Given the LW is orgasmic and can in fact have orgasms through vaginal sex... i dunno, just tie the husband up try to get off that way? Maybe bring out your vibrator and use it on yourself while you guys are cuddled up and watching Stranger Things? I mean if you can't have your orgasms while having sex with your husband, maybe you can work on having your orgasms while you are with your husband, at least.

Just a thought: Perhaps someone who doesn't give much of a shit about making sure you are satisfied (sexually or otherwise) doesn't actually love you that much, so you could ask yourself if it's worth it to stay with him just because you actually happen to love him. That love of yours could be directed towards someone who deserves it (hint: start with yourself).

While Dan referenced the letter concerning choking, I was reminded of the recent letter from HERPES, the woman who wanted to cheat on her husband, worried about an STI, but didn't want to leave him.

AWHN, who had good sex prior to meeting her husband at age 21, opted for bad sex with a man 15 years her senior; a man who couldn't make her orgasm, doesn't know how to touch a woman's body, sucks at oral sex, and is a failure at PIV sex. I think it is perfectly fine to prioritize a loving relationship over sex, and its also fine to prioritize someone who can be a good financial provider over being a great (or even good) sex partner. But if you freely make that choice, I don't think you can years down the road decided that you're entitled to good sex outside your monogamous relationship. AWHN's husband won't consent to an open marriage? Then get a divorce. While Dan likes to note that there are circumstances where someone cannot leave their marriage, I think those circumstances are narrowly enough circumscribed that AWHN's situation is not covered.

If she's having affairs with different guys each year and the latest one continues, she's already earned the CPOS monicker.

While I get a whiff of passivity in her directions to her husband (there aren't any ultimatums: "You will eat my pussy like this and will use your hands like that or you're not getting any sex."), the repeated affairs suggest there's more to the disconnect than his technique. NRE, likely. Years of resentment, probably. These lovers are half hubbie's age - that doesn't hurt.

I don't think she's looking for a fix with the H, but for permission to continue with the FWBs.

I agree with everything Dan said. And everything commenters 1-4 say. Good letter today - not too weirdly complicated!

I miss weirdly complicated! Is it just me, or is this column not what it used to be?
I can understand that Trump is a total boner-killer and him playing nuclear chicken with North Korea is a more pressing concern than what some CPOS does. "Be careful with someone putting their hands around your neck," "Feel guilty about putting a move on someone twenty years ago," "Be careful about whom you elect, for they may be itching to fire some missiles, like, over dessert or something." Can we just campaign to compel Melania to fuck her husband so he doesn't feel he has to fuck up the planet?

@6, "I miss weirdly complicated! Is it just me, or is this column not what it used to be?"

It's probably worthy of a Master's Thesis for a sociologist to examine the range of questions over the years. There are fewer things new to me now than back in Dan's "Dear Faggot" days, so I'm not sure if it's the letter writers or me.

Yeah, we fondly remember the poo-eaters and the horse-fuckers when we long for the good ole days, but were "use your words" and "DTMFA" letters just as common back then? Maybe.

@2 Agreed. NuPru brought up something, that it's not about the orgasms, it's about having a partner that doesn't care if you're miserable. It's about having a partner who knows there's a problem but refuses to change or step up. You shouldn't stay with a person who's A-OK with ignoring your needs.

@6 I think you can blame the internet for that. No one needs to write into Dan about how to have anal sex or bestiality when they can just Google that shit. And I think we are getting more open minded. In some places at least.

@4. David. "I get a whiff of passivity in her directions to her husband".

I agree. I think their relationship is such that, with his being about fifteen years older, she doesn't typically instruct him or take the lead. Here, maybe, she could get him to try harder by framing his trying to please her more in bed in terms of the advantages it will bring him e.g. he'll be proud; she'll reciprocate more readily and spontaneously; he wants to make her happy. It wouldn't surprise if he has some form of older man's performance anxiety. He isn't sure he can measure up to the young buck she's been seeing (supposing he knows this) and is diffident about trying.

To me, this is one of those letters where tone makes me extraordinarily non-receptive to the lw. She denigrates her husband every way she can, including age- and size-shaming him. Everyone else is a great lover and they're amazing, and HUGE, and young, and knew how to make her squirt, or touch her and did I mention that he's a lot older than she is and one of her lovers is a hot younger man, and one guy's a massage therapist (of course he knows what to do with his hands), and one guy's got "stamina" (which means obviously the husband doesn't), and one of them "adored" her, and . . . not one good thing to say about her husband. But lots of blame. He never had fellatio before he met her, despite being a used-up, decrepit old man--and somehow that's a problem for her. He sucks at eating pussy--not eating her pussy, because different women might find different techniques satisfying, just eating pussy in general. He won't squeeze her. He wants to "go back to regular sex," "regular" apparently not including lingerie, toys, touch, oral. And what kind of normal man doesn't want to play with his wife anally? (Her attitude, as it comes though this letter, not my assertion.)

In short, he sounds too bad to be true. But he sure sounds like a justification for cheating.

I can't tell if she is about ready to take some responsibility for the horrible sex life she has in her marriage. She says this, "I have had good sex prior to him but never understood sex or the female body so what me and my husband had was ok." So maybe she's suggesting that she really didn't know how good sex could be. But other than that, the blame rests solely with her husband. She is clearly not attracted to him now, if she ever really was ("what me and my husband had was ok" at the outset of a marriage is not a ringing endorsement).

She doesn't mention kids (which doesn't mean there aren't kids). She's 39. She hates having sex with her husband and says he wouldn't consider opening the marriage. She should leave.
But I think she's going to keep on cheating and what she wanted was absolution of her guilt.

He does not sound too bad to be true. She was just too young when she commited to know how long a life time of bad sex really is or to heed that old chestnut about sex being 20% of a relationship when it's good but 80% when it's bad.
LW didn't say it, but I can very easily imagine LW asking for what she wants 10 different ways and her husband being unable to deliver due to perhaps some of his own personality issues, which might be tolerable outside of the bedroom but become front and center in the bedroom. Many people's inability to accept pointers, advice, or criticism (both in and out of bed) trumps their desire to please their partner, or the pride they would feel in so doing Narcissists are people deserving of love like anyone other of us flawed people, but that or similar personality types in particular makes improvement in the bedroom nearly impossible.

No LW, you don't love your husband or you wouldn't deceive him. Maybe you love the lifestyle you have together, which is not the same thing.

Hm, Dan, I'm thinking about that "layer cake" of yours. Desire, action, persona. Do you apply that to relationships as well as to sex?

On sex, LW has got desire = action = young sidepieces, so two out of three. Being open about it would bring persona in line.

But what about the relationships themselves? What relationships does she desire? Some people truly desire an array of FWBs or brief affairs, and they should have that (ethically), but it doesn't sound like that's *her* first choice. And does she desire a loving committed relationship to come home to?

Just another way of saying an old thing, but I liked the Savage Hierarchy: that getting good side sex can be a bad mistake if it makes your life without love or respect juuust good enough to keep on until... you're out of time.

@10: Yeah, this is obviously "I regret getting married young" and now she is doing everything she can to try to get this guy to divorce her out of resentment. She is already cheating on him, clearly hates him, and has obviously spent a lot of time justifying why cheating on him is fine.

The only reason I can think of for not just being a decent person and divorcing is that she still enjoys humiliating him and making him feel inadequate. She knows he won't open the relationship, but she won't divorce him. And if you notice, she doesn't even actually ask Dan a real question. What does that tell you?

@14: “The only reason I can think of for not just being a decent person and divorcing is that she still enjoys humiliating him and making him feel inadequate.”

I can think of another, surely.

Gettin married young may leave a person with literally no clue what life is like beyond what she feels trapped in here. She has no real coping skills as an adult, and not a lot of ability to compare her position to that of others with more experience in loss, heartbreak, and moving on (plus what the fuck to do about kids.)

It’s messy and it’s wrong, but beyond the vein of spite for feeling trapped I don’t think it’s so wholly, actively malicious. When you haven’t had to make the petty bad decisions before, you are probably not going to have full perspective and biff it on the one biggest decision you need to make and spin around in misery and indecision.

"To me, this is one of those letters where tone makes me extraordinarily non-receptive to the lw."

I absolutely agree with @10. What a revolting POS lw. She and her bias must be a nightmare to interact with. The straw that broke my back was when she wrote that 15 is "almost 20".

Not getting the ‘hate’ that some others are commenting on, but definitely getting frustration (duh.)
In 27 years as a personal trainer, almost all my clients have been women over 40, most of the rest gay men. * These are 2 populations that definitely take better care of themselves in middle age and past, than straight guys. I’ve also heard, many times, variations on ‘the sex isn’t good, but he can’t be arsed to make it right’ thing (though women tend to use those weird euphemisms like ‘the passion went away,’ or’I didn’t find it completely satisfying’ for ‘we stopped fucking’ and ‘I didn’t come.’ I swear. You guys.)

Dan has said, ‘The graveyard of relationships is filled with tombstones reading ‘It was all great, except for the sex;’ well, the graveyard of sex in relationships is filled with tombstones reading ‘...but I did so much other stuff, especially making money!’ We’re in the dark as far as if/what kind of lifestyle her marriage affords LW, but yep, she ought to make a choice.
The ‘stay together for the kids’ issue was taken out and beaten like it stole something last week, I tend to fall on the side of Team The Kids Know What’s Going On, so, bet she’ll be a lot happier separated. She says she still loves him, would like to know what their day to day life together is like.

*I’m broadminded, however, perfectly willing to work with straight guys, poor souls.

I agree with others that LW seems to really want permission to keep cheating. Nope. Life is all about choices, and you need to take responsibility for the choices you make.

However, if she wants to actually address her relationship problems, she needs to sit hubby down and tell him that the lousy sex, and his disinterest in improving it for her, is going to kill their marriage. She can tell him she's discovered what she likes playing solo, if she wants, but TELL HIM what the problem is and what the stakes are. If he doesn't even make a good faith effort, then the marriage is already over. If he does, she has a chance to enjoy better sex and save her marriage, with the caveat that 'better' doesn't mean it will be the same as her lovers who no doubt thrilled her in part because of the transgression.

Although, her description of her second lover - "HUGE, amazing stamina, and of course made me come,' is a little hinky. I've heard women, here and elsewhere complain of guys with huge dicks or who went on for-fuckin'-ever, as NOT making them come, similar to a non-infrequent complaint among men is about women who are dazzlingly beautiful: they think that beauty/dick size/continu-pounding does the job right there, and otherwise don't apply themselves.

I mean,glad she got off, but yeah, she does seem to be reaching.

“And if you notice, she doesn't even actually ask Dan a real question. What does that tell you?”

She doesn’t know the questions to ask, potentially. I have a few acquaintances who are affixed in the emotional development they entered their young marriages in and need to make up for lost time. It’s unfair to apply that to everyone who ends things with the appropriate maturity for their age, certainly. But I can see more nuance in these series of bad decisions.

@16/19: Yeah, it’s the tone of someone with not a lot of experience with partners of ANY attention, so the novelty of her situation (and what she’ll put up with to attain basic minimum of care) is all the more jarring to those who weren’t married at such an early age.

Ordinarily, I'd be sympathetic to the writer of a letter with such a situation. The couple sounds as if the sex was never very good and now they're in a deeply-ingrained married rut. The wife was very young when she married and 38-39 is just the time for a mid-life crisis to kick in.

But her writing of this is just so deck-stacking. She comes right out and says negative things about the husband, and then she still needs to denigrate him further by saying positive things about the other men, leaving her husband in the obverse position. She doesn't say her husband is small or has no stamina, but that's implied by the fact that the other lovers are and do.

Her husband can't actually help being older than she is and having the size penis he has. With her description of the sex they have (uninspired, boring, unsatisfying), I am pretty sure that should the husband acquire stamina, she wouldn't appreciate it.

"Whiff of passivity." Perfect way to put it.

AWHN doesn't seem to have tried very hard either in educating her husband on how to please her or in communicating how unhappy she is with their sex life as it stands. She puts sex in terms of men's skill or lack, what they know how to do with their hands or how her husband sucks at oral sex, but her lessons seem to be about complaining. It would seem that some men are magic mind readers on what will make her come while her husband is an unfortunate non-mind reader who isn't good at it. If AWHN wants to teach her husband to please her, she'll have better luck with: right here, this much pressure, faster, slower, wait, etc.

But communication and education aren't what it's about. She's more attracted to the other guys. Who knows why. No one is ever great at saying what attraction is about.

Boredom is a real thing. So is divorce. Instead of shifting blame, how about owning the reality. AWHN could ask herself which she values more, sex or her current situation with her husband, and then CHOOSE. Or would that be demanding too much agency on the part of someone who prefers to see herself as passively at the whim of whatever blows her way.

I'm having trouble feeling too much sympathy for AWHN even as you'd think I would. I know what it is to have great sex with the guy over there who wouldn't make a great life partner while having okay sex with the guy here who does. My advice to AWHN is make up your mind.

@20: Don't get me wrong, god knows what is being left out, or how mature this woman actually is. It could very well be that she is just very inexperienced and immature and this is new ground.

But I think what is pushing me in this interpretation is what #22 describes: she just really seems eager and happy to denigrate her husband over and over in this letter. It really seems like she gets off on it.

It reads more to me like she wants Dan to exonerate her selfish ways and she is pointing to evidence on the table to sway his decision. She doesn't really have a question, she just wants to feel better about her decisions.

Her desire to open the marriage when her husband is clearly not into it suggests this as well: she wants to have her cake and eat it too, and be damned what that means to other people.

Here's an idea: Get him to read The Ethical Slut, and then refuse to behave ethically yourself. Have fun making polyamorous people look bad. You can be like, I dunno, Newt Gingrich or something. Good luck!

More thoughts on passivity: AWHN accidentally fell on those dicks, and the orgasms just happened without her input.

@24: “It reads more to me like she wants Dan to exonerate her selfish ways and she is pointing to evidence on the table to sway his decision.“

Oh, agreed. She does need to get away from the marriage if she truly loathes the man a much as her excitable posts suggest.

@26: It’s a miracle!

@Fichu #26: That's almost the scenario she lays out with the massage therapist, but with hands instead of dick.

Since AWHN makes a point to note that she's attracted to the dudes she's fucking on the side, the implication seems to be that she's not (and probably never was) attracted to her husband. I don't really understand why people have sex with people they don't find attractive (outside of cases like sex work), but whatever. AWHN should decide whether the parts of the marriage that she likes (there must be some to have gotten married in the first place, right?) are worth not having sex with people she's attracted to and then either stay and not cheat or split. Her husband isn't entirely blameless here (I'm taking her report that he isn't willing to try to do what she needs at face value), but since we can't actually control other people's behavior, only how we respond to it, that's only important as data to inform her decision to leave or stay.

Sublime @3: "if you freely make that choice, I don't think you can years down the road decide that you're entitled to good sex outside your monogamous relationship."

Come on... this woman was only 21 when she committed to this guy. Dooming her to live with a decision she made before she had all the information (like how her own body works... seldom do younger women know what makes them come) seems a bit unfair. She discovered how to come when she was 36, making him 51. I can kind of see why he'd be surprised at her wanting to "try new tricks" after all this time.

Curious @16: Or Dan changed the ages and he is 18 or 19 years older, not 15 and a bit. Inconsistencies like these have appeared before and the LWs have chimed in to state that details were changed. (I agree that the entire tone is "this old dog won't learn new tricks," but nearly two decades of sexual mediocrity make that attitude understandable.)

Nocute @22: Also understandable is the contrasting language AWHN uses to describe the difference between sex with her husband and with her other lovers. After all, it was only after she started experiencing good sex that she fully realised what she had been going without all these years, and of course that contrast is going to be stark for her. (I don't think she's alleging her husband has a small penis; she only mentions one lover's size, indicating that he, not hubby, is the outlier.)

There's a bit of self-congratulation in LW's account, not every woman her age is pulling hot hung ass, but maybe that's just the whole story she felt she had to give, plus like the old joke, "Why am I telling you, Father? Hey, I'm tellin' everyone!'

But I think the commentariat can agree one thing - She ain't stopping the new sex train, and her husband would not/will not be down when he finds out. So, LW, time for a long look in the mirror, and do the job thing - Where do you see yourself in a year? In five years? Ten? This is not a sustainable lifestyle.

@BDF I didn't read Sublime's comments as dooming her to live this life. It sounds more like Sublime is saying that this woman made a choice and that choice has consequences, and you don't get to have it both ways- stay in the marriage with secret sex on the side. You have to decide which it is you want. The marriage which is what it's always been, or face the music and leave. I agree. You don't get to cheat and lie and toy with someone else's life just because you aren't satisfied. If you can't be satisfied in the marriage, you don't get to shift your problems onto to someone else which is what you do when you cheat on someone repeatedly. You have to own them and do something about it- and unless there is some legit reason you can't get out of it- that probably means leaving the relationship.

I agree with NoCuteName's comments about the tone.

These letters are just making me sad lately. I was really happy to see the letter about the gal who's gagging on dick, not because I want a gal to gag on dick, but b/c it is a question about someone having hot sex who wants to have hotter sex and that's refreshing. We need more letters about young men with rich admirers who buy them fancy underwear and boyfriends that used to jack off with their best buddies.

Emma @32: Oh, I'm not saying that a poor choice when young justifies her current approach to her substandard marriage. I'm saying "you made your bed, now lie in it" isn't helpful advice, especially when that bed was made at an age when most of our choices, let's face it, were pretty poor. I agree that she needs to own her current reality. Maybe give her husband one last chance to shape up, letting him know that she'll ship out if he doesn't.

Hey, Bi, I was thinking we could go halfsies on the Prophet's above offer. So, of the 12 choices (#13 is really part of 12), I want the 'rich,' 'promoted in office,' need to get one first, though, and 'win court case,' as I'm sure I'll be sued by people trying to get their hands on said riches, and I won't yet be high enough in Office to have them dragged away in chains.
You get the rest!
Think about it....

Personally, I'm alarmed by 5. My only choice is to have a sterile child? And it seems shitty to offer 13 when you could offer 12. Like if you have that power, why give someone the choice of "I'm going to cure AIDS instead of Cancer, Parkinsons, Tuberculosis, Malaria and AIDS."

Also it seems really shitty of the prophet to put that husband back in that woman's life. He sounds like a real asshole.

Cat @35: Rats! The offer in question seems to have been deleted as spam. I'll never know what riches could have awaited me in the Kingdom of Spamalot. :)