shaving her pubic hair. It’s her body, so she gets to choose how she does or doesn’t style her pubes.
However, one thing that you can try is asking her if you can shave or trim her as part of erotic play. If all that’s keeping her from shaving is the time spent on it, well, here’s a way to use that time as a bonding experience. See if she’s down? However, she may have left reasons out that she doesn’t want to shave, including that when it starts to grow back, the stubble can make it very itchy (another argument for trimming it instead). So don’t be surprised if she shoots this idea down, should you be interested in it in the first place.
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Dear How to Do It,
I’m a woman who’s in the early stages of seeing a man who has disclosed HSV+ status to me. I’ve casually dated people in the past who were also positive, so have done a decent amount of research on safety, transmission rates, and best practices, and I feel comfortable hooking up with a trusted partner on meds, avoiding sexual contact during active outbreak periods, and using protection. I understand the stigma is far worse than the disease and risk of transmission is low when precautions are taken.
The issue now is that I think I might come to really, really like this person, and the thought of having to use condoms for the entirety of a potential long-term, committed relationship is bumming me out a bit. Preferences wise, I’ve got kind of a cum thing, so being able to interact with that aspect of sex is important to me. I guess my first question is: are there safer sex practices that would still allow us to indulge that part of my sexuality? Should I assume encouraging him to cum on areas of my body outside of mouth and genitals negates risk of transmission? What are the real stats on unprotected sex, with meds, sans outbreak?
—Not That Big a Deal (I Think)
Dear Not That Big a Deal (I Think),
Your mindset—relaxed but vigilant—is about as primed as possible for navigating this. It’s true that herpes stigma is, in many cases, worse than the virus but of course, no one wants an infection that they can avoid. Herpes is so prevalent, though, that you may not have avoided it. According to an expert I asked about this issue in a previous column, most people who have HSV-2 don’t know that they have it. You may already have contracted it without knowing it.
Assuming the strain in question is HSV-2, another expert I talked to for that same column (which you should read for full context) told me that he estimated that the risk for HSV-2 transmission is 1 in 1,000 acts, in instances of vaginal sex without condoms or valacyclovir use (but also not during an active outbreak). He estimated that the transmission rates for oral contact would be far less, since HSV-2 “doesn’t take very well to the oral cavity.” The stats are generally elusive, but here’s a 2004 study on the efficacy of once-daily valacyclovir which found that over an eight-month period, 4 of 743 instances of transmission in people whose partners were given the antiretroviral, versus 16 of 741 transmissions in those whose HSV-2-positive partner was given a placebo. (Thirty-seven percent of participants reported not using condoms during the study.) Those are extremely low rates. Something that tips the scales in your favor is that HSV-2 is transmitted more frequently in the months after initial infection; the longer away from that you get, the more the risk tends to decline.
It sounds like you already are aware of the precautions that you can take (daily valacyclovir for him; condoms during sex). As herpes is spread via skin-to-skin contact, him ejaculating on you—when he’s not experiencing an outbreak, and on a body part that isn’t a mucosal membrane like your eyes or vagina—should be OK. The virus is present in semen, so be especially careful (don’t get it in your eyes, as herpes can reside there), but since the risk of transmission is already relatively low, external shots would qualify as harm reduction.
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Dear How to Do It,
Is there such a thing as being a “verbal exhibitionist”? My roommate will bring home guys for hookups and the level of noise she makes has me thinking she wants me to know exactly what’s going on in her room. I need this to stop!
—Living With an Oversharer
Dear Living With an Oversharer,
It sounds like your roommate may just be a regular old exhibitionist, no modifier needed. At the same time, she may be performing sexually in a way that just feels free to her. Some people want to let it all out when they have sex because, in fact, holding it in is a distracting effort that can take one out of the moment, rendering sex less enjoyable.
Regardless of her intentions, though, she isn’t being considerate of the generally assumed need for quiet and privacy in one’s home. It’s OK for you to ask for this. It’s OK for you to point out that she’s loud. Maybe she doesn’t realize it. There are people that you encounter in this world who seem to lack much sense of how their behavior affects others until they are informed explicitly of just that. There are also people who like to skate by with plausible deniability until they are specifically confronted for doing the thing they’re trying to get away with. I don’t think this situation improves unless you actually say something. It doesn’t have to be specific: “When you bring guys back, I can hear everything. Could you try to keep it down?” If she doesn’t know that you can hear her, she should, and you pointing it out is nowhere nearly as rude as having sex that’s loud enough to be disruptive.
If you don’t have the kind of relationship where you feel like you can talk about these things, or if you are just on the shy/non-confrontational side, you can write a note saying much the same. Such a letter may be ultimately as ignorable as the very concept of your sense of peace and quiet, but it’s a route to pursue if direct contact is somehow difficult to you, which the existence of your letter in lieu of an already had direct conversation implies.
—Rich
More Advice From Slate
I will not sugarcoat this: I have been masturbating to photos of my cousin, who’s a few years younger than me. I saw him for the first time in years over the holidays and he’s simply an extremely attractive young man now. We don’t have a close familial relationship—he lives three states away—and I have no intention of acting on this. I should probably just unfollow him on Instagram, but is there anything wrong with what I’m doing? Is this abnormal?