I Have a Delusional Obsession With an Old Lover. It’s Making Me Do Something Very Bizarre.

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Dear How to Do It,

I’m currently in a perfectly happy marriage and yet, my body still lusts for a guy I slept with 12 years ago when I was 21. He was my professor, a volunteer firefighter, and had the aesthetic that I find deliciously fuckable. It would wreck my husband and so many others if I let the desires of my body take control, but I can’t stop myself from finding little ways to inch closer to him. I called his work phone (dumb me) and got the voicemail. Hearing the sound of his voice saying his name sent my back arching and my pelvic region ignited into flames. I know everything about this is wrong and would yield only negative results. How do I extinguish this silly lust?

—Forever a Hot Mess

Dear Forever a Hot Mess,

I think you should pursue the kind of sex that you had with your former professor in an ethical manner, be it with your husband or non-monogamously. With your husband, this might involve roleplay (have you tried any student/teacher and/or firefighter scenarios?). It could actually involve a bunch of stuff like kink, toys, switching up venues. The idea is to liberate yourself from routine and make more of the kind of memories you’ll want to hold onto for a decade or more.

An open arrangement could allow you to obtain the kind of excitement you’re hungry for—new stimuli is, for many people, inherently exciting. You could pursue sex with others alongside your partner or solo. That’s not for everyone and it very well might not be for your partnership, given the devastation you predict cheating would cause. But it would be a way to get a firefighter into your bed—that particular firefighter is probably not the one you want to pursue, but there are more of them out there.

You can also work on reframing your past relationship. You don’t have that guy, but you do have the memories you made together. That’s a net positive. You know that it’s not something that your current life situation would allow you to pursue, but it’s still with you. In your mind you can replay the sex you had or the experience of being in his presence. It’s not the same as being with him, but it’s certainly not nothing.

The third option is to blow everything up for sex that you had 12 years ago, at a different stage of your development, when you were in many ways a different person. Sometimes said reunions are wonderful, and sometimes they primarily function to show you how much you’ve changed. If that were the case, it’d be an expensive lesson to teach yourself.

Dear How to Do It,

I have found myself in a horrible position. I’m friends with a married couple with kids. I care very much for both people but over the past few years, the wife has started having affairs and acting like a love-sick teenager over any man who looks her way. (Their marriage has always been rocky but they still sleep together regularly and keep up appearances.)

The first affair was with her son’s soccer coach. She’d continually invite him to dinner and parties at the couple’s home with their kids. She even took a special interest in her lover’s kids to the point where both her kids and his kids were hanging out daily.  Then came the 21-year-old French soccer players who stayed at the house while in the U.S. She lusted after them and likely slept with one of them while visiting them on a solo trip to France recently. Then came her old boyfriend from Amsterdam. Another long distance affair that would have occasional meet-ups when she took vacations to Europe without her family.

Although I tried to support my friend’s happiness, I felt sick about it. Her husband is also a friend and one who has always been kind to me and my family. The wife and I parted ways a few months ago. The culmination of her disrespect and general strange, erratic, and gross behavior finally ended our close friendship.

It’s been a relief not to have to look the husband in the eye knowing what I know but I have been feeling terrible about the whole situation. To make it worse,(and this is bad) I recently found out that she invited one of the men she was sleeping with (and claimed to be in love with) on a camping trip with her husband and kids. His kids came too. When I drove by their house the day before, her husband was packing up the car and happily getting ready to go. I had just learned that her lover would be going, as well. I felt sick inside. It feels like she gets off on taking serious risks with her husband’s feelings.

Admittedly, my own husband had an affair a few years ago. It broke me. I look back and can now see that people were trying to tell me but I just didn’t catch on. I really wish they had. I’m hurt they didn’t. (We survived it, by the way) Her husband is a friend of both mine and my husband’s. His side of their extended family is also dear to us. We are all neighbors. In fact, they were incredibly kind and supportive to me while I was going through the whole affair ordeal. So it’s complicated.

I can’t get the words out of my mouth. I don’t know if it’s because I should mind my own business or because I can’t bear to cause someone the pain that I just went through. He deserves better. Please help. I’ve been losing sleep over this for a very long time.

—Sleepless in SF

Dear Sleepless in SF,

Are you sure they don’t already have an ethically non-monogamous arrangement? It’s not just the pattern of regularly taking on new lovers that makes me wonder this (or the fact that you’re in San Francisco, a veritable hub of polyamory)—it’s that she’s bringing them around her husband. Either she’s flagrant and he’s willfully blind to her machinations, or they have something already worked out. It’s hard to tell what you’ve been privy to. That you “tried to support my friend’s happiness” suggests that she was filling you in on elicit happenings, but then there’s the conjecture (“… and likely slept with one of them while visiting them on a solo trip to France recently,” emphasis mine). I would think that if she was giving you the download on her cheating and then rubbing it in her husband’s face without telling him that’s what she was doing in so many words, her getting off on taking serious risks with her husband’s feelings would be not something you feel but something that you know because it would be obvious.

So, before proceeding just make sure you know what you’re talking about and if there’s any doubt and/or you haven’t at least considered the possibility that this relationship that seems all wrong through a heteronormative lens could be functioning totally consensually. You probably should mind your own business, but if you simply must say something to the husband, approach the conversation as an inquiry. What does he think of his wife constantly having new male friends that she brings around and then seemingly drops? Has he ever gotten the feeling that something is up? Given her flagrance, it would be odd if he didn’t at least suspect that she’s up to something if their arrangement is, in fact, supposed to be monogamous. Get his side of the experience and if he voices confusion or negativity about the way his wife is conducting herself, that would be the time to fill him in on what you know. But not before.

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Dear How to Do It,

I have a vampire/vore (blood) kink which my partner happily acts out on me. I would like to take things to the next level by adding mild to moderate pain when they pretend to bite my neck. I know from YouTube and similar sites that prosthetic fangs are available but I assume that realistic (pointy) ones will run the risk of causing an actual puncture injury (my dentist tells me at every visit that the jaw is the strongest muscle in the human body).

I think short, non-pointy “nubs” made of plastic or rubber would work for the task. Are there commercially available ones as far as you know? My partner has three spare identical low-profile orthodontic retainers so I’ve contemplated going the DIY route on one of them to see if I could achieve my “inner Etsy.”

But is there an alternate way to do this that I’ve not considered? Or is there no safe way to do this that won’t risk getting me featured in an episode of

“Sex Sent Me to the ER”?

—Have a Drink of Me

Dear Have a Drink of Me,

There are definitely rubber vampire fangs out there—a quick internet search will get you what you’re looking for. But Father Sebastiaan, a fangsmith once dubbed by the New York Times magazine as “the Vampire King of New York,” has a message for you: Don’t use fangs for biting.

Granted, the custom fangs that Father Sebastiaan makes are “medical-grade quality,” and formed out of dental acrylic. These days, they’re mainly 3D printed. He’s been making fangs for 30 years (his first pair was a Christmas present for his mother)—and his grandfather was a dentist, as is his aunt. “The fangs I make are good for nibbling, kissing, and blowjobs,” Father Sebastiaan told me via Zoom. Blowjobs? How does that work, I wondered. “Very carefully,” he responded.

“I think that the fangs and the saliva are a dangerous mix for infection. You’ve got to nibble,” said the man who has been active in the vampire subculture since 1992. He said he’s (accidentally) broken skin when kissing with fangs in. And so, through his years of experience in the community, Father Sebastiaan has come to conclude that, “using things to bite people, I think that’s dangerous. You can break the skin, you could break an artery. You can bruise someone. You can hurt someone really bad.”

To be as safe as possible here, I’m going to recommend that you keep things at a nibble, regardless of the material you’re using. “As the most famous fangsmith in the world, I’ve seen it all,” he continued. “I’ve been making fangs for 30 years. I know all the different techniques to make fangs. And I will tell you that it is stupid to drink blood with fangs. It’s irresponsible. It’s not funny.”

Incidentally, Father Sebastiaan has tasted blood before. “It tastes like iron,” he reports. He did not do this with fangs, but with a lancet, like the type that’s used for diabetic blood tests. “When I did it, I just used the lancet and put a couple holes in the person’s back, above the shoulder blade. Never in the neck!”

Dear How to Do It,

My wife and I have been married for 12 years, together for 14. We’re a trusting, loving couple with a great marriage and sex life. We’ve been talking about exploring some kinks, maybe adding another person or a couple—possibly a bi woman or man.

We’ve looked around at couples dating apps but they are so impersonal. The profiles are so specific that they’re real turn offs—people have these ridiculous lists of dos and don’ts, likes and dislikes. It makes us not even want to try. Why bother? Who wants to be in high school again?

Where else can we meet mature people like us that isn’t a bar, dance club, or some dingy basement sex club? We want this to be fun for both of us, not gross or a chore.

—Fabulous and 50

Dear Fabulous and 50,

I understand where you’re coming from. There’s one particular gay dating app that allows for effectively infinite space in one’s profile and the results can be pages and pages of rules, which I agree is a boner-killer. With that said, you have a lot of your own rules listed in your brief letter: No apps, no bars, no dance clubs, no dingy basement sex clubs, no dos, no don’ts. I point this out not to suggest that you shouldn’t hold onto your standards and boundaries—you should—but that you should also give people a little grace for having theirs. Yeah, some people are excessive, which I find to be a red flag (it can read like a preview of the complaining you’re likely to put up with if you make that person’s actual acquaintance). But not everyone is so uptight and you are cutting yourself off from a large segment of potential partners if you dismiss apps outright. To read the way people present themselves on apps as high-school behavior is to interpret in bad faith. Sure, you’ll meet some people who won’t let you sit with them, but I think if you give the benefit of the doubt to people whose profiles are a little bit annoying (as opposed to the egregiously didactic), you’ll do much better.

The reason I’m asking you to reconsider the apps is because you may find it challenging finding potential partners IRL given your other restrictions. You should take a look at an app like Feeld, which caters to non-monogamous people and is typically friendly. Some people are verbose in their profiles, but it’s not as common as on other apps. TK. Otherwise, you might want to look into local swingers groups—they sometimes have meetups outside of places like clubs and bars. If your initial search doesn’t turn up anything, try inputting “lifestyle.” If none of these things is appealing, I think the two of you just need to integrate your desires into your daily life, which means flirting with friends or even strangers to see who bites. There isn’t some magical spot away from nightlife that’s going to give you a good pool of people to work with—those spots, even the dingy ones, exist to make that which you’re looking for more attainable. You have no obligation to patronize them, but not doing so will make your task harder.

—Rich

More Advice From Slate

Last night, I went on an amazing date. We slept together, and that part was amazing, too. But in the afterglow, he casually let it drop that he’s dating someone seriously, but they’re open. I felt extremely betrayed, like he got me in bed under false pretenses. I left, and he texted later and said he hadn’t meant to mislead me. Did he, though? I can’t help but feel like he tricked me to get laid.