My boyfriend is a fine art photographer and has always vocalized his appreciation of beautiful women and the female body. He works with many, often nude, women in an intimate setting with just the two of them in her house or ours (when I am away). While I am out of town, he is more likely to go out for dinner with a model and/or stay up late hanging out with them in our apartment. He has an incredible talent and eye for beauty and detail, and I support him because I appreciate his art and the joy it brings him! Photography is the best thing that he started in his life and I am beyond happy for him to have found it.
However, I can become emotional—jealous, apprehensive, anxious. I think this is because when we temporarily broke up, he slept with a model he worked with, and also because he doesn't photograph me like he does models. I'd fucking love to take more photos with him but he recently said he feels nervous working with people close to him. When asked about relationships and cheating he says "never say never."
He is an incredibly sexy man and I feel anxious of his constant temptation, being surrounded by sexy females in vulnerable, provocative settings. He is a fiercely sexual being and regularly talks about it.
Points His Object Towards Other Girls
He's fucking other women.
Wait! I don't know that for sure! I can't say that with any certainty! I had a feeling reading your letter but feelings aren't proof! But I was thinking that—and thinking it loudly—even before I got to that highly incriminating "never say never." My bullshit detectors autotranslated that "never say never" to "taking photos is how I get into women's pants and I'm in other women's pants all the time and I don't need to take your photos because I'm already in your pants and when did you say you're going out of town next, honey?"
Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe I'm being pessimistic. Maybe I'm being an asshole.
So let's start over...
Mutual respect and admiration are important ingredients in any relationship, PHOTOG, but the word I want to emphasize here is mutual. I'm concerned that, in the case of you and your incredibly sexy fine art photographer never-saying-never BF, you're more FG (fangirl) than GF (girlfriend). Yes, yes: It's wonderful that he found photography and that it brings him joy. But your boyfriend doesn't belong on a pedestal—no one's boyfriend does—not even if his "incredible talent and eye for beauty and detail" is admired by all. Boyfriends are things you love and fuck, not things you gaze at in awe whenever they aren't photographing nude women they may or may not be fucking (but so totally are fucking) because you aren't allowed to gaze at them in awe while they are photographing nude women they may not be fucking (but so totally are fucking).
Zooming out: Dating an artist who works with nudes sounds like the beginning of a hipster romance novel or a two-season arc on House of Cards. But it also sounds like a cliche. Remember what happened in Titanic after Kate got Jack to draw her like one of his French girls? The scene fades to Kate being a sentimental old woman, reminiscing about the lover she let drown in the freezing Atlantic ocean. (The transition is pretty jarring.) My point: tragedy befalls those who romance cliches. Or something. Maybe that's not my point. Maybe this Titanic aside is just an excuse to say I TOTALLY AGREE WITH ROXANNE GAY. Rose killed Jack. Case closed.
Full disclosure: I think one of the Christmas cookies I ate before sitting down to bang out today's SLLOTD might've been made with chartreuse butter.
Anyway...
Have the two of you had a conversation about maybe having an honest open relationship, PHOTOG? People in consensually non-monogamous relationships, according to the latest studies, "have similar psychological well-being and relationship quality as monogamists." People in non-consensually non-monogamous relationships, on the other hand, don't rank highly on those "well-being" and "relationship quality" charts. And it seems clear you're either in a non-monogamous relationship now or will be soon. If monogamy is a deal breaker for you and your BF knows it, PHOTOG, then "never say never" is a shitty thing to say (and cheating on you, if he's already cheating on you*, is a shitty thing to do). I'd like to think there's more to your relationship than your fangirling and your boyfriend's indifference to your wants, needs, and anxieties, but I'm not certain there is. So, yeah. DTMFA.
* He's already cheating on you.
Listen to my podcast, the Savage Lovecast, at www.savagelovecast.com.
