There’s this boy – he’s 29; I’m 46 and female. We met when we were 23 and 41. I was not and am not into little boys. The Kid chased me, and I turned him down for months – until I got drunk one night and caved. It was supposed to be a one-night stand, but it isn’t anymore. We’ve never been “together,” because the Kid wants kids and happily ever after and all that horseshit, and I don’t (and I’m too old even if I did). The Kid has been in several relationships over the years, looking for The One, and I genuinely hope he finds her. In my wildest dreams, I’m invited to their wedding and their children call me auntie. But in the meantime, the Kid runs to me when he hits a hiccup in a relationship, and I let him – meaning, he gets mad at her and [bleeps] me madly. Afterward, I get him to talk about it – he tells me what happened, and I always try to advise him how to make it better, how to make it work. But so far it hasn’t, and we’re “us” again until he meets another girl. I do love this Kid, for what it’s worth. But I’m afraid I’m ruining his chances. I’m afraid that by being an escape hatch, I’m giving him a reason not to work on these relationships and he will never find the kids/forever thing he’s looking for. Should I let him go for his own sake? If I tell him honestly why, he won’t accept it, so I’d have to just vanish. I’d hate that. It would be worth it if I knew he met someone and got to live happily ever after. But I’d spend my life feeling bad for disappearing on him, and I’d always wonder if the Kid wound up alone.Don’t Call Me Cougar
I don’t see any conflict between what the Kid says he wants in the long run – kids and happily ever after and all that horseshit – and the things his actions indicate he wants now, i.e., your rear and your ear. He’s young, he hasn’t met a woman he could see himself with for the long haul and he appears to be in no rush – he can have his first kid next year or 20 years from now.
And the meantime, DCMC, he has you.
Here’s where I detect some conflict between statements and actions: The fact that you keep [bleeping] the Kid while he’s technically still with other women – first you [bleep] him (madly) and then you advise him (sagely) – is a pretty good indication that you’re not ready to let go of him, either. If you really wanted to encourage the Kid to work things out with whatever woman he happens to be seeing, DCMC, you would offer him your make-it-work advice without [bleeping] him first.
[Bleeping] someone who has a girlfriend – especially someone who has a girlfriend he’s supposed to be with exclusively – doesn’t exactly telegraph “I think you two should work it out.” So going forward, maybe you should offer the Kid your advice when he’s seeing someone, [bleep] the shit out of him when he’s single, and don’t waste too much time worrying about whether [bleeping] you incentivizes being single. Because single/you may be what he wants right now.
If I first met someone on a hookup site or at a sex party and then we start seeing each other, what’s the best way to explain how we met when we’re at a social event and people ask?Torrid Revelations Undermining Totally Honesty
The truth is always nice – and in your case, TRUTH, telling the truth about your relationship could be constructive.
There are a lot of people out there in loving committed relationships (LCR) that had crazy sleazy starts (CSS). But very few people in a LCR with a CSS tell the truth when asked how they met. A couple that met at a sex party will say they met at a dinner party, a couple that met inside a cage in a sex dungeon will say they met doing a team-building exercise at a work retreat, a couple that met during an impulsive, drunken threesome will say they met at a riotous protest outside a Trump rally.
These lies are understandable: People don’t want to be judged or shamed. But when a CSS couple lies about how they met, TRUTH, they reinforce the very shame and stigma that made them feel like they had to lie in the first place. And they play into the sex-negative, self-defeating and super-hypocritical assumption made by singles who attend sex parties, spend time in cages and have impulsive threesomes – these single people who do sleazy things often refuse to date the people they meet at sex parties, etc., because they believe no LCR ever had a CSS. If couples that had sleazy starts told the truth about themselves, single people would be less likely to rule out dating people they met sleazily.
I despised your advice to LIBIDOS, the poly married woman who you counseled to have sex with her husband even though she has zero desire to do so. You came close to telling her to throw away her consent. Somewhere between a third and half of women have been sexually assaulted. Would it be possible for most of them to suck it up and sleep with someone they had no desire for without ending up resenting or hating that person? Even if LIBIDOS won life’s coin toss on sexual assault, she would most likely come to resent her husband if she had passionless sex with him. From the husband’s perspective – assuming he’s not a piece of shit who thinks he’s entitled to sex but rather just wants a sexual connection with his wife – wouldn’t being lied to in this way ruin him? I also don’t think you would’ve given this advice to a gay man – to let his husband [bleep] him the ass, even if he didn’t want to get [bleeped]. The truth is really the only solution here. The road you set this woman down leads only to bitterness and divorce.Seriously Horrified About That
LIBIDOS, a poly woman with a boyfriend (who she’s [bleeping]) and a husband (who no one is [bleeping]), asked me if she should “force” herself to [bleep] her husband. She also mentioned having a kid and not wanting to get divorced. And it was my opinion – an opinion she sought out – that she might wanna [bleep] her husband once in a while. Advice isn’t binding arbitration, SHAT, and if [bleeping] her husband is a traumatizing ordeal, as opposed to a dispiriting chore, she should ignore my advice and keep not [bleeping] her husband. And seeing as LIBIDOS asked me if she should [bleep] her husband, it seemed safe to assume that she was open to the idea.
You weren’t the only reader to take me to task for my advice to LIBIDOS. Apparently, there are lots of people out there who don’t realize how many long-marrieds – men and women, gay and straight, poly and mono – [bleep] their spouses out of a grim sense of duty. It seems a bit extreme to describe that kind of sex as a consent-free/sexual-assault-adjacent trauma. Choosing in the absence of coercion to go through the marital motions to keep your spouse happy is rarely great sex – for either party – but slapping the nonconsensual label on joyless-but-trauma-free marital sex is neither helpful nor accurate.
Dan Savage is a nationally syndicated sex advice columnist writing for The Stranger in Seattle. Contact him at [email protected] or @fakedansavage on Twitter and listen to his podcast every week at savagelovecast.com
