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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,
I am a 48-year-old woman, married to my husband for 24 years. Three years ago, I started reading romance novels, which segued into BDSM novels and then erotica. Since then, I have been way more interested in sex.
It took a bit for my husband to get used to my new desire frequency, but we’re now at an every-other-day schedule. Our relationship has strengthened so much, and it’s been really positive. We’ve acted out fantasies and are much more open with each other about everything—not just about sex. I don’t have a lot of other sexual experience outside of my husband (three other partners when I was young), and he has none other than me. But based on my limited experience and the statistics I have read, his size seems pretty normal. The problem is that my vagina feels very big.
When penetration begins, I hardly feel anything at all. He also has a much more difficult time climaxing, and I assume it’s because he’s not getting much friction. The only sensation I really get is when he is very deep, especially when I am on top. But not from thrusting. I have been going to physical therapy for an incontinence problem and doing the exercises as best I can. I thought that would help with the “feeling big,” but it has not improved. I do orgasm pretty easily from his fingers and from clitoral stimulation (but only with a toy). I have never had one from oral, though it’s arousing. I used to orgasm from penetration occasionally. Now it only happens if I’m on top. That’s fine for me, but it doesn’t do much for him. This is a tough topic to bring up with a doctor. I thought I’d see if you all had something to say.
—Loosey Goosey
Dear Loosey Goosey,
When you say your husband has a much more difficult time climaxing, I’m unsure what that is in comparison to. More difficult than during oral or manual stimulation? Or compared to a previous period of time, and if so, does the change in ease of climax coincide with any health concerns, life stressors, the increase in regularity of sex, the end of your occasional orgasms from penetration, or anything else that might help you contextualize the change? Did your vagina always feel big to you, or was there some point where that feeling started, and what can that context point you toward, as far as possible reasons and ways forward?
Gratuitous focus on pleasure or any amount of eroticism in the discussion during a doctor’s visit is inappropriate, but bringing up general concerns about changes in the part of your body they focus on, or sexual dysfunction, is usually OK as long as the doctor in question has a specialty that relates to the subject. Regardless of whether you’re ever able to muster the courage to ask a medical professional what they might be able to help with or offer you as far as insight into your own body, concerns about your husband’s pleasure will require a more concrete understanding of what he’s feeling and what’s working or not working for him.
Without more specific information, I’m not able to make any solid guesses about what might help you troubleshoot the issue. It’s quite possible that the fiction you’ve been reading is unrealistic to the point of warping your ideas of what sex and pleasure tend to look like in practice. Where a lot of media (romance novels, erotica porn videos, and short scenes in mainstream TV and film) does present thrusting into a tight vagina as the default route to simultaneous orgasm, the reality often looks like one partner needing one kind of stimulation (the very deep sensations you get while on top, that aren’t from vigorous in-and-out motions) to orgasm, while the other needs a different kind of stimulation, and the couple taking turns prioritizing whose orgasm is being catered to when.
It’s also completely possible that you’ve lost muscle tone in your pelvis, which has reduced the sensations you and your husband feel during thrusting, and adding other exercises could help, or that your doing the exercises “as best you can” is either insufficient in quantity or you haven’t quite learned what movements you need to be doing, and further discussion with a pelvic floor therapist could get that sorted. Both of you could have absolutely average anatomy that is well suited to each other in terms of dimensions, but are in your heads or stumbling over psychological aspects. And your husband might be having a great time and simply slowing down due to aging, while you’re having less of a good time in part because of unnecessary worries. You’ll need to consult with your husband and maybe at least one medical professional or sexologist to get to the bottom of it.
—Jessica
More Advice From Slate
I (M27) have been with my current partner (F29) for five months, and I’m getting bored with sex. In general, I have always had a relatively high sex drive, and I have never experienced a loss of excitement/interest like this in previous relationships. My partner finds it extremely difficult to reach orgasm: In the five months we’ve been together, I think she has climaxed maybe three times. She has reassured me that I’m not doing anything wrong; apparently this has been a problem in all previous relationships. However, her frustration is obvious.