On Thursdays I respond to comments from readers and listeners. These posts — which go up like clockwork on Thursdays — are for Magnum Subs only. So, if you’re already a sub, thank you and read on! If you’d like to become one of my subs, do it now! Magnum Subs get the Magnum Lovecast (more guests! more calls! no ads!), the Maxi Savage Love (more Q! more A!), the Sex & Politics podcast, invites to Savage Love Live, Struggle Session (which goes up every Thursday, without fail), and bragging rights: you’re one of my subs!
Okay, this Struggle Session is obviously not going up on Thursday. Wednesday was a holiday, and my week has been packed and chaotic. So, forgive me for being a day late…
I responded to a caller on the Lovecast whose wife got a haircut from a sexy/slutty Berlin hairdresser with dominant vibes. Says Brian Charles…
I’m thrilled that you took my call and I’m grateful for your advice. We’ve got some things we’re trying to work through, but this situation kind of fell into our lap. Your encouragement helps shore up my confidence in telling her to go for it. We can treat this as a fun experiment…. One pushback, though. You spent the first portion of your response outlining how we fit the technical definition of a sexless marriage. Which, good to know I guess, but it felt kinda unnecessary. It wasn’t really related to your actual advice (which was helpful!), so it felt little like prodding a sore spot.
Also, one thing I wasn’t able to ask in the call was how to manage the negative feelings. In the right mindset, I’m stoked — I want her to embrace feeling sexy and desired, and toy with the flame that guy seemed to ignite. It makes me happy and excited for her. I also find it hot imagining her in that situation. On the flip side, I’m not totally satisfied with where our sex life is at the moment, so some really powerful feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and inadequacy can creep in disrupt the positive mindset.
First, it’s always great to see callers and letter writers jumping into the comment thread!
My intent wasn’t to poke at a sore spot, Brian, so my apologies for that. The point I was trying to make — and failing to make — wasn’t that your marriage is sad and sexless, but that the bar (IMO) for “sexless marriage” is set too low. Once a month may not be a lot of sex, but it’s not nothing and hardly qualifies as “sexless.” And I firmly believe that if a marriage is loving and low conflict… and if both partners enjoy sex when they have it… open and honest communication can get their sex life back on track.
Now, people in monogamous marriages who aren’t satisfied with their sex lives sometimes won’t agree to open the relationship — or even risk broaching the subject of opening their relationship — until they get things back on track. Which is understandable and, for some couples, absolutely the right choice/order. But for many bored monogamous couples drifting toward sexlessness, some consensual outside sexual contact — the prospect (talking) or the reality (doing) — winds up being the very thing that got them back on track. (And, yes, a couple can get things back on track without opening up their relationship; there are ways to address boredom and reconnect without opening the relationship up.)
Which judging from followup comment you made, Brian, seems to be what’s already happened for you and the wife (emphasis added):
Talking about this actually has increased the energy between us. When she came back she spent the evening telling me about it and how she felt. It was cool to see her all excited and bewildered she was, like she had just accidentally unlocked a feeling inside that had been dormant. I let her have the space to just share here thoughts and feelings, and then the next morning we discussed my reaction and feelings, both good and bad. But it was refreshing to talk about sex, sensuality, and eroticism in a hopeful, exciting way. We had amazing sex and felt closer than ever. That’s one of the reasons I’m feeling confident. If we can keep communicating like this, we can do this, and have fun with it.
As for those feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and inadequacy…
There are two ways to address them: You can lean into them and learn to enjoy them — some men eroticize those feelings (cuckolds, stags, men into hot wifing) — or you can allow for them and ride them out. Even if you can’t eroticize these feelings (it’s not like flipping a switch), you can make an effort to understand them differently. Take jealousy. We’re conditioned to understand jealousy always as a negative, but if feelings of jealousy inspire you to have insanely hot sex with your wife after she hooks up with her hot hairdresser, Brian, you could come (literally come, over and over again) to understand jealousy as a positive.
Everyone thinks I went too easy on the leader of “embodiment retreats” who routinely slept with women who attended this retreats — see these great comments from Laura M, Dawn, and Muriel — but Delta 35 came to my defense:
Yoga retreat: I’m with Dan, after it’s over, people are adults. Agency! Your retreat leader, after the yoga mat is put away and the one-time retreat weekend is over, isn’t Harvey Weinstein with a casting couch! They aren’t a therapist! They aren’t a professor where a college degree hangs in the balance! I get there are cult-like yoga gurus who have manipulated their acolytes but if the doors aren’t locked keeping you a prisoner, adults should take responsibility for joining and staying in a cult! Asking (not pushing) for a date and hooking up after a one-time retreat ends may be unprofessional but it’s not abusive.
We’re clearly in the minority on this one, Delta, but thank you for jumping in. And for the record: I advised the caller — who wasn’t the retreat leader but one of his coworkers — to push the company to adopt of a simple, four-word policy: “Don’t fuck the students.” That said, while this is potentially very problematic behavior on the part of the person leading these retreats (and could be fatal to the business/movement/whatever), the adults who attend these retreats are adults and adults are free to make their own adulty choices.
Good advice from Zoftig for people thinking about having kids. And Amanda has a hot tip for the wannabe professional pup handler: “Anthrocon in Pittsburgh, PA! July 4-7!”
Says LookAtHerButt…
The first caller in Episode 921 — the wannabe bitch — reeeeeally sounds like she’s overthinking things. She doesn’t want to be a Domme, she just wants to have permission to not attend to a guy’s every want/need in the bedroom. It sounds like her question is, “I’d love to have all my desires attended to and not have to be nice, what is this odd new kink I’ve discovered?” She just needs to be told to be more upfront with the next guy that you wanna boss him around, and try it out if he’s into it.
Yeah… the caller can spring her interests on unsuspecting guys — that’s what kinky people did before the Internet came along. (And kinky people still do that after meeting presumed-to-be-vanilla people through work, friends, on non-kink dating apps, etc.) Or the caller can look for submissive guys who are looking for a dominant woman. While some of these guys are looking for Mistresses in thigh-high boots with fully tricked-out dungeons, not all of them are. Some submissive men just want a little verbal abuse before and after sex that truly centers their female partner’s wants and needs.
Or — hear me out — the caller can do both: she can ask men she meets in normal ways if she can boss them around while also seeking out submissive men on kinky dating apps. But the caller will have better results (and waste less of her own time) if she goes looking for subby guys where they subby guys are.
This came in via email…
From a female fan: How can you possibly define sex as an act resulting in a female orgasm?! I’m absolutely heartbroken by Episode 921. I’ve only ever had an orgasm with one person (my former male partner of 22 years). I’ve had many other sensual and sexual experiences, but none of them have concluded with an orgasm on my end. I resent this definition of sex. I know who I’ve desired, who I’ve had sex with, who I’ve fallen in love with, and who I’ve taken as a lover. My inability to have an orgasm with these individuals has nothing to do with my experience of romantic, sexual, or physical desire. You should’ve stopped at your broad definition of sex which I also embrace. Please don’t bring shame on those of us who have difficulty reaching orgasm and don’t fake, yet enjoy sensual and sexual encounters. Thanks!
Says Patient Polyamorist…
If “it feels like sex, it is sex” has been my definition for ever, at least since I was a moderator of r/sex back in the early 2010s. Sometimes this leads to one sex partner having had sex and the other not having had sex, but such is the price of logical consistency. I disagree with Dan & Nancy on the orgasm-centricity of the definitions offered. Many people struggle with orgasms, and taking the emphasis off the orgasm can lead to more pleasurable (and just more) sex.
We weren’t trying to offend (or erase!) people who struggle to orgasm — women like this recent LW — we were just doing our bit to help close the orgasm gap. Yes, we should all be aware that not everyone can climax during sex… and that someone who struggles to climax can still enjoy sex… but there are too many straight men out there who aren’t placing enough (or any) emphasis on orgasms when it comes to their female partners. It would be helpful — it would certainly help close the orgasm gap — if everyone assumed that they had a responsibility to get their partner off. That should be our default assumption going in (or down), but if the person we’re with tells us they can’t come or don’t need to come or don’t wanna come, we shouldn’t regard them as broken or refuse to believe them when they tell us the sex was pleasurable.
One last item of business: Our Muppet-Faced Man of the Week is Harvard professor Carrington Bornstein!
Okay, have a great weekend everybody!