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,
I’m autistic and my boyfriend is not, which I think may color this question. I fundamentally don’t experience much jealousy.
I love my boyfriend, and I trust that if he loves me, he’ll be faithful. If he wasn’t, I would leave. I’ve been cheated on by an ex in the past so it’s not like I blindly trust but although I loved my ex, the cheating was like flipping a switch—it hurt but also made me see him as childish and cowardly for the choice and I moved out that same day.
My boyfriend and I both have plenty of opposite-sex friends and maintain friendships with some of our exes. I generally think this is fine. I don’t understand what the point of a relationship is if you feel anxious or unsure all the time, and a life outside the relationship is important to me. I thought we were on the same page, but recently my boyfriend has been complaining that a partner’s jealousy makes him feel desirable and wanted and that without it he feels insecure. I don’t know what to do about this, and he suggested playing it in bed, even if not in real life. Any suggestions on how to approach this?
—Pretend
Rich Juzwiak: I absolutely love the straight-shooting tone of this letter. “I don’t understand what the point of a relationship is if you feel anxious or unsure all the time, and a life outside the relationship is important to me.” Amen. That’s great. I feel like this person really has it all figured out. We should be asking them questions.
I think the boyfriend is wrong, generally speaking, for requesting jealousy—this feeling that doesn’t exist for this person. Accept your partner’s feelings for what they are, and you’ll have a much easier time, even if it doesn’t align with how you see the world as it should be. It is what it is. You have a partner who isn’t jealous.
Jessica Stoya: I would ask the boyfriend what they get out of jealousy. The boyfriend’s going to say, “Well, it makes me feel desirable and wanted and secure.” And then I would say, “OK, what’s underneath that?” In what ways does it make you feel desirable? What about it makes you feel wanted? Where do you derive the security from? You might be able to lead him to understanding and in turn, explaining what it is that he actually wants. Then the letter writer can cater to the healthy needs that are underneath this jealousy thing, which I think is probably harmful and not the best.
Rich: Yeah, because there are other ways to get this affirmation. Maybe it’s the particular flavor of jealousy that he likes, but besides that, there are other ways to get all of this stuff that jealousy would putatively give you.
Jessica: I am imagining, “Where were you tonight? What did you do? Who were you with?” can feel like suspicion and jealousy, but it can also be done in a way that is a direct expression of curiosity about your partner’s day, and both might result in a feeling of being wanted.
Rich: Yes, yes. What do you think about the role-play idea? I think it sounds actually like a positive way to get this stuff out and to play with this desire that he has for this kind of expression in a form where everybody knows it’s not real. So you don’t have to actually have the jealousy and then your boyfriend gets to vicariously experience this thing that he prizes.
Jessica: I think it’s not a clear top-bottom situation, but it bears mentioning that the active party’s consent and desire to participate is also important. The boyfriend wants jealousy done to him, but our letter writer should also stop to consider whether they want to pretend to express jealousy at all. And then if they are, television is full of examples of jealousy within relationships being expressed.
Rich: So in other words, you can model a scene off of something that you see.
Jessica: Yes.
Rich: And this kind of scene-setting probably requires a good deal of planning really, especially if it’s not going to come naturally to you. It would have to be basically—again with the letter writer’s consent—the boyfriend saying, “Here’s what I would like to see. Can you work with that?”
Jessica: Which means sitting down and having a talk about what jealousy is and what it does for him. So I really think my initial suggestion of getting to the root of it and expressing it is the healthiest way. But if the boyfriend is not on board with that, then have the conversation and role-play it. I just have this bad feeling about the role-playing, and I don’t know why. And it’s one of the times that I’m frustrated that there isn’t a dialogue with the letter writers, because I’m thinking: Is the letter writer going to be OK? Is this going to spill over? How good are they at separating role-playing from real life? How good is the boyfriend at separating role-playing from real life? Do they know anything about acting? Could they do a de-rolling exercise where they come out of the role they just played? So that’s something worth looking up: ways to return to the present. But just simply asking the partner what he wants said to him to express jealousy and then acting that out, I feel like that’s going to blow up in their faces somehow.
Rich: Yeah and I guess if they’re not already engaging in role-play, it’s a lot to bring this very loaded issue to a new form of expression for the relationship as well.
Jessica: It feels combustible.
Rich: Well, good luck to them.
Jessica: Good luck. Have the conversation. Get to the root.
More Advice From Slate
I’m a single father in my late 30s interested in getting back into the dating game following a two-year hiatus. As someone who spent most of his 20s involved in making pornographic movies, I’ve spent my 30s normalizing sex and relationships. As an extremely well-endowed man, I came to accept the idea for a long time that I would never serve more than one purpose to a woman and that a serious, committed relationship was just not in the cards for me.
