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I've been seeing my boyfriend on and off for about two years. We met at a difficult time—he was recently divorced—but have both grown a lot and are back together. Things are better than ever, but I had a feeling something was up. I already know it's not great to be in a relationship where you snoop your partner's phone, but I did, because my spidey senses were tingling, and I found correspondence that appeared to be to an escort. I shut it down by texting to ask her to stop texting my dude and had a pleasant conversation with her.

It turns out he put up an ad online offering a woman $500-$1000 to let her take a video of him shaving her head.

I looked at his browsing history and there are tons of YouTube videos of women shaving their heads. Our sex life has never been great—it's improved with emotional intimacy, but it's always been a red flag that touching my vagina can trigger a panic attack. I've wondered for a long time if he was gay, but the fact that all these videos are of women has made me think that's not the case. To be honest, I'm wondering whether he could have been molested by a hairdresser—he's super avoidant about getting haircuts, and has always been keen on having me cut his hair for him (and has hinted a few times that he'd like to cut mine). This is a theme in his correspondence with past girlfriends as well.

I've asked him directly whether he's been molested and he says he doesn't think so. Is this a fetish you've encountered before? I'm hoping this is just a case of him having shame about the fetish and am hopeful that with more time (we've only been together seriously for about two months) that he might feel safe disclosing it. He has been in therapy and I'm wondering whether this is something clinicians can actually deal with, or if I should just give this up as a lost cause.

I don't want to DTMFA. We are better together, we want all the same things in life, and everything has been so much better this time around. Things are actually getting better all the time. I've tried so hard to make a safe space for him to express himself. As far as I know, he is happy. Is this something I should just let go?

Having An Interesting Relationship

Before we get into your boyfriend's hair fetish—which isn't common but he's obviously not the only person on earth with this particular kink (those "tons" of YouTube videos weren't made just for him)—let's take a quick stroll through the garden of your fuck-ups:

1: Despite knowing it's "not great" to snoop through your partner's phone (which is how you got into this panicky mess), you did it. Snooping can sometimes be justified in retrospect, depending on what the snooper finds (secret second families, risky/stupid sex outside the relationship, "Make America Great Again" merchandise orders), but I don't think this is one of those times. You've only been serious for two months, HAIR, and at two months you don't have the right to police his every thought, impulse, fantasy, etc. (Or at two years or twenty years, IMO.) A "right to privacy" is the default setting in every relationship, whatever the length, even if—again—the impulse to snoop is understandable in some circumstances and retroactively justifiable in others.

2: You thought it was a good idea to "shut it down" by texting the escort directly, putting this innocent third party in an extremely awkward position. Instead of wasting her time, HAIR, you could've and should've had a conversation with your boyfriend about what you found. Having that convo would've required you to confess to and apologize for fuck-up #1, which I suspect is why why you reached out to the escort instead.

3: You discovered your boyfriend has a hair shaving fetish and leapt to the conclusion that a hairdresser must have molested him. First, that's not how kinks work; second, that's an extremely fucked up, sex-negative, and kink-shaming leap.

So, yeah, hair fetishes. A quick search on Google would show that hair fetishes are pretty abundant, and, like most fetishes, they manifest in a variety of ways; sometimes people want to trim someone's armpits and sometimes they want to shave someone's head. And, again, this doesn't mean they were molested by a fucking hairdresser. Foot fetishists weren't molested by podiatrists (although some might like to be), swim cap fetishists weren't molested by Olympic butterfly strokers (ditto), and suit-and-tie fetishists weren't molested by George Zimmer (ditto again). As with all fetishes, there's no way to pinpoint a cause; people have kinks because they do. Asking why—to say nothing of assigning blame—is a waste of time when kinksters do it to themselves, it's sex-negative/kink-shaming crap when kinkmuggles do it to them.)

If you're curious what a hair-shaving fetishist has to say about his kink, HAIR, here's a link to a Reddit AmA where a guy with a head shaving fetish answers questions. But you should think about skipping that link, HAIR, and just ask your boyfriend why he's into it. Which you can do right after you cop to and apologize for snooping.

And before you blow up at your boyfriend about cheating, HAIR, mull this over: Your boyfriend has this kink, he's probably always had this kink, and he was making a plan—and taking an enormous risk—to act on this kink. If having your head shaved isn't something you're willing to do with/for him—and doing so would go far beyond the call of GGG ("game for anything within reason")—then you two will have to come to terms. He'll either have to agree to go without ever exploring/acting on this kink (under the duress of a breakup threat), HAIR, or you'll have to give him the okay to act on it with someone else—like, oh, an escort who might be willing to part with her hair for $1000 and then rake in the bucks from the many dudes out there with a fetish for bald women (none of whom were molested by oncologists).

UPDATE & P.S. The freaked-out-by-touching-vagina thing seems like a much bigger issue than the has-a-fantasy/chatted-up-an-escort-about-it thing.

Listen to my mouthy podcast, the Savage Lovecast, at www.savagelovecast.com.