Before we begin the sixth installment of our new sex advice column, we’d like to remind you to submit your questions to this Google form. Don’t worry, it’s all anonymous.

In this week’s C.U. in Bed, one reader wonders if it’s mean to not allow her boy to go past “short stop,” and a confused reader wonders if engaging in a foursome with another man makes him gay. 

Dear Andrea,

I’m a woman who wants to start getting frisky with my new boy but isn’t ready to have sex. Is that totally inappropriate/cruel to him? I don’t want to sexually frustrate him, but I’d like to pay a visit to the short stop between second and third.

— Let’s Play Some Ball

Dear Let’s Play Some Ball,

I’m not 100% sure what the “short stop between second and third” means to you—for me, oral sex and penis-vadge sex both count as a “home run”!—but you’re certainly not being cruel. It’s lovely that you’re considering your boy’s needs and that you want to satisfy him. But pushing yourself into sexual territory where you would feel incredibly uncomfortable doesn’t sound lovely at all.

I’m interested by your choice of the words “sexually frustrate,” mainly because you’re implying that you don’t expect your boy to be fully brought to orgasm by the short stop—yet who says he can’t be? You don’t need that “home run” (whatever it means for you—sex is more subjective than baseball) to get him off. Have him jack off in front of you. Jack him off (I’d suggest using lube). If “short stop” also includes blowjobs, jack him off with your tongue and lips (but if you use lube, make sure it’s flavored. Unflavored lube, in my experience, is NASTY).

And maybe—and trust me, this is a possibility—he might get off just from making you horny!

But, Let’s Play Some Ball, you don’t even have to make him orgasm for your frisky encounters to count as “good.” If you feel that the measures to make him orgasm, even if they fall within “short stop,” make you uncomfortable, you’re under no obligation to keep going.

No, you’re not a bitch. You’re not a tease. You’re not leading him on. You’re respecting your boundaries.

And he needs to respect them, too. Blueballs are temporary. The negative emotions you might get when you push yourself sexually or when someone violates your boundaries rarely are. And after all, this is a game for the two of you, and you’d both better respect the only rule to the game: Consent!

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Dear Andrea,

I am a man. Does having a foursome with two guys and two girls make you gay?

— Struggling with my Sexuality

Dear Struggling with my Sexuality,

No. The types of sexual acts you do, the genders of your sexual partners, or the amount of women versus men versus non-binary people you fuck, the clothes you wear, the way your voice sounds—none of them define your sexual orientation. There’s no formula to figuring out your sexual orientation, be it gay, homoflexible, or whatever you want to define it as. Sexual orientation is a personal feeling, not an act.

I’ve known straight-identifying women who fuck women. I’ve known straight-identifying men who fuck men. I’ve known gay-identifying men who fuck women. And it’s frankly none of my business to tell them if I agree or disagree with their labels.

Based on your pseudonym, I think it’s possible that you were already circulating this question in your head before considering a foursome, and that the foursome may just have spurred further confusion. And to struggle with your sexuality is totally normal.

Now all you need to do is make sure that the assumptions your friends, the media, society, or anonymous jackass trolls attach to a sex act don’t get in the way of you figuring out your sexuality. The fact that pop culture calls a threesome with two men a “devil’s threesome” is just one such example.

You’re probably getting—or probably will get—a lot of shit from people who think it’s totally okay to choose your sexual orientation for you based on what you do in bed. Once when I mentioned to someone that I might be open to a threesome with two men, the response was: “But both guys would have to be gay. You couldn’t possibly hook up with another guy without being gay, or at least being bisexual.”

Putting aside the facepalms I’m giving myself just remembering this incident, I want to emphasize that nobody can figure out how much you like men except you.

Even if you do have a foursome and you do end up concluding you’re gay after it, where’s the intrinsic harm in that? You probably won’t be making friends with homophobes any time soon, but you’re still you.

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Andrea García-Vargas is also a Spectrum Opinion blogger and a former editorial page editor. C.U. in Bed runs every Sunday. Follow her on Twitter:@AGarcíaVargas.