I feel for your wife, man. You’re interrogating her about her sexual past after a quarter-century of marriage. There should be a statute of limitations on such things.

There must be a reason why this suddenly matters to you now. M. Gary Neuman, a therapist and author of “Connect to Love,” senses “some guilt or fear of the ‘what goes around comes around’ karma.” He says, “Maybe you now feel doomed to struggle since this relationship began through inappropriate behavior,” and adds: “It’s never too late to apologize to those you may have hurt in the past. Do what you need to in order to feel freer moving forward and allowing yourself to enjoy your marriage to the max.”

Listen to the man. He’s been on “Oprah,” yo.

Therapist Charles Foster, co-author of “I Love You but I Don’t Trust You,” says there are a couple of possible interpretations of what’s going on here. It could be that “after 25 years, their sex lives — so clearly in need of spicing up from the beginning — are developing rigor mortis, and his re-opening this can of worms is the best way he knows how to wake things up in bed.” Or maybe “for some reason, trust issues have reared their ugly head.”

Is your wife giving you new reason to mistrust her — based on her current behavior, as opposed to things she did when she was a young seductress? If not, this might be less about your wife’s actual trustworthiness than obsessive thinking.

Foster has little patience for this: “Come on, what is it you really want? Better sex? More closeness? More trust? Any of these could make you happy,” he says. “But satisfying your obsession will only stimulate the very itch that’s making you miserable.” Instead, he suggests that you “focus on your real needs, and work with your partner to get them met, and keep telling yourself that your obsession is just a sinkhole of misery.”

On a similar note, Diana Kirschner, author of “Sealing the Deal: The Love Mentor’s Guide to Lasting Love,” suggests that you start by simply listening to each other: Sit down and give each other 10 minutes to talk uninterrupted about whatever is on your mind. Instead of talking about past exploits, try talking about “sexual longings or fantasies you have right now and especially how you would like to act them out with each other.” She says, “Build a whole new relationship now that is so satisfying, the past just doesn’t matter.”

“I wish I knew.” That’s Barry Komisaruk’s matter-of-fact answer, and he’s the leading expert on the science behind the female orgasm.

His lab at Rutgers University was the first to produce a video of the brain during climax in women — just last November. “We’re in the embryonic stage of understanding,” he says. “It’s not even in its infancy.” That’s in large part because it’s tremendously difficult to get funding for sex research — but that’s a story for another day (and you can bet I will be telling it someday soon).

Komisaruk, whom I’ve interviewed before, and his team have made huge strides, but still, he says nobody fully understands the mechanism at work here. Just to give a sense of the range of scenarios, Komisaruk explains, “What about people who used to have orgasms but now they’re on antidepressants or antipsychotics and they no longer can have orgasms? The blockage could occur in a part of the brain that’s different from people who, say, have had a traumatic psychological event like sexual abuse and no longer can have an orgasm.” There is no one thing that makes it difficult, or impossible, for women to orgasm.

It’s not unusual for a new partner to come with a change in your orgasmic experience. Recently, a woman who had never orgasmed called Komisaruk and volunteered to do a brain scan for his research. “I set it up and then a couple days before the scan was scheduled, she called me up and said she just got a new boyfriend and she had her first orgasm,” he says. “So, bummer — for me, not for her!”

What’s most interesting in your case, is that your experience of orgasm even during masturbation changed profoundly and, it sounds like, without a dramatic adjustment in technique. “It seems like it’s more of a psychological factor,” he says. “If somebody can suddenly start having orgasms, there could be attitudinal changes. It seems more likely that it would be an attitudinal change rather than a physiological change.” There’s also the annoying irony of getting what you want when you stop trying.

An important part of what’s going on here is that by no longer preempting your orgasm with fake ones, you were able to begin experiencing legitimate climaxes with your partner. I asked Komisaruk if it’s possible that you experienced a snowball effect: The more orgasms you had, the easier it became to come in the first place. In my supreme scientific in-expertise, I suggested: Maybe she, like, burnt new neural pathways? He responded: “We don’t really know; it’s possible.”

You see, there are many possible explanations. What’s important is that you’ve got ahold of your orgasm. Enjoy it, treat it well and don’t let it go!

I remember trying to voice my discontent about it to some female and male friends who said, basically, “That’s terrible, but hey, she’s making you look good!” Furthermore, there was an assumption (mainly by the girls, oddly) that being a “manwhore” was acceptable and brag-worthy whereas being a slut was not. I found that curious too.

It’s true, women are the typical targets of slut-shaming, but your experience proves that it can happen to men too. (For the uninitiated, the term “slut-shaming” describes any behavior meant to punish someone for their sexual appearance, behavior or reputation.) Your ex-girlfriend was hurt by your decision to break up with her and, possibly reflecting her own feelings about herself and her recent infidelity, she tried to use your sexual behavior (real or imagined) to insult your moral character and humiliate you. (You sure you wanted to end that? I kid.)

This isn’t to say that it’s the same for men as it is for women. Jaclyn Friedman, a feminist author and activist, told me in an email, “The difference is that the slut-shaming he experienced didn’t come with an inherent threat, the way it does when it’s targeted at women. It didn’t mean that anyone can do anything they want to his body without his permission, or even over his objection,” she says, referencing the classic use for slut-shaming: excusing sexual assault. “It didn’t come with the long history with which most women are intimately familiar, of friends, family, police, courts, churches, doctors, schools and reporters blaming any woman to which the word ‘slut’ can be even tenuously attached for felony violent crimes perpetrated against her body.”

Hugo Schwyzer, a gender studies professor, agrees. “Men can’t be slut-shamed the way women are slut-shamed simply because the word doesn’t have the same pejorative power in men’s lives,” he says. “If we want a word that shames men with the same force as ‘slut’ can shame some women, we have to look to terms like ‘fag.’ Accusing a man of being promiscuous just doesn’t have the same corrosive impact.” He’s most likely to be seen as a stud, a playboy, a ladies’ man — the flattering adjectives quickly pile up, and that’s just not the case for women who get around.

That said, “It doesn’t mean men always hear it as a compliment on their sexual prowess,” he says. “We live in a culture that sees male promiscuity as a developmental phase. The older a man gets, the more he’s expected by his peers to become discriminating in terms of whom he sleeps with.” After a certain point, it’s seen less as a passing phase and more as a personality flaw or romantic liability. “Just as men were said to do in the past, women today are likely to distinguish between the hot guys with whom they might hook up and the men with whom they might risk an enduring commitment,” Schwyzer says. “A woman who might be happy to go to bed with a ‘man-whore’ would never take him seriously as boyfriend material, as the presumed risk of infidelity is just too high.”

I guess you could call it the husband-manwhore dichotomy. Oh, equality.

I’d be interested in knowing two things: First, how common do you think this is? Equally important, do most women know about this attraction, or do they simply think “yuck” when they think about their underarms?

Underarm Fetishist

My first question about armpit attraction — and I’m wearing a sleeveless shirt, how serendipitous!

As you already know, you’re not alone. There are collections of hundreds of shots on Flickr and Tumblr of women in bras or tank tops with one arm (or, in the raunchiest cases, both!) raised above their heads. (Many of these are re-appropriated fashion shots, but I’m dubious of your theory that the models were posed this way just to display your favored body part.) Forums like Girlpits allow connoisseurs to debate the qualities of a good underarm (there appears to be a great partisan divide between smooth-ocrats and hair-publicans). Porn hubs across the Web feature countless lingering closeups of pits — hairy, smooth, sweaty, take your pick — and clips of underarm “licking,” “sniffing” and more.

It’s unclear whether you, sir, like your armpits PG or X-rated. You simply say, “I can be sexually aroused by the sight of a woman’s uncovered, clean-shaven underarms.” Well, now, the capacity to be turned on by the sight of a particular body part isn’t unusual in the least. “That he has an area of the body of a woman that he focuses on is not surprising,” says Chris Kraft, a psychologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultations Unit. “It’s actually called partialism when you’re fixated or specifically aroused by a very specific part of the body — typically, we see things like the feet, buttocks, breasts.”

Richard B. Krueger, a psychiatrist and medical director of the Sexual Behavior Clinic at New York State Psychiatric Institute, tells me, “I don’t even think it’s a fetish in his case. I would say it’s in the range of typical sexual behavior,” he says. “It isn’t deviant, it’s just a variant of normal — or within normal.”

You don’t indicate that you’re only turned on by armpits, after all — and even if you were, Kraft would be hesitant to pathologize it. “There are plenty of men who only like to ejaculate with their penis in a vagina,” he says. “Should we call that a problem?”

Basically, these guys are super-unimpressed by your armpit attraction. There’s nothing like talking to someone who routinely deals with patients who have all-consuming fetishes that ruin their professional and personal lives to feel normal, eh? It puts things in extreme perspective.

As for the “why” of such an attraction, I can really only offer you speculation. Kraft suggests, “The thing about the underarm area, similar to the genital area of women, it’s usually a covered, private area. To have it groomed and presented, historically, it would have been considered a taboo.” He adds that it’s possible hairlessness gives you a sense of cleanliness; maybe there’s a spark there for you.

Finally, getting to your two main questions: How common is this attraction and what do women think about it? It’s impossible to put a number on it. “We don’t have a lot of people presenting in the clinical areas of sexuality just to talk about it because most people are functioning fine with these types of things,” says Kraft. “That’s why we don’t get a real accurate number of the commonness of different types of fetishes.” In other words, people don’t talk to an expert about their armpit fixation unless it’s problematic for them. “It’s hard to study the happy,” he says.

As for women’s awareness of this kink, “I don’t think for many women it crosses their mind that this is an area of attraction,” says Kraft. “It’s not something that people acknowledge, since it’s taboo.” There are always exceptions, though: Any woman who spends enough time browsing online porn, or reading this column, will be aware of the extreme variation in human sexual interests and practices. And of course there are women who share similar desires, either for other people’s armpits or for others to worship their own.

I’m going to borrow the typical therapist move here and say: The real question is, “How do you feel about your kink?”

—————–

Send your question to tracy@salon.com.

I have no idea why I feel this way. When I see their hands come together in applause, a smile on their faces and one or two bloodied, fallen men, I feel like I am speaking to God. I am filled with wild emotions of shame. My body shakes, and I feel a very deep burning in my stomach. This burning can be debilitating, almost like it consumes me, but it feels so good. Sometimes I can’t control myself. I don’t understand any of this. The burning feelings, the fetish itself, it’s all a mystery to me.

I’ve known about this since I was 8 years old. I know I’m not alone with this, I know there are other people with the same feelings, but never anyone I’ve encountered personally. Thanks and much love/respect.

What a hall of erotic mirrors your subconscious has built! Only you can successfully feel your way through this complex maze — but, with the help of some experts, I might be able to start you down the right path.

From the outside, your fantasy harkens to a primal scene of sexual competition. It calls to mind grunting cavemen clubbing each other over the head as a babe in a leopard-print bikini looks on; great works of literature built around a woman’s power to compel men into war; and any number of contemporary romantic comedies where protago-dude dukes it out to win the girl.

In that sense, your fantasy could not be more normal.

The specificity of your interest, on the other hand, is more unique — but it’s hardly unheard of. I managed to find a blog called — drum roll — “Giggling Girls and Bloody Violence!!” dedicated to similar imagery. It’s filled with raunchy photos of women paired with captions along the lines of, “He beat up my boyfriend to within an inch of his life? Well, sounds like I have a new boyfriend!” I also came across an online message board where women who are turned on by watching men fight, and men who are turned on by watching women get turned on by watching men fight, get together to swap erotic tales — yet more proof that there is someone out there for everyone.

What immediately sticks out about such desires is the symbolic worship of masculinity, which can be interpreted any number of ways. Eric Anderson, a sociologist specializing in research on masculinity, sports and sexuality, detects potentially repressed desires for other men. He suggests that maybe wrestling or fighting were ways you were allowed to watch men be physical with each other at a time when you were “sexually attaching emotions onto men.” Perhaps instead of identifying with the male fighters as a male yourself, the female audience members are an access point for you to vicariously enjoy male bodies in action.

On the other hand, Joe Kort, a therapist and sexologist, says your fantasy doesn’t necessarily suggest desire for men. He compares your chosen scenario to that of cuckolding, which is typically where a husband watches his wife with another man: “When the woman leaves the fantasy the two men are left cold, and maybe that’s the same thing here.”

Kort says the symbolism in such fantasies is often more complicated than it at first seems. ”I look at the man and the woman in the fantasy as stand-in characters, say from his childhood. Was his father weak? Did he want to fight his dad, and have his mom watch, and win? Was there violence in his childhood?” He adds, ”It may have to do with his masculinity, maybe he didn’t feel honored about his masculinity. Maybe he was shamed by some girls in school or a female teacher. Maybe he’s trying to turn [some trauma] into a victory.”

These are just questions, things to mull — like I said earlier, you’re the one who gets to do the work of figuring this stuff out, should you even want to. Ian Kerner, a sex and relationships counselor, tells me, “When I’ve worked with clients with specific issues like this, it takes a while to fully unpack what’s going on,” he says. “As long as it’s not causing him distress, let the game continue — of course if he’s seeking out bar fights to witness that’s another story.”

I love that you start out coy about your, er, um, “intense play” and then come right out with a question about fisting and inflatable toys. I imagine there would be even greater hemming and hawing if you were to try to broach the subject face-to-face (or face-to-cervix, as it were) with your OB-GYN, which is surely why you’re coming to me instead. It seems to me that most of us treat medical professionals with kid gloves when it comes to our sexual health, as though we’ll shock them if we reveal what we really get into behind closed doors (maybe because we’re privately shocked by, and embarrassed of, our sexual selves). There’s this sense that introducing a kinky topic like inflatable vaginal toys in their staid, erudite sanctum is downright improper — but it’s not. I encourage you to press through the fear and ask away!

Preaching aside, I took the basic question of whether it’s possible for an IUD to become dislodged through vigorous, deeply penetrating penis-in-vagina sex to David Grimes, an OB-GYN and vice president of Family Health International. He told me in an email, “The answer is no. The IUD is in the uterus, the penis is in the vagina. Two different compartments.” The same is true even of fisting or large toys. Deborah Nucatola, senior director for medical services for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told me by phone, “The IUD is completely in the uterus. It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

Now, the soft, flexible strings of the IUD, which are used for removal and to regularly check that the device is still in place, do extend beyond the uterus into the cervix and vaginal canal, but they are “rarely pulled by intercourse,” says Tania Basu, an OB-GYN at University of California, San Diego’s Medical Center. Just make sure your partner doesn’t pull the strings with a stray finger; and if they’re in any way uncomfortable for you or your partner you should simply ask your doc to trim them.

Might I add that there’s nothing like some old-fashioned medical diagrams to put you at ease; it’s remarkably easy to be out of touch with our own anatomy. (I swear to you, I’m amazed every time I see a detailed rendering of the female reproductive system.) Sexologist Shanna Katz tells me in an email, “I encourage folks to reach up and feel the string prior to sex play (and also have their partners feel for it, so they have an idea of its size and location) and to check again after sexual activity is over.”

For the record, the experts that I spoke with were thoroughly un-phased by your question. The important lesson here isn’t so much that you can engage in “intense” play while on an IUD, but that you can ask your doctor all about it; and if it ends up that you aren’t the only one blushing and stuttering, it might be time to look for another provider.