For many couples, keeping things spicy in the bedroom is a top priority — but what if the one thing your partner really wants is … super awkward. Oof, cringe. For one woman, a suggestion her husband made was especially off-putting. She and her husband have recently gotten into role playing — but things took a turn for the weird when her hubby asked her to dress up like a “casual acquaintance” of theirs.
It all started when the Letter Writer and her husband were trying to fix their “dry spell.”
As the OP explained in a letter to Slate's "Dear Prudence" column that has recently bubbled up again, she and her husband are trying to be more “open” about their sexual desires and so far it’s been very successful.
It “has really revitalized all aspects of our relationship and made us much happier,” she wrote.
The two have recently started “dressing up” during sex — “but recently he confessed a desire that gave me pause,” she wrote.
The bomb, so to speak, is that her husband wants her to dress up like someone they know casually, and it’s really making the LW uncomfortable.
“He wants me to dress up as a casual acquaintance of ours. He wants to call me her name and for me to wear a very particular kind of clothing she wears,” she explained.
The LW doesn’t know what to make of this.
“It’s kind of gross, and also suggests he’d rather be sleeping with her,” the LW admitted. “Then again, maybe I should be glad he’s not and he’s making do with what he’s got (me),” she added.
“What should I do?”
Most people agreed — this was not OK.
"Nah, I would seriously consider divorce. I guess I'm incredibly close minded compared to [columnist] Emily and the comments, which surprised me, but oh well I gotta just accept it," wrote one person. "Anyway, it would be a total dealbreaker to me. I would take my prudish bum right out of that marriage. Open communication about sexual things is one thing, but dont be so open-minded that your brain falls out."
"Generally speaking, if you're sexualizing your casual acquaintances, you probably wanna keep that to yourself," another person agreed.
"Just wanted to commend LW1's husband on his giant balls. I mean, the marriage is probably doomed, but … man," another commenter joked.
Other people advised her not to read too much into it.
"OK, it's obvious why LW thinks her husband would rather be sleeping with the acquaintance, although of course she's wrong. He just wants to pretend," wrote one commenter. "But why does she think this is 'gross?' Is the woman disgusting? Does she have horrible acne or body odor or something? Or is LW just in fifth grade in 1984 and that's her only word for 'bad stuff?'"
"LW1: Haven't you heard by now that sex doesn't mean anything? Let him screw who he wants to screw and get over yourself," another person agreed.
According to Emily Yoffe, the LW’s conclusions are perfectly reasonable but not necessarily correct.
“Of course it sounds to you as if he’d rather be sleeping with her,” she wrote. “But I don’t think it means that. I think it means that with this new fantasy-play in your marriage, he gets to act out sleeping with other people while sleeping with you.”
If anything, the LW needed to be very clear with her husband that this bothered her “for the obvious reasons” and she’s left feeling “disconcerted,” the columnist wrote, “but you’re going to give it a try.”
“It may be that you surprise yourself at how much fun it is to be ‘Darlene’ for a night,” she advised. “Alternately, you can tell him that his fantasy is crashing into your reality, and you just can’t get into pretending to be someone you both see, and whom you now know he’d like to sleep with.”
