Soul Snacks 🌶️

2 minute read

Dear Snackers,

This week for Soul Snacks, I asked the audience on my IG story to share their spiciest secrets with me, and promised to share one of them anonymously and reply with my take on—kind of like Dear Abby, but explicit. If you enjoy this format, let me know in comments, and I will share another secret next week. Here’s the secret I chose:

THE SPICY SECRET:

“Had a brief sexting thing going on with my ex from 20 years ago, both married, and it was so hot.”

My Take:

I received a lot of very spicy secrets from the crowd and, although many were a lot spicier than this, for instance, one person told me that she has been having an affair with her best friend AND her best friend’s husband, and wow….first of all, I have no idea where you find the time to have that much sex, and second, while I enjoyed reading it, that secret is kind of past the point of a response other than, “holy shit. You got me. I’m speechless.” I’m not judging you, I’m just speechless. 

But to the person who had the sexting thing going on with your ex... if you were my best friend and you told me this, here is how I would respond:

Let’s be honest…most people who have been married for a long time with kids, going through the motions of real, everyday life miss that hot passion that only really comes from the beginning of relationships, or with something taboo, like sexting with an ex. I’d say a lot of people would consider sexting with your ex to be cheating, but let’s say for the sake of debate that this is a gray area and that cheating is crossing over a line physically…the tricky part is that it feels wrong because, even if sexting your ex is not technically cheating, it certainly does muddle the waters around faithfulness. While I don’t personally feel you broke your monogamy by sexting, I do think it compromised the reason why monogamy is important, and therein the ability to direct your sexual heat toward the person you married. I recently listened to a podcast with Dan Savage who is a sex columnist, and he really highlighted what I think is the coolest part of monogamy, which was that, it is not supposed to be easy. A healthy version of monogamy, as Savage described, has to do with two people recognizing the potential for desires/thoughts/fantasies about someone else, but making a promise not to act on those desires because it is the sacrifice you are willing to make in order to build a life with one person and have each other’s trust. I don’t know shit about your marriage, so this could be off base, but maybe you guys need to take some time to discuss what it was about each other that made the idea of monogamy worth it to you when you first decided to get married. I’m not suggesting you tell your husband about the sexting – don’t do that, you will only hurt him, but I do think you can get back to that place of remembering what is most important about your life together by saying it out loud to him (and hopefully him saying it out loud to you too, because relationships have to be a joint effort). If you don’t intend to leave your marriage, but you would like to turn the heat up on it more, get vulnerable…. send those dirty texts….to your husband. 

-Caitlin

P.S. The Elf on the Shelf can still go fuck himself.