My boyfriend is more adventurous in bed than I am and engages in a lot of dirty talk. I’m willing to try new things, but I still have boundaries. How far should I go in satisfying his sexual fantasies, and at what point should I say no?
He Said: After having sex with another man for the first time, a friend of mine declared, “I’ll try anything once!” Well, 500-some-odd sexual experiences later, he’s not just trying it. He’s turning homosexuality into an art form. The moral of the story: Being game for new experiences can lead you to delights you didn’t even know you wanted. But be honest with yourself. After running the gamut of “sexperimentation” with your boyfriend, if you don’t look forward to things like dirty talk, blindfolding, and spanking, tell him that you simply prefer vanilla. Then the two of you can go about turning your vanilla into a dazzling layer cake with a cherry on top.
She Said: Maybe so, and that would make a happy ending. But I’m guessing there’s a part of you that fears another scenario—the one in which you tell your boyfriend you’re vanilla, and he tells you he’s double fudge with rainbow sprinkles and mocha chips and wants a partner of the same flavor. Your talk of boundaries suggests to me that you do, in fact, lean toward the simple end of the Ben & Jerry’s spectrum. The sooner you say this, the better. It doesn’t necessarily mean you two will break up, but you need to find out how much he likes vanilla, if at all, and where your taste for kink ends. You must ascertain whether you two can meet in the middle.
“He” is Chris Bull, author of seven books, editorial director of Queerty.com and cofounder of GayCities.com.
“She” is Robin Rinaldi, 7x7’s former executive editor, currently at work on a memoir titled The Wild Oats Project.