Dear Nikol,
I write this question to you as my housemate loudly makes love a few rooms over. Perhaps unsurprisingly the question concerns the housemate/lovemaking/noise issue.
A bit of context. My partner and I live with our housemate who is, I guess, “dating” – she has loud sex, 100 percent of the time. Oh, and the housemate is also a very close and long friend of both my partner and me. I guess I come from a place where loud sex is all well and good, but even in the throes of passion, I am aware of my surroundings and moderate my sexual noisiness. This usually means when other people are in the house an attempt is made to keep the noise at a more ‘private’ setting.
This doesn’t seem to be the case with our housemate. And, to be honest, though I’m quite an open kinda person I find it uncomfortable, and even a little rude. The housemate can be kind of prickly about this kind of confrontational thing, and I certainly don’t want to be all down on her sexual expression (which, btw, I am pretty convinced has been influenced, vocally at least, by mainstream pornography). I’m not sure how, or even if this should be addressed.
Any words of wisdom?
– Earplugs Aren’t Enough
Dear Earplugs,
I am such a communication advocate, aren’t I? Every column I seem to be telling people they need to talk to someone. “Be direct,” I’ll say. “Honesty is the best policy,” I’ll say. Well, guess what? Sometimes you can’t speak to someone about something, though, and that is usually because they’ll react all stupid if you try to bring it up.
One would argue that how you say a thing will change how it is received. For example, if you say, “Would you stop moaning like a porn star every time you get a penis inside of you?” it wouldn’t go over as well as, “I support sexual expression completely, but it makes me uncomfortable to listen to you having sex.” So maybe you could say it the second way, but you seem pretty sure that any discussion of that nature would negatively affect your housemate living situation. If you are 90-100 percent sure she’d be pissy about this no matter how you say it, move on.
(It’s like choose your own adventure, advice-column style. I hope there are dragons!)
Option B: When you cannot communicate with your mouth, you can communicate with your actions. If her noises are loud enough that you can hear them, turn your music/television/power tools on so that she can hear them. If your partner has a sense of humor, next time you are laying there and she starts having the loud sex, start making your own noises, but make them decidedly ridiculous. If you don’t want to be that blatant, how about you two just have a loud conversation about something completely non-sexual, which should make it apparent to her just how thin the walls are.
Chances are she doesn’t realize just how loud she is being. If she’d get pissy about you talking to her about sex, she’d probably be a little red in the face to know you can hear her having it. Also, by making some amount of noise when she’s making noise you are alerting her sexual partner that you can hear them. Maybe he’ll cup a hand over her mouth or ask her to quiet down.
Option C: Really, at the end of the day if nonverbal communication doesn’t spark a change, and verbal communication is off the table, it may be time to realize you don’t have a healthy or respectful housemate situation and maybe it’s time for someone to move out before it totally destroys the friendship. Oh, and in this option you also fight a dragon.
– Nikol
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Questions? If you have a question for Nikol, you can reach her confidentially at lovesexetc@milwaukeemagazine.com.Your anonymity will be protected.
