STRUGGLE SESSION: Difficult Conversations, Non-Hierarchical Polyamory, Sword Fights and More!

...hat your advice to WHIP from the Team Fantasize post could use some more insight. While it may be beneficial for her own sexual satisfaction to stop asking and start doing (albeit in baby steps), she could be opening a can of worms that she may not be ready for. See, I had found myself in the exact same scenario at age 30: married to my high school sweetheart and wanting more flavor in our vanilla sexual encounters and met with a similar prudish response. ‘ After pushing the subject, I discovered (all at the same time) that my husband, best friend, and father of my two children was a closeted bisexual, wanted to be poly, was in love with his best man from our wedding, and had been sexually abused as a child by an older female cousin. (So, me being a top was a big no-no.) Suffice to say, my life hasn’t been the same since that unforgettable discussion. It would have helped my situation if we had a couples therapist from the start. But we jumped into consensual non-monogamy much too quickly and are doing therapy only now, several years later, for damage control. Hindsight is 20/20. ‘ So my advice to WHIP is to tread carefully around her husband’s insecurities and be ready for anything. WHIP’s question was seven years old, T.G., which means your advice — assuming WHIP sees it — may come too late to help her out. That said, I’m not sure what your advice to WHIP is exactly. Is the takeaway that it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie — it’s better to settle for increasingly unsatisfying sex in a long-term relationship and suppress emerging sexual fantasies or interests — because initiating a conversation might mean finding out something (or multiple things) you didn’t know, can’t un-know, and aren’t thrilled to know? ‘ Even if you never risked having that conversation with your husband, T.G., he would still be bisexual, still be in love with his best man, still have wanted to open your marriage, and still have been abused by a female relative, just as you would’ve been unhappy with your sex life still. Surely all of those things, if left unaddressed or unacknowledged, would’ve negatively impacted your marriage over time. So, we can’t run a counterfactual here — we can’t get a look at the condition your marriage would be in if you’d never had that conversation — but it’s possible your marriage would be in just as bad shape or possibly even worse shape. Everything that came out in the wake of the convo you initiated would’ve still been true, T.G., and they were either going to come out at some point (and threaten your understanding of your marriage) or they was going to slowly eat away at your marriage like a cancer. ‘ Right now you feel like having that conversation was a mistake — and making the choices you did in the wake of it — but not having that conversation could’ve been the bigger mistake. I hope therapy helps and your decision to have this conversation begins to look better with additional hindsight. I’m rooting for you guys. ‘ Says Andrew via email… Dan, in Episode 954, you responded to a gay man who had an issue regarding which partner to spend Valentine’s Day with. As someone who is poly and a relationship anarchist, it didn’t sit right with me when you said his boyfriend will always be secondary and poly people are problematic when they pretend their relationships are non-hierarchical. I agree that new relationships don’t hold the same weight as fully established, long-term relationships, and there are some responsibilities with cohabitation that take priority, but that doesn’t mean the long term partner automatically gets priority blanketed over everything. If Valentine’s Day is important to the caller and both of his partners, there are wants and needs here that should be discussed among all parties, and it’s not fair to assume all parties believe legacy equates to priority. Saying that new relationships don’t hold the same weight as long-established relationships and that we, as poly people, have special responsibilities to our cohabitating partners… that sounds like another way of describing (or tacitly acknowledging) a hierarchy, doesn’t it? You and your established partners may wish to practice non-hierarchical polyamory, but that’s something you aspire to and work towards with new partners, not something you can just declare. Look, I believe — and believe I said — that secondary/newer partners can become co-equal over time, but it’s unrealistic for a secondary/newer partner to expect equal footing/billing/prioritization early on. If you’ve been with someone for two months and they’ve been with someone for fifteen years… yeah, there’s going to be hierarchy and you’re at the bottom of it. It’s also highly manipulative, in my opinion, for long-established couples (or throuples or quads or whatevers) to encourage new partners to believe they’re co-equal after two months. Because it isn’t true — it’s never true — and the first time it’s tested (say, around a holiday), the newer partner (if they fell for it) is going to feel like they’ve been lied to (because they have). Managing other people’s expectations — which includes not promising things we aren’t able to deliver (yet or ever) — is something we owe our partners whether we’re monogamous, monogamish, DADT, open, poly, or whatever. This may play differently and/or unfold differently for people who practice solo polyamory and/or relationship anarchy (I sense BiDanFan is already at work on an informative and insightful comment!), but most poly relationships are hierarchical at least at the start… whether we want them to be or not. As you acknowledge, Andrew, our obligations to someone we just started dating are different (and lesser) than our obligations toward the people we have been with for ten or twenty years. So, it would seem that’s true of even your relationships. As for people who argue that hierarchical polyamory is unethical… I’m going to let Danielle from Openly Committed address that bullshit argument. Says Delta35… To the bi caller seeking “straight” sex parties welcoming individual guys with many AFAB women attending: I’ve read about two. Have not attended either. Bi-writer Zachary Zane writes on bi stuff in his substack BOYSLUT. In the year I’ve subscribed the only time I’ve read him describe anything similar to what the caller seeks is a bi weekend at a Jamaican sex resort. Zach’s substack BOYSLUT has racier deets. Sunshine and Lollipops has a specific recommendation for the same caller… Don’t know where bi-guy looking for coed parties called in from, but come up to Canada! There’s a monthly party at a Toronto club called Swordplay (“a night to celebrate bi/pan men and their lovers”). The club itself is very trans- and women-forward and pricing reflects that, but there’s special pricing for MMF/MFM triads for that event. Sean doesn’t think the caller whose partner is looking at escort ads is merely wanking to them… There is plenty of free porn from which to pull for his “spank bank” without having to put escort ads in his phone. Fucker is lying. Says Ted the Bellhop… Escort ads for the faps — this is a real thing. I used to get my engine revved by going through the Craigslist personals in my area to find guys looking to share their big dicks. I would fantasize about my wife hooking up with those guys. Says Justin S. via email… I’m not sure if you’ve already uncovered this word but it popped up as the “word of the day” on some app and right away I knew I had to get it to you! Love the show! The word of the day was “onolatry,” a noun that means “worship of the ass or donkey” and/or “devotion to foolishness.” I was fully ready to incorporate this term into next year’s Feast of the Ass celebrations until I made the mistake of reading its wiki page: “In Imperial Rome, the charge of onolatry was used to taunt the Jews and Jewish Christians [and it] included accusations of worshipping a golden donkey head and even sacrificing foreigners to it at intervals.” So, like everyone’s favorite beast of burden (Buddy the Ass, who comes bearing loads), “onolatry” would appear to have some serious baggage. ‘ The kind of feedback we love… Great episode. — Ariana Kaufman (@arianakaufman.bsky.social) February 18, 2025 at 11:37 AM Thank you, Ariana! Okay, it’s been a while since I shared a letter that isn’t going to make it into the column — this time due to length — so, here we go… I live in a super progressive US city. My 30-year-old child (biologically male) has come out as half of the rainbow over the past decade. They’ve gone from “gay” to “bi” to ”mostly gay” to “trans” to ”queer” to ”gender-fluid” and now “trans and non-binary.” The pronoun de jour is she/they (after shifting across many combinations) despite their being clear that they love their male body, have no interest in surgeries, but like to cross dress. We love this child with all our hearts, and we have been supportive each step of the way. The cliché bigot-parents-kicking-out-the-poor-queer-kid thing never happened. The minute we wrap our heads around a new identity and language demand, there’s another coming out announcement. It gets harder and never lets up. When they is around, we have to constantly self-police our words and be policed, which, eerily, reminds me of my experience growing up in China at the very tail end of Chinese Cultural Revolution. Currently, aside from pronouns, they insists that everyone calls them by new names, avoid all male-related words around them, and be OK with them dressed in the most caricatured “feminine” attire that few women would ever actually wear. Interestingly, after spending only five days in China and dressing in more stereotypically masculine clothes by choice, said child declared that they realized gender identity didn’t need to be front and center in their life! And that dressing in masc attire was totally fine; in fact, they described it as “life-simplifying.” They even wondered about staying in China and trying to find a job there. It obviously wasn’t feasible so they returned to the US, and sadly, went right back to centering life around gender. As we headed into Thanksgiving, they declared: “Unless you accept my wearing a dress at the table [we already did], not use he/him pronouns [we weren’t planning to do so], not use any male-related words in my presence [how is that even possible?], and start calling me by this new name, I’m not coming to Thanksgiving.” We’ve been having Thanksgiving with the same lesbian couple for over 30 years. They love this child, and yet the child boycotted the event simply because we couldn’t guarantee that we could all switch out the name we’ve been using for them for 30 years without error or avoid “male related-words” in their presence! (By the way: I was ahead of the curve and gave my child a non-binary name at birth by choice. So the dead-name-invokes-gender-dysphoria thing isn’t the issue here.) The progression is dizzying, full of contradictions, and with no end in sight. At this point, they has lost all credibility re: their constantly evolving gender identity and controlling behavior and language policing has alienated even the most indulgent family members. I can only imagine what others might feel about such nonsense. Trump did not get my vote but I now believe my Chinese friends’ assessment that the gender identity stuff is one of the reasons he was elected again. Ever since I first heard my child declaring themself trans, I started to educate myself on the gender topic, reading extensively and listening to countless podcasts. To me, my child fits the bill of a bisexual man (per definition of Robin Ochs) with the kinks of cross-dressing and exhibitionism. All of that is fine with me, thanks to all your advice in no small part. I have accepted that they is not going to marry a woman and have a traditional family, that they may bring rainbow partners home, and present in femme ways. I even accepted their cross dressing in my presence when we are together (e.g., feminine attire, long hair, nail polish, etc., all fine). But the one thing I cannot stomach is their insisting on wearing exaggerated “hyper-femme” attire in my home. To me, it feels like I am being forced me to participate in a kink. I’ve always loved your advice about how “a mother has the right not to know.” I feel strongly that “a mother has a right not to watch.” If there’s one place on earth where I must feel free it’s my home. We are now at an impasse over this child’s demand de jour of doing this kind of drag in my home at family gatherings. They insist that this is how I must demonstrate my acceptance. If I say no, they will boycott all family time. This is even more insulting after they nonchalantly declared that dressing in masc clothes does not feel bad at all and they could do it all the time in China! They is now spreading the lie that they is banned from home because of their trans non-binary identity, which is absolutely untrue. (Can someone be trans and non-binary at the same time? Doesn’t being trans place one in the binary?) My question to you is, am I wrong to experience their insistence on this kind of cross dressing in my home as their forcing a kink on me without my consent? Does a mother have the right to not watch? Mom Over Very Entitled Monstrously Expressed Nonbinary Transness Advice for MOVEMENT? Drop it in the comments.