While I generally enjoyed your conversation with Jill Filipovic, I was disappointed and distracted by the fact that neither of you acknowledged that there’s a whole generation between the Baby Boomers and the Millennials. Mine! Gen X was and still is parented by Boomers, has our own massive educational debt, and shoulders the added difficulty of being smaller than both the generations you and Jill represent. Guess we’re not known as the forgotten generation for nothing. Ouch!
Hey! I just listened to Episode 932 and while I was listening to you and Dr Barak (and walking my dog), I opened up my browser to SwingLeft and donated. Thank you for thenudge — it worked!
Dan, please be careful about OnePA. While I’m a Democrat who agrees that PA is crucial for the election, their local candidates oppose the development of housing for Pennsylvanians and any kind of development that will lead to construction or long-term jobs. It’s short-term relief for a very few that opposes the long-term YIMBY policies we need that will provide housing for all.
With the candidate at the top of the ticket sounding like a YIMBY (and the last Democrat in the White House making the same sounds), it would be great to see down-ballot Dems and progressive orgs fall in line and back pro-housing policies. We’re in a housing crisis, people, and being for housing should be like being for gay marriage or reproductive rights, e.g., litmus tests/default positions for all Dems and progressives. But in this all-hands-on-deck election, we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If OnePA is working to elect Harris, I’m willing to send a few bucks their way… even if they’re not great (at least not yet) on housing. Just like I was willing to donate money to Barack Obama in 2008 even though he opposed gay marriage at the time and in the most offensive possible terms.
Jo has a question for me…
I would have liked to hear more about the line between privacy and secrecy in the second answer in your September 10 column — and the line between harmless and shitty flirting. Which side is phone sex on, or talking about meeting up with someone but not actually meeting them? I’m glad Dan said that his line should only be the start of a conversation (about flirting), and she should consider whether her actions help or hurt her marriage. I’d add to consider if she could easily forgive him if he acted the same way.
“Dan, you may follow Shibari practitioners, but can you spell it?”“Sorry to be that guy, but you’ve misused the word ‘squalid’ twice in two weeks, Dan. Squalid is not a synonym for ‘skeevy’ or ‘sleezy.’ It is a pejorative adjective used to describe a PLACE or an ENVIRONMENT that has the trappings of poverty.
High-ranking members of a group that a judge has previously termed a “cult” were convicted Monday of taking children from their parents and forcing them into unpaid labor, squalid living conditions and disciplinary beatings.
My best guess is that a shibari scene is focused on the process of tying. Usually an hour or more of tying and untying where putting the rope on and taking it off is the whole point of the scene. “Tied up” is more like a state you’re in and if you’re tied up you likely want some other stuff to happen.
Mid-40s Gay man here who was with my boyfriend for ten years, two of which were spent living together. A year ago we purchased a couch for our apartment. It was agreed we would each pay half of the cost. Then, months later, he admitted he was in love with another man. I was crushed. We had been open, but not emotionally so. After telling me about this lover, he left for a week to visit him. But upon his return, he said nothing for about a month until I broached the subject. He said he had no clue what he wanted. This was infuriating because I was left on the sidelines waiting to see where our relationship would land.
Eventually, out of frustration, I ended the relationship, which he initially agreed with. Then he checked with his lover who apparently just wanted to hook up. All of a sudden my boyfriend felt we made a mistake and pleaded with me to reconsider. I did, but against my gut and we started therapy at my insistence and that cost we split. First couple of sessions were great, but eventually my ex was saying all the right things in therapy, but outside of the sessions he was cagey, awkward and tense with me. We broke up earlier this year. He moved out, but I kept the couch.
I’ve been paying him my portion a little each month for the couch. I’ve taken on a second job to pay down additional credit card debt of mine and soon I will be able to pay off the remaining $1,500 I owe for the couch. I intend on doing so because I just want to put that part of my life over with. However, everyone in my life is telling me I don’t owe him anything. Even my fiscally responsible mother tells me to not pay him back. I’m curious to know your take, please.
Stumped Over Funds, Always
What should SOFA do, Strugglers? Work two jobs so he can pay the ex-boyfriend for his half of the couch they purchased together before their messy breakup — the blame for which can be laid at his ex-boyfriend’s feet (bearing in mind that we only have SOFA’s side of the story) — or take his mom’s advice and tell the ex-boyfriend he’ll have to eat the couch?