Dear Kiki

Questions about love and sex in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area can be sent to dearkiki@littlevillagemag.com (queries can also be sent anonymously using this form). Questions may be edited for clarity and length, and may appear either in print or online.

Throughout witnessing a series of traumatic events happen to my daughter over the course of a very difficult year, I’ve developed strong attachment to and connection with an eighteen year old friend of hers. I’m thirty-five and in a relationship with the father of my younger children. This young man and I have been having an incredibly mutually amenable, emotional, creatively inspiring and sexual affair for the past few months and are both developing real feelings for one another.

My boyfriend is wonderful and feminist and sex positive, but he has issues with me being bisexual. It’s not that he’s openly raged at me or anything. It’s just that whenever it happens to come up, you can see the micro-flicker of discomfort on his face that he’s trying to suppress. I know it’s normal to feel a little uncomfortable at the idea of your partner having a past, but he feels especially threatened by the idea of me checking out a girl over a guy (when I actually don’t check out anyone; I’m too in love with him to really notice anyone else in that way).

Can you recommend some let’s-get-it-on music that’s not “Let’s Get It On”? In other words, how would you set the scene without being heavy-handed and melodramatic? I’m open to all genres of music, but not a huge fan of sappy romantic tunes.

A few days ago, I made a joke Tinder account with friends, with a fake age, job, etc., but all the pictures were my own. Turns out, I really hit it off with a guy and he was still interested after I told him my real information. The thing is, he’s 23 and I’m 17. Is there any hope for a relationship?

I met this girl and she’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if she was into me, but we slept together. Thing is, she has a lot of friends and suitors and I don’t know if I make the cut. I don’t have the money to take her out and I felt bad when she paid last time. Now I’m thinking I have lost her because the only time we communicate is when I text her and she seems like she’s being nice.

I am a woman in my later 20s who has been in a relationship with my boyfriend for 2 years now. He is my best friend; I couldn’t be happier with him! The issue does not lie with my boyfriend or our relationship, but with his ex-girlfriend.

I’m a little blown away by how emotionally and physically intimate we had been for it to suddenly turn so cordial/superficial, literally overnight, without any major incident (besides her move) to provoke the change.