I was trying to turn my boyfriend on when I asked whether he wanted to watch me have sex with another man. We’d been hanging out, the conversation had become sexual, and I decided to say something daring. My contribution was this:
“You wanna watch me with another guy, don’t you?”
That killed the mood. Since then, he’s been quiet and distant. He hasn’t shouted or started a fight; he’s just pulling away. I went looking for a line that would leave him speechless. Apparently I should have been more specific.
I’m 21, and I can’t even give a convincing explanation for why that particular idea came out of my mouth. I think I’d read or seen something like it online and assumed it was a fantasy people found exciting. Somehow, “people” had become “my boyfriend” without any further research. I was trying to sound adventurous, not announce something I’d arranged.
Looking back, the “don’t you?” is especially hard to defend. I didn’t simply mention another man. I spoke as though I already knew my boyfriend wanted to watch. In reality, I was improvising with an idea I barely understood myself. I supplied both the fantasy and his enthusiasm for it. He had contributed neither.
I don’t know whether he heard it as something I wanted to do, felt jealous, or simply hated the thought. He hasn’t explained. What I do know is that a sentence I meant as a turn-on has left an awkward distance between us, and I’m the one who put it there.
Now I want to apologize. I also want to understand what bothered him, but I’m embarrassed about having to explain how little thought went into something I said with such confidence. There isn’t a clever explanation waiting behind it. I was trying to be sexy, picked the wrong thing to say, and watched the mood vanish.
I was impressively fluent when I had no idea what I was talking about. Now I’m trying to get as far as sorry.
