There’s a specific way I want to be able to get off with my wife. It’s never happened.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

I’m a cis man and have been with my wife for 20 years. We have an active and varied sex life with good communication. One thing that could be better is that I’d like to be able to ejaculate during blowjobs. I come during vaginal and anal intercourse and titfucking, all usually while I’m thrusting pretty deeply. She’s enthusiastic about giving oral, and everything she does with her mouth and hands feels amazing, but I can never seem to finish. I can come while actively fucking her mouth (when she wants that), but we’d both love it if sometimes I could come mostly from what she’s doing rather than mostly from what I’m doing. How could I learn to orgasm from what she’s giving so well?

—Not Receiving Well

Dear Not Receiving Well,

The simple truth is you may never make it there. For whatever reason, there are guys who can come from one kind of stimulation and not the other. Anecdotally, “I can’t come from head,” is something I’ve heard quite a bit on apps and in just general sex talk. For some, this may have something to do with mechanics—thrusting can induce orgasm in a way that sitting back and getting serviced does not. You have discovered a workaround (fucking her mouth), and you can orgasm by many other means on top of that, so your question is one of optimization. You’re looking for perfection, and you’re just a few points away.

Still, there are things you can try, albeit none of them are guaranteed to get you off. Abstinence from orgasm (sex and masturbation) can make you more sensitive and it can make coming easier when it’s finally time to do so. Try it. Go a few days or even a week and see if anything shifts. During the blow job, you can also experiment with prostate stimulation, as that pushes some guys over the edge. A finger will work, as would a toy (like the kind of stimulators that Aneros makes). A vibrator on your penis might help increase sensation, too, and you can always introduce porn and/or fantasizing while she blows you, potentially turning up the heat. Finally, you mention that what she’s doing with her mouth and hands feels amazing, so this might not apply, but just in case: She can stroke you while she sucks you in one motion. Sometimes the hand grip plus mouth suction is a winning combination. If you haven’t tried that, ask her to give it a whirl.

Dear How to Do It,

My wife and I got together in 2010 during my senior year of college and married in 2017 at her behest. While in school and early career, our relationship was fun, exciting, and boozy. The relationship, sex, and romance were great. Things waned over time, and with clear hindsight I don’t think we should have ever got married.

We were soulmates and when things were good they were great. Those intoxicating moments of passion slowed over 15 years. I thought we had settled into a mature mid-30s relationship. I haven’t seen a perfect one and I at least thought we were doing quite a lot better than most.

Back in August, she left with relatively little warning (I’m sure she’d disagree). She moved five hours away and left me to serve as undertaker to the marriage. I had to sell the house and try to grieve a wife that effectively died suddenly with no wake, ceremony, or burial. That grief was tremendous and I’m still feeling it months later.

I try to let go but there’s definitely resentment in how she left. So now the question: How in the world do I start a relationship when I’ll only ever be remembering her? It feels entirely unfair. And to boot, with an older and not a younger love.

—Hoping for a New Soulmate

Dear Hoping for a New Soulmate,

Breakups are hard. If they were easy, we wouldn’t contend with the concept of heartsickness in this context and you wouldn’t have written the letter that you did. You wouldn’t be wondering how to move on—you’d have moved on. But as you say, you are still grieving. You are coping with the loss of a 15-year relationship. That’s not something that is easy to conquer in a few months. Give yourself time and patience. Feel the pain. Trying to skip over this part would be futile and it wouldn’t properly honor your loss. You can distract yourself, sure. Go on dates, have meaningless sex, take up hobbies, get in touch with old friends. But know that sadness is natural and inevitable. It speaks to the love that you had. Sometimes a bitter aftertaste is an inevitability. That doesn’t make the main course less meaningful.

Maybe part of you never does get over it, and you carry around some amount of pain from this with you for the rest of your life. You’ll still be fine. You can still be OK even when your life isn’t perfect. The sadness is what you have in your wife’s absence. It’s part of you, and it’s informed by the happiness that was. Of course being upset is not ideal, but that sadness is yours. It’s what you get to keep.

It is quite possible that when you are ready to look for a new relationship, you won’t find someone who compares to your wife. This is not a liability; it’s a gift. From your past relationship, you have insights. You know what worked and what didn’t. There is probably some stuff that you wish you could have done differently and a new relationship will allow you a redo. You may think about your ex as you venture out. You may think about her a lot. Maybe when you meet someone who takes up more of your brain space and you realize your ex-wife is taking up less of it, that’s when you’ll know you have found a relationship that’s worthy of your devotion. This person may be wonderful in ways that you can’t predict. They may possess goodness that is appreciable in its own right and not in contrast to your ex’s. This is not always easy to find. It may take you a while. Let it. It’s all part of the process.

Dear How to Do It,

I want to store my sex toys in my bathroom. I wash them after use and I also feel most comfortable giving them a rinse and pat dry before use, so between uses it just feels pointless to put them away in my bedroom when they’re gonna end up in my bathroom again anyway. Right now I’ve been leaving them just on my sink, but it’s suboptimal (if I have a guest who needs to use it, I end up just tossing the toys on my bed), and I have a tiny shower with a shelf that barely holds my shampoo bottle, let alone three dildos and a vibrator that isn’t completely waterproof anyway.

Would cloth storage bags in a tray under the sink be safe, or would there be a mold risk? Are there safe hard case storage options for sex toys? Would it be best to just actually put them away in my bedroom?

—Sinkside Drawer

Dear Sinkside Drawer,

According to Lisa Finn, a sex educator for the sex-toy boutique Babeland, it would indeed be best to actually put them away in your bedroom. In a phone conversation about your letter, she explained why leaving your toys on the sink is suboptimal for reasons beyond optics. “When you take a shower, the air becomes filled not only with the steam from the shower, but also with all the products that you’re using in the shower,” she said. “And steam will also catch any of the dust that’s in the air, so you have the potential for everything that’s floating around in that steam to get onto your toys as well.” As your vibrator isn’t completely waterproof, the moist environment could also kill its motor over time.

Mold is a risk if storing your toys in any kind of damp environment, Finn explained, though the risk is much higher if you are using a toy made out of porous material. Non-porous materials like glass, stainless steel, and pure silicone can be washed completely (and boiled even, if they don’t have motors). A silicone blend—jelly rubber, elastomer, latex, vinyl cyber skin, or really any silicone blend that isn’t represented in packaging as 100 percent silicone—is porous and much more vulnerable to the elements. “Those have the ability to get mold and mildew into those pores, even if you can’t see it,” said Finn. Eventually, harboring mold/mildew could make the toy unsafe to use and/or destroy it.

Finn recommends storing toys in a cloth bag (like one made out of satin), only after they have been completely dried. This is important no matter where you’re storing them. And then, if you are storing them in the bathroom, you’d want to store them in a sealed container to keep moisture out. Also be aware of the kinds of chemicals you are storing them next to, in the event that something should spill or leak. In terms of cleaners, Finn recommended the One Toy Cleaner and Wicked Simply Cleene Antibacterial Toy Cleaner, both spray-ons.

I understand your desire for convenience, but in this case, it’s not that much more work to store your toys away from the humid environment of your bathroom. So do that.

—Rich

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