Good answer, except I would give husband a lot more credit here. He tried, at least 1.5x.

I guess your perspective depends on whether hypnosis is considered AFTF. Considering the potential loss of autonomy/control, I would say yes.

So, LW, get out there and happily explore your FTF with like-minded souls.

I do not get kinks. Three years of reading SL and trying and I still. do. not. get them. Complete failure of imagination. My next effort will be trying to find men attractive.

So I sort of get LW's husband's disinterest. He may not be as supportive as he could be, but at least he is groovy enough to let her strike out on her own. Which is definitely not cheating. Personally I think that would be better than trying to engage an uninterested but game spouse (not that he is game). She should totally do this with someone who enjoys it as much as she does.

One difference between this and a lot of similar scenarios is that it sounds like she doesn't have to actually have sexual intercourse with her scene partner in order to do a scene. I can see how the husband wouldn't consider something like that cheating.

I'm admittedly curious about what kind of communication occurred post-disclosure pre-wedding. Presumably they got married knowing he couldn't do her kink? Irrelevant now, perhaps, but they'll need to have regular open communication going forward whether or not she branches out.

Wait, what? Hypnosis? That's a thing now?

If she wants to totally and intimately submit to her husband, the man she loves, she isn’t going to want to do it with someone else. It just won’t be the same.

Worried about their less than exciting sex life, a young wife sent her husband to a therapist who wound up teaching him self-hypnosis. And, to her joy, everything got much better. However, she could not help but notice that each night, early into their lovemaking, the husband would dash out to the bathroom for several minutes. This tormented her until finally, one night, she followed him. There she found him saying to the mirror: "She's not my wife... She's not my wife... She's not my wife..."

.

The LW's strange passive-aggressive writing makes me think she's not telling us something. Probably something crucial too. But we'll never know so whatever.

"One and a half" suggests she's not easy to please in this regard. Seems like she should have tested his abilities & willingness more before marriage. But hey, it's still pre-kids (or they don't plan on kids). I think they should re-evaluate how compatible they are at this point.

Did anyone else interpret "pass the salt" to the equivalent of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and saying, "la la la; I can't hear you!"?

@8: What makes you so sure she wants to totally submit to her husband?

@11: I wondered that as well. There's something obfuscating about the letter's style.

Also, everyone seems to think that because people can remain fully clothed, this isn't a sexual kink, when it's clear that to G, her husband, and the guys she could meet online seem to consider it a form of sexual contact/conduct. Maybe the husband, knowing exactly what hypnosis means to his wife, isn't really all that game to allow her to get her hypnosis-kink fulfilled by someone else.

Sorry, but can someone explain how hypnosis is a kink? I.E., does she want to hypnotize her partner, or does she want her partner to hypnotize her? And is that it? Or does the one who is the mesmerist get the subject to have sex under hypnotic control? Is it a "scene," that is pretend, or is there a real trance involved? WHERE IS THE SEX?! (Sounds like maybe nowhere if you can do it without removing your turtleneck! So maybe that is why the husband didn't get a turn-on?)

@15,

Though not a hypnosis fetishist myself, I'd feel quite comfortable in wagering that the answers to your posed questions there is yes.

Wife? If so, she gets credit for breaking gender roles and doing the courting.

Hypnosis is a bit of a tricky one. In many cases, I'd be inclined to agree with Mr Savage's semi-snark. Here, though, LW says Husband has "implemented" 1.5 times. That's not quite the picture of clarity, though in neither direction is it an easy ask, assuming LW means the real thing and not play acting. If this were merely a question of play acting, I think Mr Savage would be on to something. Husband didn't apparently get squicked, and if not he doesn't seem to have made much effort to take compensation for it not being his thing in LW's extreme pleasure. But if LW enjoys the real thing from either side? Someone being hypnotized who doesn't like it isn't a recipe for success. If "implementing" implied that Husband tried to hypnotize LW, there's a skill set involved. As Mr Darcy points out to Sir William Lucas that dancing has the advantage of being as accessible to savages as it is to the most refined society, so shall I assert that such activities often connected to kinks as spanking or tickling can be undertaken at least in some rudimentary form almost universally and almost immediately upon first introduction of the idea. Ranking, "He won't hypnotize me," with, "He won't spank me," is like attributing Tivvy's not playing Costly Colours at Jancis' caking in Precious Bane to willful disinclination rather than inability.

Perhaps there was evidence removed that LW really meant pretend hypnosis. LW seemed to me to enjoy the real thing.

I omitted that I also lean towards divorce rather than outsourcing - although more tentatively than usual (again, to paraphrase Mary Crawford, I would have almost everyone divorce as soon as he can do so to advantage) because the letter is so fuzzy.

rob! @10, FTW

@15, google orgasm under hypnosis to see some samples. Real hypnosis, real orgasms.

@17: Sorry; my heteronormalizing is showing! I actually saw the "courting" line after I'd posted and wondered. Then I thought it was fairly sexist for me not to think a women could do the courting. So I'm hanged for a sheep as well as a lamb!

I also seem to have missed the part where the husband who doesn't want to participate in the hynosis says he expects his spouse to find a substitute. But I still don't know what he meant by that. It could have been said with bitterness, resignation, joyfulness, who knows?

To second Mr. Venn, I also did not find any gender signifiers whatsoever in this letter. I was actually imagining two men while reading it. Why is everyone assuming she's a she?

@lizza:
I also thought that the LW is a man. But Dan referred to the LW as "wife".

@22,
Everyone is assuming she's a she because it's the average. When you have no other information, you should always regress towards the mean.

In my humble-yet-statistician-opinion

Thanks @20 -- I did! So now it would seem that what she wants is for him to hypnotize her into having a very intense orgasm with no need for actual sex (that is, the turtlenecks can stay on!) And maybe that's why it's not much of a kick for him, even if she returns the compliment and gives him a hypnotic organism as well? (Hence only 1.5 successes?) And yes, @16, I guess the answers to all these questions might be "yes" as well!

A Bell Award for M? Forka.

Ms Cute - Of course, there's no reason why a woman wouldn't court a man. It may happen statistically less often even with gender roles removed because the term implies a financial outlay that the wage gap still keeps tilted the other way.

The most interesting part is that Husband expects LW to act eventually "with another person". That opens up several possibilities, some more relevant than others. Possibly the most interesting is that LW, if monosexual, has a nongendered kink, which could contribute to a variety of reactions from Husband.

M? Forgot @26 - That sounds very dodgy.

Okay, if the lw is the one who wants to be hypnotized, it seems that husband could/should be willing to indulge him/her (unless husband finds it too difficult/tedious/time consuming to hypnotize lw or lw complains that husband is "doing it wrong") from time to time. Like maybe once every 3-4 months. That might be enough for the lw, and it seems easy enough to indulge, even if the husband isn't getting anything out of it. (Questions to consider: how long does it take to hypnotize the lw? How difficult is it? How much set-up or follow-through is required? In other words, how much real effort does the husband have to make?)

If, though, the lw wants to hypnotize the husband, that's a different story. Husband may not believe that hypnosis works; husband might not be able to be hypnotized; husband might not actually get off from/during the experience (and isn't that what lw would want?).

The lw says s/he has "no desire to be unfaithful," but it is unclear whether or not s/he would consider an erotic hypnosis scene to be an act of infidelity, especially since s/he later describes it as being more sexual--to him/her--than "most or all typical sexual acts" but also qualifies it in ways which most of us would initially consider non-sexual in key aspects: participants can remain fully clothed and don't have to make much physical contact.
So to the lw this is a sexual act and s/he seems to want to perform it only with his/her husband. Does the husband perhaps not regard it as sexual enough for him to be upset if his spouse acts on it with someone else? Does he feel relief at outsourcing it? How does the husband feel about open marriages or outsourcing sex acts in general? If the husband, say, didn't like to perform oral sex and the spouse really wanted it, would the husband be as nonchalant about bringing up the fact that he "accepts that [his spouse] will eventually act on it with another person?"

Way too much information left out here.

Hypnosis does not exist

Gilbert Hernadez' graphic novel porno "Birdland" has a lot of sorta-hypnosis sex scenes. The LW might like it.

@11: I do wonder what's missing.

A little puzzling is the women into Hypnosis, the hypnosis forced-consent seems to be more of a male-centered phenomena. I'm sure I could probably find a few women posting in forums devoted to it if I cared to research, I guess.

@29: Well, duh :) People don't really get forced to do things they don't want to under a trance state.

Part of my confusion here is also in the whole-

"The fetish in question, which I find more sexual than most or all typical sexual acts, could be acted upon successfully by two fully clothed adults wearing turtlenecks, with little more physical contact than a handshake. "

-it's all in the getting put into a "trance state"? Nothing else? No discussion of anything naughty? I know simplistic things can have power, but if you're going to complain that it's too easy to be dismissed, go into a little more detail for the peanut gallery!

All I've heard about online are those who want fantasy ability to use hypnosis to "have their way" with any woman.

If it was that, I could understand why the husband would be slightly more hesitant to participate, though I could probably find a way to compromise.

@26: "Now if for some reason you aren't receptive to suggestion, hypnosis won't work"

I believe the word is "credulous".

@undead, I don't know. I can't be hypnotized, I just sit there thinking, "well, I could raise my hand to please him, or I could not raise my hand since I'm not hypnotized."

But my husband certainly does all sorts of weird, embarrassing stuff when hypnotists ask him to ("Cluck like a chicken!"). My theory is that the hypnotist is just giving him an excuse to do the embarrassing stuff. (Maybe my husband wants attention?) But I haven't figured out whether my husband himself feels it's all just an excuse to act silly in public, or if he has fooled himself into believing that he's in a trance.

It has always seemed to me that an emergency would snap him out of the trance. Does that mean it's not a trance at all?

@34 clarification: the question of raising my hand comes when the hypnotist is trying to find the susceptible people in the audience. He/She does some mumbo-jumbo and then all the easily-hypnotized people end up raising their hands, or standing, or otherwise indicating that they're easily hypnotized (or credulous, or game to be embarrassed, or whatever).

IDK about the practicality. I've gotten myself into a trance state, but haven't really tried with another person, interactively.

As they describe here-

http://www.skepdic.com/hypnosis.html

A legitimate trance state and stage hypnosis are likely two separate things.

Honestly, I'm more interested in hearing from Sloggers about sexy-hypnosis than I am in poo-poohing stage hypnosis!

@ 31: I had a girlfriend who had fantasies involving being used sexually while drugged or unconscious. She was also very interested in erotic hypnosis. It's probably a lot more common than you think, as it's just a variation on the rape fantasy (aka resistance play when acted out) which many women have - in both cases, the fantasist is giving up control and responsibility for her sexual desires. Not unusual in a society which programs women to believe they do not and should not have sexual agency.

I agree that the LW is maddeningly vague about what she wants (to be hypnotized? to hypnotize him? to then talk through a fantasy scenario, or to actually be ordered to do things?), which makes me very skeptical that her husband (Dan does say "wife") really understands that this experience is "more sexual than most or all typical sexual acts".

Nor is it clear whether her lack of desire to be "unfaithful" means she would do it with another with her husband's permission or she only wants to do it with her husband (Alison @8 may be right).

@24
Yes, but our sample size is not The World. Our sample size is the set of People Who Write to Dan Savage. Do you really think that their sexual orientations and gender identities are distributed as a bell curve?

@39,
Ten years ago, probably not. Today? Yeah.
I would guess at this point Dan probably gets way more letters from heteros than homos. Probably not a perfectly normally distributed curve, no, but close enough that it shouldn't seem unusual to assume a hetero couple in most unidentified cases.

Chiming in to say that although I'm generally a skeptic and I don't "believe in" hypnosis the way it's used on stage, I have in fact been hypnotized and it was a nice experience. It's really just assisted meditation, and helps lower inhibitions to the point where you sit there thinking "I guess I could open my eyes, but eh, why bother?" Your contentment with your current state gets to be greater than the desire to try to prove someone wrong.

That said, I've never done erotic hypnosis, but hypnosis-induced orgasm sounds plausible to me. (I'm female, by the way.) Again, all about the meditation and the internal awareness - the mind is our greatest sex organ, after all. "Hypnosis" to get your partner to do lots of crazy, kinky things? Not so much. "Post-hypnotic suggestion" to make them orgasm immediately on command? Definitely still skeptical. But hypnosis-assisted getting off on fantasy and voice alone? Sure, why not?

I hate it when people bury the lede. BORING.

Maybe I missed something, but it seems like she talked to him about it, and, having told him about it, made her fetish entirely his responsibility. Is he responsible for surprising her with hypnotism? Is this a fetish that relies on the fetishist never stating the desire to be hypnotized? I would think "I want you to 'hypnotize' me tonight/this weekend/a random day next week" would be a part of the communication, especially if it wasn't the SO's particular thing.
Am I being thick here?