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 grappling with the complexities of dating younger cis men who hold differing views on issues like HPV, experimentation with sexuality, and openness in relationships. As a woman in my late 40s, I found myself entangled with a younger man for several years.
Our dynamic was fraught with ambiguity—torn between my desire for more exclusivity and a more casual arrangement, amidst his infidelity with his girlfriend with other women and me for years.
While our physical connection was electrifying, our emotional communication often fell short. He kept up boundaries because of his girlfriends. I walked away and there was no communication for three years. Recently, we reconnected, and I wasn’t prepared for the bombshell he dropped: Two of his partners had tested positive for HPV, he had explored sexual encounters with men a few years ago while cheating on his girlfriend, and he expressed a desire to date a married woman concurrently with me. We live in other cities so we cannot fulfill needs for each other all the time. This revelation left me reeling, contemplating the implications of potential health risks and emotional complexities. I couldn’t help but wonder if this mindset is prevalent among younger cis males. Is this a generational gap I hadn’t fully appreciated?
Should I expect these attitudes from younger cis men under 40? Or is this an individual’s approach rather than a generational trend? These are the questions swirling in my mind as I navigate the uncertain terrain of contemporary relationships.
—Maybe I Don’t Want HPV
Jessica Stoya: I really want to know why the writer puts so much emphasis on the possibility she holds in her mind that this is a generational thing. Because I suspect it’s a desire not to engage with the fact that this man she’s seeing is terrible.
Rich Juzwiak: Well, yeah, what jumps out to me first is that this guy is cheating and she’s cheating with him. She’s facilitating the cheating, and then she’s saying, “Oh, well, his attitudes are strange to me.” That, to me, is the strangest attitude in the bunch here. I have less of an issue with a relaxation of attitudes toward HPV because while it’s important to stay vigilant, we know that HPV is a possibility with casual sex.
Jessica: Yeah, the prevalence of HPV in the United States population is incredibly high.
Rich: Incredibly high. The CDC estimates nearly all sexually active people will get HPV at some point if they’re not vaccinated.
Jessica: Right and the vaccine only protects against certain strains. There are many, many HPV strains, and the U.S. doesn’t have an approved HPV test for men. It’s a common misconception that HPV is just one terrifying virus or that you can engage in sex with people without putting yourself at risk for it.
Rich: Yeah, even with condoms, HPV is prevalent. It’s the risk that you take. It kind of comes along with being alive for a lot of people.
Jessica: And as for him having sex with men, yes, that’s a thing that some people do, especially if those people are bisexual or curious.
Rich: That might be generational, in a way. I think it’s probably easier for guys in 2024, depending on where they live and what their circle is, to experiment like that openly and not have it be a secret. It’s slightly more socially acceptable, even though biphobia persists, but it just seems like queerness in men is not the scarlet letter it once was, especially during the HIV epidemic.
Jessica: Yes. I’d say the generation under 30 came of age when we were close to having PrEP or had PrEP, when HIV had already become a controllable medical condition. For people between the ages of 30 and 40, the sex education I encountered in school was along the lines of, “Think about whether this person is worth dying for before you have sex with them.” In that particular stretch of 10 years, it could really go either way, whether a person learned scare tactic-sex ed and then encountered updates as technology advanced or just learned the scare tactic-sex ed and was like, “Well, I can’t deal with this.”
But much like you, I am really struck by this cheating thing. Is it worth asking our writer to turn the question around on herself and ask whether she thinks women in their 40s are more likely to aid and abet sexual infidelity?
Rich: Right. She’s talking about attitudes and the most surprising attitude is how blasé she is about the cheating. That’s an attitude.
Jessica: As for “the implications of potential health risks,” hopefully the information we mentioned above about the prevalence of HPV is helpful. But having sex with other men doesn’t put you at a necessarily higher risk of contracting an STI. It has to do with the types of safer sex methods people are employing, how frequently they are getting tested, and how well they’re communicating. The cheating is what’s likely to reduce communication here.
Rich: Obviously the more partners somebody sleeps with, the more opportunity they have to contract something. So if our letter writer is concerned about that, why isn’t she picking a monogamous arrangement? Why is she going for somebody who’s inherently non-monogamous unethically?
Jessica: Yeah. Why are you having sex with someone else’s boyfriend?
Rich: And then complaining about the risk. You mentioned that Gardasil-9, the vaccine, certainly does not cover all strains. But it does cover two of the big ones, 16 and 18, those are the ones that a very high percentage of HPV-related cancer comes from. Even if it’s not recommended for your age group, you can get the vaccine, just pay out of pocket. I got it before they upped the age. I was too old for the recommendation at the time, but they ended up upping the age to 45. I got it before that. It was 300 bucks and the money was well-spent. I don’t regret that at all. It’s certainly better than nothing, and if you’re concerned about HPV, this will allay some of your fears. It’s worth looking into.
But ultimately, I think that there’s a misdirection here. The issue, as I see it, isn’t the queerness, it’s not the HPV, it’s the cheating, and it seems like so many of her fears and problems would be solved were it not for that one component. There are other guys out there. Find one who’s not cheating on his many girlfriends.
Jessica: When it comes to these questions swirling in the writer’s mind as they navigate the uncertain terrain of contemporary relationships, I’d tell her to put them to rest. You’re not in a romance novel where you’re going to change the heart of the bad boy. If you don’t want emotional strife and a heightened risk of STIs, date someone who’s not cheating on his girlfriend with you and several other people.
Date someone who is upfront about what they do and what they want. They might be 25, they might be 37, they might be 50. You can find that in any age group, just like you can find guys like this one in any age group. You’re the main character in your own story, but you’re not in a TV drama and there’s no need for this.
Rich: Totally. Beware of attributing generational trends or any kind of trends after experiencing one person from said group. Your sample size is not big enough and your experiment is not scientifically sound.
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I have been sexually active since I was 17. I am now 29 years old. (I’m a straight, cis female.) A majority of the sex I had between 17 and 21 was only when I was drunk, so I don’t remember most of it, but I know I didn’t climax. I got sober and started a serious relationship and started actually enjoying sex, but I have one big issue: I can only climax if I think about awful/degrading things.
