I lied to my wife about why I’ve been dodging sex. I’m not sure she can handle the truth.

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

Dear How to Do It,

Hear me out, I know this sounds insane…

But ever since I walked in on my wife douching in the bathroom two weeks ago, my desire for sex has evaporated like rain in a desert. You simply can’t unsee some things. She’s beginning to wonder what’s going on. I’ve told her there’s been a lot going on at work, but I can’t keep putting her off forever. Help!

—My Eyes Have Been Sullied

Jessica Stoya: Why is the wife douching?

Rich Juzwiak: Well, that’s a good question.

Jessica: I cannot deal with the writer’s actual question until we address why the wife is douching. The writer is not in a position to give us answers to any questions, and it’s not really their place to say, “Hey, wife, we haven’t had sex in two weeks. And now randomly I’m asking, why were you douching?” But please, don’t douche.

Rich: It seems like one of the most straightforward, unhealthy products of capitalism made under the guise of being for women’s reproductive health.

Jessica: In very rare circumstances, there might be a short-term, specific medical use for it. But the douche as a cleanliness product, just for the sake of it, is not good for you. I cannot walk past the word douche without a public service announcement.

Rich: Every expert that I’ve ever seen talk about it has said not to do it. And obviously, anal douching is a different thing. You’re supposed to do that with clean water, and that’s strictly for the purpose of making one’s asshole not shitty during anal sex. So that’s a different kind of thing.

It’s funny that you bring it up, because my question after reading this was, what’s so traumatic about douching? What if this guy is super knowledgeable about women’s health, and it’s the very fact that she’s doing this? He can’t believe she would do that to her body.

Jessica: He’s like, “Oh, my God, until two weeks ago, I thought my wife was a mature adult with functional judgment skills, and it turns out now I can’t look at her the same way.” That is a funny scenario. I think it’s more likely that he is grossed out by the fact of her having a body.

Rich: Right, it seems like that would be the case.

Jessica: In a recent Dear Prudence column, there was an ideologically body-positive woman, but she was struggling to connect that ideology in practical terms to how she thinks about her own body. And Jenée told her to look at people with bodies similar to yours being people, doing things everybody does, until that feels normalized. I think that might be useful here. Read some subreddits related to women’s health. Just walk right up to the thing that you never really had to realize before, and kind of rub your own face in it a little bit. Hear about some of the gross stuff. Actually, that might completely backfire.

Rich: It can be shocking to actually consider the full extent of your partner’s humanity and existence in a body, but I think it speaks to a rift in intimacy, that you’d be able to have sex with this person and theoretically want to please them and know their body well enough to do that, but then shrink away when you’re presented with another reality of their body. The fact that, for whatever reason, she thought her vagina was not up to snuff in terms of freshness, and somehow, this is going to send him into a spiral.

Jessica: Women are people. I’ve never heard of anyone losing their capacity to see a woman as erotic because of douching, but I think that’s only because most people our age got told really early on, “Do not douche.” But I’ve had male partners who didn’t want to wait until my period was over to have sex, but had to do it with the lights off and the windows open because if they were visually or olfactorily confronted with the reality that there is menstrual fluid, which has a coppery smell. They would be squicked out and disgusted.

I’ve also had male partners who are completely fascinated by tampons or menstrual cups, not in an erotic way. There’s nothing arousing about it, but it seems to be the same thing as for me when I saw a male partner shave their face the first few times. There’s that curiosity. The way we teach sex education, even in the areas where people get relatively good sex education, leaves young men severely in the dark about how women’s bodies operate. And I do leave space for the fact that giving birth is pretty traumatic for everyone. So I have a lot of empathy for the men who watch their wife give birth and then are like, “I’ve got a lot to work through.” But these everyday experiences are different.

Rich: And that aspect of birth is a documented phenomenon. There are a lot of people who have that reaction.

Jessica:  Yeah, so that aside, we’re talking about common, everyday occurrences. When you’re ovulating, the completely healthy fluids coming out of your vulva are sometimes milky or cloudy. Menstrual blood, it’s a thing, it smells like copper, it’s part of having a body. Tampons, they go in, they come out, and they sit in the trash. I mean, it’s aggressive to leave a bloody menstrual cup sitting on the side of the sink where everyone’s toothbrushes are. I can understand how that’s a lot for someone. A tampon in the trash can, that’s another story.
It shouldn’t be on the woman to have to manage all of these shocked and grossed-out feelings. It’s like, “I’m sorry. I’m basically an animal with very little body hair.” You’ve got to come to terms with that if you want to have sex with women, marry women, and live with women.

Rich: I think that coming to terms with it is actually the process here. You just kind of have to allow yourself to process these feelings and to understand them and just go through it. It has been two weeks for this guy who saw this thing that traumatized him for whatever reason, so it’s early.

If he walked in on her doing it, she’s aware of that. So if the problem is that he doesn’t want to tell her, but she keeps asking, you can tell her. She may find it strange, confusing, or offensive, but it is the reason, and this is a thing that is beyond you; you’re not controlling this. You can be honest about it. Maybe then she’ll have suggestions or she’ll be able to kind of hold your hand, even if you don’t quite deserve it, and actually help you through it. Or you’ll be on your own. And you know what? Give it a few more weeks, give it a month, and you’ll get horny one day, and that will probably be enough to overcome this issue. You just might need to metabolize this and move on.

Jessica: When it comes to explaining to the wife what’s going on, the opening of their letter, “I know this sounds insane,” that’s great. Stay in that lane. Own that it is. The writer should own that they are having a reaction that is their problem. They want to let their wife know what’s going on. If the wife offers to be supportive, great. But if at any point the writer frames douching as disgusting or any other facet of just living in a body with internal genitalia and reproductive organs, and the wife leaves them, that is the writer’s fault. If it blows back on you because you’re acting like it’s disgusting to be human, then that’s on you.

Rich: So just choose your words carefully and communicate effectively.

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