STRUGGLE SESSION: No Argument From Me!

.... The consensus seemed to be Struggle Sessions that come out every week. The last few weren’t any shorter — the last two Struggle Sessions clocked in at 3K words (!) — but this week’s Struggle Session is going to have to be short. (I’m away with the BF and there’s a mountain he wants to drag me up.) So, to keep this week’s Struggle Session short, instead of choosing comments I disagree with and having something to say about, I’m only picking comments I agree with completely. Okay, I took a call on this week’s Lovecast from a guy whose wife was angry with him fo failing to seize on a “teachable moment”: they were watching a movie with their kids and one of the characters committed adultery and the wife thought dad should’ve stopped the movie and told their kids about the affair he had a dozen years ago presumably to teach them a lesson about what a POS there father is. Says marshlc… Holy shit the wife of the guy with the long ago affair! Yes, it hurts to be cheated on. Yes, it takes time to get over it, and sometimes you can never get over it. But eventually, you need to make a choice to either forgive or get out of the marriage. Keeping someone twisting in guilt and shame for decades is at least as bad as the original offense. No argument from me! Says Mathis and Lea about another call on this week’s Lovecast… To the woman in the abusive relationship. I agree with Dan. Move on. Get your living situation settled and start to rethink what you want. Are you truly interested in an open relationship? Does an ENM life style sound interesting to you? If yes to any degree then go to poly meets and the like in your community. Maybe approach all this first as a solo poly woman and meet others and if there is a connection have sex with them. You’re young. Take your time but start exploring. Leave him. You can do this. Again, no argument from me! Turning to this week’s column, SomeCallMe had some thoughts about the first letter… What I doing understand is why SPLLS continues to have his boyfriend apply lube when his boyfriend has shown himself to be incapable. Unless SPLLS is himself incapable of applying lube — if he’s missing both hands or all his fingers — he should just take over all lube application duties from his boyfriend, and hide the silicone lube out of sight for safe measure. Nothing to argue about there, as that’s pretty much the exact advice I gave SPLLS in my response. SomeCallMe goes on… If SPLLS’ partner has shown himself to be incapable of doing something correctly over and over again, for years, and SPLLS gets frustrated every time his partner messes it up, but SPLLS keeps tasking his partner with doing the thing he know he can’t do… well, now SPLLS’ is setting himself up for frustration and aggravation, and one has to ask why SPLLS would keep doing that to himself. At this point, neither one of them seems to be learning or changing. No argument from me! But I wanna say that this doesn’t look like a case of weaponized incompetence to me — SPLLS’ partner is not trying to get off the hook for some boring chore by doing it badly (I mean, who doesn’t enjoy greasing up a toy they’re about to be impaled on?) — he simply can’t to do this one thing without making a mess. To avoid the aggravation, SPLLS should see to the selection and application of the appropriate lube. And for the record: If you’re with someone and you have to do basically everything because they can’t seem to do anything without screwing it up, that’s a problem. But if there’s reciprocity — if you take care of some things your partner can’t and they take care of some things you can’t — that’s not a problem, that’s loving and mutually supportive relationship. Coolie had some words of support and perspective for SAPHIC, a reader who may have to close her business, declare bankruptcy, and give up being self-employed and work for someone else… As far as financial resets go, they don’t have to be life ending. They can be uncomfortable, and demoralizing for sure. I too once ran a business and then had to return to working for someone else. It wasn’t the end of the world especially when it meant bills got paid. In the end, about 7 years later I’m making more money than before, with much more freedom. I did have to give up my self image as an entrepreneur, but it was worth it. She’s only 42, plenty of time for an Act II or III. I did my reset in my 50’s and then shortly after that got divorced, and let me tell you THAT is a financial reset to end all resets. No argument from me — oh, and speaking of SAPHIC, she jumped into the comment thread here. TedTheBellhop weighed in on ENM, the gay man who wanted to open his relationship but suspected his partner would not be down despite some signs of interest in group sex… He’s super guarded about his fantasies, but you watch threesome and DP porn together? I feel like you gave Dan a layup, but he took a step-back 3 instead (I’m really caught up in the NBA playoffs right now.) I can’t argue with TedTheBellhop’s comment because I have no idea what he’s talking about. And finally… an important note from TheZvik, a listener up in Canada, about a recent discussion on the Lovecast about when and whether an HIV+ person has to disclose their status to new sex partners… Hi, Dan! Regarding your answer about the disclosure requirements for HIV positive guy: It’s important to say that in Canada law putting your partner at risk with out disclosing is a criminal offense. I don’t know if “undetectable” has been challenged as “risk” in court, but your listeners should be aware there is a risk engaging in unprotected sex in Canada. The caller in question was disclosing his HIV-status — it was right there on his Grindr profile — but he called in after a guy only read his full profile after they’d met up to fuck and then freaked out at him for not disclosing. The caller asked a hypothetical followup question: is someone who’s HIV+ obligated to disclose his HIV-status to everyone at a big gay orgy. While I think it would be ridiculous to assume that no one at the large gay orgy you’re at has HIV (and therefore no one who is should feel obligated to disclose), the law in Canada and some US states requires disclosure. But anyone who ran to the authorities after finding out someone with HIV was at the orgy they attended this weekend shouldn’t be invited to any more orgies. Okay, that’s it for this week’s Struggle Session! Hope everyone has a great weekend! I haven’t been getting any nominations for the Muppet-Faced Man of the Week lately… and since I don’t wanna get yelled at for declaring Mike Faist the Muppet-Faced Man of the Week for the third week in a row (SIGH), I’m not going to award the MFMOTW crown and sash to anyone this week.