I recently found a secret stash of sex stuff – handcuffs, a vibrator, blindfold, nipple clamps – hidden in the back of my husband’s drawer. It was all new and mostly unopened. When I confronted him, he was mortified and said he’d bought it a while ago for the two of us, but lost the nerve to tell me. I consider myself easy-going and not prudish, and it all seems suspicious. What could be going on? Name withheld, by email
My instinct is that he’s telling the truth. If he’d bought it for another woman, he’d have stashed it at her place, surely? It being unused also lends credibility to his story. You see yourself as sexually
open, but does he see you that way? Sometimes the impression we think we’re giving isn’t what the other person is receiving at all.