So my hubby and I have been together 20 years. The messages have been mixed. He's attracted to women much older than myself and much closer in age to him—we have a 20 year age difference—and he's also attracted to men. He had a terrible time trying to come to grips with his own sexuality and his inability to reconcile who he was with who he "was supposed to be" got mixed up into shame, guilt, infidelity, and addiction. Fine. Wherever. His sexuality did nothing but turn me on and help me overcome some of my own hangups. I have been through my own ringer. I cheated on him. I lied about the fact that he was my first. After my own affair I became a prostitute—with his befuddled blessing—but all of that is over. Now he wants me to be a hotwife. I want to be his sub. He has issues with being a Dom and I have issues fucking strangers. Can you refer us in a direction we can start from? I am excited for us to move on without hangups and shame and he can't get past the negative.

Bored, Dull, Sad, Married

P.S. I should clarify: I cheated because I never felt I was attractive to him as I'm not in his demographic. We have supposedly moved on from that. I have major body issues and feel generally unloved and unattractive. I feel like he settled. He says that's not the case. There has been little to no romance and we have two teenage kids. Despite encouraging me to continue with the infidelity he will try to use it against me. I am just at a loss. Please don't tell me to leave him. It is just not going to happen and by the way, he thinks something bad happened to him a a kid to make him so fucked up. Nothing happened to him but I can't tell him to get over the notion he had some horrible child hood as he has too much invested in that. Whoa.

My response... after the jump

Where to start?

I trust that along with the cheating, lying, shaming, guilting, addicting, and negotiating hotwifing vs. subbing... you and your husband are still finding the time to do a little parenting now and then. Adults don't stop having their own lives when they become parents, of course, and the older kids get the more time parents have for cheating, shaming, prostituting, and other adult diversions. I realize you're recounting twenty years worth of events in your letter—a great deal of history and incident—and that requires telegraphing and everything didn't happen all at once. But... man. You and your husband have had a lot to process over the years and one would hope—one would expect—that two decades in you guys would've found a groove or two that worked for you both.

But no such luck.

I'm going to give you the same advice I gave HURTME in this week's "Savage Love": "A few sessions with a kink-positive shrink might help... You can find one through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (aasect.org)." Your husband needs someone to help him with the shame, the possibility that something awful happened to him in his childhood, and you need to talk to someone about your body image issues and your insecurities.

As for this...

Now he wants me to be a hotwife. I want to be his sub. He has issues with being a Dom and I have issues fucking strangers. Can you refer us in a direction we can start from?

Don't freak out when I use this phrase, BDSM, because I'm not using it in the grounds-for-divorce sense but the less popular thems-the-facts sense: sounds like an irreconcilable difference to me. He's not up for BDSM, you're not up for fucking strangers. (Not anymore.) You don't want to divorce and the existence of one two or three thousand or more minor irreconcilable differences doesn't mean you have to divorce, BDSM. (If it did we would all be divorced before the wedding cake was served.) But it does mean you'll have to let go of your Dom/sub fantasies and he'll have to let go of his hotwife fantasies—at least for now.

Get yourselves to a smart, kink-positive counselor—aasect.org—to discuss your hangups, your shame, your history, and your future, BDSM, and maybe you'll be able to finally find a groove that works for both of you.

P.S. Most people have more than one "type." The fact that your husband is attracted to women his own age doesn't mean he can't also be attracted to women—and men—closer to your age. On that point you're just going to have to ova up already.