Dear Roe,
I have a problem caused by my own indiscretion. I find myself often slightly intimidated when in the company of a big, boisterous group of female friends on a night out. I usually just sit there quietly and listen. But on one night out at the start of this year, I had something juicy to share.
I’d started dating a guy on the edge of our social circle a few weeks before. The first time we were intimate was very disappointing and awkward. He’s just very small. I didn’t think there was much of a future in the relationship, so to get a laugh, I told the story in great detail in the pub. My friend group really took to the idea. They made up a funny but mean nickname for him and used this in a running joke on our WhatsApp group.
The thing is that once I’d gotten over the initial surprise and awkwardness, the relationship quickly developed to the point that I was having the best sex of life with this guy. I mean sex in the broadest possible sense, as we don’t bother with traditional intercourse any more, but we’ve adapted.
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I moved in with him when lockdown hit and our connection deepened amazingly over that period – I now really want this to work long-term. He’s just an amazing person in so many ways, and mostly I just completely forget about his physical issue. It was easy enough to keep this all hidden from my friends when socialising was off limits, but now they’ve started meeting again.
I’ve made excuses so far, but eventually I’ll have to rejoin social activities. I fear someone will say something cruel to him and it will hurt him so much that our relationship will be damaged beyond saving. What should I do?
I think you need to examine your relationship with this group of friends, who appear to both behave badly and inspire you to behave badly. You say you feel “intimidated” by them, that you felt your only value to the group was when you were sharing gossip about someone else, and that they all very enthusiastically engaged in nasty, prolonged body-shaming about this man.
When individuals have shown themselves to be nasty or indiscreet, you have a responsibility not to share intimate details about other people with them
This is all deeply concerning. The fact that you also don’t feel comfortable admitting that your behaviour was wrong and asserting that you all need to be more respectful of your new partner (and hopefully everyone, more generally) implies that there is no room for accountability or growth within this friend group, which relies on perpetuating pettiness and nastiness.
It also seems that you’re hiding the fact that you’re now in a relationship with him? If your dynamic with your friend group is now causing you to act ashamed of your partner and hide them, your friends are bullies, and you are choosing to dehumanise your partner for them. This is all really awful behaviour and needs to stop, immediately.
When individuals have shown themselves to be nasty or indiscreet, you have a responsibility not to share intimate details about other people with them. Everyone should be able to speak about their sex lives with someone who is not their sexual partner, but these conversations should only be had with a limited number of people who will be respectful of the privacy and dignity of everyone involved. This group of women are clearly not those people, and unfortunately in this situation you did not respect other people’s privacy and dignity, either.
You not only shared intimate details about this man’s body in a mocking way, but every time the derogatory nickname was used about him, you allowed the cruelty to continue. This wasn’t wrong just because you happened to end up with this man. It was wrong because you shouldn’t use other people’s bodies for cruel laughs or social clout, ever. This is the measure of a person, and it is here that you and your friends have fallen short.
There is a positive outcome that can potentially come from this situation. It’s clear that you have realised that penis size is absolutely no reflection of a man’s masculinity, sexual prowess or character, and that both romantic and sexual relationships are not defined by a person’s body, or centred around penetrative sex.
Lead by example by holding yourself and your peers accountable
I’m delighted that you and this man appear to have forged such a strong connection, and that your sexual life is demonstrating what I’ve been writing about for years: penetrative vaginal sex has long been held up as the pinnacle of sexual satisfaction, and this is frankly nonsense.
Apart from completely undermining the sexual lives of everyone who is not heterosexual, cis, able-bodied, and people who have conditions such as vaginismus that makes penetrative sex painful, this heterocentric hierarchal approach to sex where vaginal penetrative sex is the only form of “real” sex is simply a way of prioritising one facet of male pleasure, and ignoring all other forms of sexual pleasure and fulfilment.
As this column has stated many times before, up to 80 per cent of women cannot orgasm from penetrative sex alone – and as you have indeed discovered, you can have the best sex of your life without penetrative sex even featuring.
Despite behaving badly and being disrespectful about this man, you have been lucky enough to have had your limited, incorrect assumptions around bodies and penis size and sexual pleasure corrected – and it’s time for you to share that message. If you choose to see these women again, simply tell them you have fallen head over heels for this man and are blissfully happy. Tell them you were wrong to be rude and derogatory and that was cruel – but also you were wrong in how you thought of sex and bodies generally.
Tell them that this situation has made you change the way you think about how you speak about other people, and what you value in people, that you want to be more respectful and open-minded – and hope that they want to do the same. Obviously, the nickname will no longer be tolerated, but this is also an opportunity for you to set boundaries with these women generally around how they speak about people.
Lead by example by holding yourself and your peers accountable. Do not be derogatory about other people again, and do not let derogatory comments go unchecked.
Take this opportunity to set higher standards of behaviour for yourself and those around you. This man sounds wonderful – prove yourself worthy of him.