STRUGGLE SESSION: Stealing Daddies, Faking Orgasms, Embracing Asymmetries… and More

...ost/3lngoek5qb224?ref_src=embed">[image or embed] — pepeduke.bsky.social (@pepeduke.bsky.social) April 22, 2025 at 11:58 PM So, BRIEF and his wife “defaulted” to a DADT arrangement — or least he thinks they did (BRIEF seems to be making a lot of assumptions) — because while his wife enjoys hearing about his sexual adventures, BRIEF does not enjoy hearing about hers. BiDanFan made, as BiDanFan often does, a great point… Given that she does want to know and he doesn’t, it seems weird that they went with his preference. Is he sure he’s not just cheating? Surely their preferences can both be honoured: he tells, she doesn’t. Ethical non-monogamy does not always require symmetry, it requires that both people’s needs and desires are met. Delta35 emphasized the same point… BRIEF Your wife wants to hear your play details you don’t want to hear hers. Why not asymmetric DADT? ENM isn’t always symmetric, there can be ethical consensual asymmetry on some parameters that fits each person’s needs better. And Dutch Lady agreed… You’d be surprised how many people think the only thing that’s fair is 50/50, same rules for everyone. But I agree, asymmetry is probably the solution here. OMG — thank you BiDanFan, Delta35, and Dutch Lady! I have struggled to explain that things don’t have to be “fair” (or seem fair to an outsider) for an open relationship to be healthy and completely consensual. “Asymmetrical” is a far better way to describe — and a far less loaded way to describe — arrangements where one person tells their partner about their outside adventures and the other doesn’t or, to take another example, one person is allowed to do something the other isn’t allowed to do (and ideally doesn’t really wanna do anyway) than “unfair.” Zooming out for a second: I recently got to watch a friend (let’s call him “Friend A”) short circuit when another friend (“Friend B”) explained — or tried to explain (alcohol was involved) — why his boyfriend gets to fuck around with other men but he does not.  Basically, it turns Friend B on when his boyfriend “cheats” but it turns his boyfriend off when he cheats. (Selective use of quotation marks doing some light lifting there.) So, Friend B agreed to a one-sided open relationship with his boyfriend — for the time being. “But that’s not fair,” Friend A kept saying. “If your boyfriend gets to fuck around, you should get to fuck around too!” I think Friend A was doing what people often do when they hear about asymmetrical open relationship agreements: he was projecting himself into the relationship and recoiling because Friend A would never agree to an asymmetrical open relationship. Also coloring Friend A’s reaction: he wanted to get with Friend B and was frustrated to learn he couldn’t — for the time being. Says NoCuteName… Regarding the woman who occasionally fakes orgasm with her husband: Dan, it’s very kind and altruistic of you to be anti-faking on behalf of men’s future female partners, but my problem with it is that if one has been faking consistently or over a long period of time or every single time a couple has sex, and then later decides one no longer wants to fake, and would rather try to have genuine orgasms with their partner, there’s an absolutely horrible conversation in which one has to confess. A woman who fakes an orgasm with a dude she doesn’t plan to see and then doesn’t see again isn’t going to create a problem for herself — she can, however, create a problem for the other women in that dude’s future. It’s especially problematic if that dude has a series of firsts (first experiences, first girlfriends) with women who faked their orgasms. (“All my previous girlfriends could come from PIV alone — there must be something wrong with you.”) But when a woman fakes an orgasm with a guy she wants to see again and then fakes another the next time she sees him and the time after that… sooner or later she’s going to wanna stop faking it. And informing her partner of six months (or twenty years) that she’s never actually had an orgasm with him… yeah, that’s gonna be a horrible conversation. The easiest way for a woman to avoid that horrible conversation is by not faking orgasms in the first place. But if a woman makes the mistake of faking orgasms for the first few months… or the first few years… there’s still a way she can avoid that horrible conversation, as I explained in a recent column… I’ve long advised partnered women who wanted to stop faking orgasms to start faking something else: getting close. After a few months of getting fake close instead of fake there, a woman can say this to her boyfriend or husband: “Something changed with my body when I hit [insert current age] and it’s made my orgasms harder to achieve — it even happens when I try on my own — so it looks like we’re going to have to experiment with some new things to get me there!” That’s a lie — obviously — but it’s a defensible one. Now, let the record show that I believe “I’ve been faking it” is something a man should be able to hear without falling apart. I also believe straight men should be able to wrap their heads around why a woman might fake an orgasm with a new partner and then feel obligated to keep faking orgasms. (I also think men should admit that we would fake orgasms if we could.) So, while lies are generally bad, I would argue that there’s a difference between a wholly self-serving lie meant to deceive and a partly self-serving lie meant to spare. Some men do feel humiliated — some men feel betrayed — when they’re told (or they discover) that their partners have been faking orgasms, and if a small lie (“my orgasms have gotten more elusive”) helps a woman walk back a bigger lie (months or years of faked orgasms) without hurting her partner’s feelings, I will allow it. A point of order came via email… I’m a huge fan and have been following you for many years! I noticed something in your April 22 podcast that is bothering me enough that I wanted to mention it. When you responded to the woman who was faking orgasms with her husband you repeatedly used the term “gay porn” when what you actually meant was gay male porn. The caller said she watches lesbian porn which by definition is also gay porn but you sort of dismissed this comment and went on to tell listeners they should watch gay porn to learn how gay men manage to come together. I wish you would call it what it is — gay male porn — rather than gay porn because lesbian porn is also gay porn. It seems like you are (unintentionally I’m sure!) discrediting lesbian porn (which is also hot gay porn). I meant no disrespect to lesbian porn, which is obviously hot, which is why there’s so much of it in HUMP. But I gotta say… For years, gay women argued — lesbians argued — that the term “gay” was so male-coded that its use by gay rights organizations effectively erased homosexual women. That’s why the Gay Activists Alliance, which was founded in 1971, changed its name to the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance in 1986; it’s why the National Gay Task force, which was founded in 1973, changed its name to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1985. (The organization would change its name again in 2014, becoming the National  LGBTQ Task Force.) Nowadays, non-men who are exclusively and/or semi-exclusively sexually and/or romantically attracted to non-men — née lesbians — are likelier to use the term “sapphic” to describe themselves than they are to use the “gay” or “lesbian.” So… yeah. I respectfully disagree with the point you’re making. Everyone understands that gay porn features men doing other men and lesbian porn features women doing other women, which is why using “gay male porn” to describe the boy-on-boy stuff sounds clunky and redundant. And does anyone describe the girl-on-girl stuff as “gay female porn”? (And would they get in trouble if they did? They might!) Boy-on-boy is gay porn (even when straight guys are making it), girl-on-girl is lesbian porn (even when straight girls are faking it). I don’t make the rules. Says Erin via email… I just listened to your episode Do The Thing. Frankly, I think your slogan “Do The Thing” SUCKS. It falls into the same trap as so many things the democrats like to promote-it is CLIQUEY. All of us who listen to your show or pay attention to politics will get it, but you will be leaving out too much of America for it to be effective. I think the word “America” needs to be on the hat so people outside the loop don’t need a decoder. Here is my suggestion for a hat to compete with MAGA: “Restore the American Dream”, aka RAD. It can mean everything you associated with Do The Thing and more, but you will reach more people. Democrats can no longer afford to be lofty. Vote RAD! I like RAD, I think RAD is pretty good — at the very least, an initialism that can easily sounded out (like MAGA) has an an edge over an initialism that can’t be easily sounded out (like DTT). So, if RAD catches on, I’m all in. Says Stacey via email… Hi, Dan. Notably absent from your conversations about politics in the last month are two people who are right now canvassing the country to try to rally people together: Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And Bernie had one of the best campaign slogans ever: “Not me, us.” In these dark times, focusing on ways to bring people together, including those who don’t agree with each other on all issues, seems really important. Oh, my God, yes: Bernie and AOC have been out there DOING THE THING! ‘ ‘ You’re absolutely right, Stacey: I should’ve cited Sanders and AOC alongside Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen as examples of Dems who are actually doing the thing. (I can’t run your entire letter — it’s way too long — but while you were right about Sanders and AOC and right to call me out for overlooking them, Stacey, you’re wrong about Ezra Klein and you’re wrong about YIMBY.) ‘ This came in via email… This is a response to the lesbian who was invited to her pansexual friend’s coming out party. Dan, I loved what you said about previous generations receiving a much colder reception so that later generations can throw coming out parties, so thank you for that. I think this friend is trying to be seen. She is coming out as pansexual, and pansexual and bisexual folks are often invisible, even to the queer community, and especially when in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship. If she was coming out as a lesbian, she might not need to call so much attention to it because she would be with a woman and people would see her as a lesbian. But she is formally inducting herself into the queer community which makes her more visible, and visibility is not only good for her, it’s good for all pansexual and bisexual folks. Says Roger via email… No question here, Dan, just a funny observation. I’m a federal worker, and the microchipped ID card we use to enter our building, unlock our computers, and perform various other tasks is called our “PIV card,” which stands for “Personal Identity Verification card.” As part of the onboarding process, new employees are required to “get their PIV card” within a certain number of days. But after years of reading Savage Love, I can’t hear “get your PIV card” without smiling a little. And we in the Federal workforce could use a little more smiling these days. Finally, a letter that came in for the column that I don’t have the space to run… I am a gay man in a wonderful (mostly) monogamous relationship with the first and (hopefully) only love of my life for the past 4.5 years. This is my first relationship and I came into it with 2-3 deeply unsatisfying hookups in my past. My partner though is experienced sexually (3-digit body count) and enjoyed his college days, something I actually respect him for and we’ve had a lot of conversations about. I know I am demisexual, but a pervasive fantasy of mine is being in an open relationship. We’ve tried being with other people. My partner is not demisexual and has enjoyed the novelty. I, on the other hand, come back from experiences with others feeling empty and lost. And yet, the thought of being in an open relationship turns me on. The thought of other people finding me attractive, having a variety of sexual experiences, and hot twinks submitting to me are all things I crave. A lot of the allure, I admit, comes from the chase. Many times, with the permission and full knowledge of my partner, I have gotten on Grindr, where I got people to the point of meeting up, but then — when the deal is sealed — lost all interest and bailed. Maybe that speaks to deeply held insecurities about my own self-worth that I just want to feel attractive, something I feel I have never truly felt in the past. The problem is that this is now a never-ending spiral. I get intrigued by open relationships, talk to my partner about it, we try again, he enjoys himself, I come back feeling empty, we decide to stop. While my partner has been super patient, his patience with me about this is wearing thin. I am desperate at this point to resolve it. How do I commit to monogamy and let go of this fantasy that is unsuitable for me in real life? I can’t keep putting my partner through this selfish, never-ending indecisive routine. Demi And Confused Got some advice for DAC? Maybe a little callbacky somethin’ about asymmetrical ENM agreements and/or one-sided open relationships? Drop it in the comments…