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,
My wife got involved in a pornographic social media group two years ago. When I found out that she was making dirty audio files for strange men, and planning a secret trip to be with one of them, I almost ended our marriage. She realized how much this hurt me and told me she was done with this kind of thing. Fast forward to 2024, my wife has a friend group now that I was totally cool with. They seem to be genuinely cool people.
Then, a few weeks ago I learned one of the guys in the group is in an open relationship with his wife and is hooking up with one of the other women in the group on the side. That began to make me a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing.
My wife told me the other day that this guy basically solicited her for nudes, but in a way that was like, “I’m sure you wouldn’t send me anything because you are happily married and I respect you.” And she brought this to my attention as a way to show that her friends respect our marriage. I told her that was this dude “dipping his toe into the pool to check the water temperature,” and he was not being respectful at all. Yesterday, I accidentally read a text where she blatantly told this man that she likes him to flirt with her. Yet, at the same time, claims to me that it is “harmless flirting” and she is not interested in him. Am I wrong for thinking this is leading to what happened last time (or worse—since he’s local, and part of her friend group), and therefore not wanting her to be friends with these people? I’m pretty much at the “second time, shame on me” stage of dealing with her need to be sexually enticed by other men, and I’m wondering if my marriage of 22 years is over.
—Innocent Flirting or Pattern?
Jessica Stoya: I have a quote I found on Quora, from Jennifer Nyffeler, and I feel like it sums up what a boundary is really well: “Boundaries are not for telling other people what to do. Boundaries are for telling people what you will do or not do.”
Rich Juzwiak: Yeah, and certainly that boundary was broached two years ago with the pornographic social media group. Right?
Jessica: I’m not so sure.
Rich: Really?
Jessica: Sometimes people get all the way past marriage without ever discussing in detail what their boundaries are. So it’s possible that the parties involved—the writer and the wife—have very different ideas about what constitutes cheating and never talked about it. So, while I would say about 75 percent of the planet would 100 percent agree with him that making dirty audio files for strange men is a breach of the relationship’s boundaries, I do wonder if they ever talked about it.
Rich: Definitely. “Did you ever talk about it?” is generally my perspective too. But I do think that assuming strict monogamy as the norm is a safe assumption just because that’s what our culture preaches. It’s like the onus is on the deviant to state their—
Jessica: I am feeling a bit argumentative today.
Rich: Why?
Jessica: Because I just handled another question from another person who is on the autism spectrum, and I really think it is unfair to think that everyone else is going to make the same assumptions that the majority of the population would.
Rich: That’s fair.
Jessica: Not saying the wife is autistic, but I’m saying there are several reasons why people make different assumptions—including autism—which is why it’s in my head that a person might not make the assumptions that “any reasonable person” would.
Rich: Right. I wish we knew a little bit more about how the revelation of that initial infraction went. Because if it did come out innocently, if the wife said, “Oh yeah, I’ve been doing this,” and totally admitted it, then that would be the way for us to see that actually she thought this was completely in the bounds of the relationship and it surprised him. That would indicate it was a difference in boundaries that perhaps were never spoken about. Right?
Jessica: Wait, I just noticed the part about “planning a secret trip.” Secret implies she absolutely knew that she was in breach of a boundary. Mea culpa.
Rich: Right. The LW says, “planning a secret trip to be with one of them.”
Jessica: Yeah, when you’re planning a secret trip, you know your partner doesn’t want you doing it.
Rich: Yes. Unless that was fantasy talk as well. But let’s assume that the trip planning was legit. So, she did that, and now she’s with this friend group. Certainly, I don’t think it’s any of your business if there are people within the group who are open and you’re not. That’s not necessarily a threat. But now there’s this new development where this guy who is in an open relationship and is having sex with somebody else in the friend group, is now moving in on the wife.
It seems to me like the LW and the wife have two different kinds of sensibilities. She seems to be leaning more toward nonmonogamy, and he seems to be leaning more toward monogamy. It doesn’t sound like she’s gone over that boundary, but she’s flirting with it in a big way. It sounds like she’s trying to scratch that itch while maintaining this relationship. I don’t know if that’s a tenable situation.
Jessica: It doesn’t sound tenable at all based on what our letter writer has shared here. In this second case with the friend she’s flirting with, the wife absolutely knows that a certain level of erotic engagement with people other than our writer is not OK for our writer.
Rich: Right. She knows that. She’s bringing it up. The LW says “She brought this to my attention,” but I don’t know that it’s such an innocent situation.
Jessica: I don’t know, either. And I don’t know if the wife is actually naive or is aware of the likelihood that the solicitation for nudes was not a joke, and is screwing with her husband or if she’s in a really weird way trying to float a boundary renegotiation or a renegotiation of the terms of the relationship. I know that our LW is freaking out and does not like the situation at all, whatsoever.
Rich: Yes. The boundary is crossed for him. Especially because, again, there’s some deception involved here. She says this is harmless flirting and she’s not interested in him, but the LW accidentally, however that happened, read a text where she blatantly told this man that she likes that he flirts with her. At the very least, this is like trying to get your cake and eat it too kind of thing. There’s some kind of vicarious need that she has to have this kind of attention in her life, and I think that’s already too much for the LW.
So, if he hasn’t stated his specific boundary, then he should now. If that was part of the calculation error the first time around, that needs to be corrected with something clear like, “This is not OK with me.”
Jessica: I have sort of a philosophical question. How detailed does a person’s demarcation of OK versus not OK behavior need to be?
Rich: That’s a really good question. Probably as detailed as you can make it. The hard part is you can’t really predict how someone may cross the line. There are a lot of people who don’t even know what a pornographic social media group is. So, you could slide in there as the other person on a technicality. “Well, you didn’t say anything about a pornographic social media group, so I thought that was fine.” I think you have to be more general here, while still trying to be as specific as possible. It’s kind of the central question of all communication: How do you compress all of these feelings into a concise statement? It’s not easy.
Jessica: It’s not easy at all. I was just thinking about whether the wife is obtuse or nefarious. By simply saying, “I’m not OK with you being involved in a pornographic social media group, making sexual audio files for people, flirting with your friends, or sending nudes to people” there are many chances where she could come up with something else—whether she just blithely stumbles into it and it doesn’t occur to her that this is also outside the boundaries, or is looking for loopholes that aren’t covered.
Rich: Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if she kept looking for loopholes. The sense that I’m getting from her behavior is that somehow this is very appealing to her, maybe even necessary in some way. She wants to have that option open. I wonder if there’s a fundamental disconnect between somebody who is more monogamous at heart and someone who is more nonmonogamous. If that’s the case, they’re really going to come up against this again, again, and again until one of them relents and is unhappy, I think.
Jessica: I think the LW is already unhappy. I’m getting frustration from their letter. I’m getting a desire to give up. I’m getting all sorts of not-happy signals. I would try this sentence on for size, “I am not OK with my wife being flirtatious, much less anything else, with other people,” and try to come up with an example of what flirtation looks like. If that feels accurate, go to the wife and say, “Hey, I’ve realized that I’m not OK with…” etc. Then see what happens. The marriage of 22 years might be over.
But if the writer comes in saying, “You can’t be friends with these people because you’re flirting with this guy and that’s not OK,” that can easily tip into controlling and abusive behavior.
Rich: Totally.
Jessica: I don’t think that’s where our writer wants to go.
Rich: No, I don’t think so either. I think it’s important to give her the option and to allow her to see what a future would be like without indulging in these behaviors that he’s finding offensive and a threat to their marriage, and then to let her choose. Because she’s going to make that choice ultimately, whether it’s now or in the future. She seems pretty strong-willed and seems to know exactly what she wants. I think it’s a matter of just really asserting what’s up and allowing her to choose whether or not that’s the path that she wants to go down.
Maybe she does. Maybe she says, “You know what, it has been 22 years and I don’t want to throw everything away for this, so I’m going to do my best not to engage in this kind of communication.” I wouldn’t be surprised if her ultimate answer is, “No, I actually kind of need this attention,” for whatever reason.
Jessica: Maybe it turns out that having experienced what it’s like to fear that his wife is going to actually have sex with someone in her friend group, makes her being in a pornographic social media group making voice recordings feel more manageable, and they can negotiate something that gives her an outlet that doesn’t feel as threatening. Or if it’s all too much for him, that’s also completely fine.
Rich: Totally.
More Advice From Slate
I’m in my late 30s. I’m still close with my childhood best friend I met when I was 10. We live in different states. Leading up to her divorce last year, we talked on the phone several days each week for about an hour each time. I was basically her sounding board and cheerleader. I thought her crisis would end after she and her kids settled into a post-divorce home and life. It didn’t. She still called regularly in distress, often over whatever guy she was dating, even if she’d only known him for a few weeks.
