Comments

1
LW also wrote to China Business Daily to complain about them only discussing Chinese business and never happy monogamous hetero overeater marriage
2
Happily eating pound bags of m&ms.
Do you know how much colouring is in those sweets?
3
Dan is a comedian "Oh yes, I get some happy straight couples, they ya know wanna know about sticking things up the dick."

4
Of course the letters Dan gets are likely to focus on problems, not contented rhapsodies.
I'm more irritated with Dan's seeming to push people to open marriages and to dismiss cheating and give an easy pass to it.
5
Seriously, Dan is an advice columnist. People whose shit is working and working well have no cause to ask for advice unless there's new stuff they're considering that there's some uncertainty about.

My snarky advice: think before writing.
6
Advice Columnist Fails to Publish Letters from People Not Seeking Advice.
9
I wish I had some M&Ms about now.
10
I'm almost inclined to wonder which prominent FemRA LW happens to be.
11
Or should that be feMRA? I think it should; it looks cleaner.
12
I thought the letter was sweet, then I was gonna complain that all the commenters here are a bunch of snarky assholes, but I laughed at all the snarky asshole comments so I guess I have nothing further to say.
14
Now that I think about it, I have a bag of Reese's pieces hidden somewhere...
15
So she has been fucking the same guy since she was 18, and how does she know he's not getting something on the side, like the cheating ex of yesterday's letter?
16
What a weird headline.
Next question:
"Why does successful public intellectual, admired by millions, in good health, making a lot of money and a happy home life, not ask for advice from a sex columnist?"
17
Remember to "fuck first"...before you eat. But you should also eat first... before you toke (cuts down on the candy-eating). How to manage these three competing pleasures. That's really the question here isn't it?
18
seatackled @ 15, that's such a pointless comment. Do you say that to everyone who's feeling happy in their relationship?
19
@18: Yeesh, right? The OP is a bit silly for asking why well-adjusted persons who had good luck don't need advice, but that definitely sounded like sour grapes to me. "Oh, you're happy? Well maybe you ain't so happy after all!!!!"
20
Oh come on. This letter begs to be ridiculed. Eating binges and pound pkts of M&Ms after smoking bowls of dope?
Where do I start articulating the problems in this marriage.
21
i call fake
22
i say 'fake'.
23
Love the "hardly-earned money." Great bit of self-deprecating humour on Dan's part.

But yeah. What's she going to wonder next? "I work in IT, and people only call me when they have problems with their computer, not when their computers are working properly. What gives?"

Also, if she hasn't seen *comments* from happily married heteros, she ain't been reading the comments. Right, DarkHorse / BusyQuilting / DonnyK / Enfant / feel free to chime in?
24
@Bi

Probably not. I wonder if she gets the column from another paper rather here on the interwebz for the stranger. I'd feel more likely to pick on her except that Ricardo, who definitely does read the comments, asked a similar question just a day or two ago.

I think she had just finished a bowl before emailing dan, otherwise she would have realized how silly her question is.
25
Happiness is fabulous to live and boring to read about.
26
@18

Do you say that to everyone who's feeling happy in their relationship?

Naw, not happy people. I love happy people. But smug people? Oh, hell yeaaaah!

(Also, see @20.)
27
I bet the LW calls a plumber to come look at her non-broken toilet. And calls an electrician when the lights are working.

Weird.

@25: You win.
28
@ 24 - I most certainly did not! (fake outrage) I asked if there were couples who still fucked after x number of years. Their happiness in only tangentially related to that.

You can have sex with your spouse and be unhappy, and you can not have sex with your spouse and be happy.

I certainly know a few of those latter couples, except that they're gay, and they've simply decided to outsource the sex in order to avoid destroying a relationship that's perfectly fulfilling to them in every other way, as they say (which I translate as "they have a mortgage and dogs/cats", but that's because I'm cynical).
29
I meant "is only", not "in only"
30
Dear Dan,
My life is too good. My girlfriend and I never argue, we have more money than we need, the sex is so good that they are thinking of making a movie about us. Our picture appears in the dictionary next to "contented" and even though we both like to have sex with farm animals, we're both totally down with that (and always get a written consent form from them in advance.) Since you are always giving advice to people about how to fix bad relationships, I thought you might like the opportunity to tell me how to fuck this one up.
31
@LavaGirl, this is for you...
http://www.swifty.com/lifestyle/49091/25…
32
@25: Yeah, I find I have an inverse correlation between doing well in work and love and productivity in the arts. Oh well, tradeoffs.
33
I come from the land down under
34
Very happy together with hubby since 16 years... Think of us as a slightly more socially competent Sheldon&Amy-version with half the genius and twice the sex - we have 2 (two) kids after all! ;-) And yes, our darkest secret would probably be attending fantasy / medieval conventions with a 30 pounds chainmail shirt, larp weapons and a real fox pelt. That and anal. OK, done my part for happy-married-hetero-couple visibility (check). Huzzah!!! And I did write to Dan once, but not on my or my geek's behalf... And Mr Savage was kind enough to give a really good and useful answer.
35
LW sounds insufferable....
36
Admittedly I'm way behind on the podcast, but a couple of things strike me about the Letter of the Day. First, I do think the percent of unhappy marriage questions does seem higher recently (along with "Go ahead and do what you have to do advice), while the proportion of "how to" questions is down. Second, notwithstanding the name, Dan appears to have increasing difficult actually publishing a LOD on a consistent basis. Sometimes, I think that Dan might prefer to go the route of the Dread Pirate Roberts, and hand off the column to a new "Dan Savage." That made Dan's complaint about the recent survey all the funnier. A column fell into his lap, required no work, and then set the commentariat off and running.
37
OK seatackled @26, point taken. I think the letter sounds smug too and why would you write to an advice columnist, of whatever type, if you didn't have a problem that needs fixing? I guess they could write to a nutritionist....

I agree with SublimeAfterglow, there does seem to be a lack of those good old-fashioned "how-to" technical questions, some of which have been very instructive for me in the past. The letter from the other day about sounding actually intrigues me but I'm not sure I'll ever suggest it to my husband because I don't think I'd like it anything inserted in my urinary tract (not sure if that's the correct term). There sure are a lot of unhappy letters from people not getting any sex, or the kind of sex they want, in relationships.
38
I had sex once.
39
SA@36. No.. There is no new Dan Savage.What is this?
Let's get Dan week. The reason there are unhappy married stories is because.. yes.. There are lots of unhappily married people.
I suggest the whole institution gets an overhaul. Forget this forsake all others and death do us part bullshit, as not that many people stick to it. Let's stop
perpetuating, what is for so many people, a big lie.
But hey, that's for another time.
On this thread we are celebrating love, monogamy, dope and sugar.
40
@39/LavaGirl: Haven't you seen the Princess Bride? The Dread Pirate Roberts was captured our hero Wesley, and everyday theatened to kill him in the morning. Then one day, the Dread Pirate Roberts decided to retire, and confided to Wesley that in fact he was not the Dread Pirate Roberts. The Dread Pirate Roberts had retired 20 years ago, and turned the ship over to him. All that was necessary was to get people thinking he was the Dread Pirate Roberts. Likewise, as Dan seems to get tired of dispensing advice everyday, I think he might like to secretly retire, and turn the column over to the next Dan Savage.
41
SA, I didn't see that movie.
I've read or heard Dan say he wants to do this job until his dying day..
I get bored with the crap people get caught up in and by, I can only imagine his dispair after doing his job all these years. Yet, it's people's lives, their struggles and their loving.
He is a cultural warrior.. No one could replace him.
42
Donny; we don't have the whirling wind in Australia. I can't even recall its name. We have cyclones up in the tropics, way Nth of me. I live in the sub tropics.
Though a couple of times lately, those winds have just erupted, down in Sydney, I think. Coming off the ocean.
Crocodiles in the street.. Again, they up Nth. Nth Qld. Northern Territory. Nth Western Australia. Wild country up there.
Oh yes, the street. That must have been after a flood. Fires; as I write, they are raging somewhere. Luckily, my area hasn't seen any for a good few years, we still getting good rain. Lots of foliage and tall trees though. A dry season could be a problem.
The guy on the motorbike with the sheep, was a drover, on a muster. That sheep might have hurt herself, of got lost. All that wool on her, she was ready for shearing. Just wanted to sort that out, seeing the only Indigenous man, was in that picture.
Loved the guy holding his beer bottle above water. Spot on. Ah, the bogans.
It is strange, reading of US culture thru SL. We share a lot with you guys, much though, is different.
43
@42 vive la différence
44
@42 Though the list of animals/reptiles that will kill you here is blessedly short, I live in Minnesota where simply walking out your door (when it's -25°F) can be fatal. A lot of people wonder why anyone would want to endure that, but we think it keeps out the riff-raff. It also leaves more lutefisk for the rest of us. Lutefisk is Norweigan codfish, dried into planks and then reconstituted by soaking in lye. It's then boiled until it is about the consistency of thick snot and served with melted butter. Yum!
45
Sublime @40: Didn't Dear Abby do just that? And Dan is using her desk...
46
Lava @39: "On this thread we are celebrating love, monogamy, dope and sugar."
Hurrah! The last two of those rank among my favourite things. :)
47
@ 45 - Sacrilege! Dan writes on Ann Lander's desk, not Dear Abby's.
48
@17 we tend to keep cut up fruit around, watermelon, pineapple, strawberries, etc. We can satisfy our munchies and feel indulgent too. Also edibles are a big help.
49
Was anyone else shocked that the letter from SOS that Dan referred to in his response was written by a woman? Ok, not shocked, but surprised? SOS's letter never mentions gender and I immediately pictured Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka. Maybe I'm just too gay.
50
I think the LW knows that Dan gets letters from people with problems rather than those without, she mentions it as an option after all.

But what is more interesting to me is that Dans letters do really give the impression that non-monogamy of some shade or the other is the rule not the exception. He has gone out of his way to negate that idea but also his most generic and often repeated standard advice (straights should fuck more and more people, gays should fuck less and less people) reinforces it a bit. As someone who has never had a threesome and was super unsuccessful at polyamory and fuckbuddies back before those were words I get the impression from Dans show sometimes that I'm doing it wrong. That vastly more complicated sex lives are the norm. That everyone I know are secretly swingers and I just missed the memo. So I can see where she's coming from, occasionally it's nice to hear that having someone you love and giving each other orgasms now and then is enough.
51
Publishing this letter makes me ... concerned... or skeptical about Dan. (eyes narrowed).. is something wrong or is he getting lazy?
52
This letter is from a Special Snowflake Crybaby. These type think they are wild and crazy for being the only normal people around. Completely missing how bizarre the idea of normativity itself is. Completely missing that the world caters to their boring ilk. Completely missing that their kink is having the whole world bow down to them. Thinking their vanilla while being fucking FREAKS. Special Snowflake Crybaby Freaks.
53
DrJones @50: I think Dan has taken up the mantle of providing relationship and sex advice for the non-monogamous because there are so many other advice columnists catering to the monogamous. Would Ask Amy or Carolyn Hax be so knowledgeable about threesomes or meddling metamours? Those of us who don't want to be told "You can't have two boyfriends, pick the one who's a better fit and break up with the other one" write to Dan.
54
Happy homo couples as well I guess? I love my lady. We have the right amount and kind of sex for each of us (a convo we have frequently, to check in). We're monogam-ish but we'd both rather hire professionals than worry about the dating game. Supportive, best friends, etc, etc.
Honestly, contentment is so boring I'm always shocked when I'm reminded that the mere existence of our relationship infuriates and scandalizes some people. Lawlz.
55
Am I the only one who read #34, and thought of some rather hot play involving some of those secrets?
"You have been fairly beaten, sir. I will not take from you that armor, but you must yield me...that ass."
56
I'm happily married and Dan published my letter a few years ago... it happens. I didn't have a question. I was just thanking him for making non-monogamy cool, and therefore by extension ensuring the happiness of my marriage.
57
"Just wanted to ask why you never publish questions or comments from happily married hetero folks?"

[...]

"I'd love to see some diversity in the Q&A department!"

Happily married hetero folks = diversity. Okay.

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