My boyfriend says he’s “not feeling” sex. Then I caught him in a lie.

How to Do It is Slate’s sex advice column. Have a question? Send it to Stoya and Rich here. It’s anonymous!

Dear How to Do It,

My boyfriend is in his late 50s and I’m 51. He claims he isn’t motivated lately to want sex or really do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV on the weekends.

Our sex life was decent (three to five times on the weekends before I moved in but now that I live with him it’s maybe once or twice a weekend to none on some weekends). He says his libido is just not there but I’ve caught him looking at videos and reels on Facebook of naked women or breastfeeding women. Is he just not sexually attracted to me or can he have low libido but still want to see naked women? I always thought if your libido was low you weren’t even interested in seeing naked pictures or anything. He did have an issue with watching porn two to five times daily when we got together and I told him if he wanted to do that, I would have to walk away.

—I Just Don’t Understand

Dear Understand,

There’s not enough information here to rule on whether he’s deceiving you. He might be feeding you a line, sure, but he also might genuinely lack interest in sex. That he isn’t motivated to “really do anything” could be a sign of depression, which can affect libido. Keep in mind, too, that there are a lot of anecdotal reports (including in this very column) about cohabitation’s negative impact on couples’ sex lives (though multiple studies have produced mixed data on the subject, as studies often do). I suspect those who do experience this are finding the closeness with their partner at odds with their eroticism for them and that creating the kind of exciting distance that Esther Perel writes about in Mating in Captivity could be useful.

Additionally, if your boyfriend has any kind of anxiety or negative feelings regarding his performance (he is, after all in his 50s), that could also be playing a role here—for some, it’s much easier to masturbate than have sex with someone else, if, in fact, he’s masturbating at all to the images you’ve caught him looking at. There are definitely people who aren’t inclined to have sex with others that nonetheless masturbate for a variety of reasons—the libido is too complicated (and varied from person to person) to definitively say, “If your libido were low you wouldn’t even be interested in seeing naked pictures or anything.” Assuming he’s not a sex researcher, perhaps what your boyfriend means by “libido” is motivation to have partnered sex and he considers masturbation its own activity (spitballing, but in that scenario, it could be valued for the release and not the kind of close/good feelings that ideal partnered sex can elicit). That’s to say, this issue might be semantic.

And actually, it most certainly is, in a way. I don’t have the needed information here because you didn’t provide it, and I think you didn’t provide it because you don’t have it. Extracting this kind of information from men, especially, can be difficult given that men typically haven’t been socialized to share their feelings or admit vulnerability. But I think it’s important enough here for you to try. You are unsatisfied with where the relationship is. You have the right to pursue satisfaction or at least answers as to why your current status is what it is. It might be useful to hear him explain why he feels he can both claim he has no libido and is comfortable looking at erotic imagery, if he even understands it at all. Having a calm, compassionate conversation, in which you state your desire for more frequent sex and listen to his explanation as to why that isn’t possible at the moment could prove useful, but attempting to conduct that conversation might be like talking to a log that only wants to lay on the couch and watch TV on the weekends. A couples counselor could help promote communication if you can’t get there on your own. But you should let him know fairly early on that this is important to you and the situation is at least pointed toward dire.

—Rich

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I’m a bisexual woman. When I was 11 or 12, my family was at a theme park. While we were waiting in line for a ride, two men in front of us in line started making out. It was nothing inappropriate, and it wasn’t a big deal because no one in my family is homophobic. I watched them out of the corner of my eye for a minute. To my memory, it’s the most sexually aroused I’ve ever been.