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Isn't that what most people want? Stability of a relationship and freedom to sleep around when the mood strikes. Point being, LIAR's sexuality seems totally normal and common, and I wonder if she would benefit by knowing that most people who make monogamous commitments do so despite strong desires to have sex with people other than their partner. Price of admission and all that. By all means, she should break up with this guy and try honest non-monogamy, but I get the sense she may be confusing people in monogamous relationships with people who are naturally monogamous.
If you want her to be happy, and you hate maintaining a long-term relationship, but want to be in a relationship with her, leave her. You're pretty selfish, duder.
Long distance relationships involve more work, effort you don't want to put in. She wants to talk to you, so do it or break up.
Though LIAR @28 is a little past the kid Mark.
Are you serious young lady? You have been with this man for two years, and have his " kid" stay on weekends. So I assume you are important in the kid's life as well as your bf's ?
Hope that fuck was worth it. Whichever way you go now, I'd call you an asshole.
So how long do you intend to continue advancing this rationalization? Your Honesty Clock started ticking when you fucked this new guy and rationalized it this way. From this moment forward you are going to have to actively dodge anything that remotely resembles an escalation of relationship status, in order to be able to continue to make the claim (mostly bogus, and mostly to yourself) that you owe him no duty of care towards exclusivity since you haven't officially discussed it. This Lie By Omission is only going to keep growing.
Second, the question is not can you claim innocence on a technicality, the question is will your "actual" boyfriend agree with you that the technicality is fair and valid? Or is he going to tell you, "Nice try, but you just showed me your true character: a sophist and a technicality hunter. Out. Now."
You seem to have forgotten that there is a real, live person on the other end of this transaction. Not just a Rule that some hypothetical cosmological referee enforces. He does have agency, just like you, and he does have the right to dump your ass for any reason he sees fit. So if you don't want to piss him off and lose him, you have to make a better effort at representing his interests as co-equal with yours.
You tell him that even if he agrees to give it a try. Otherwise you are deliberately leaving him with the impression that this is hypothetical until proven otherwise, when in reality otherwise has been happening right under his nose but you are keeping it from him. That is still cheating.
No TMI, it isn't.
There's a larger question. I have often felt like the old-fashioned relic on this column for clinging to the notion that exclusivity is or ought to be the fall-back assumed model for people who are dating as soon as they start having sex together. That's unless there's something obvious that would spell non-monogamy as is the case with a one-night stand or unless they've never dated as is the case with fuck-buddies who never see each other outside of the bedroom or something else is spelled out. With this letter and Dan's answer to it, it would seem that there's more support for my position that previously seen here.
*No pronouns or other identifiers mark TMI as female, but the letter screams young woman to me. I think the dynamic does change in this case if all the players are gay men.
Nope. It doesn't.
Assholes like this are also why it's so hard for well-meaning nonmonogamous people to broach the question, since it so often means "I'm a cheating piece of shit, and I've already cheated on you." Ruining it for everybody.
I more or less agreed with your post, but worry that the elaboration of your conclusion won't be much to my taste.
(We need a statistician like Greg Sharko to track problems and responses; it would make it much easier to compare Mr Savage to Ms Williams [though V or S I'm not sure].)
I think it more likely that we've got a troubled young woman who for some reason (a reason she should seek the bottom of in therapy) has thrown her lot with a man who isn't faithful to her, doesn't particularly like her unless circumstances mean that he has to put no effort into the relationship, and isn't making her happy. She's settling for what she thinks is the only thing she can get. Despite being great, cute, and intelligent, her self-esteem seems to be in the crapper.
While I do believe she's responsible for her own choices to stay monogamous with this guy, I also hold him at least a little responsible for leading her on. If NAA really wanted to keep her happy, he'd either be encouraging her to have sex with men who can be around for her on a more full-time basis or would make a clean break.
LW2@NAA... You're 23 and afraid of commitment so you keep your relationships long-distance mile-wise and emotion-wise. She'll get tired of your selfishness pretty quick and that will solve your problem.
LW3@LIAR... Some people don't want, some people DON'T DESERVE the stability of a relationship where "the sex we have is consistently good, sometimes amazing". This is a guy with a kid. You're fucking around with TWO people's happiness, and that's a doubly shitty thing to do. Get to couple's counseling or break it off immediately! "Too self-conscious to be dominant in bed" is surely something that can be worked on.
Please define what is a "normal degree of self control", because in my experience of the human species, a normal degree of self control is "almost none"; people do indeed repeat over and over and over again the actions that make them feel guilty, then blame their victim for what they themselves did in order to alleviate their guilt.
Loved Dan's advice. She made an effort to put her preferences out there, but BF did not get on board. She really needs to be honest with him and then accept the consequences. Her rationalization feels familiar to me as I read this. I guess there is quite a bit of rationalization going on in my life too perhaps???
RE Naa
This guy is so needy. My impression is that he keeps the LDR going just so he is never really alone between hook-ups. sheesh.
LW2, you are wasting this woman's time. Dump her and find a girl you actually want to talk to.
LW3, you my dear are a cheating piece of shit. This guy has invested two years in a relationship with you and trusts you with his child. Tell him you fucked someone else and will continue fucking other people whenever you want to so he can dump your ass and find someone who doesn't take a loving relationship for granted. Next time you want a partner try being honest from the start. There's nothing wrong with not being monogamous unless you lie to your partner about it.
I think the long distance guy irks me the most. Somehow, calling your partner a chore... etc... without any other info other than that his partner thinks she has a boyfriend ffs.... is worse than the two cheaters. LW2 - you don't want to be in a relationship. Stop getting women into relationships under false pretenses.
Crin again @17: I agree with your assessment of NAA's girlfriend. I'll bet she's very young, and needy, and that's why she's willing to accept non-monogamy on his part while insisting on daily phone calls. A slightly looser grip on the reins might allow her some time to discover herself and her other interests. I disagree with Hunter @20; NAA's situation seems to be the only one in which nonmonogamy has been discussed.
Ricardo @24: nailed it. Dan didn't describe TMI's cheating as anything other than cheating, probably because TMI initially told Male Friend s/he was off limits due to being in a relationship and then changed their mind. Ergo, they KNEW they were cheating, and that's why they felt guilty. Dan supports honest non-monogamy, but not cheating other than a last resort in a sexless relationship the aggrieved party cannot ethically leave.
If someone needs serious kink in their life, they should avoid committing to someone vanilla. The principle of GGG helps explore when your partner is new to the idea and may actually find it hot (everyone was new once), but GGG won't resolve a serious kink/vanilla incompatibility over the long term. Two years is long enough to figure out that he's vanilla.
She doesn't say if she has ever dated someone rough & dominant, and still ended up cheating at the two year mark. My sense is that she has a madonna/whore complex going on. A man who treats her roughly isn't suitable for a relationship. But the gentle ones don't turn her on. She should try dating one of the guys she's actually attracted to, and find out if that helps curb the desire to cheat after two years.
If she still cheats when she's with someone rough, then maybe it's the illicit sex that turns her on, and she should state that up front in future relationships. Someone out there will find that hot, and they can negotiate their way to an ethical understanding.
TMI - there's nothing wrong with not being exclusive after 2 months. There is something wrong with allowing someone to believe you are, behaving as though you are, and then changing your mind without telling him. As a person who has done that, and has gone on to date ethically and still gets everything she wants, just be honest. It's so much easier, you weed out douchebags right away, and you get to know the person before committing. And if I'm honest, lots of the most awesome guys are really, really stoked to find someone who isn't just looking for generic boyfriend, but really looking for the right one. They want to know you really chose them and that they have to prove themselves awesome, just like you do.
Current technology gives people the means to cheat on partners very easily and get away with it. However, a minority of people cheat in any given relationship. Something other than the threat of a partner finding out restrains people, and for most this is probably the anticipated guilt.
There's a reason religions the world over use shame and guilt as the tools of power - it works.
Huh. Sounds like a nice place, albeit a boring one.
I think a more accurate summary is that shame and guilt keep some people from doing things that'll make them feel shitty, and that the LW has demonstrated that she's not one of those people.
You learn an awful lot about human nature when you spend five years working in hotels, I can say that much. When people are away from friends and family, they reveal their true nature. Quite an eye opener. Very little shame or guilt is displayed.
And on this topic: shame and guilt only work to a certain extent, i.e. they mostly make people try to cover their tracks and pretend to be ultra-religious, which is to their religion's advantage. On the other hand, they have so far thoroughly failed to eliminate the behaviours they're supposed to, like cheating. And that's not the point. If it did eliminate them, religions would be out of business. As you say, they are tools of power, and they are used in a way so as to preserve the religions' power over the long term by prohibiting natural behaviours that the faithfuls will have a very hard time not engaging in. Hence the lack of self-control I mentioned earlier.
My thoughts exactly.
In most cases I know of, gay people have that conversation around the third fuck if they want monogamy, before the second one if they don't. As in: "Would you like to see me again? Nothing serious, just for sex. Here's my phone number." (Obviously, more often then not, dating of any kind starts AFTER the first fuck; another change in the dynamics.)
I mostly agree with your post, though given limited information in the letter it's hard to tell what steps LW has taken to address the situation.
Did she just say, "Honey, could you get a little rougher when we make the beast with two backs?" Or did she spell it out? "You gotta throw me around, call me a whore and choke my ass when we fuck or I'm not going to be satisfied. And when I'm not satisfied, I cheat." Don't sugar-coat it. She sounds like she genuinely loves the guy, but just can't help but cheat on all her partners at the two year mark, which is either pathological, deeply ingrained or a bullshit excuse for being lazy. No relationship is perfect, but asking for rougher sex isn't unreasonable (unless she REALLY wants him to beat the shit out of her). Seems like that could be overcome with a little work. The real question is why does she sabotage her relationships at the two-year mark? You had some good guesses.
We've already tested the theory of whether TMI's conscience would keep her from cheating. Experimentation has demonstrated that this hypothesis is false.
Rule-breakers make shitty partners, so people attracted to rule-breaking lead difficult lives.
Some semi harsh words to the big Kahoona:
Dear Mr. Savage,
Some of us here have been reading you for some time. Only last week we have generated almost 500 posts, although a very welcomed newcomer– she asked me to be nice to her- suspects she is responsible to 400 of them.
We have witnessed you evolving over the years, quick to learn new things, and right on when it comes to social, political, activism, and many other aspects of our lives.
We may disagree from time to time, but I’d say these are often nuances that are interpreted differently. As you may have noticed yourself our positions are defined by the jello between our ears, but are often influenced by the stuff we have between our legs.
Unfortunately your ignorance of that young lady drinking issue last week is not one of them. Look Dan, some of us got it right away in the first read, after a long day that included couple of drinks at the neighborhood pub prior to getting back home and wind down.
I assume many more would figure it out once they edit the letter and articulate a response.
Your apology seems to be in line with prior apologies, humor and all. I understand. I wish I could also drink on the job. I’d still aim to provide knowing I have such following and potential influence.
Granted, Ricardo is not the only one who’s intoxicated here. But if EOD staff members write an important business-related email at night while under the then they may opt to save the draft and look at it again the next morning.
It’s a strictly enforced company policy, not that anyone ever follows it.
EOD still loves you
But I need them to be happy to run the fuck most of the time and enjoy tossing me around. That sounds like what she needs, too. From seeing a lot of marriages end over this issue, I don't think it can be reduced to a casual "it's not that hard to rough it up a little in bed unless the guy is a total wimp."
Actually, it is that hard to bring dominant energy to the bedroom if that's really not your thing.
Totally agree. I tried a few times, and I just disappointed the subs. I can play submissive for a little while, but I don't really get into it either, and the few doms I've been with could sense it.
"Kinky people should only commit to other compatible kinky people". Truer words were never spoken.
LIAR is the one that spooks me. Her dispassion in the letter re any concern for how she has behaved towards her partner and his child, so easily going off and fucking some stray dude, oh that's right, she gets a little toey at the two yr mark.
She wants to feel like a porn star?.. This woman, I sense, has serious issues with her humanity, her empathy for her guy.. Who she says she loves.
And following Dan's advice sounds really callous and dishonest.
Leave this man and his child LIAR, or front him Now with the truth. No bullshit manoeuvres re Dan's suggestion. No more lies.
If you decide to go the leave way, do it with real care.. And forget to mention the hot fuck. Just tell him you made a mistake committing to this little family. If the child has developed an attachment to you, wean them off you over time.. Don't just disappear from their life.
How quickly your little enterprise has grown.
Yet she shacks up with a man and helps rear his child? Not too smart really, whatever sex she is, if she knows she lasts only two yrs till the itch starts again. Much better she own up to herself how she wants to play it and not drag others with her down the wrong path.
And rosary beads to you , Donny.
Lolly @51: Ah, Dan and I both read the letter literally. I guess it could be interpreted as "I don't want to communicate as often as she would prefer, which is every day." I guess I can more easily sympathise with NAA because I don't need constant communication from partners. Sounds like, either way, she needs a lot more communication than he does. She's not giving him enough absence for his heart to grow fonder.
Those other letters, bring up the Expectations people bring to a relationship. The two month girl hasn't had that conversation, yet she is caught by expectations that he might have..
The LDistance guy is also in the same situation.
Expectations are a burden. Because everyone brings different ones to the table at the beginning of relationships. Does one have to write a check list at the beginning of relationships that turn sexual?
Unspoken expectations are confining, yet we all have them.
Unfortunately, people have been known to do stupid things.
But in truth, it's a highly hypothetical question to me: I don't know of any gay couple that didn't clarify these things pretty much from the start. Being guys and knowing what guys are like, it's the logical thing to do in order to avoid having unrealistic expectations.
Intimacy is a felt thing. If it is forced by expectations, then the intimacy suffers.
Obviously LIAR has made some strong commitment, living with her bf..
The other two need to tell their lovers how they want it, one is allowed one's truth.
The two month girl really needs to have that conversation.
Both twos come across as understanding and helpful in untangling a situation. Yet 69 is more of a “don’t even try.” Pretty harsh on someone in her 20’s, despite the possible patterns.
And I’d say it’s also the father’s responsibility to choose his dates and whom he brings to his child’s life, though I can’t really tell what was going on.
Ricardo @ 73, also on the subject
The realization of who you really are and what you need may take time. Lots of mistakes are done along the way. Changes occurring, needs and desires shift.
Unless he has a cuckold kink. In which case, carry on.
I also know it took me a lot longer accepting my kinky nature than my homosexuality, so I understand that she might just not be there yet, and that her intentions aren't necessarily bad. But quite frankly, if you've already identified your pattern of cheating after two years, you should realize that you need to work on understanding yourself better before you ask someone else to come into your life.
It is only two months, after all. And who says that one has become monogamous after a few fucks? If they haven't actually said the words to each other..
I don't like the way she has gone about it, and her story with two month guy is probably at an end.
I just don't agree that others should assume anything after a couple of fucks about how the other person is conducting their sexuality.
Did I promise consistency? I don't think so.. And I do just play with ideas as they come up. Teasing out the story..
And really her letter did freak me a bit. Her heading out in the cold light of day to go fuck Mr Great.. Something about her attitude to what she has committed to.
Why live with a man if you can't commit? Wtf is that story. And a man with a child.
Yes, it is the father's responsibility to watch who he lets in close to his child.
Did LIAR tell him of her two yr itch Before they shacked up?
Did LIAR tell him of her two yr itch Before they shacked up? "
Good point. He can't tell that she's not trustworthy unless he gets some evidence of it.
hahaha.... damn you hunter
The well-documented fact that women can be assholes too has been proven once again to those who say that women can be assholes.
All genders and orientations come with a built-in asshole.
Some are more attuned to their inner one then others.
The committee in Stockholm or is it Oslo should be contacted again: Eud and BiDan just ask Ricardo for a compromise they both agree on in advance!
Knowingly letting someone continue to conspicuously believe that things are one way, while secretly going and doing the opposite, is an asshole move. Caveat emptor is no way to run a relationship. I wouldn't do business with a shopkeeper who worked that way. Why is it okay in a love interest?
Close your laptop, take a shower, locate the exit to your apartment (hint - it's where the delivery guys bring you the pizza), and go outside into the real world to meet women.
Wow. So, wife and I had sex this morning, and I was feeling it a little more than usual, and it was an epic struggle not to been too dominant, rough, or dirty for her tastes. God how I wanted to take that cock-teasing princess by her hair and teach her a hard lesson about what happens to pretty little fuck sluts when they get a man all worked up.
If they're into that sort of thing, of course.
Damn, LW, I kind of hate your boyfriend.
I can understand this girl wanting it a bit rough.. She doesn't sound D/s like some of the crew here like it. Well she doesn't say that she is.
If it's just sometimes she likes a caveman in her bed, then maybe bf could have upgraded his skill set.. If she had
found a way to unleash that man dragon. Or just told him to get the fuck a bit more proactive, giving her what she wants.
Bit bloody late now.
Hard call, unless the spouse says point blank no more nooky for you, in that case I feel it's fine to go, ok.. I'll just cruise off quietly and find some action elsewhere.
If, however, spouse hasn't closed the sex up.. Then I guess, rationalization does come in handy.
Our spring so far has been very gradual and some nice rain. Fills the tank.
One son over in the Solomon Islands for few
weeks, doing some building.
Labour day here next Monday, I'm hoping to make that my first trip to the ocean. Those sharks better stay away.
to maintain an increasingly complicated web of lies. They need to be honest with themselves as well.
As for LIAR, she needs to go out and find herself a dude with a cuckold fetish.
Registered @93: I'd rather fuck you than Sean. Someone even tries to "take me by the hair," I show them the door. Takes all kinds :)