Dear Joely: My Wife Wants an Open Marriage. I Want My Wife.

She wants to experience other men. He can’t bear the thought of it.

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Dear Joely,

I'm a 35-year-old male. I have been married for 9 years to a woman who is currently 27. Although she was very young when we met, we have a great relationship. We communicate well, for the most part, we share common interests and friends and we seem to make one another happy.

Last weekend, she kind of dropped into a conversation we were having that she would like for us to try having an open relationship. I was so thrown that I didn't know what to say... I find the idea absolutely abhorrent. She said that she is happy with our sex life, but that she increasingly feels the need to experience sex with other men. She wants to be honest about it.

I'm afraid I didn't handle it as well as I could have. I said something like "Don't be ridiculous, I'm your husband, you're my wife, we're happy." When she tried again to talk about it, I blanked her. It led to an argument and we haven't sat down and talked about it properly. We haven't had sex since.

I thought we were approaching a time when we could start planning to have our first child and she comes up with this, straight from left field. I can't bear to think of her with someone else and the whole idea is driving me to distraction. I don't even know how to have a conversation with her about it without going off the deep end.

I have no idea what to do and I hope you can help.

Yours,
Call Me Old Fashioned, But...

Dear Call Me Old Fashioned, But...,

You're not old-fashioned. You're monogamous.

Which is unfortunate, because your wife has just announced that she'd quite like to be monogamous with you and occasionally naked with somebody else.

I can see why you didn't immediately reach for the family calendar.

But “Don't be ridiculous, I'm your husband, you're my wife, we're happy” isn't going to make this disappear. In fact, there's one word in that sentence doing rather more heavy lifting than it should.

We.

You thought we were happy. You thought we were approaching the point where we would start a family. And perhaps you are happy. But your wife has just told you that there's something significant going on inside her that wasn't included in your version of “we”.

You need to hear it.

Not agree to it. Hear it.

Because I don't yet know what your wife means when she says she “needs to experience sex with other men”, and neither do you. You stopped listening before she got to that bit.

She may be sexually curious. She may have discovered that monogamy doesn't suit her. She may love you perfectly well and still be struggling with the idea that the last new man she will ever sleep with entered her life before she'd finished becoming an adult.

And we probably ought to linger there for a moment.

You're 35. She's 27. You've been married for nine years.

So your wife was around eighteen when you married her, and apparently younger still when you met.

I'm not going to turn you into a villain on the strength of some arithmetic. But nor am I going to pretend the arithmetic isn't sitting there waving at me.

The woman you're married to now has spent virtually her entire adult life as half of a couple. Whatever else she's had — a happy marriage, good sex, shared friends, somebody she loves — she hasn't had the experience most of us take for granted of finding out who we are romantically and sexually as independent adults.

She may now be wondering.

That does not mean you owe her an open marriage.

Please don't let anybody persuade you that recoiling from the idea of your wife having sex with other men means you're possessive, insecure or insufficiently evolved. Some people thrive in open relationships. Some people would rather exfoliate with a cheese grater.

You appear to belong to the second group.

Believe yourself.

An open marriage requires two people who genuinely want an open marriage. One person enthusiastically exploring her sexuality while the other lies awake imagining where she is and what she's doing isn't ethical non-monogamy. It's misery with progressive branding.

But your wife gets to believe herself too.

If what she's telling you is not merely I'd quite like this but I don't think I can happily remain sexually exclusive for the rest of my life, then you have a much bigger problem than whether you can talk her out of it.

That's why you need another conversation.

Start by owning your first attempt. Tell her you were blindsided, frightened and hurt, and that blanking her wasn't fair. Then tell her something equally important: you don't want an open marriage, and you're not going to pretend you might just to keep her.

Then ask the question you should have asked the first time:

“What happens if I say no?”

Not threateningly. Not as a test.

Because her answer matters enormously.

Does she say, Then I'm disappointed, but I choose our marriage?

Does she say, I don't know?

Or does she say, Then I don't know whether I can stay married?

Those are three very different futures.

And while you're finding out which one you're living in, put the baby plans away.

A baby is many things. A relationship stabiliser isn't one of them.

Don't start trying to create a child while one of you is imagining parenthood and the other is wondering what it would be like to have sex with Steve from Accounts. Sort out the marriage first.

You may discover that this is a desire your wife can talk about honestly and ultimately choose not to pursue.

You may discover that something fundamental has changed.

What you cannot do is return to last Friday, when you didn't know any of this.

That's the really rotten part. She didn't just ask you whether she could sleep with other men.

She changed what you know about your marriage.

Now you both have to decide what to do with the knowledge.

Yours, monogamously,
Joely

Dear Joely: Is He Dating Half the Office?

When a brilliant first date suddenly comes with an unexpected colleague.

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Dear Joely,

I'm 24 and work in admin for a fairly big furniture and homeware company — nice office, about 35 of us, mostly women, and we all rub along really well together. The warehouse side has more men, and we cross paths at lunch and in the canteen.

There's a floor manager there — I'll call him Norry — who everyone loves. Friendly, always up for a quick chat, and (I'll admit it) properly fanciable and funny with it. He always has me in stitches.

A couple of weeks ago he asked me for a drink and I said yes before he'd even finished the sentence. We had a brilliant night — proper flirty, talking rubbish till late, and he said a few things that made me feel like he actually saw something in me — how I dress, my sense of humour, that I "have a way about me" he can't stop thinking about.

At the end of the night we had a bit of a kiss — quite full-on, if I'm honest, and it could easily have gone further, but I held back. Didn't want to dive in headfirst. Still, I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I've seen him at work a few times — nothing but knowing looks and a bit of teasing now, which is exciting in itself — and we've texted a little, nothing serious. I kept expecting him to ask me out properly. I know he's busy with football and part-time study, but I really felt something between us.

Then yesterday we had lunch at the pub for Annie's (from Accounts) 30th — just the office girls. I turned up about fifteen minutes late, and Annie was already passing her phone round, showing off photos from a night out. When it got to me, there they were — her and Norry, dead cosy, sat on the bonnet of his car, big smiley selfie, looking every bit the couple.

My stomach hit the floor. I put my acting face on sharpish, but inside I was gutted. Everyone was going "ooh, lucky you, he's gorgeous!" and "you'll be walking down the aisle before Christmas!" — all said in fun, obviously, but it properly stung.

Maybe I'm being daft, but I really like him. Part of me wants to just ask him outright what's going on, so at least I know where I stand. I know the sensible thing is to write it off as one nice night and move on, but my gut's telling me there's more to it than that.

Please help.

Yours,
In Bits

Dear In Bits,

I don’t think you’re being daft. I think you may have accidentally wandered into the romantic clearance section.

Let us examine Norry. Handsome, funny, universally adored, works in a building populated largely by women, knows exactly how to make you laugh, and is apparently gifted at producing compliments specific enough to make a woman feel she has been individually selected from the catalogue.

“I like how you dress.”

“I love your sense of humour.”

“You have a way about you I can’t stop thinking about.”

Very nice. Lovely finish. Available in several departments.

Because the interesting thing here isn’t simply that Annie from Accounts appears to have got her hands on Norry. It’s that Annie may be evidence that Norry has got his hands on a rather wider section of the workforce.

You had a brilliant, flirty night with him. He kissed you. He made you feel that something particular was happening between you. Then he didn’t ask you out again, despite apparently finding time to become sufficiently cosy with Annie to pose together on the bonnet of his car.

I would therefore resist the temptation to think of Annie as your romantic rival. For all you know, she’s simply one aisle further along in the same showroom.

And before anybody writes in, yes: Norry is single and perfectly entitled to date more than one woman. You and he had one date and one kiss, not a civil ceremony. The question isn’t whether he has broken some sacred covenant with you. He hasn’t.

The question is whether Norry has developed a pleasant little habit of making women at work feel uniquely chosen while keeping his options as extensive as the company’s sofa range.

You can certainly ask him what’s going on with Annie if you want to. But I’d ask calmly and then listen very carefully to the answer. Don’t tell him what answer you’re hoping for. Don’t minimise your own feelings to make things easier for him. And if the explanation requires an Allen key and twelve pages of diagrams, put your coat on.

Most importantly, don’t feel embarrassed about having believed him. You weren’t foolish. A gorgeous, funny man asked you out, paid you highly personal compliments, kissed you and continued flirting afterwards. Most reasonable people would conclude that he fancied them.

He probably does.

I’m just not entirely convinced you’re the only one.

So by all means find out where you stand. But before you invest any more heart in Norry, make sure you aren’t looking at a beautiful display model that’s already been tried out by half the showroom.

You deserve better than flat-pack romance: exciting when you first open the box, increasingly confusing once you realise there are several important pieces missing.

Yours, checking the staff discount policy,
Joely

Dear Joely: Does It Count as Cheating If We Haven’t Done Anything?

When every message is innocent, but the relationship isn’t.

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Dear Joely,

I’m married, reasonably happily, and have been for eleven years. About six months ago I started working closely with a man in another department. Nothing has happened. We haven’t kissed, touched inappropriately, exchanged naked photographs or accidentally found ourselves sharing a hotel room at a conference.

But I think about him all the time.

We message most days, ostensibly about work, although work now seems to require an extraordinary number of observations about what we’ve had for dinner, things our partners have said, songs we like and whether either of us slept well.

I know when he’s had a bad day before his wife does. He knows things about my marriage that I haven’t told my closest friends. If something funny happens, he’s the person I want to tell. I’ve started choosing clothes for work based on whether I might see him.

Here’s the ridiculous part. We’ve never actually acknowledged that there’s anything between us. If you read our messages individually, almost every one could be defended in court.

My husband has met him. He likes him.

Last week my husband saw his name come up on my phone and said, completely innocently, “You two have become good mates.”

I felt sick.

So what exactly am I doing? Can you cheat on someone without ever doing anything that technically counts as cheating?

And if the answer is yes, what the hell do I do about it?

Yours, apparently not dead,
Married

Dear Married, But Apparently Not Dead,

The good news is that your vagina has an excellent alibi.

At all relevant times, it was elsewhere.

Unfortunately, I’m less convinced about the rest of you.

You’ve presented a meticulous case for the defence. No kissing. No inappropriate touching. No naked photographs. No hotel-room incident requiring you to explain why there was only one bathrobe.

You would particularly like entered into evidence the fact that every individual message is innocent.

I’m afraid the court is more interested in the pattern.

Because yes, something can become an affair before anybody takes their pants off.

We like physical cheating because it has lovely clear borders.

Kissed.

Touched.

Fucked.

You can point at an event and say, “There. Thursday. 9.17 pm. Infidelity commenced.”

Emotional intimacy is much less considerate.

There may be no Thursday. There may just be six months of Tuesdays.

A message after work. A private joke. A song. A bad day you tell him about before you tell your husband.

Nothing happens.

And then nothing happens again tomorrow.

Until an entirely defensible collection of nothings has become something.

And I think you already know that, because your husband saw this man’s name on your phone and said:

“You two have become good mates.”

And you felt sick.

That’s the bit I’d pay attention to.

Not because your husband caught you.

Because he didn’t.

He trusts the description he’s been given.

Good mates.

And you know it doesn’t quite describe what’s happening inside you.

People get crushes while married. They notice other people. Marriage does not cause every other sexually interesting human being on Earth to become a pot plant.

So forget, for a moment, whether a magistrate would officially declare you unfaithful.

Ask yourself instead:

What are you protecting from your husband?

The frequency of the messages? The intimacy? The anticipation? The fact that seeing this man’s name on your phone does something to you?

Because secrecy doesn’t always mean deleting messages and changing passwords.

Sometimes secrecy is simply allowing somebody to possess all the facts while withholding the meaning.

Then comes the more interesting question.

What do you actually want?

Do you want this man?

Do you want your husband?

Or do you want the version of yourself that appears when this other man is looking at you?

Funny again. Interesting again. Desired again.

Sometimes the intoxicating thing isn’t the new person.

It’s who we get to be with them.

So I’d put a little distance between you and your colleague while you work that out. Not because Joely has arrived in sensible shoes carrying a laminated sheet entitled APPROPRIATE WORKPLACE BOUNDARIES.

Because you need to look at your marriage without comparing it with a man who currently exists in beautifully edited fragments.

Your colleague doesn’t leave wet towels on your floor. You don’t know how he behaves when the boiler breaks and somebody has gastro.

Your husband is living in the full-length feature. This other man has an excellent trailer.

That doesn’t mean the attraction isn’t real.

It means you don’t yet know what it’s real for.

So no, Married But Apparently Not Dead, I’m not sentencing you to seven years for aggravated messaging.

But I am confiscating the argument that nothing is happening because nothing has happened.

Something has.

Your husband called it friendship.

Your stomach objected to the verdict.

I’d listen to your stomach.

It appears to be the only member of this arrangement who has stopped pretending not to know what’s going on.

Yours, in defence of innocent vaginas everywhere,
Joely

Dear Joely: My Best Friend Shagged Someone Beside Me

When your best friend crosses a boundary you didn't know needed explaining

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Dear Joely,

You seem good at holiday problems so I thought I'd write in. I happened to find you while scrolling by the pool. My best friend (let's call her Christine) and I are both 24 and have known one another since secondary school. We are very close. There's no one either of us knows better in the world. We are called "the fixture" by my family. She's on the next sun lounge as I type this, but things are a bit strained at the moment.

We recently came to Tenerife on a holiday break, for a week. We looked forward to the trip as we have all our holidays in the past. Our days are made up of sunning ourselves, reading, chatting and swimming. In the afternoons we go back to the apartment and take our time getting ready for the evenings, a few drinks, getting showered and dressed and then out for dinner, more drinks, dancing and fun.

Last night was just like that. We both drank probably too much. Well, it was too much. At some point, I knew I needed to go back to the apartment. Christine wanted to stay out. I didn't think that was a problem. She was having fun with a guy. We weren't far away from the apartment. So I told her goodnight and told her to have a good night.

The sun shines in the curtains in the mornings and this morning was no exception. I felt as rough as a badger's arse. I looked over at Christine's bed. It was then that I realised she wasn't alone. I think it was the guy she was last dancing with when I left. To be honest, who cares? They weren't just sleeping, they were actually shagging. You know, in that kind of "let's do it quietly so we don't wake her up" sort of way.

I felt the bile rising in my throat, and I ran to the toilet and was sick. My head was banging and I was suddenly so angry I could barely see. I went back to my bed and just yelled at him to get the f*&% out. Christine started to protest. I just kept yelling, "Get out."

Things have been strained between us, to say the least, since this morning. I've got my dark glasses on and I'm under an umbrella on my sun bed, as I said. But I'm furious with her. She's tried to talk to me, but I won't have it. I just can't believe she'd treat me like this. I hope you can answer me urgently.

Yours,
Barf & Bitter

Dear Barf & Bitter,

First things first: your friend should not have brought a man back to your shared bedroom and shagged him while you were asleep three feet away.

I don't care how quietly they did it. Sex is not made private by reducing the volume.

You were entitled to wake up furious. You were entitled to tell him to leave. And Christine owes you an apology for deciding, without consulting you, that your shared bedroom could become hers for the night while you remained inconveniently unconscious in the other bed.

So far, I'm entirely under your umbrella.

But now I'm going to pull my sun lounge slightly away from yours.

You say, "I just can't believe she'd treat me like this."

Like what, exactly?

Because there are two possible offences here, and I'm not convinced you know which one has made you so angry.

Imagine the same morning again. Same murderous hangover. Same Tenerife sun drilling through the curtains. You roll over and Christine's bed is empty.

An hour later, she wanders in wearing last night's dress and somebody else's grin. She tells you she went home with the man from the bar and had spectacular sex.

Are you furious?

If the answer is no, excellent. We know what happened. Christine violated a perfectly reasonable boundary about your shared room, behaved selfishly while drunk, and now needs to apologise. You need to stop refusing to speak to her long enough to let her do it. You've been friends since secondary school. Don't turn one inconsiderate shag into the Treaty of Tenerife.

But if you're reading this and thinking, Actually, Joely, I'd still have hated it...

Then I'd be interested in that.

You call yourselves "the fixture". Your family calls you "the fixture". You holiday together. You have your rituals: sun lounges, books, swimming, the leisurely transformation from daytime selves into evening selves. And you tell me there's no one in the world who knows either of you better.

That's a beautiful friendship.

It may also have become an arrangement whose terms you've stopped examining.

Sometimes the most intimate friendships acquire invisible rules. We don't announce them because we don't realise they're rules. You'll choose me. I'll choose you. Other people may come and go, but this is the relationship that remains. This particular territory belongs to us.

Then somebody wanders into the territory wearing nightclub trousers and suddenly we discover there was a border.

I'm not telling you you're jealous of Christine. I'm certainly not telling you you're secretly in love with her. Perhaps neither is remotely true.

I'm asking whether you felt displaced.

Because your reaction interests me. You weren't merely irritated. You were incandescent. And somewhere between the badger's arse, the vomiting and the strange man moving rhythmically in the next bed, several different kinds of nausea may have become acquainted.

Incidentally, I wouldn't place too much evidentiary weight on the vomiting. You had drunk far too much and woke with your head banging. Christine's sex life may be many things, but I'm not yet prepared to hold it legally responsible for your stomach.

What I would do is take off the dark glasses, turn towards the woman on the next sun lounge and let her speak.

She may say, "I'm so sorry. I was drunk, I wasn't thinking and I behaved appallingly."

She may say, "I genuinely didn't think you'd care."

She may even say something that makes you angrier.

But at the moment you don't know, because you've sentenced your oldest friend before hearing her defence.

And when she has finished, tell her why you were angry.

Not just "You shouldn't have done that."

Tell her what hurt.

If all that hurt was waking beside an unsolicited live sex show, that's quite enough.

But if something else hurt too, don't be frightened of looking at it. You don't have to give it a name immediately. You just have to be honest enough to notice it.

You asked me urgently, so here is your emergency holiday prescription:

Drink some water. Eat something salty. Stop looking at Christine over the top of your sunglasses as though you're Joan Collins discovering a second will. And talk to your friend.

You have several days of Tenerife left.

Don't give the best sun lounge to a grudge.

Yours, in better boundaries and separate bedrooms,
Joely

Dear Joely: Was I Just His Wank Bank?

The memories are warm. The messages are filthy. Then she suggests meeting in real life and discovers just how little of the relationship exists outside his trousers.

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Dear Joely,

An unanswered message has hurt me a bit, and I thought you might be able to give me some perspective.

Yes, it’s a man involved.

This man is not a current lover, far from it. I am not trying to win him back, and I wasn’t expecting some grand romantic reunion at the airport.

Here it is in a nutshell.

I met him when I was about 24, living and working in Scotland. I’m in Australia now. We worked together. He was married with two young children. We fell very hard for each other, and I became the other woman.

It went on for a few years and was exactly as intoxicating and dreadful as those situations tend to be. Ecstatic highs, terrible pain, an astonishing amount of sex and not nearly enough sense. I remember being convinced that I could no sooner hold back the tide than stop loving him.

Eventually he left his marriage, but he did not leave it for me. He left me as well and began a relationship with another woman from the office. They lived together for five years. I was heartbroken for much longer than I care to admit.

But somehow we never disappeared completely from one another’s lives.

Over the next thirty-five years there were occasional calls and messages. He would bring up old moments between us, sometimes very sentimental ones, as though they still meant something to him. I listened. I gave my best advice when he went through difficult times.

We have slept together a few times since, on my rare trips back. Our connection had always been intensely sexual.

About ten years ago, I suggested meeting while on one such trip and he sent me a very harsh reply. It was so dismissive that something in me finally woke up. I stopped speaking to him for years.

Then, around five years ago, he contacted me and asked whether I was really never going to speak to him again. We began corresponding once more. Some of it was ordinary conversation, some of it reminiscing, and quite a lot of it sexual.

To be blunt, I began to wonder whether I had become little more than a sort of wank bank.

He has old and newer photographs of me. He sends sexual scenarios and dick pics. I have joined in and sent him nude photographs too, although the truth is that I wasn’t really getting much from it anymore.

I wasn’t pining for him. I wasn’t imagining a future.

I simply thought there was affection there. History. Some basic friendship after all this time.

I told him I am going to Scotland for a holiday in a few months and will be flying home from his area. I asked whether he might like to spend a couple of days together at the end of the trip. I made it easy for him. I said that if he was happily involved with someone, or it simply wasn’t appropriate, that was completely fine.

He answered the next day with a breathless little message about how lovely the trip sounded, complete with enough exclamation marks to frighten a flock of birds, but he did not acknowledge my suggestion that we meet.

Not yes. Not no. Not even, “I’ll think about it.”

He simply stepped around it and carried on.

I wasn’t expecting sex. I wasn’t expecting declarations. I wasn’t even necessarily expecting him to say yes.

I was expecting a reply. I thought he'd be pleased to see me after all this time.

I think what has upset me is that for years he has spoken about our shared past as though it mattered to him. He has recalled rooms, moments, sex, things we said and things we did. He has accepted my listening, my advice, my photographs and my availability. He has behaved as though there is some tenderness attached to that history.

Yet when I appeared in the present as an actual person, asking for nothing more than a courteous answer, he vanished.

It feels awful. Worse, it feels familiar.

Not because I am still in love with him. I’m not.

It feels awful because I thought that after thirty-five years we had become old friends. Or, at the very least, two people who had once meant enough to each other to warrant basic respect.

Am I making too much of an unanswered message?

Or have I finally understood that he is sentimental about the memories, but not especially concerned with the woman who lived them?

Yours,
Closing an Account

Dear Closing an Account,

You are not upset because he did not agree to see you. You are upset because he could not bring himself to answer you plainly.

That distinction matters.

For years, he has revisited the history between you. He has remembered the sex, the rooms, the private moments and the woman who once loved him beyond reason. He has accepted your photographs, your attention, your advice and your willingness to enter his fantasies. This has apparently required no shortage of enthusiasm on his part.

Yet the moment you asked him to meet you in real life, he became strangely short of words.

There is something shabby about a man who can summon the energy to maintain a wank bank but not the manners to acknowledge the account holder.

He may insist, if challenged, that the memories meant something to him. Perhaps they did. But sentiment is very easy when it asks nothing of us. It can survive for decades on reminiscence, fantasy and selective tenderness. Ask it to do something as ordinary as answer an invitation and suddenly the whole structure begins to wobble.

That is because nostalgia can imitate intimacy for a very long time.

You thought the two of you had become old friends. He appears to have thought he had retained access to an old lover.

Those are not the same arrangement.

The unanswered message was not the wound. It was the diagnosis.

Never mistake someone’s ability to remember you for their willingness to show up for you. They are entirely different talents.

He has shown a considerable gift for the first and very little appetite for the second.

Do not ask again. Do not send a wounded follow-up. Do not explain why his response hurt you. Do not provide him with another opportunity to turn your perfectly reasonable expectation into an emotional discussion he can avoid, minimise or eroticise.

And when he next returns with a sentimental memory in one hand and his trousers unfastened with the other, do not confuse the performance with affection.

The house of cards has already fallen. You are simply no longer obliged to crawl underneath it looking for friendship.

Yours, in closed accounts and considerably better investments,
Joely

Dear Joely: My Boyfriend Gave Me the Holiday Ick

Seven nights in Greece, one shared bathroom and rather more information about her boyfriend than she bargained for.

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Dear Joely,

I've been in a relationship with a guy for almost eight months now. We met on Tinder and it felt like a great match from the start. He just seems to get me. We don't live together. I'm still with my folks, and he's in a share house.

This summer, we decided to go on holiday together.

It was the first time I'd been away with a boyfriend and also my first time in Greece. I'm 22 and he's 25. We went for a seven-night package, and it was all very exciting at first. The weather was beautiful, with nothing but sunshine each day.

On the other hand...

I'm not really sure how to put this delicately, so I'll just go for it. I didn't know that in Greece you can't flush the toilet paper. Not until I got there. I must be a bit of a princess because I found that unbearable.

Also, a couple of days in, I noticed I wasn't feeling quite as into my boyfriend anymore. I was starting to see things about him that I hadn't at home.

He would take his book into the toilet with him each morning and spend an hour in there. I'm not even kidding. I found this just gross. I didn't know how to approach the subject with him, so I let it be.

I also didn't like seeing his used toilet paper in there when I had to use the toilet. Just eeeeuuuwwww!

He was really messy with his stuff too. I like to keep a hotel room tidy. I asked him about this, but he didn't seem to take me seriously.

About halfway through, he got a stomach bug. This made the whole toilet situation worse. I kept finding myself torn between wanting to be caring and not being able to bear it, so I would leave the room and go for walks by myself. I took to using the public toilet rather than the one in our room.

It got pretty bad because I was even doing my makeup in a compact mirror rather than going to use the main bathroom mirror.

I'm sure I sound horrible, but even though there were a few other things that bugged me, this is the last thing I'm going to mention.

When he wasn't sick and we were exploring the island, I found he would talk down to the Greek people, as though he thought he was better than them. I was really embarrassed.

I just got quieter and quieter over the course of the trip. I suppose I went into myself. I also didn't fancy him much, and we didn't have a lot of sex, which is not like us.

Now we're home, and I don't know whether to try to put this whole sorry holiday behind us and get back to the way we were, or face the fact that I get on a lot better with him when we don't share accommodation. Which, to me, doesn't seem like it has much of a future in it.

I had the idea to write when I read that other letter to you about the ick. My situation seems a bit different, though.

I hope you can help.

Yours,

Cor-feeuuwww

Dear Cor-feeuuwww,

There is nothing quite like a first holiday together for stripping the soft lighting off a relationship.

At home, you see your boyfriend in portions. A dinner here, a sleepover there, perhaps a weekend if everyone is feeling brave. On holiday, there is nowhere for the ordinary machinery of a person to hide. You see how they pack, how they sulk, how they cope with illness, how they treat waiters, how long they occupy the bathroom and whether they regard the hotel floor as a wardrobe with better lighting.

So let us begin with the toilet paper.

You are not a monster because you found the Greek plumbing arrangements revolting. You were unfamiliar with them, sharing a small bathroom with a man who apparently regarded it as both lavatory and reading room, and then he became ill. That is enough to test even the most fragrant of romances.

The hour-long morning bathroom occupation would irritate many people. The fact that you did not know how to raise it says something too. After eight months, you should be able to say, “Darling, I love you, but I also need access to the toilet before breakfast.”

The mess is also not trivial simply because it involves socks and toiletries. You told him it bothered you, and he did not take you seriously. Shared living is built from tiny acts of consideration. Nobody has to keep a hotel room like an operating theatre, but they do have to notice when the person beside them is becoming distressed.

His stomach bug is the part for which I would offer him the most mercy. Illness is graceless, and very few people become more alluring while their digestive system is staging a coup. You were not wrong to struggle with it, though disappearing for walks while he was unwell may be worth thinking about. A long-term relationship eventually asks us to care for someone when they are inconvenient, unattractive and producing evidence we would rather not inspect.

But the detail I would not wave away is the way he spoke to Greek people.

That is not holiday mess. That is not plumbing. That is not a stomach bug.

It is character.

A person who talks down to local people while enjoying their country is showing you how he behaves when he believes he is entitled to something. Embarrassment in those moments is often the body’s way of saying, “Pay attention. This matters.”

You say you became quieter and quieter. That may be the most important sentence in your letter.

You did not merely lose sexual interest. You began withdrawing from the relationship while still standing inside it.

That is not simply a story about getting the ick. It is also a story about what happens between you when something is wrong.

Do not make a decision based solely on whether you fancied him while he had diarrhoea. Very few romances survive that particular lighting test with dignity.

But do not rush to “get back to the way you were” either. The way you were depended partly on not having seen certain things.

You now need one honest conversation.

Not a prosecution. Not a catalogue of his bathroom crimes. Tell him the trip made you realise that you communicate badly when uncomfortable, that you felt dismissed when you raised the mess, and that you were genuinely troubled by the way he spoke to Greek people.

Then watch what he does.

Does he listen?

Does he laugh it off?

Does he blame you for being precious?

Does he become curious about your experience?

Does he show any shame about his behaviour towards the locals, or only embarrassment that you noticed?

The future of the relationship is not hiding in the waste-paper bin. It is in his response.

You may discover that the trip exposed some manageable habits and one miserable week. Or you may discover that the version of him you liked best was the version you only ever met in carefully measured doses.

Either answer is useful.

And for what it is worth, there is no shame in learning that you do not want to share a bathroom with someone for the rest of your life. Civilisations have collapsed over less.

Yours, from the public toilets with my compact mirror,
Joely

Dear Joely: My Sock Drawer Has Become a Personality

Dear Joely,

I am a 32-year-old man who, on paper at least, seems to have his life reasonably sorted. I have a decent job in IT, my own flat in a middling part of town, and I can cook a passable spaghetti bolognese without setting off the smoke alarm every time. Yet here I am, writing to you with a problem that feels both ridiculous and strangely genuine.

The issue is my socks. Yes, really. For the past year or so, I have developed what can only be described as a mild obsession with buying new pairs of socks. Colourful ones, thick hiking ones, those fancy bamboo ones that promise to eliminate odour (they do not), and even a pair with little pineapples on them that make me smile every time I put them on. My sock drawer now resembles a jumble sale, and every time I open it, I feel a strange mix of pride and panic.

The trouble is that my girlfriend of six months has started to notice. She is practical, organised, and the sort of person who folds her T-shirts with military precision. Last week she suggested we “have a clear-out”, and I found myself defending my pineapple socks as if they were treasured family heirlooms. I mumbled something about self-expression and personal joy, but I fear I sounded unhinged.

Deep down, I know this is probably a symptom of something else, maybe a fear of proper grown-up commitment, or the creeping realisation that I am hurtling towards middle age with nothing more substantial to show for it than an impressive collection of foot coverings.

I do love her, and I want to be the sort of man who has his life together rather than one who argues passionately in defence of novelty hosiery. But every time I try to throw a pair away, I hesitate. What if those are the socks that finally bring me luck, or at least a decent day?

Please tell me if I am being absurd, or whether this is a perfectly normal male rite of passage that no one talks about. Any advice on how to balance sock-related happiness with not driving my girlfriend up the wall would be gratefully received.

Yours in mild embarrassment,

Sock Hoarder from Surrey

Dear Sock Hoarder,

You are not having a commitment crisis. You are having a storage crisis wearing tiny pineapples.

The socks themselves are not the problem. Colourful socks are harmless, cheerful and considerably preferable to many of the hobbies available to a 32-year-old man with disposable income and internet access. You could be collecting vintage swords, cryptocurrency or opinions about craft beer. Novelty hosiery is practically civic-minded.

What matters is whether buying them has become compulsive, expensive, secretive or emotionally loaded. If you are spending money you cannot afford, hiding purchases, or using new socks to anaesthetise yourself every time life feels dull, then yes, there may be something worth examining beneath the bamboo blend.

But from what you describe, this sounds less like a psychological emergency and more like a small source of pleasure that has outgrown its allotted drawer.

Your girlfriend is also not unreasonable. She sees chaos. You see possibility. Both of you are being honest, although only one of you appears to believe a pineapple can improve morale from the ankle down.

So do not stage a brutal purge. Create a system.

Keep the pairs you genuinely wear and love. Throw away any that are stretched, uncomfortable, holey, mysteriously single or capable of standing upright unaided. Put the rest into one defined space. When that space is full, one pair must leave before another pair enters. This is not oppression. It is border control.

And do not surrender the pineapple socks. Every relationship needs one object that makes no sense to the other person but is nevertheless protected by treaty.

As for your fear that the socks represent all you have to show for adulthood, I would point out that you have a job, a flat, a relationship and a bolognese that only occasionally threatens the fire brigade. That is a perfectly respectable life. Adulthood is not proved by owning fewer socks. It is proved by knowing which ones are worth keeping.

With full support for regulated pineapple retention,

Joely

Dear Joely: The Affair Was Perfect. Then He Went Down on Me.

Dear Joely,

I am 44, married with two children, aged 12 and 8, but the relationship is all over bar the shouting. It won’t be easy to leave. My husband is abusive, not physically, but through a complex web of coercive control. I am seeing a psychologist. That’s just some background.

For a long while, I have felt as though I am ripe to have an affair. As I said, there is nothing between my husband and me, and I am constantly left alone while he works long hours and travels abroad for work. I work as well, but the childcare has somehow worked out to be my responsibility.

About four months ago, I met a man through work and we really hit it off straight away. He is intelligent, kind and generous, and we have heaps in common. We get together for meals whenever we can, normally lunches because of our commitments. We talk and talk and talk. He gets me, and for the first time in years I feel understood.

I should mention that he is also unhappily married. That’s just the start of it, though. Our lives are so similar it’s actually spooky.

Over time, we built up quite a closeness and, yes, an attraction as well. We ended up making a date to spend a night together at a hotel away from the area where we live. My children were spending the night with their grandparents.

It was really quite lovely being with him in those circumstances. I got to dress up, and we had drinks at a nice bar and then dinner together. It had been years since I had done anything even remotely like that.

After the drinks and food, we ended up back in the hotel room. Things progressed to kissing, then touching, and soon afterwards we were naked in bed.

He went down to give me oral sex, and that’s when things took a turn for the worse.

It was awful. It didn’t turn me on at all. He was all over the place and didn’t seem to have the first idea about female anatomy. I found myself in the really difficult position of not knowing whether to fake it or say something, which I think he detected.

I tried to encourage him to have normal sex, but that didn’t work either. He wasn’t erect. After all the weeks of build-up, talk, closeness and caring, followed by the drinks and dinner, it was a terrible outcome. I felt like crying.

He ended up pacing around the room, not naked, and I tried to get him to talk about it. He wouldn’t speak for ages. Eventually, he told me he had never gone down on a woman before and had felt enough about me to make me his first.

My reaction was not what he had hoped for, and he felt ashamed and embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say.

We spent an awkward night together, and the atmosphere was horrible. Since then, things haven’t been the same between us. I miss him terribly because the messages and conversations haven’t been as they were.

Worst of all, I cannot imagine in my wildest dreams ever having sex with him again. It has completely turned me off. I wish I could change that, but I have the ick. A serious case of it.

If I’m honest, I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that he had never given oral sex to a woman at his age, he is 39, or that his first attempt, with me, was so bad.

I feel down in the dumps, lonely, sad and disappointed. To be honest, I wish I had just given an Oscar-worthy performance.

Pathetic in Putney

Dear Pathetic in Putney,

First, you are not pathetic. You are disappointed, lonely, sexually underwhelmed and currently living inside a marriage where your freedom has been slowly parcelled up and handed back to you in supervised portions. That is quite enough misery without adding self-contempt to the buffet.

And no, you should not have given an Oscar-worthy performance.

An Oscar-worthy performance might have spared him one mortifying evening, but it would have sentenced you to an entire sequel. Possibly a franchise.

The problem is not simply that he was bad at oral sex. People can learn. Female anatomy is not guarded by riddles, fire-breathing dragons or a subscription paywall. A willing, attentive adult can improve enormously by listening, asking and resisting the urge to approach a vulva like an unfamiliar control panel.

What seems to have killed the mood was the whole peculiar bundle: his inexperience, your shock, his shame, the pacing, the silence, the failed erection, and the crushing distance between the night you had imagined and the one you actually got.

You had not merely booked a hotel room. You had booked passage out of your life.

For weeks, this man had been intelligence, kindness, conversation, recognition and possibility. He made you feel understood after years of being controlled and neglected. By the time you reached that bed, he was carrying the combined weight of romance, escape, sexual resurrection and proof that another life was waiting.

That is an impossible amount of luggage for one man to bring into a hotel room, particularly when he has never previously travelled south.

Your ick may be permanent. Sometimes desire disappears with the speed and finality of a stage trapdoor. But it may also be protecting you from the humiliation and sadness of that night. You cannot order yourself to want him again, but you also do not need to decide immediately that the entire connection was fraudulent.

The more revealing question is whether the two of you can talk honestly now.

Can he say, “I was inexperienced, frightened and ashamed,” without making you responsible for repairing his pride?

Can you say, “I was disappointed and overwhelmed, and I did not know how to guide you,” without turning his lack of experience into a character defect?

And can either of you discuss what happened without pretending the evening was solely a technical malfunction involving his tongue?

Because there is another awkward truth here: neither of you is free. You are both using this relationship partly as refuge from unhappy marriages. That does not mean your feelings are unreal. It does mean the relationship has been growing in a greenhouse, protected from school runs, bills, domestic habits, difficult decisions and the full weather of ordinary life.

Before deciding whether this man deserves another chance in bed, I would concentrate on something more urgent: creating a safe, independent plan for leaving your abusive marriage.

Coercive control often intensifies when the controlling person senses separation. Please continue working with your psychologist, and seek specialist domestic-abuse support to help you plan practically and safely. Do not make your escape dependent on whether this affair survives. You need a door that belongs to you, not one held open by another unhappily married person.

As for your lover, one honest conversation is warranted. Not because you owe him another sexual audition, but because you miss the friendship and closeness that existed before the hotel. Tell him the night affected you, that his withdrawal has hurt, and that you would rather speak plainly than let embarrassment rot the whole relationship in silence.

Then see what he does.

A man can be forgiven for not knowing where everything is. At thirty-nine, however, he should be capable of having a conversation after getting lost.

Yours in better exits and considerably better sex,

Joely

Dear Joely: My Friends Stopped Inviting Me Out Since I Got Engaged

Dear Joely,

I stumbled on your page. I hope you can help.

I’m 26. Rather than tell you loads of boring story about how I got where I am, I’ll try and make it as easy as I can.

I’ve just finished my degree in nursing. Apart from all the study and exams, I had a wonderful time. I had lots of friends around me and a fantastic social life.

I met a fantastic guy on one of our great nights out. He and I just got closer and closer, and we’re now engaged and living together. I’m happy with that, but it feels like my friends have left me behind.

I don’t usually get texted now when they’re going out as a group. I find out about it afterwards, and it really hurts. They just say, “Oh, you’re always busy.”

We used to do everything together. There was a really close group. Now it’s like we can talk, but it’s really basic chat. Nobody bothers going into what’s really going on with them — well, with me anyway.

I miss talking properly to my friends, and while I’m happy with my fiancé, I feel really excluded even though I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s starting to affect my relationship with my fiancé a bit because I’m down in the dumps a lot of the time.

Sorry, this is a bit mixed up.

Sad and Left Behind

Dear Sad and Left Behind,

First of all, congratulations on finishing your nursing degree. That is not a small thing. That is a very large thing involving caffeine, panic, shoes that hurt, and possibly a relationship with laminated notes that became too intimate.

And congratulations on the fiancé too. A good one, I hope. One who knows how to make tea, apologise properly, and not say “calm down” unless he has a death wish.

Now to the sore bit.

I don’t think you’ve done anything wrong. But I do think something has changed, and everyone is pretending it hasn’t.

Groups are funny creatures. At university, friendship can feel effortless because everyone is in the same stream. Same deadlines, same nights out, same shared exhaustion, same cheap wine, same tiny dramas given Shakespearean importance at 2 a.m.

Then someone graduates. Someone gets engaged. Someone starts shift work. Someone moves in with a partner. Suddenly the stream divides, and people often handle that very badly. Instead of saying, “We miss you, but we don’t know how to fit you in now,” they say, “Oh, you’re always busy.”

That line hurts because it makes their exclusion sound like your fault.

But here is the awkward little truth: they may not be deliberately leaving you out. They may have made a lazy assumption that engaged-you is no longer available in the same way single-student-you was. They may think they’re being considerate. Or they may be avoiding the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the group is changing and nobody knows what to do with that.

The first thing I’d do is stop waiting for the group to magically remember you. Pick one friend — the kindest one, not necessarily the loudest one — and say something plain.

Not dramatic. Not accusatory. Just honest.

Try:

“I know life has changed a bit since I moved in with him, but I really miss you all. I’ve noticed I’m not being included as much, and it’s hurt more than I wanted to admit. I still want to be part of things.”

Then be specific. Suggest a night. Suggest coffee. Suggest drinks after work. Don’t just say, “We should catch up,” because that phrase has sent more friendships to the grave than almost anything else.

Also, make sure you are not accidentally waiting to be invited while giving off the signal that your fiancé is now your whole social life. That happens more easily than people think. Love is wonderful, but it can become a very comfortable little cave, and sometimes our friends stop knocking because they think we’ve moved in permanently with the candles and the throw rugs.

This does not mean your fiancé has done anything wrong. But it is worth being careful not to make him responsible for filling every emotional gap your friends have left. That’s too much pressure on a relationship, especially a young engaged one. He can love you beautifully and still not be a group of girlfriends.

So build both things: your relationship and your friendships. They need different rooms in your life.

And if you do reach out clearly, and they still keep excluding you? Then you will have your answer. Painful, yes, but useful. Some friendships are for a season, and some survive the awkward transition into adult life. The ones worth keeping will make space for the fuller version of you — nurse, fiancée, friend, tired human, all of it.

You haven’t been left behind because you moved forward.

But you may need to turn around, wave your arms a little, and say, “I’m still here, you idiots.”

With sympathy, and a firm vote for one proper girls’ night very soon,

Joely

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Dear Joely: Why Do I Keep Going Back to Men Who Hurt Me?

Dear Joely,

Congratulations on your column. I have really enjoyed it so far. You make me smile and sometimes laugh. I hate that I need to write to you about something serious. If my letter is too much of a corta-onda — as we say back in Brasil — please don’t publish it.

I am 26 years old. I grew up in an abusive household. There was always a lot of yelling. My father was a drunk and when alcohol was involved, it was nothing for him to hit my mother.

As kids, my older sister and I tried to protect her as best as we could, but we couldn’t be there all the time. She would often walk around bruised and, of course, she suffered mentally as well.

My sister left as soon as she could, leaving me alone with my mother and father from age 13. I didn’t blame her. I still don’t.

My mother died young from cancer — at just 45. It is fair to say life was a disappointment to her.

I say all this by way of my background. My problem is that I’m finding relationships incredibly difficult. I tend to date men who are a fair bit older. Things start well, but they always turn out abusive.

I don’t stick around when this happens, but I have been known to go back and “visit the scene of the crime,” hoping things will be different. Of course, they never are.

I have tried going to counsellors. I can’t seem to relate to them and there are not many where I live. I know you can’t solve a problem that has been with me forever, but I just thought you might be able to give me some perspective.

Thank you, Joely,

Machucada

Dear Machucada,

First, your letter is not a corta-onda. It is not a mood-killer. It is a human being telling the truth.

And I’m very glad you wrote.

You grew up in a house where love and fear were tangled together before you were old enough to know they should be separate things. You watched your mother being hurt. You tried to protect her when you were still a child yourself. Your sister left, as she had every right to do, and you were left carrying far too much.

That is not “background.” That is weather. That is the climate your nervous system grew up inside.

So when you say you now find relationships difficult, I’m not surprised. Not because there is anything wrong with you, but because you learned intimacy in a dangerous room.

This is the part I want you to hear clearly: you are not choosing abusive men because you are stupid, weak, dramatic, or secretly “asking for it.” You are being pulled toward a pattern that your body recognises before your mind has a chance to object.

Sometimes what feels like chemistry is actually familiarity wearing perfume.

Older men may feel steady at first. Protective. Certain. Grown-up. But if the dynamic later becomes controlling, cruel or abusive, then the age difference may be part of the power imbalance, not an accident beside it.

The fact that you leave when abuse appears matters. That is a strong and sane instinct. Please respect that part of yourself. She is trying to save your life.

The part I would be more careful with is what you called “visiting the scene of the crime.” That phrase is painfully accurate. Going back to someone who has already shown you harm is not romance. It is the old wound asking whether this time the story might end differently.

I understand the hope. Of course you want the person who hurt you to become the person who makes it right. That would feel like justice. It would feel like repair. It would feel, perhaps, like rescuing the younger version of you who could not rescue your mother.

But abusive people rarely heal us from the harm they caused. More often, they repeat the lesson.

So here is one practical rule I would like you to try:

When a man becomes abusive, the relationship is over. Not paused. Not under review. Not waiting for his sad childhood explanation. Over.

You do not need to keep returning to check whether fire is still hot.

Counselling not working for you so far does not mean you are beyond help. It may mean you have not yet found the right kind of help. For what you describe, I would look specifically for someone trauma-informed, ideally with experience in childhood domestic violence, coercive control and relationship patterns. General counselling can sometimes feel too light for a wound this old.

You might also find it easier to begin with something less face-to-face: online trauma therapy, a domestic violence support service, a group for adult children from abusive homes, or even structured reading and journalling while you search for the right person. The right support should not make you feel judged, rushed or “too much.”

You are not too much. You are injured.

And injured people do not need scolding. They need safety, repetition, patience, and new experiences of being treated gently until the nervous system slowly begins to believe that gentleness is not a trick.

Please do not try to solve your whole life at once. Start smaller.

Do not go back to men who have harmed you.
Do not explain away the first signs of cruelty.
Do not mistake intensity for intimacy.
Do not confuse being wanted with being safe.

And when you feel the pull to return to someone who has hurt you, try saying this to yourself:

This is not love calling me back. This is the wound looking for a familiar door.

You signed yourself Machucada — wounded.

Yes. You are.

But wounded is not ruined.

Wounded is not doomed.

Wounded is not unlovable.

It only means the next part of your life must be built more carefully than the first part was built for you.

And you are allowed to build it.

Yours with tenderness, and absolutely no tolerance for men who make love feel unsafe,

Joely

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Dear Joely: Should I Tell His Wife?

Dear Joely,

We had one of those workplace birthday things yesterday. You know the ones. Everyone gets called into the tea room, someone produces a Woolies or Coles cake in clear plastic — the sort that looks like it would still be technically edible in a month — and we all stand around singing like we haven’t got actual work to do.

Nobody really wants the cake. Everyone takes a piece anyway. Then half of it ends up in the bin later because, shock horror, shelf-stable supermarket icing is not actually a food group.

Anyway, I was already in a filthy mood because I’d barely slept the night before, so perhaps I wasn’t at my most generous.

There’s a woman at work — let’s call her Barbara — who has always got on my nerves a bit. She calls everyone “babe,” laughs too loudly at men who aren’t funny, and does that thing where she touches a man’s arm as if he’s just said something terribly clever when he’s only asked where the stapler is.

Normally I just roll my eyes internally and get on with life.

But yesterday, during the birthday cake hostage situation, I noticed something between Barbara and a married male colleague. I won’t name him, obviously, but let’s call him “Old Mate With A Wife.”

It was the looks. The stupid little smiles. The way they were trying so hard not to look like anything was going on that they looked exactly like something was going on.

Honestly, Joely, it was as obvious as a possum in a pantry.

The annoying thing is I know his wife. Not closely, but we go to the same yoga class and she seems like a perfectly decent person. Now I feel like I’m sitting on something.

I don’t especially like Barbara. I don’t feel any loyalty to him. And I fully admit I may have been fuelled by no sleep, terrible cake and general workplace irritation.

But if there is something going on, should I tell his wife?

Yours sincerely,

Namast-hey!!!

Dear Namast-hey!!!,

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the true villain of this piece: the workplace birthday cake.

There it sits, sweating gently in its plastic coffin, covered in icing the colour of printer toner’s breakdown. Everyone gathers around it pretending to be delighted, when in truth they are all thinking, I am an adult. I pay taxes. Why am I eating this?

So I understand the state you were in when Barbara began her mating display beside the urn.

Barbara sounds exhausting. Any woman who calls everyone “babe” while treating the office kitchenette like a cabaret stage is going to test the patience of the sleep-deprived. And yes, people conducting a new workplace flirtation often believe they are being wildly subtle when they are in fact lit up like a service station at midnight.

But should you tell his wife?

Not today.

I know. Unsatisfying. Joely has put the kettle on and hidden the matches.

The reason is this: you are currently angry, tired, cake-traumatised, and morally itchy. These are not ideal conditions for life-altering disclosure.

There is a big difference between acting from conscience and acting because Barbara has finally pushed your last nerve into traffic.

Ask yourself three questions.

First: what do I actually know?
Not suspect. Not smell in the air. Not “the way he looked at her near the paper plates.” Know.

Second: what is my relationship with his wife?
Are you close enough that silence would feel like betrayal, or are you yoga-adjacent acquaintances who once bonded over tight hamstrings and a shared hatred of crow pose?

Third: why do I want to tell her?
To protect her? To relieve your own discomfort? To punish him? To drop Barbara into a moral volcano and watch the plume?

Be honest. You don’t have to be pure, but you do have to know your motive.

If what you have is only a strong suspicion, do not march into yoga like the Angel of Adultery with a rolled-up mat. Watch. Wait. Say nothing yet.

If you later discover something concrete — not gossip, not vibes, but actual evidence — then the question changes. At that point, if this woman is genuinely in your life and you believe she is being deceived in a way that may harm her, a careful private conversation may be warranted.

But it would need to be calm, kind and clean. Not:

“Your husband and Barbara are at it.”

More like:

“I’m really sorry to say this, and I may be overstepping, but I’ve noticed something at work that made me uncomfortable. I don’t want to gossip, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I also didn’t feel right saying nothing.”

Then you give only what you know. No embroidery. No dramatic lighting. No Barbara character assassination, tempting though that may be.

For now, though, I prescribe sleep, distance, and not making lifelong decisions under the influence of Coles cake.

As for Barbara, let her keep calling people babe. Every office has one woman who treats married men like complimentary snacks. It is rarely as invisible as she thinks.

Do your yoga. Hold your tongue. Keep your eyes open.

And next time there’s a workplace birthday, bring your own biscuit.

Yours with clean hands and no office cake,

Joely

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Dear Joely: My Boyfriend Won’t Take Me To Barbados

Dear Joely,

My partner and I live together in London. We have been together for almost two years and, for the most part, life is good. Last year, we went on holiday together to Goa, which was really fun. We both had a great time.

It has always been a strong wish of mine to visit the Caribbean — in particular Barbados and perhaps one of the smaller islands. The problem is that my boyfriend won’t even consider going to the West Indies and the reason, to me, is basically a joke.

When I push the point, and it has come down to arguments a few times, it turns out to be based around a deep-seated jealousy of Black men and the perceived size of Black men’s bodies.

I find this completely and utterly ridiculous and have said so more than once. I have pointed out the obvious: that I would be there as his partner and not casting about for an island fling, but he will not be moved.

I mentioned this to a few of my friends and they were shocked. He doesn’t come across this way to them.

I am annoyed about this on a few levels. The first is his stubbornness on what I see as an absurd point. Then I think about his inability to see my point of view. And plus, his underlying insecurity is deeply unattractive to me.

We have a sex life that we both enjoy a lot. Why he’s acting this way is beyond me. Should I just go alone and hang the consequences?

Yours sincerely,

Exasperated

Dear Exasperated,

There are many respectable reasons a person might not want to visit the Caribbean.

They hate heat. They don’t like long-haul flights. They once had an unfortunate encounter with rum punch and have never emotionally recovered. They are saving money. They prefer mountains. They are frightened of boats, mosquitoes, or becoming the sort of person who says “island time” without irony.

Your boyfriend’s reason is not one of these.

Your boyfriend does not want to go to Barbados because, somewhere in the private locker room of his mind, he has decided that if you are placed within a certain radius of Black men, your fidelity, judgment and knickers will all fling themselves into the sea.

This is not a travel preference. It is insecurity wearing a racist hat.

You are right to find it unattractive. Insecurity can be tender when someone owns it honestly: I know this is my issue, I’m embarrassed by it, I’m trying to work through it. But insecurity becomes controlling when it expects the other person’s life to get smaller around it.

And that is the part I would take seriously.

Because the issue is not really Barbados. Barbados is just where the ridiculousness has chosen to wear sunglasses. The real question is: what happens when your desire for something harmless collides with his fear of being inadequate?

Does he get curious about himself?

Does he trust you?

Does he hear you?

Or does he dig in until your wish becomes the problem?

You say you have a good sex life. Lovely. But sexual compatibility does not cancel out sexual insecurity. A man can enjoy your body and still be terrified that it contains preferences, memories, curiosity, fantasy, autonomy, and a passport.

Should you go alone and hang the consequences?

Not as a stunt. Not as punishment. Not with a dramatic “fine, I’ll go without you then” flourish while booking flights at midnight with one eye twitching.

But should you go to the Caribbean if you genuinely want to go, and he refuses to join you for this reason?

Yes, quite possibly.

First, though, I’d have one calm, adult, deeply unsexy conversation. Not about anatomy. Not about stereotypes. Not about whether his fear is “valid.” About the relationship.

Try something like:

“I want to understand whether you’re asking me to give up a place I’ve always wanted to visit because you don’t trust me, because you feel insecure, or because you hold beliefs about Black men that I’m not comfortable with. Whichever it is, we need to talk honestly, because this is starting to change how I see you.”

Then stop talking.

Let him answer.

If he can say, I know this is irrational, I’m ashamed of it, and I don’t want it to limit you, you may have something to work with.

If he doubles down, sulks, accuses you, or turns your perfectly ordinary travel wish into evidence that you’re secretly planning a sexual field trip, then you have learned something important.

Go to Barbados. Take sunscreen. Take a good book. Take your own sweet self.

And while you’re there, ask yourself whether you want a partner who can stand beside you in the world — or one who needs you to avoid entire regions because his imagination has packed badly.

Warmly,

Joely

More dilemmas? Read more letters and replies in the Dear Joely advice column.

Dear Joely: The Bedroom Goes Quiet

Dear Joely,

My wife and I have been married just over four years. It is a second marriage for both of us. I’m 53, she’s 49, and until recently we’ve always had a very active sex life. That’s partly why I’m so thrown by the sudden change.

For the past few months, she always seems to have a reason not to. She’s tired. She’s stressed. She wants an early night. She’d rather read, scroll, or disappear into a game than come to bed in any meaningful sense of the phrase. She’s friendly enough, and not cold exactly, but there is a distracted quality to her now, as though I’m approaching her from slightly too far away.

I’ve tried not to make a big performance of it. I’ve been patient. I’ve made dinner, brought flowers, made an effort. She seems touched by those things, but not moved in the direction I’m hoping for. The more I try, the more I begin to feel like a man laying rose petals in front of a door that isn’t opening.

So now I’m wondering what I’m meant to think. Is this just a phase in a marriage and I’m being oversensitive, or should I be worried there’s someone else?

Signed,

Missing My Wife

Dear Missing,

The first thing to say is this: a drop in desire is not, by itself, proof of a third party lurking in the shrubbery.

People go off sex for all sorts of reasons. Fatigue, resentment, distraction, hormones, low mood, buried irritation, feeling unsexy in their own skin, or simply getting stuck in a pattern where avoidance becomes easier than explaining what is going on. The human libido is not a punctual little clerk. It wanders off, goes silent, and sometimes needs coaxing back under less pressure than flowers and hopeful dinners can create.

That said, you are not wrong to notice the change, and you are not shallow for missing your wife in this particular way. Sex is not the whole of a marriage, but neither is it nothing. When it goes quiet without explanation, people start telling themselves stories. Usually unpleasant ones.

Before you leap to infidelity, I would ask a duller but more useful question: have you actually spoken to her plainly, without the bouquet, without the seduction campaign, and without making the conversation sound like a charge sheet? Not “Why don’t you want me?” Not “Is there someone else?” But something closer to: “I miss you. Something feels different between us. Is anything going on that I’m not seeing?”

Because at the moment you are trying to solve a communication problem with romance, which is understandable but often ineffective. A woman can enjoy a lasagne and still not want to take her clothes off. The flowers are not the issue. The silence is.

If she brushes you off repeatedly, refuses to talk at all, and leaves you alone with your increasingly inventive theories, then yes, you may have more cause for concern. But don’t promote yourself to detective before you have first tried being a husband in a chair, asking a difficult question and waiting for the real answer.

There may be someone else. There may equally be stress, sadness, menopause, anger, boredom, or some private knot she hasn’t yet untangled into words. Your job for now is not to guess correctly. It is to open the conversation without accusation and see whether she meets you there.

You say she is friendly. I would aim for something more intimate than friendly. Friendly is for baristas and neighbours. Wives should, at the very least, be reachable.

Yours, with a steady hand,

Joely

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