Would leaving him for that reason really be unfair though? Like if she's to be believed he is only able to have sex for five minutes, twice a year. That is a lot to ask.

In this situation I'm not really sure that "I need sex, preferably with you but failing that with others, or I'm leaving" is really an unfair thing…

Yes. She absolutely shouldn't have cheated.

But then again the reverse ultimatum is that she have five minutes of sex twice a year, apparently. Given that it seems to me an open marriage is the only real solution: such an arrangement is just not going to be stable.

Yes but the 'physical' reason is that she doesn't want to hurt him, which on reflection sounds more like 'won't' than 'can't'. Not that, like, she should have to do anything she doesn't want to.

Ok yes but let's at least agree that the part where she was cheating on him behind her back was shitty

I'd say "logical and necessary" more than "beautiful" but yeah

look out we've got a badass over here

I can think of a few possible explanations:
-men are more confident than women in all ways, not just this one

The rate of friendliness-misinterpreted-as-sexual-interest was 88% for women and 70% for men. Which actually isn't *that* different, so you might be right

Would "I'm looking mainly for casual relationships right now" at some natural part of the conversation be an acceptable way of doing this? Presumably there is some not-dehumanizing way of figuring out whether the person you are talking to is interested in casual sex before you go out with them. Or not?

From talking to people about this it seems to me that this line of reasoning - "even if I wanted a FWB relationship, being directly asked at an early stage would be dehumanizing" - is almost ubiquitous among women, but quite difficult for men to understand.

This presumably indicates that one comes to think this way by…

If the killing mechanism is so specific, then wouldn't the bacterial just become more resistant to triclosan specifically? Unless triclosan is an important antibiotic or something, why would this be a problem?

"Sulfates only take away oil from your skin."

Well, you could just reply and say "I think this comment is stupid"

I think you have a real future in the tobacco industry

Meh, don't knock it till you've tried it

"Anal penetration" isn't the issue, directly. The issue is that if you go and ask everyone in America if they A) have HIV and B) have had sex with men* in the past year, you find that a very large proportion of the former group are also in the latter group; enough that the relative risk of A given B is considered to…

If he means "test all the blood we get for HIV", they obviously already do that. The problem is the tests aren't perfect, and since HIV is heavily concentrated in the men-who-have-sex-with-men population excluding such people still makes sense from a risk-benefit perspective.

Sometimes when I'm both a) very tired and b) very horny, I actually *prefer* to just quickly get myself off, because I can do it much more efficiently with much less production. It's like not wanting to sit down to an elaborate steak dinner every time you're hungry. I feel like many people of all genders feel…

The only way I can see this not being the correct response is if you had some kind of traumatic experience about boundaries in the past that gets stirred up when your partner is getting off while you are vulnerable. In which case I think you should just tell your partner that you're sorry, it's not their fault and you…

I feel like the basic issue here is that the term 'maintenance sex' means a different thing to you than to some other people on this thread, and that there isn't actually any real disagreement