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,

Nearly a month ago, my wife, “Luisa,” bought a high-end dildo vibrator.

The trouble is that ever since, she seems to have forgotten I exist. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to initiate sex only for her to turn me down. Yet a few hours later, I can hear an unmistakable hum when she’s in the bathroom. When I confronted Luisa about it, her excuse was that she didn’t feel like having sex at the time I did. Her response to my suggestion that we set aside specific times for sex with each other was that “scheduling is unromantic and kills spontaneity.” This is humiliating—I feel like I’m competing for my wife’s affections with a sex toy! Other than arranging for it to find it’s way to the dumpster, what can I do?

—Replaced

Jessica Stoya: There’s obviously a disconnect in the relationship between the letter writer and his wife. There is something going on. Why didn’t Luisa, a few hours after she turned him down for sex, go to him and say, “Hey, now I’d like to have sex. What do you think?” Has that kind of interaction gone poorly in the past? Has our writer responded to Luisa circling back with, “Well, you didn’t want me earlier and now I feel rejected?” I don’t know, but putting all that frustration on a perfectly innocent vibrator, to the point where he wants to walk it out to the dumpster, is not helpful.

Rich Juzwiak: I think there’s a cliché at hand of like, oh, that sex toy is going to replace me somehow. This is an anxiety that people often have, but I think that it’s very wise of you to look more into the past and think about what other situations this dynamic could apply to. How is our writer treating Luisa in bed? Does he care about her pleasure? Is he generous? Is he reciprocal? Does he make her feel good about herself? Is he overly critical? All of this stuff matters. We’re dropped in the middle of this situation without any context, and I think that instead of worrying about Luisa and her vibrator, this is an opportunity to look inward.

Jessica: I actually do want to worry about Luisa and her vibrator a little bit.

Rich: OK, let’s do it.

Jessica: Drawing on my own lived experience and several letters that we’ve received over the years, some people, including women, although this is counterintuitive as far as the cultural messages we get, often or sometimes just want a mechanical, bodily function style orgasm. So I’m wondering if there’s a lack of communication that’s leaving our writer in the dark. Perhaps Luisa is saying, “No, I don’t want to have sex,” and the subtext is because I don’t want to get super sweaty, messy, and have it take an hour and a half, and whatever else. But then a few hours later is like, oh, but my clitoris is screaming at me and I can make it be quiet if I take my vibrator to the bathroom and take care of this in five to seven minutes.

Rich: I think that a similar rule or guideline that I have when it comes to hooking up with a member of couple should apply here, which is you have to be cool with the boyfriend of the guy that you’re hooking up with. I’m speaking from a gay perspective, as usual. At minimum, you have to just be cool with each other. There’s no stated rivalry because it’s just going to end up not working out for you most of the time. The relationship already exists, you’re coming in as a stranger or something close to it. Sometimes it’s better to be friendly with the guy.

I think the writer should make friends with his wife’s vibrator, or at least offer to do so, instead of resenting it. It’s clearly something that she is enjoying and likes it. Offer to be there with her, maybe talk to her about it. Treating the vibrator as a good thing because it’s giving your partner pleasure and release is really going to help you more than expressing jealousy or contempt for this machine.

Jessica: It’ll be a lot easier for our writer to make peace with the vibrator if he understands what the vibrator does for Luisa, and that’s really going to require an information-gathering conversation. That conversation has to come from an actual place of genuine curiosity because the faintest whiff of, “Why the vibrator and not me!” will cause an argument and push them apart. Instead ask Luisa: What does the vibrator do for you?

Rich: I think that’s true. Even if we’ve misjudged this scenario and he has actually done everything as a partner and a sex partner and just all of a sudden, his wife decided to do this, and even if it’s hurtful on a very fundamental level, I still think curiosity and the affirmation of her pleasure is just going to make this conversation easier to have.

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Jessica: In an ideal world, Luisa would be telling her husband already, “I don’t know. My hormones are shifting around. All of a sudden, the only thing that works for me is intense clitoral stimulation.” And she’d also be inviting the husband into sexually intimate situations, making time for him, and extending other invitations for other forms of intimacy. There’s almost certainly stuff Luisa could be doing better as well, but pointing that out to start won’t get this conversation very far.

Rich: Certainly not leading with that.

Jessica: No.

Rich: What you want to do is facilitate the conversation. You don’t want to shut it down. You don’t want to have it be an immediate point of contention because it’s going to be that much more difficult to get through that issue and then come around to the underlying desire and perhaps sexual issues that have facilitated the situation at hand.

Be generous and certainly do not throw your wife’s vibrator away. That’s her toy and she likes it.

Jessica: Think of the planet.

Rich: Totally. Don’t create waste.

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