Longtime reader, Dan. Just wanted to ask why you never publish questions or comments from happily married hetero folks? Too boring? None ever come in? I love to read your advice and think what you've done in your career and for the advancement of gay rights is incredible—but I'd love to see some diversity in the Q&A department!

So! My husband and I have been together for 24 years—I'll be 42 in July—and despite normal ups and downs, we're happy together. We have great sex on a regular basis (at least twice a week) and both enjoy trying different things with each other (inside and outside the bedroom). We've talked about swinging, opening our relationship, etc., and neither of us is into it. Are we freaks? Two normal, nice happily married middle age folks content to fuck each other and no one else? Just curious!

I feel like I should add something shocking but really don't have any ideas, Dan. Our biggest problem is we're binge eaters and often find ourselves demolishing pound bags of peanut M&Ms in our bedroom late at night after smoking bowls. So even our shocking details are pretty lame. But as a regular reader and a longtime monogamous couple, Dan, I'd love to see some letters about how it CAN work—not about how it's destined to fall the fuck apart. Might give some hope to the other saps out there wondering wtf they are doing wrong cause they aren't planning a wild threesome or fantasizing about fucking the neighbor!

Happily Married, Happily Fucking, Happily Monogamous

My sample is skewed—or maybe I should say that my samples, plural, are skewed.

I don't get tons of questions from people who are happy and/or content. Straight or queer, married or not, monogamous or non-monogamous—happy people don't send me a lot of questions about the problems they don't have. But letters do come in from happily married hetero folks, HMHFHM, and their letters regularly appear in Savage Love. Take the first letter in this week's column:

Down to business: Christmas came and went, and every present I bought for my extraordinary husband could be opened in front of our children. He deserves better, and I have a particular gift in mind for Valentine's Day. My husband has expressed an interest in sounding, something we've attempted only with my little finger. He seemed to enjoy it! But the last thing I want to do is damage his big beautiful dick. So is sounding a fun thing? Is sounding a safe thing? Recommendations for a beginner's sounding kit? Or should I scrap the idea and just get him another butt plug?

Safety Of Sounding doesn't say her marriage is monogamous, HMHFHM, but I would bet my hardly-earned money that she and her husband are monogamous. (Straight couples who aren't typically mention that fact.) And SOS and her husband appear to be just as blissfully happy as you and your husband are, HMHFHM. But don't take my word for it. Here's the first paragraph of SOS's email, which was edited out of her letter for reasons having to with space and Catholicism, which really drives the blissful shit home:

First I want to thank you so much for all that you do. I would not have the happy, healthy, exciting, sexy marriage that I do if I hadn't spent years reading your columns and listening to your advice. What you do is awesome and I hope you never stop!!!

And SOS's letter—a letter from a happily married hetero!—isn't some once-or-twice-per-annum rarity. Perhaps you missed this column from late December:

After spending some years in the doldrums after having kids, my husband and I are now enjoying hot kinky sex and the occasional free pass to fuck other people. We couldn't be happier. I have a friend who was extremely keen for me to cage his cock with the same kind of locking male chastity device I got for my husband—a fixed-ring stainless-steel type....

Married! Hetero! Couldn't be happier!

So the question here isn't, "Why won't you print letters from happily married folks, Dan?!?," but rather, "How did you miss all the letters I've printed from happily married folks, HMHFHM??"

My best guess: Since happiness isn't the issue/problem/point of contention for those happily married hetero couples who do write in (and whose letters do appear in the column), HMHFHM, these couples don't emphasize their happiness the same way miserable couples emphasize their miserableness. But happily married hetero folks are represented in Savage Love—they're all over the column and the podcast—you're just too distracted by the sounding rods and cock cages to see them.