I'm not sure what CW2D is asking. I'm not sure what help the old flame has. Dan makes some reasonable guesses... but can folks just be explicit?

@1 I think "helping the old flame out" is not, like, moving his sofa into the new apartment. Or maybe that's what the husband is thinking b/c I am sort of flabbergasted that not only was he cool with her telling him 'bout 3 years of sexting, but he was saying "Sure, help the fellow out."

Or maybe he was just pretending to listen? "Sure dear, that sounds good. Whatever you say."

Maybe the best problem ever.
jill
http://inbedwithmarriedwomen.blogspot.co…

I say leave the boyfriend behind. You can't reheat a souffle.

spoon for the win!

Another consideration for Cw2D-- Imagine that a short while after you help out Old Flame your husband says that he wants to have sex with other people too. Play that out in your head. Are you O.K. with that? Imagine that you're not. For whatever reason, it doesn't feel right to you. Are you O.K. with your husband quite reasonably telling you that you're being illogical and unfair and if a big argument with accusation ensues?

My bigger concern is for Old Flame. In my (admittedly limited) experience a little exposure to the One That Got Away doesn't bring answers, doesn't bring closure, doesn't heal the hole in the heart. He thought that contacting you would make him feel better about where he was in life. But that wasn't enough. He needed sexy texting. That wasn't enough. He wants to have sex with you. The direction this is going is that he won't be satisfied unless he opens up a whole relationship that might very well include jealousy of your husband. If not that, you may want to break up with for reasons unrelated to your relationship with your husband. If that case, he's going to be as unhappy as he was when his marriage broke up. I see a can of worms. Can't you just friend him on facebook?

A bit more for Cw2D-- Dan is right that marriages don't have to be killed by infidelity, but this isn't something you'd be doing for YOUR marriage. It's not something you'd be doing for you at all. This is something you'd be doing for some guy who contacted you after 23 years. Unless I'm missing something, but you say that you're happily married and that your husband has been terrific. I'm not suggesting that you'd be doing something horrible to your husband. He's made it clear that you wouldn't be. I'm wondering about your motives in general. If a complete stranger said he needed 10 grand, do you give it to him? What's in it for you? Here's a guy who needs you to have sex with him. What's in it for you?

Sadly, just LW2's statement "I'm standing in a bookstore on Castro Street" makes it clear it was at least a few years ago.

Here's a question about HARD's issue. Does anyone else worry that being extremely open-minded means that the perv inside us has to work that much harder to find dirty, shameful stuff to work with? As a parent, I'm hoping to keep my teens on a pretty strict leash, so when they rebel, they do so by smoking pot and making out in the car; not by smoking crack or fucking the football team.

Similarly, if I felt dirty about masturbating and oral sex, then I might never have "graduated" to threesomes, BDSM, and anal. (And indeed, I worry that what I do now will start to feel tame to me, and I'll be looking for more intense thrills in the future...)

Or do I just worry too much?

Yes, yes: Every couple you know who's ever had a three-way or okayed a fling wound up divorced. And that may be true—of the couples whose three-ways and flings you know about. You know lots of couples who've had three-ways and flings who aren't divorced, but you don't know you know them. Most married couples want to be perceived as monogamous even—especially!—when they're not. So your friends who aren't divorcing as the result of a disastrous fling, affair, swinging experience, three-way, etc., aren't going to tell you about all the successful flings, affairs, etc., they've enjoyed.)

This last bit confused me. If swinging and three-ways were so wonderful, why WOULDN'T the couples/threesomes who have had good experiences with them want to broadcast them, to show the skeptics that they can work?

@Erica

I had very strict and overprotective parents. I did not stop at smoking pot at making out in cars.

Try dressing up in a schoolgirl uniform and spending the night in a hotel with a stranger. Try stuffing my boyfriend's ecstasy in my underwear in case we encountered authorities. Try soliciting free rides off strangers just to see if it would work. Try a threesome under the influence of at least four different drugs at once. Try hanging out with gang members. Try doing lines in my underwear in the middle of the afternoon, off the top of my head.

All of those were before my 17th birthday.
No... parents don't get to set the bar for what their children consider "rebellious" unfortunately. If you'd like a book about the influence of parents and what DOES work, I can happily make a reccomendation for you.

On the flipside, I never felt dirty about masturbation (I started too young to know it was supposed to be dirty) or oral (I grew up in the 90's when Clinton was telling everyone it wasn't even sex) but I never felt a need to "gradutate" to anything extreme.

Ms Erica, you may have answered your own question. I'd rather not predict your future, but it would not surprise me if your current activities start to feel tame to you.

You sometimes give an impression of being so open-minded that you have half an eye on the door waiting to see what possibility walks in next. It seems to work for you, and if so, great.

Your parenting theory is interesting, but I'm not quite sure how you're going to pull it off. I suppose it could be the case that the dangers out there are sufficiently great to call for what looks like as a dishonest bargaining strategy. But part of the problem to bear in mind is that, in your attempt to insure your children's safe teen lives, you could be mortgaging their adult lives to some extent. Although it seems highly implausible to imagine you even trying to make a teen feel dirty or ashamed about masturbating, what if you do that and get a non-rebelling teen with whom it sticks well into adulthood?

Then again, I'm tempted to take the other side and say, why not do it thoroughly? Get them going to the most restrictive church you can find two or three times on Sundays and half the weekdays besides, and send them to a school of a similar philosophy. Then their rebellions would still make them look more tame than the vast majority of the population.

I don't know if this will make you feel any better, but I suspect that, if your offspring are in possession of a reasonable quantity of intelligence, they will realize that their most effective form of rebellion would be to become hard-right Republicans and attempt to badger you into taking them to anti-choice events.

At any event, I wish you luck. The only serious piece of advice I have to offer is not to take either of my parents as a role model, as I assume you'd like your children to contact you voluntarily and enjoy your company in the long years ahead.

@11/12 - thanks for reminding me that I'm not likely to be able to manipulate my teens into just the right kind of rebellion (anti-choice Republicans! Yikes!) You guys are right.

And, no, don't worry, I certainly wouldn't shame them for masturbating (though I do insist that it be done in private :-)

As for me, well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see where my open-mindedness takes me...

Erica, I haven't kept my girls on any sort of a leash. I'm an extraordinarily permissive parent, and haven't had any rebellion from my children. In fact, I find myself concerned that they haven't acted out in any way that I can discern- these girls are downright prudish, I have a difficult time believing that they are mine. I have done my level best to raise them with an open minded attitude regarding their bodies and their sexuality. I can only hope that serves them in the long run.

Am I the only straight girl who finds HARD's story about the bookstore hot? Seriously. Other than the shame aspect, that I find distressing. We like what we like; what turns us on isn't right or wrong, it just is.

My 17 year old says she just hasn't found the right guy. I made it very clear to her that we were not going to quarrel about hair (whatever she wants is fine with me), or clothing (within reason -- no junior hooker look), or musical choices (whatever she likes is fine with me). I did tell her that she needed to keep her grades up, that smoking cigarettes or pot would destroy her singing voice, and that I had too many students get derailed for serious drug use. I told her that I'd prefer to be in on her plans to have sex so that we can talk through being careful and choosing well. By taking a no-parental-interference stance on things that many teens regard as VERY important (hair/clothes/music), it has freed us up to keep in close communication about the rest of it. Whew.

CW2D: At this point I'd quote the late great actor / NASCAR driver, Paul Newman, when once asked by a journalist if he was ever tempted to stray from his 50 year marriage to Joanne Woodward:
"Why would I go out for hamburger? I've got steak at home!"

Sarah, you're the kind of mom I hope to be when my daughter reaches 17. Why don't more parents realize that things like crazy hair just don't matter? In the end I think the specific "rules" are less important than just always maintaining open lines of communication with your kid. My mom wasn't the greatest, but she DID take me Planned Parenthood BEFORE it was urgent to do so.

@16 Sarah: I'm with danfan @19: You do sound like a cool Mom! Kudos!

@19 how did she (or you) know it was time to go?

HARD - do you think this self-analysis is a way to rationalise away the guilt your upbringing has left you with? I know that when I was younger I tried to come up with feminist analyses of my own subby fantasies.

Didn't work. In the end, I just had to say, 'Screw it; I like what I like,' and put my feminism into saying that I had the right to enjoy my own sexuality no matter what it was.

Maybe you need to do the same and put your 'reaction' into saying, 'Screw it; I like what I like no matter what influence my upbringing had on it.' You're probably never going to work it out because people are much too complicated, even if they've had a totally sex-positive upbringing.

Your hard-on might annoy the people who taught you kinks were bad, but that doesn't mean it exists to be a fuck-you to them. I think you might be confusing cause and effect here. A hard-on mostly exists to say 'Fuck me!', not 'Fuck you.' The fact that you're still linking it to your upbringing says to me that you're still feeling the guilt, but looking at it upside down - 'You feel this because you're sinful' has turned into 'You feel this because you heard too much about sin', but they're sung to the same tune.

If I were you, I'd stop fighting the shame and eroticise it instead. ;-)

Catballou, but it seems that your "downright prudish" girls have rebelled against you, at least in the sense of them going against what you apparently represent to them, an "extremely permissive" and open person. Rebellion can take many forms. But hey, don't worry, once they're a little older and grow out of their rebellious stage they'll probably realize ole' mom made pretty good sense, most of the time and will likely turn it up a notch or two....

EricaP, who wrote: As for me, well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see where my open-mindedness takes me...

Indeed. Because, at least as far as my experience goes, there are no guarantees in life, ever.

Asking whether or not the stuff you're doing now will seem tame and unerotic a few years later on is a 'kinkier' version of a very old question that everybody asks themselves about the things they like in life. The vanilla version is something like, 'will I really be always in love with the person I'm in love with now? Especially when I hear so many depressing stories of divorces, people growing indifferent to each other, etc. etc. etc.?'

Well, you never know. People give recipes: try variation, evolve and change together with your partner, be open, try and explore new things (and not only sexual ones), etc. But of course there are no guarantees. God knows what will happen in 10, 20 or 30 years.

But one thing I've noticed in life is that, unless you're clinically depressed, there always are interesting things popping up. Relationships are also like that: you think they're boring because you keep looking at the same issues, but if you watch other sides of it you (I) always find new things to do and think about.

And so, ultimately, is sex. Sex is not so limited that you're really "always" doing the same thing. It's always different, if you want to look at the details that are different rather than at the ones that are the same. And usually, if you take a break from it for some time, the desire builds up, and you start missing the things you thought you were almost bored about. Suddenly they become interesting again.

This is life in general, not just sex, I think, Erica. Will life ever seem boring to me? Will someday the next language I try to learn seem boringly 'just the same' as the previous one? Will I someday lose any interest in getting up in the morning and just want to wait for death in my cozy warm bed? I surely don't think so. I can't of course predict the future; but I get the strong feeling that life is always so full of different details that, if I ever do feel that 'bored' by it, it will be because I decided to selectively look at those parts of life that are repetitive rather than looking at those parts that are not. 'Two prisoners looked out from the prison's bars; one saw mud, the other saw stars...'

(On a more specific tone: @19, you asked: "how did se (or you) know it was time to go? The Dutch tend to have a standard answer to this (at least the liberal Dutch): by the time she has her first menstruation, the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy raises its ugly head. Assuming you've kept your communication channels open, you talk to her about her having sex, and when that will happen, etc. No details of who she is or isn't dating are necessary. The ongoing communication via this channel will make it clear whether or not it's the right time. Usually by 14-15 most daughters (of liberals) have already gone with their mothers to the gynecologist and got anticonceptional prescriptions (fully paid by mom's health insurance); the age may vary a little for specific cases.)

Personally - I find being called a queer straight girl an honor!

Teal, who wrote: If I were you, I'd stop fighting the shame and eroticise it instead. ;-)

Indeed, HARD, I agree with Teal here. Maybe you could even include the prudish people in your upbringing in your fantasies? 'Now, Mr Preacher, look at what I'm going to do to you with this ball gag...' :-)

HARD, speaking for myself, I also had a very difficult time trying to accept my own kinks and not wonder what bad things they meant about myself. (To this very day, I wonder if there doesn't lurk something self-destroying, something dark and evil, in the very heart of hearts of submissiveness... There does seem to be a danger of exaggerating and becoming addicted to one's degradation in an unhealthy way that leads to self-denial rather than to growth and pleasure. But then again, isn't everything harmful when you exaggerate?).

One is always looking for explanations, right? How come I have this little kink rather than that, or even rather than no kink at all, "like everybody else"? There has to be an explanation! I'll know more about myself, I'll understand what (destructive?) motivations lead me to be so interested in this kink rather than in "normal" sex if I find out where it comes from...

Well, I've come to realize you could similarly wonder about anything else in your life. How come you like sports? Or cars? Or playing poker with your friends? Or solving crossword puzzles? Or playing the guitar? Or... or... But if I spend too much time thinking about the causes of my pleasures, I end up not enjoying them. It's better, I think, to worry about how to enjoy them in a sane, non-destructive way than wondering about their deep causes.

Goethe, the great German poet, wrote a poem I like very much about this very topic. In case you don't know it, here it is, in the original German (yes, I can't resist it, sue me) followed by an English translation by yours truly.

---

Die Freuden

Es flattert um die Quelle
Die wechselnde Libelle,
Mich freut sie lange schon;
Bald dunkel und bald helle,
Wie der Chamäleon,
Bald rot, bald blau,
Bald blau, bald grün;
O dass ich in der Nähe
Doch ihre Farben sähe!

Sie schwirrt und schwebet, rastet nie!
Doch still, sie setzt sich an die Weiden.

Da hab ich sie! Da hab ich sie!
Und nun betracht ich sie genau,
Und seh ein traurig dunkles Blau -
So geht es dir, Zergliedrer deiner Freuden!

-----

Joys

Around a strem nearby
flutters a dragonfly
that pleases me to no end.
Now dark, now light,
a chameleon's flight,
now red, then blue,
or blue, then green;
oh! if only I were nearer
so that its hue
could now be seen!

It hovers and whirrs, never rests
But wait -- it now sits on a willow

I've got it! I've got it now,
I can now see the real hue --
a dark, depressing blue.
So will it happen to you, analyzer of your own joys!

EricaP-- It might help if you stopped thinking about your children's growing up as rebellion. Kids differentiate from their parents. From the time they're infants, they look around a world that's different from their parents', have experiences different from their parents', interpret those experiences differently and form their own opinions. It's rebellion if the parent thinks the child should grow up to have exactly the same thoughts, emotions, likes, dislikes and opinions. It's just growing up if the parents don't think they own the children or should control them to that degree.

Imagine you were talking about volleyball where your daughter loves the game and you've never taken to it. Is it rebellion if she comes home pleased to be on the team? No different if we're talking about sex and politics and no different if we're talking about differentiating to the left or the right.

In fact, every time I hear parents talking about rebellious teenagers I privately wonder about how much they're controlling, how much they're able to let go, and whether they're able to appreciate their children for who they are as individuals in the first place.

@cyranothe2nd, that sounds like a journey worthy of a book. I hope you'll write it; I'd love to read it. :-)

@31, very well said. I agree entirely, and I couldn't have put it as elegantly and succinctly as you did.

mydriasis @11: I'd like that book recommendation, even if EricaP doesn't. :)

EricaP-9- Keep going with the drugs analogy. I came of age in the late 70s when we were already starting to make fun of the anti-drugs propaganda/education that promised us that if we tried marijuana the thrill wouldn't be great enough and we'd start shooting up heroin. It didn't take a lot of looking around to realize that plenty of us tried dope and stopped there. The ones who became addicted to opiates were likely troubled in the first place. Marijuana was not a gateway drug.

Thus sex. I don't understand everything about how addiction and risky behavior work, but I can look around and see that masturbation and sexual exploration don't lead to soul-crushing promiscuity for the vast number of us. It might feel that way to the few for whom sex is not a wonderful experience, but I suspect that the thrill seekers who keep hoping but never finding satisfaction in dirtier and pervier sex were never the sort to find satisfaction to begin with.

(Ankylosaur-31 is an infinite loop.)

Indeed, Crinoline -- I had meant you@29, not myself@31. Oopsie! :=| ...

@ 10 (Snarky)--

If swinging and three-ways were so wonderful, why WOULDN'T the couples/threesomes who have had good experiences with them want to broadcast them, to show the skeptics that they can work?

Well, I'm a happily married person in two long-term poly relationships-- much more invested in the identity than the couples you're talking about-- and I still am reluctant to present as anything other than monogamous in a lot of contexts. This is for two reasons:

1) I don't want people to assume my marriage is in trouble, that I'm unfaithful, that I'm promiscuous, etc-- and I'm pretty sure that, for a lot of people, even if I tell them we're happy and faithful and secure and it's great, they won't believe me. They'll think I'm lying, to them or to myself. People have a very clear idea of what sex-outside-of-marriage means, and I don't know that I'll be able to change their minds. If I've got anything invested in the relationship with them, I'm not always willing to risk it just to correct their misperceptions. I know that nothing's going to change if I don't come out about this, but at the same time... on a personal level, it feels like a bigger risk than it's worth.

2) As a happily-married person, I don't particularly need to be out to everyone about being nonmonogamous in order to be sexually satisfied. If there's someone I'm particularly interested in, I'll let that person know... but it's not like being queer, there's not a whole host of legal and political reasons why being out is important. It's just about getting laid, and for that, people I'm not interested in don't have to know.

TL;DR version: Telling people you're an ethical slut is scary, because they often don't take it well.

34-- In that case, thanks. Some of the rebellious things I've done that have caused my mother no end of grief: being good at math, dating a nice guy, liking to cook and bake, making friends with someone who was good at languages, moving out of town at age 25, not liking to perform in front of large groups, preferring neutral colored clothes to bright ones, and wondering if civil disobedience could be a good idea.

Once again, three spectacularly boring letters. But I'm glad he posted one about that misguided idiot Kate Bornstein.

Mr Ank @28 - I don't think there's a universal or even a general answer to your wonder. Perhaps it might work to say, Open too many doors and you'll probably get Zonked, but that does not apply to every deal.

HARD seems to be emitting a rather Wildean aura. There's the temptation epigram, and probably a reasonable similarity in tastes. I'm not sure if there are traces of Lord Arthur Savile in his burden carrying.

It might be a bit different if this were just one of a number of options, but HARD seems pretty rigidly pointed in one direction. One need not embrace EVERYthing, but definitely wants SOMEthing. I almost wish that HARD were a personal acquaintance of Mr Savage, who would like excel at keeping him sane and safe. Is a Fairy Godfather necessary? Not for some or perhaps most, but it wouldn't be a bad thing to have.

What interests me most about the letter is HARD's asking whether these are questions he SHOULDN'T be asking. Certainly they don't HAVE to be asked. But I'm not sure what downside he sees as possible. It reminds me of a recent discussion of attraction from the other side and whether it's sufficient just to accept somebody being unattracted by one group or another or whether it's important to deconstruct for prejudice. The theory was advanced that, if one worked on the prejudice, one would magically start being attracted by members of the group in question.

@29 I like your take on "rebellion" often just meaning "doing their own thing", but I've also seen people get bad grades on purpose, to spite their parents... Surely that's "rebellion."

@11/32 - yes, I'd like the book reference too.

@33 - I tried harder drugs than pot. But I saw my friends acting like idiots, making stupid choices on drugs. Those real life consequences made drug use less appealing. My line with my kids is that it's great to experiment, but you should consider how likely this particular experiment is to interfere with further life experiences (Russian roulette, drunk driving, selling your body on the street, goofing around on cliffs... I went back to mydriasis' post @11 to see if she had done anything I would put in that category, but no, not really, unless you count "doing lines ...off the top of my head" -- which sounds like quite the contortionist's trick :-)

I'm aiming for some zone of adequate parenting between super-controlling and oblivious. Like everyone else, I think Sarah (@16) looks like a great model. But wherever you draw your lines (at "keep [your] grades up," for instance), you face being the person who doles out consequences or expresses disapproval. At that point, I think a lot comes down to tone. Just as one can express dissatisfaction to one's spouse in a loving tone or a dismissive, disparaging tone, so too with parenting, the goal is to find the tone that says "I care about you and wish you would rethink your choices," rather than "I knew you would screw up again like you always do." Sarah's method of pointing out the natural consequences is very helpful along those lines.

I've always had an interest in the kinky, deviant and subversive, which is why I started reading Dan's column so many years ago. I've learned so much about how to be a better lover and a better person. Now, thanks to comments, I get to benefit from the wisdom and experience of you guys too, on of all things a topic as unkinky as parenting. Thanks for sharing your experiences guys! And thanks for the Goethe ankylosaur!

P.S. I think I found a new kink: Reading mundane comments posted by people who I know to be into kinky sex. Is that pervy?

@39 "The theory was advanced that, if one worked on the prejudice, one would magically start being attracted by members of the group in question."

I think the hypothetical was: imagine a transwoman Gloria who is indistinguishable from ciswomen. She was born with male genitalia, but from the age of three, she told her parents she was a girl; she went to school as a girl; she took hormones at puberty to approximate a woman's puberty experience; she had surgery at 16 to construct female genitalia. Now imagine a straight guy, Joe, who thinks he could never be attracted to a transwoman. He meets Gloria and is extremely attracted to her. After dating for a few months, and having enjoyable sex together, he asks her to go on birth control so they can stop using condoms. She explains that she was born with male genitalia, and thus can't get pregnant. He freaks out, and dumps her that night, because he feels he has been having sex with "someone who used to be a man." That's just prejudice. Maybe they have to break up because he wants to have children the usual way, but for him to say "she used to be a man" is just silly.

No one ever claimed that an unprejudiced straight man would be attracted to all transwomen -- that's equally silly, since straight men aren't attracted to all ciswomen.

@28 I love that Goethe poem, ankylosaur. But is he really saying that the "sad, dark blue" is the real color? Isn't the neat thing about color that it really is whatever it looks like to us? Things change color in different light; to me it makes no sense to say that in dim lighting one just isn't seeing a thing's color accurately. It's like Schrödinger's cat: if you pin the dragonfly down, you thereby assign it an unchanging color, but the colors it had in motion were just as real. I see Goethe as saying one should allow one's pleasures the freedom to shift in meaning & interpretation; not as saying that one should never examine one's pleasures at all.

HARD, there is no 'should' or 'shouldn't' when wondering about kinks. They just are. I was raised pretty permissively but I am very kinky. Don't feel shame about your sexual desires - that's what your old pastors, congreation, etc. want you to feel. Just because you like to read about/ engage in BDSM doesn't make you any different from anyone else. You can still be your own person when you aren't having sex (assuming you are a sub).

EricaP - actually having a tight rein on your kids might drive them to rebell even more. Anyway 'rebellion' is just a way for a kid to find themselves as separate beings from their parents. The most important thing you can do for your kids is love them with all your heart and make sure they know it. Let them know you accept and respect the people that they are/are becoming and there will be nothing to 'rebel' against. I speak from my own experience.

Great advice to CW2D.

As for the guy who objected to the label of "Queer Heterosexual," I believe Kate's label were referring to the man's POLITICS and not his sexuality. I.E. -- A Queer Heterosexual is s straight man who supports queer people. I think it's a great label and I will suggest it to some of my straight friends who support queers.

I had friends back when who were hard-core hippies. Their kids didn't become super-hippies to rebel--they signed up for ROTC.

Kids don't *need* to rebel, they need to define themselves for themselves.

@16 Sarah - I just printed your post and taped it above my desk. I hope to be your kind of parent when my kids reach their teens. Way to go!

"Queer Heterosexual" -- been there, done that, found out quickly that, to the people who object to homosexuality, that sounds exactly like "fag." So now I just let them think that (unless they're conservatives, and in a men's room).

@14

I don't know you or your children but - for the record - just because you think they're prudish doesn't mean they are. My dad actually thought I was a lesbian because I never he never heard me mention a boy, I never brought a boy over, etc etc etc. Some kids are just good at keeping their secrets on lock. Good news, right? :P

@32/40

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/displa…

I haven't read it myself but I've read several by Gabor Mate and a lot of his books talk about development and parenting. He is bang on. His books are written with a solid hard science (neurobiology, endocrine, etc) basis along with a deeply compassionate and intuitive outlook. I avidly read parenting books, magazines and articles when I was a kid (I was into psychology, what can I say) and he approaches things differently in a somewhat subtle but really important way. I would totally reccomend anything written by him to any parent and I plan to read it before I ever have kids.

But since this is the interwebs you don't need to go in blind and take my word for it. (Or the many glowing review quotes) Here's a clip where he talks a bit about things including bullying, ADHD, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tdljIW86…

Speaking hypothetically here, as I'm not non-monogamous, but I see no reason why I would want to broadcast to the world that I'm sleeping with multiple people any more than I would want to broadcast to the world which particular positions my wife and I enjoy. Even if the message was "Both of us think vanilla straight missionary is absolutely fantastic and we both get off every time from it," unless you are a participant, it isn't any of your business what goes on in my bedroom.

Regarding "Queer Heterosexual," who you support is not necessarily synonymous with who you identify as, and conflating the two can lead to nonsensical constructions. Calling a heterosexual who supports LGBT community as "queer heterosexual" is syntactically the same as calling a man who supports women's issues a "female man."

@ EricaP: Trying to control your kids' behavior, or the consequences of their decisions, is just going to frustrate you and irritate (or infuriate) them. The best thing you can do as a parent is to give them the best tools you can for making responsible, informed decisions (and questioning convention and authority is one of those tools), and keep the lines of communication open (which means listening without judgment and paying attention to what they do and say, not insisting that your kids tell you what's going on). All things I'm sure you already know on some level.

The best sign that you've been a good parent is a happy, responsible, self-confident adult. You can't get that result through force.

@22: Teal nailed it.

@29: Same goes for Crinoline.

@52 "Trying to control your kids' behavior ...is just going to frustrate you."

Nice in theory. In practice, it's the parents' job to have some rules in the house and there is no way to parent without trying to influence your kids' behavior & choices. Even if it's just my decisions about what foods I keep in the house; what media I'll pay for; or what activities I'm willing to drive them to. At 9 and 12, they are very dependent on me. That means that my choices affect their options. I go even further than I have to. In my house, they know that they only get dessert if they have completed their household obligations. And they have to be in their rooms and quiet by 9:30 pm. If you think that's overly controlling, I can live with that.

Also: @33

If you're interested in addiction, the author I mentioned above also wrote an amazing book on addiction called "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". There's an incredibly strong case to be made that early life (and even prenatal) influences do much to decide whether someone will dabble in pot or move on to become a crackhead.

A very interesting (although not perfect) experiment was done quite some time ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Though there are genetic influences (polymorphisms in genes that code things like receptors and enzymes for neurotransmitters) they are less predictive than you might imagine

@ 49, Howlin' Jed--

Yeah, the whole working-out-the-rules-as-you-go-along thing is really tricky! Because you know that some of the mainstream rules/tropes/patterns don't work for you-- but then you have to come up with a way to figure out which ones do. What do you keep, what still has meaning, what doesn't/shouldn't apply. What feels emotionally like you should just ditch it, but turns out later to have been a really good idea...

I'm glad that Dan is trying to get people to have this conversation, actually-- I think it'll be really helpful for us to figure some of this stuff out.

40EricaP-- I hope it didn't sound like I was suggesting that true rebellion doesn't exist. It probably does. I was merely suggesting that it's a lot less prevalent than (most) parents tend to believe. Even your example of the kids getting bad grades to spite their parents--

Are we sure? The parents might be figuring "I know little Johnny is bright. He was always so good in elementary school, polite and glad to do his homework, but now in addition to snarking at me every time I tell him what I expect of him, he's letting his grades drop. He failed a test because he was up talking to his friends all night. I'm sure he's doing it to spite me."

Meanwhile, John isn't thinking in these particular terms, but highschool is much harder, and he's having trouble knowing why he can't keep up. He doesn't have great study skills because all he ever used to have to do to do well is go to class. He can't explain that he might as well not try to do the reading when none of it makes sense because if he does that, he'll look stupid, and his parents have a vested interest in believing he's smart. Besides, he gets negative attention which right now feels better than the babying, cloying positive attention he used to get.

That's not rebellion. That's learning disabilities, different priorities and disfunction. But more to the point, I can't see that children rebel more against strict parents. Strict might just mean clear about consequences in this context.

@56 - My friend couldn't bring herself to finish assignments because she would always do well on them, and then her parents would be happy. I kid you not. She almost flunked senior year (well, she also stopped going to class much). But in college, once she didn't have to see their faces every day, she did fine.

CW2D: No one else suggested this but I think your husband has a secret cuckold fantasy. It's a very common one - open up any edition of Penthouse Letters and you'll see that at least half the stories have that theme.

What a great thread!

Mydriasis - My wife and I went to a talk by Gabor Mate and he made quite an impression on us. He's very approachable, and he displays a profound common sense built on serious book-learnin and hands-on experience caring for folks on the downtown east side in Vancouver. At the time he was addressing the roots of addiction, which I believe turned his interest toward how children are raised and what makes some more resilient than others. Fascinating stuff, and highly relevant. Take-away point: abandonment and disinterest seem to be the unforgiveable parenting sins.

Ankylosaur - nice translation.

Snarky @ 10 - No way I'm sharing details of my monogamish marriage with friends and family. Occasional non-monogamy works well for my wife and me, but some people get seriously freaked by the idea and you never know how someone you care about is going to react. One fairly liberal friend of mine, not knowing about my open marriage, got on a rant one night on the way to hockey about cheating and fidelity and described people who sleep with someone other than their chosen partner as "sick". That's just not a discussion I can be bothered to have, especially if it's going to lose me a ride to hockey. And I can't imagine how my fairly traditional folks would change their views on the daughter-in-law they've adored for so long if they knew about her extra-curricular activities, so to speak.

Plus I kind of like the monogamish closet. It's hot having a double life. :)

@10: Successful kinksters don't speak out about their success because there's still a lot of sex-negative judgment in society, some of which could really fuck up a successful, happy, unorthodox sex life. If you're having fun, friendly, drama-free orgies at your house every weekend, do you really want some asshole calling Child Protective Services on you?

@43(EricaP), when I read that poem I remind myself that Goethe had worked on light and color (he was also interested in science, particularly optics, and published a monograph called Zur Farbenlehre 'On the Theory of Colors'); he certainly knew Newton's work with prisms, for instance. I suspect he was well aware that colors don't "exist" outside of our perception. Taking that into account, I see a 'deeper' meaning in the poem, very close to what you say: namely, it's the experience of experiencing (!) the color that creates the color. So the "sad depressing blue" he sees at the end is in a sense just as incomplete as all the other colors he had seen while the dragonfly was fluttering around.

In other words: since the sensation of color exists only in its experience, any attempts to describe colors outside of the realm of color perseption are always unsatisfactory. How is 'blue' different from my experience of blue? How could I explain what 'blue' is to someone who was born blind and never saw blue -- since to me blue is my experience of blue and there are no other words/experiences that I could use to approximate it? How could someone ever describe to us what seeing infrared or ultraviolet would feel like? How could I use even a complete optical theory of light and color, with all the wavelengths and chromatic aberrations and refractions and wave-particle dualities etc., to explain what blue feels like to me when I perceive it?

Likewise with our pleasures: they exist only in our feeling/experiencing them, and there is little that theories of psychology and biology can do to help us explain that experience to someone who just doesn't perceive it. For instance, we, as submissives, perceive/feel pleasure and joy in certain situations -- situations in which a non-submissive person would perceive no pleasure (but probably rather the opposite). Now, we could talk to this person about psychological hypotheses with this person ('maybe I like being tied up because my nanny used to tie me up playfully when I was a little boy'), or about biological hypotheses ('whipping can cause certain endorphines to be released into the bloodstream that can lead to pleasurable sensations'); but just as I can't explain 'blue' except by presenting my experience of seeing blue, I also can't tell him what the pleasure is in the submissive scenes I enjoy, unless I could somehow make him also experience this pleasure; but if he's not a submissive and my kinks are not his kinks, then I can't do that. Any biological/psychological explanation, interpretation, theory etc. that I could offer him would miss this crucial part -- my experience of the pleasure I feel -- and since this experience is the crucial point, it is what makes the whole thing meaningful and worthwhile (without it, submissiveness would seem quite stupid and pointless) -- the theory I'd present would therefore end up looking to me, even as I offered it, like a 'dark, depressing blue.'

Or at least that's my interpretation :-). Does that make sense to you?

EricaP, when I came home talking about sex ed for the first time, my mom said, "Let me know if you need anything, and I'll help you get it." She also answered my questions without getting defensive.

My mom fucked up in a lot of ways, but she handled this aspect of parenting splendidly. When I went on birth control a few years later (I was a late bloomer), I called to tell her.

@59, who wrote:

Plus I kind of like the monogamish closet. It's hot having a double life. :)

How deliciously true! :-)

Maybe you could write a fictionalized version of your lifestyle and publish it as a book? 'A True Story. Names have been altered to protect all characters.' :-)

"ARE YOU MARRIED? Have you had successful flings, affairs, swinging experiences, and three-ways that your friends and family members will never know about? Send me an e-mail, share your story, and I'll publish it."

And I'll read it.

CW2D:

May I recommend Tristan Taormino's _Opening_Up_? Great overview of what's possible and what has worked for a huge variety of people encountering vaguely analogous situations.

And since there's love there--his for you, yours for your husband, your husband's for you, and maybe yours for him--you're dabbling not just in generic open relationships, but specifically in polyamory. You might want to pick up _The_Ethical_Slut_, the classic "how-to" guide (second edition is far better than the first).

If it were my mariage, I'd make no moves until all three of you had browsed at least those two books and talked about them together. But that's me.

Good luck!

@10/60 there's also the issue of not wanting one's children to find out.. One brave couple told us about their activities, and in turn we admitted ours to them -- but now when we all get together for family dinners, it's really hard to avoid "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" conversations, and our preteens are old enough to pick up on that.

@62, yes, very much so.
@63, that's inspiring, and good advice.

Ms Erica - I remember that discussion here, which reminded me of the one I'm recalling from elsewhere. It was definitely a question of dating rather than sex, though I forget whether the starting point was Not Dating a Race or Not Dating the Overweight. The main post I recall was fairly strict about anyone who didn't date a particular group being required to scour his psyche to look for -ism-related reasons for that, with the idea advanced that doing the necessary work on his -ism would as a matter of course be followed by attraction to at least some members of the previously non-attracting group. I was tempted to post a question about whether the converse would hold - if someone were attracted to other group X for -ist reasons, would curing the -ism remove the attraction?

#3: When you write a comment every week and list a link to your blog, when you make sure you are one of the first people to write a comment every week so you can list a link to your blog; that is SPAM.

I have a very dear friend who has made a choice to live in a four person three couple relationship. It was and continues to be thought out, loving, caring and beautiful family, Kids an all. Since humans are designed to love each other without titles, gender restrictions on their sexuality are counter-intuitive to who we are as a species. When societal restrictions are removed from the equation, it makes sense that more and more people are choosing to let their spouses explore life giving relationships outside of the marriage.

"Help my old flame out" is the one thing in CW2D's that pops up a red flag. What does "help" mean? Has he never gone on to have a good relationship with any other woman? Is he pining away for something that is really a 23 year-old memory? Is he looking for something more than hot sex? Could he be honest about it, with sex on the table, if he were?

If he's carrying a torch--tread carefully, they can burn your whole house down.

@26, 51, and LAS, I'm pretty sure that when somebody celebrates queer straightness, they're using the meaning of "queer" that basically means "celebrating anti-oppressive identity." Short pedantic philological moment: This is an old word (16th century!) (my grandmother called things she thought were weird as "queer as Dick's hatband") -- that ended up being *reappropriated* as celebratory after becoming an anti-gay term. When people extend the label "queer" beyond gay identity itself, they are *further* reappropriating it to mean that people are deconstructing and thoughtfully defining their *own* identities (hence, "queering").

This just seemed useful to lay out, since it's not quite the oxymoron it appears to be.

& re the CW2D thread: I so agree about the hotness of the monogamish closet, and the tension between the desirability of deconstructing annoying monogamy strictures and the daunting impossibility of taking on deep-seated fears and biases. VERY happy in my marriage; also very happy with lover of many years (and very fond of husband's lover). (And remain engaged in this tension above because the main thing that would make this all better would be if it COULD be more open; i.e. if we could all raise kids together, etc.)

@26, 51, and LAS, I'm pretty sure that when somebody celebrates queer straightness, they're using the meaning of "queer" that basically means "celebrating anti-oppressive identity." Short pedantic philological moment: This is an old word (16th century!) (my grandmother called things she thought were weird as "queer as Dick's hatband") -- that ended up being *reappropriated* as celebratory after becoming an anti-gay term. When people extend the label "queer" beyond gay identity itself, they are *further* reappropriating it to mean that people are deconstructing and thoughtfully defining their *own* identities (hence, "queering").

This just seemed useful to lay out, since it's not quite the oxymoron it appears to be.

& re the CW2D thread: I so agree about the hotness of the monogamish closet, and the tension between the desirability of deconstructing annoying monogamy strictures and the daunting impossibility of taking on deep-seated fears and biases. VERY happy in my marriage; also very happy with lover of many years (and very fond of husband's lover). (And remain engaged in this tension above because the main thing that would make this all better would be if it COULD be more open; i.e. if we could all raise kids together, etc.)

(sorry for the double posting there)

Hey, thanks for the props, guys! I'll get back to you in ten years on how it worked out! :) Okay, I'm kidding. Let's just say that my daughter knows that I have solid intentions, that I think perfection is way overrated, and that as humans, it's the law that we're all gonna screw up. I also know the names of most of her friends and who's "in" with whom. Just remember that 90% of love is paying attention.

LAS: I agree with you, but wanted to add my two cents here: I used to be a fundie Christian. Not for very long, thank whatever deity you like, but I was. Today? I support LGBT causes and don't give a fuck what others think. My own fundie wife thinks I'm a closeted bisexual pervert who wants a three way with her and another guy because I listen to Dan. She told me so over Thanksgiving. She can't understand why I would listen to what gay people have to say if I wasn't secretly one of them, and you know what? It doesn't bother me in the least. I'm perfectly content to let her think whatever she wants about me. I have zero interest in trying to convince anyone otherwise because it just doesn't matter to me. If closed minded people want to think I'm gay, great! They won't mind me spending time with their sexually frustrated wives and girlfriends.

We've had three ways, flings, and outright old fashioned cheating affairs... and aren't divorced. In fact after a decade we seem to have calmed down and chilled out. And it's not that I want to be perceived as monogamous necessarily, I truly don't give a shit, but we just *are* perceived that way. We look blazingly hetero... and it seems awkward to say "oh by the way we had a three way relationship for a couple years and I'm bi but not interested in the drama of a poly relationship right now and he had a bad habit of whipping out his dick for anything in a skirt for a long time and I was in love with his best friend and business partner but never quite fucked him but the husband knew all about it..." I mean how does one praytell weave that into conversation?

Oh and for the record I disagree with Dan's reply to HARD. If what turns you on really truly bothers you, you CAN change your proclivity to such things. I used to be super into BDSM and now I find it silly. Before someone tells me you can't change what you like, I am pretty sure everyone can thing of a band or tv show or even religion you used to be into but just aren't anymore. I became super uncomfortable with the idea it was hunky dory to smack the shit out of someone if it led to sexual pleasure, but not if people just decided this is the way a spouse should be disciplined. Why did sexual pleasure make it anymore palpatable to be brutal? Yuck. I didn't like myself or my participation in it so I grew away from it. Now this is not to say groups like EXODUS are right. I think there's a big difference between training ourselves to orgasm or be aroused to certain stimuli and which gender we're attracted to (although many people are fluid there as well). But for me, I truly made a conscious choice to not like that sort of thing anymore, much like many people choose to no longer enjoy wearing fur or eating meat. Your mileage will obviously vary.

HARD: I understand! Sometimes after I come, I'm like WTF? That was so effing weird. I don't want that. I want my orgasms to be all wrapped up in warmth and love and compassion.

Then I'm like fuck it. It's not going to happen. I gotta let it go because no matter what "normal" criteria I wish my orgasms would fall around, they just won't, so I gotta be stoked to be in love with a guy who's like "yeah I'll degrade the shit out of you AND THEN I'll make you feel warm and love you and be compassionate towards you outside the sack."

Self-acceptance. Your orgasms are but a small part of who really are, (unless you're in a 24/7 D/s situation); your lizard brain is a piece of who you are as a person. In my experience, the more you indulge your "shameful" kinks and come out a happy and self-possessed person, the less you demonize them. You'll get there.

Also, CW2D needs to chill out STAT. Her ex-lover will get hurt, and she won't like where it leaves them--possibly including her and hubby. If the ex-BF was like "damn you were hot; let's bone again" that would be one thing, but he's playing it all romantic like. Also, reaction formation: "I never stopped loving you." Yes he did. He's just reconstructing his memory to better suit what he feels now, which is horny and affectionate. It's not going anywhere NSA. He'll cling like a starfish.

Wendykh, I understand that. I've gone through masturbatory phases. Some of my past interests seem odd, and I have moved way from them without trying.

However, your likening it to television and bands is incorrect. You don't achieve orgasm (largely by brain arousal and response) by music and tv, just simply feel entertainment/enjoyment from them. (However, truly moving music is not something most people grow out of or move away from. Ask an adult how they feel about the first song that gave them the chills, and how it makes them feel now. I bet it still makes them feel prettydarngood.) Orgasm occurs in a different area of the brain than amusement.

Orgasm is not something you can train. If that were the case, there would be no pedophiles.

The interesting/enviable thing about you is that you found it cognitively uncomfortable to smack the shit out of a loved one for sexual pleasure, and somehow reconciled that with your deep, subconscious, orgasm-craving brain. For many of us, what is cognitively uncomfortable reads as HOT HOT HOT in the d, s, o-c area.

@ snarky, because it is not a socially acceptable norm.

@Snarky that is because it is not socially acceptable to admit to having a consensual affair, swinging experience, three-way, etc.

Wendykh, if you're happy with where you are now, then more power to you, but let's not be judgemental about other people's pleasure, huh? BDSM and spousal abuse are very different things, thank you. Saying 'Why did sexual pleasure make it anymore palpatable to be brutal? Yuck." is like saying that sexual pleasure doesn't make PIV sex okay because some people get raped. Any form of non-consensual physical contact is a bad thing, but the non-consensual forms don't make the consensual forms bad. It's the consent, not the act itself, that makes the difference.

@70, how can a four-person relationship be simultaneously three-couple? It sounds mathematically confusing. Am I missing something?

@76(justanotherguy), and despite such unflattering differences of opinion (including questioning your sexual preferences), do you still feel it is good to be married to your wife?

@Wendykh, who wrote:

Why did sexual pleasure make it anymore palpatable to be brutal? Yuck.

I understand this is your opinion, in that it feels true to you, and you want to live this way, so that is OK. But notice that the logic behind it does not compute. All of sex is pretty 'yuck', as we would certainly think... if it weren't for the sexual pleasure we get out of it. And claiming that the same action being 'yucky' or even morally wrong in another context implies it being 'yucky' or even morally wrong in all contexts is like saying that, since penetrative sex with small children is indeed morally wrong and physically dangerous, then penetrative sex with adults also has to be. Or saying that, since having an affair without or against your spouse's consent is wrong, then having the same affair with your spouse's consent (as you have done) is equally wrong (which would be the fundie position, I believe).

Sexual pleasure makes a whole universe of difference. Sexual pleasure is the basic reason why we have sex at all (excepting for those people who 'think of England' and just want babies; but I'd frankly not call that sex, just reproduction). If there was no sexual pleasure whatsoever, the whole of sex in all its forms would simply make no sense.

Nobody even laughed a little at my comment from @18?
Sigh.

@85 anklosaur (re@76 justanotherguy's comment): I agree with you!

Personally, I'd rather be single and live alone than remain unhappily coupled; especially if the spouse or BF in question had nothing flattering to say about me. I mean, what's the point if it comes to that?

Like many of the commenters here I spent a lot of time trying to figure out *why* I'm kinky.

But then a good friend told me that BDSM is like frogs and humor. When you dissect them they don't work so well.

78-wendykh (and 83&86) -- I think I understand your question on when sexual pleasure made it any more palatable to be brutal. That the sub is enjoying it might not make it any easier on the has-to-pretend dom. In this case, it's the dom who's not feeling any sexual pleasure, and while in a vanilla relationship, my partner's pleasure is a turn-on for me, I can absolutely understand not being turned on in a BDSM relationship where I was only going along to please my partner.

As for whether you can change your proclivities, there's a difference between willfully deciding to make a change and changes that happen over time. I'll use your example of the songs any of us used to like but no longer do. Consider this: "I love the Lovin' Spoonful, but I hate that I like such stupid, juvenile music; I'm such a dork and would rather be highbrow, so every time "You Didn't Have To Be So Nice" comes on the radio, instead of whistling along and enjoying it, I'll practice aversion therapy and make myself hate it." Now compare that to: When I was 11, I loved the Lovin' Spoonful. By the time I was 15, it was the Stones, and later I didn't understand why I ever liked any rock when I'm so much more into jazz."

Or for an even more benign example: When I was 17, I only liked teenage boys. I might have been attracted to a guy as old as 25, but anyone older than that was just grody. I could never imagine sex with some 50. I'm 50 myself now and find sleeping with a 55 year old man to be quite nice. Is that because I changed my proclivity, or did my proclivity just change?

@90 I think for most people there is a set of sexual activities we come to enjoy for our own reasons of physiology/psychology. But being with a partner can make us see the pleasure in some other activities as well. When you're sexually interested in someone, and you learn you have a way to make their eyes light up, that's a powerful feeling. So even if that way (beatings; CBT, cuckolding; cream pies, whatever) doesn't float your boat on its own merits, it can excite you to see how much it excites your partner. Over time, that vicarious pleasure can also become internalized, so that is one path by which people do acquire new proclivities.

(To extend this to the music analogy -- there are also many bands I wouldn't have listened to much on my own, but when I am hanging out with someone who loves that music, I come to like the music too: first by just hearing it enough to get that easy familiarity (the way top-10 songs become part of our lives just by hearing them so damn much), and second by seeing that light go on in my friend's eyes when they hear the music. It's infectious :-)

Mr. Ven @68, Oh, sorry for confusing that conversation with the one we were just having about the transgendered. I was probably on the wrong side of that earlier conversation too -- I prefer people acknowledge their preferences for certain body types without absolutely ruling out whole categories of people. As Dan has said, he's gay, but there's a particular butch dyke firefighter that he'd fuck anytime. People are more than the categories we put them in, and attraction is a weird beast.

@80 "For many of us, what is cognitively uncomfortable reads as HOT HOT HOT"

Yes! I was just trying to explain that to someone. His fantasies are all things that he has done and loved in real life; at the moment of coming he thinks back to a particular woman he loved fucking. Whereas I masturbate to fantasies I don't actually want to experience -- in my fantasies I go far beyond the level of pain/humiliation/cognitive-discomfort/anal-rape I'd be willing to take in real life.

@84
John&Yoko / Paul&Linda / Yoko&Linda
John&Yoko / John&Paul / John&Linda
John&Yoko / Paul&Yoko / John&Linda
etc.

I guess I pissed everybody off...?

@96 not me! have you started working on your exercises from last week's column? anything to report back? :-)

Not me either. And the Newman quote is indeed funny. :-)

@97 EricaP: Hi again! I must have missed a response from you! Sorry!
Did you send me a link? What are the exercises?

Please tell me again and I'll get started. Thanks for sharing.
Nothing like the holidays for building up energy!

@#4: Sure you can. It just never tastes as good as when you baked it up the first time.