Solo Survivor

...Dominant women are all but impossible to find. I’ve tried joining clubs and going to events, but the people I meet are invariably too old or already coupled. I’ve tried personal ads and only received responses from gay men. Dating coworkers is out of the question for obvious reasons, and speed dating results in bust after bust. Escort services and prostitution are financially, legally, professionally, and ethically unacceptable to me. “Make a FetLife account and go to munches!” is the usual advice, but I’ve done that for a year with no results. Personals sites are littered with M4F posts with zero replies, and in all the events I’ve attended I haven’t met a single dominant woman. Masturbation wasn’t doing it for me anymore even before I got raped and now it is much harder to touch myself. I suppose there are toys to try, and techniques to experiment with, but at a certain point nothing can replace an actual sex partner. I’m sorry if I sound a bit ranty. I just feel like I’ve hit a dead end in a sex life that never even got started. I have no idea what to do. Sexually Stillborn Submissive I can offer you some practical advice and some encouragement in this space, SSS, but I can’t help you work through your lingering trauma. So, if you aren’t already seeing a t herapist — if you haven’t spoken to someone who specializes in working with male rape victims — you need to find one. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists has a database of therapists you can search by location and specialty, SSS, and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) helps run online support groups for male survivors in partnership with 1in6, an organization that advocates for men who have been raped or sexually assaulted. Okay, so… There are a lot more straight male subs out there than there are dominant women, SSS, which is why women can make a living as professional dominants and men can’t make a living as professional submissives. So, what do you do? You keep going to munches and events (you don’t give up after a year), you show up in good working order, you remind yourself you’re playing a long and sometimes frustrating game, and you try your best — maybe with the help of your kink-positive therapist — to be Zen about it. You can and should continue to date women you meet outside of munches and kink events and then lay your kink cards down on the table after establishing mutual interest but before things get serious. I would encourage you to play with some of the couples you’ve met — I’m assuming we’re talking about opposite-sex couples here — and that you play nice, you play responsibly, and that you show gratitude after you play. Play with a partnered woman may not be what you ultimately want, but it’s better than no play at all. And a couple who has gotten to know you as a person and a player and who likes you — which they’re unlikely to do if you’re seething with resentment and/or trauma dumping all over them — will be able to vouch for you as a person and a player if one of those rare single and dominant women should show up at a munch or a play party. Some other tips: some of the best dominants are frustrated subs, SSS, and some women who are dominant now were submissives at the beginning of their kink explorations. And I’ve met lots of submissive straight men over the years whose partners were vanilla but GGG and came to really enjoy D/s sex play. So, don’t rule out vanilla women, just be honest with them about who you are and the kind of sex you’re interested in having. Finally, SSS, I’m going to emphasize again the importance of seeing a kink-positive therapist who specializes in male victims of rape. You’ve been dealt an unfair hand, and you have every right to feel aggrieved and a right to rant. But working through your anger, hurt, and disappointment with a qualified therapist — ranting at a professional — will set you up for success with your first dominant girlfriend, however she comes into your life. Good luck. P.S. Some of the smartest, kindest, and most emotionally intelligent women I’ve ever met were professional dominants. There are terrible people in every field, of course, but the best professional dominants view their clients as people with needs, not as walking wallets, and many have helped their clients move more comfortably through kink spaces, which enabled their clients to meet and date other kinky people. I am gay and in love. I’ve been in a non-traditional monogamous relationship for the last three years. We’ve had a few threesomes during our time we’ve been together, and we have attended a few sex parties. Recently, we had to spend time in different places and experienced things with other guys separately. Now we are back in the same place and redesigning the terms of our relationship. I am wondering if it’s justifiable to have sex with other people just to satisfy certain aspects of our desires that are not currently fulfilled within the relationship? Or is that the easy way out? Are we escaping a duty to adapt ourselves sexually to each other more fully in the hopes of achieving perfect sexual satisfaction together? Or should we assume that we are never going to fulfill each other completely and it’s natural to look for other people to fill certain gaps? Binging On Your Show P.S. I’m a new listener and reader from Lisbon! English is not my first language. Thank you for your work! If you and your boyfriend wanna have sex with other people and you’re in agreement about it  —and you’ve had an open and honest conversation about rules, limits, boundaries, and safety — you don’t have to come up with a justification for opening your relationship (or keeping it open). “This is what we both want,” is all the justification you need. With that said… While allowing your partner to explore kinks you don’t share is one reason many couples open their relationships — sometimes just a crack — stepping outside your sexual comfort zones for each other is a good idea. But if neither of you is ever willing to give something your partner wants to explore a try, BOYS, you may wind up missing out on sex acts and/or kinks you might discover you enjoy if you’d only given them a try. (There are two kinds of guys you meet at big gay kink events: the guys who were tying themselves up when they were twelve and the guys who — after meeting as adults — fell in love with those guys.) Additionally, sexual exploration with/for a partner can benefit and improve your emotional connection. Being GGG (“good, giving, and game for anything — within reason”) was some advice I pulled out of my ass, but Dr. Amy Muise at York University actually studied people who were “motivated to meet a romantic partner’s sexual needs.” And what Dr. Muise found was that people who explored their romantic partners’ sexual interests and kinks reported high levels of relationship satisfaction and strength as a result of those explorations, i.e., getting kinky together brought them closer together. (You can read Dr. Muise’s paper on what she dubbed “communal sexual motivation” here. But be sure to clock the title of her paper.) So, I would advise you to give the things your partner wants to try a shot, BOYS, and I would advise your partner to do the same for you — barring, of course, anything either of you finds disgusting, appalling, or triggering. If you’re into feet and he’s not, he should be able to let you go to town on his feet. If he’s into fisting and you’re not, allowing him to explore fisting (and maybe fisting only) outside your relationship may be the better option. No one should do anything in the bedroom or darkroom or dungeon or wherever that they don’t wanna do — of course — but there’s a difference between “this is something sexual that turns me off and I don’t wanna do” and “this is something sexual that wasn’t my idea but I might be willing to try.” Don’t think of it as adapting to each other — and don’t think of it as an obligation to do anything and everything your partner wants — but rather as a willingness to explore and grow together sexually. P.S. You describe your relationship as monogamous, BOYS, but it sounds like it’s been open pretty much the entire time you’ve been together. Sticking with what works is always a good idea. We’re a straight couple in our forties. We have some very dear friends who are younger and queer and we sometimes find ourselves giving them life and relationship advice. We don’t want to unintentionally muddy things with our heteronormative expectations. So, here’s the question: If a gay man goes out with another gay man — something prearranged, intentional, with an articulated plan to spend the night together afterward — is it rude for one of them to flirt with other men and disappear for periods of time? There is no relationship to define as of yet, just a planned night out together. To us heterosexuals, this seems like a very shitty thing to do. But maybe there’s a different set of expectations or a different baseline in the gay male community? Seeking Input Today, Thanks You! What you describe is deeply shitty behavior regardless of sexual orientation. A good guy doesn’t bring a date (a date date) to a club or a party and then start looking around for better D. If the man who ran off to flirt with other men didn’t realize they were on a date — sometimes a person asks to “hang out” instead of making their romantic/sexual intentions/hopes clear — then it could’ve been a misunderstanding. But if this was an unambiguous date (a date date) and if they’d made explicit plans to spend the whole/hole night together, that guy — the one who ran off to search for better D — is an inconsiderate asshole. Now, maybe that guy decided halfway through the date that your friend wasn’t someone he wanted to spend the night with… and maybe he had good reason to bail… but he needed to use his words to officially end the date and given your friend a chance to head home and/or shift gears and start looking for other D himself. I was on a date date with a guy once and we quickly determined that we weren’t sexually compatible and instantly pivoted to being each other’s wingman, something it was possible for us to do because 1. the feeling was mutual and 2. we used our words. Sometimes a person hesitates to use his words because he knows the other person isn’t going to like hearing them. But someone who opts to show rather than tell in a case like this… by serving up context clues like flirting with other men and/or disappearing to go get railed in a bathroom stall… is either a coward (the worst kind) or a sadist (the wrong kind). Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! Or record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love