Q: I’m a straight married man. My wife and I have a four-year-old and a three-month-old. We’ve just started having intercourse again. For Valentine’s Day, we spent the night in a B&B while grandma watched the kids. We had edibles, drank sparkling wine, and then fucked. It was amazing. After we came and while we were still stoned and drunk, my wife mentioned she was open to inviting others into our sex life. I asked about getting a professional sex worker. She said no. But maybe if we were in a bar (we’re never in bars) and met someone (a unicorn), she might be into it. Anal came up. She’s always said she’s up for trying anything once. I have a desire to experiment with anal. (Not just me entering her, but her pegging me as well.) I asked if she would use the vibrator we brought on me, just to experiment. She said she was too high to do anything. I felt let down. I feel she unknowingly teased me with fantasies I have, not knowing I actually have them. We have a good sex life, and I’m willing to write off the fantasies we discussed while high and drunk. It’s the teasing that drove me crazy. —Having and Realizing Desires

So if you ever want to have that threesome or experiment with anal, HARD, you need to keep talking with your wife about these fantasies—and you need to tell her your fantasies too! Tell her you’re not pressuring her, of course, but let her know these are things you would actually like to do, and the more you talk about them, the more you want to do them. If she keeps talking with you about them, that’s a sign. Not a sign that she’s a cruel tease, HARD, but a sign that she’s inching closer toward pulling on a Team Realize jersey.

Q: I’m a 30-year-old straight woman who’s been with the same guy (high school sweetheart!) for the last 13 years. We love each other deeply, best friends, etc. The problem isn’t that the sex isn’t good—he’s very good at making me come. But the sex is vanilla and routine, and I would like us to go beyond that. Nothing extreme, I just want to switch things up a bit. Talking about sex makes my husband REALLY uncomfortable. If I ask him what he’d like me to do to him while we’re having sex, he shuts down. He’ll say, “Everything you do is good,” and leave it there. In the very few conversations we’ve had about this stuff, he’s said that he feels intimidated and doesn’t know what to say. This is incredibly frustrating for me. How do I get him to loosen up and feel more comfortable about talking to me so that we can eventually progress to some new experiences? —Why Husband Is Prudish