QI’m a 28-year-old pan-curious married guy from the midwest about to move to San Francisco. I’ve been with my wife for ten years (married four), and we’ve started to explore being monogamish. I’m also reexploring my bi attractions. I’ve been thinking a lot about the opportunities for reinvention that our cross-country move might provide. My wife is GGG and fully supportive, but I still feel apprehensive about getting back out there. After ten years of monogamy, I’m worried that my sex knowledge is the sex that works for my wife and me. And there’s the fact that I am very new to guys, with just one short-term M/M relationship and one terrible hookup under my belt. Any tips for bolstering one’s confidence and making new sexual encounters as fun and unawkward as possible? I know little of clubs, kink parties, Growlr/Tinder, etc. I want to slut it up in SF, but I don’t know where to start. —Newbie (New Bi?) Slut
“After ten years of monogamy with a woman, it’s not surprising he’s apprehensive about having sex with men,” said Superstar. “That’s totally normal! But I don’t believe that sexual confidence with new partners is the key to great hookups. There are a gazillion books out there teaching people techniques for self-confidence, but most of them just teach you how to be an asshole. He should just be himself and be real. Accepting that new sexual encounters can be awkward is the first step in making them less so.”
QMy wife and I are in an open relationship. It started because my wife found flirtatious text messages I sent to a coworker. She confronted me calmly and said she knew our sexual relationship hadn’t been great. She wasn’t that interested in sex, as she’d gained about 50 pounds. I was still attracted to her, but I was rejected half the time. She said she was willing to try an open relationship. I offered other solutions (porn and toys), but she said she just didn’t have the libido for it. We talked it to death before deciding we should move into (open) uncharted waters. I had a yearlong relationship with my coworker that ended when my wife and I moved. During that time, my wife never had a sexual experience with anyone else, but she started losing weight and we started having better and more frequent sex. Now I’m not looking for anything on the side. But she’s embarked on sexual relationships with several people, including threesomes with her best friend and best friend’s husband, a neighbor, and a coworker. I know I sound like an asshole, but I’m insanely jealous. I feel like she’s getting to know our new city by sleeping with everyone in the neighborhood. Four partners in two months seems crazy to me. Do I deal with this by ending our agreement to share information about outside partners? Or do I tell her I don’t want an open relationship anymore, which seems like a dick move considering my past long-term relationship and the newness of her explorations? —Other People Excluded Now
