@85, you can only infer lying if the number of men and women in the survey was equal (likely) AND those people only had sex with each other (not very likely).

Crinoline, I totally agree with you & think that was a very considerate post to Turista! Mydriasis, from your perspective, one night stands don't spend the night together, but that isn't universal reality. It's about different expectations, as Crinoline wrote.

Factor in the cultural factor of men in the area intentionally trying to play up American women, then ditch them, (according to the few people from Costa Rica who have weighed in) and Turista is understandably pissed.

When Miss Manners used to run in the paper once a week, I used to save her column for last as a treat. My then-13-year-old daughter was delighted by her dry tone and sly humor (both of which pretty much match my daughter's), and in fact, I think the kid learned a lot and honed a lot of her linguistic skill, not to mention delivery technique, on those columns. I wish they were available to my younger daughter, too. She makes do with Dear Prudence, but it's not the same.

Ms. 11-- Thanks. I knew I'd be in the minority when I posted. I also knew I wouldn't be entirely alone in my opinion.

Nocute-- Just google on Ms. Manners. Her column is carried in many online newspapers. If you don't want to register to read the Washington Post, google on "Miss Manners -Washington". I completely agree. Dear Prudence is fine, but no substitute.

Thanks, Crinoline!

Re: TURISTA: Never mind whether the expectation of being able to spend the night is universal or not, because how others feel about it isn't going to change how Letter Writer feels about being treated that way. To her, "he was so sweet" is incompatible with "that was fun, now go home." So she felt used, bait-and-switched, played. Feeling used is not the same thing as slut-shaming.

That said, however, I agree with IPJ: if sexual encounters go hand in hand with being treated romantically for you, if the prospect of it turning out to be nothing more than a casual roll in the sack makes you feel nasty, maybe you should go a little slower.

I am wondering how she reconciles "he was so sweet" with her guy back home whom she "absolutely adore[s], but we're not necessarily exclusive." That sure sounds like she is leaning on the technicality that that monogamy has not been formally agreed to, but has been the default practice for some time. In other words, she isn't sure whether what she just did was cheating on the guy back home whom she claims to adore. (Which is probably part of why she feels nasty about herself. It's neither slut-shaming nor sex-negative to wonder if what you just did makes you a CPOS.) Seems to me that the more she hooks into the whole "he was so sweet" thing, the greater the potential betrayal that will need explaining back home.

If I was the guy back home, I would be rather more dismayed if the story that got back to me -- I suspect LW isn't actually going to confess to her boyfriend, but her adventure probably will travel the grapevine -- was "He was soooo sweet, and he made me breakfast with crepes and fresh fruit and a bouquet the following morning" than "I got drunk at a club and accidentally fucked a local, but the sumbitch kicked me out right afterwards." I'd be pretty damned unhappy with either of them, but with the latter I would lean towards, "Sorry you got drunk and you got played, I hope you learned something," but with the former I would be feeling more like "What the fuck? Are you looking for a romantic replacement here?"

For that matter, a little thought experiment: Let's imagine that instead of kicking you out of bed before the mess even had time to crust over, that he let you stay the night, treated you to a sumptuous local breakfast on a beautiful sun-dappled veranda filled with lush tropical flora, raucous with brightly plumed songbirds... and THEN he drove you back to the hotel and that was the last you ever saw of him.

..seriously, the end. Then what?

That's not a meaningful connection, that's just good showmanship. If he did that for you, a one-night stand -- yes, you undoubtedly were a one-night stand -- he probably does that for all of them (all of you), probably a couple of times a week. It doesn't make him one iota less sleazy, but it does make him a good concierge.

It's a meaningful connection when your boyfriend does it for you because you ALREADY HAVE a meaningful connection. If you have a yearning to be treated like someone adores you, don't go looking for it in fucking Costa Rica.

@109/110
I like the idea that TURISTA really wishes her holiday guy could have done the courtly romantic thing in the morning, so that she could value him along the same guidelines ("sweet") she uses for a LTR. Anything to help her convince herself that she's better than a mere hookup. After all, she has a respectable relationship back home, you know.

OTOH, perhaps she should consider herself lucky. Why? Well, imagine if she'd spent the night and the next morning her oh-so-sweet man would be asking when he could move to America to be with her FOREVER!

People who do judo are healthy, don't combine it with drugs/alcohol, and have witnesses to testify to their good intentions.

@111: Yes, exactly. See, she would never stoop so low as to use someone for a hour or two of animalistic pleasure and then flush him. BUT, the more she wants it to not have been mere meaningless rutting, the less she gets to tell the boyfriend back home, "It meant nothing." (I really, really hope Boyfriend reads Dan Savage. Preferably over her shoulder.)

And yes, what if she had gained herself a stalker?

@113
Hee! Or, more than "It meant nothing," what if she said the holiday-guy was SO SWEET and reminded her SO MUCH of her RL boyfriend whom she was missing SO VERY VERY MUCH ... and that's why she slept with him.

::giggles:: Yup, we SLOGgers would probably have a chuckle if her partner DID read over her shoulder.

@95: "Oh neat. A sociopath..."

For the love of god, tell me you are joking.

Someone posts about not being willing to undertake a risk that could potentially ruin their life in the event that they screwed up and managed to end their lover's, and your interpretation is that they would be fine with manslaughter if it weren't for that pesky jail thing?

You are either the most cynical commenter I've ever met, or the most bloody-mindedly literal one.

Did he really need to repeat all the other traumas that go with accidentally killing your lover, that have been listed a dozen times by other commenters, in order for you to not think that avoiding jail was his only motivation? Posts are TL;DR already (says a major offender in that department). Including every possible disclaimer just isn't feasible.

Or maybe you were being ironically absurd, and your deadpan delivery is so convincingly dead that it draws flies, in which case, well played.

Ms Cute - Indeed; I don't recall Miss M going in for advocating anonymous letters.

Re: THROTTLE - To me, the thing that sticks out in your letter is how little your wants and desires seem to matter to your girlfriend. She has to have it this way every single time, even though it really isn't your thing. In other words, she is getting all the sex her way, and you are getting none of the sex your way. You are being GGG. She is merely being selfish and dismissive.

Completely bypassing the technical aspects of whether and how it is possible to "safely" engage in breath play, you still have a right to sit her down and tell her, "Look, I do this for you even though it really does nothing for me, because it's what gets you off. But enough with this Every Fucking Time bullshit. It's long past time that you treat MY sexuality with the same degree of respect, deference and priority that I've been treating yours. That means plain old vanilla sex just the way I like it, even if you think it's boring, 50% of the time. (For example, learn how to fuck QUIETLY in a god-damned hotel.)"

IF, and only if, she promptly and cheerfully agrees to meet you halfway, and shows a good faith effort to keep you sexually happy, then consider if there is some way you can maybe make the rape scenes a reasonable simulation that doesn't scare you as much. If she can't or won't, end it.

108-nocute-- Oh, and try Carolyn Hax, also online and available by googling. Nowhere near the dry wit of Judith Martin, but considerable insight.

117-avast-- Yes. You got to the heart of the matter.

Ms Crinoline - Do we know why Mr Savage doesn't recommend Ask Polly (written by somebody called Heather something under the pseudonym Polly Esther)? She's a bit heteronormative, but she sometimes admits that, which puts her ahead of most. And she's a big favourite with a number of feminists of the sort Mr Savage sounds like when he takes a feminist position.

@120: Thank you.

To clarify, when I say "plain old vanilla sex" I don't necessarily mean just missionary PIV, merely that it shouldn't always have to be a rape scene with choking. There is an awful lot of stuff available that falls mostly under the category of "vanilla:" fingers, mouths, dildos, vibrators of every conceivable physical configuration, dirty talk, exhibition (privately, to each other), unusual positions, et cetera. I can't help thinking that THROTTLE's girlfriend has hooked into the kink equivalent of Adolescent Male Masturbation Death Grip Syndrome.

OK, for the sake of Vennominon's(BJ) I'll go out on a limb, here, and speak from my own experience. I've had maybe a dozen one-night-stands, more with men than women, and mostly in the U.S. Within this small, unrepresentative sample, I do not observe any pattern - in terms of gender, age, locale, etc. With specific reference to Turista's situation, some have ended at night, and some in the morning. Most ended with at least pleasantries - I can only remember one instance of a person leaving rudely, in the morning.

Follow-up has been wide-ranging and entirely unpredictable, from catching up later as friends, to a sporadic correspondence lasting more than a decade, to never hearing from the person again. But this is true of the longer-term relationships I have had as well.

So in my opinion, Turista probably had a fair helping of unrealistic expectations vis-à-vis the situation, blended with a shot of morning-after guilt towards her boyfriend, topped off with a sprinkling of shock that Senor Tico was not as suave to her after sex as he was before. Pobrecita. And now she's couching her distress in Dan-friendly language (sex-positive, slut-shaming) hoping for some strokes.

The more I think about it, actually, the more irritating it seems.

122-Ven-- I'd never heard of Ask Polly until you pointed me in her direction. I found her to be long-winded, lacking in humor and without literary reference. She writes like I do when I'm unhappy, misunderstood, can't sleep and lonely. I couldn't say if that's the reason Dan doesn't recommend her or he's never heard of her as I hadn't. Her advice seems O.K., though lacking in insight.

Hello All,

I need to get a friend's Christian head screwed on straight. She states that she doesn't believe in gay marriage, but follows that comment with I'm friends with many gay people. I know I've heard Dan discuss some Christian sources that give context to such thinking. I believe she needs to hear the rationale in the context of Christianity. Can someone provide some links to this information.

Thank you.

DG

@130: It's fine to not have had "the talk," and it's fine if both parties are okay with DADT. The only problem is when the talk hasn't been had and one person thinks the couple is exclusive and the other one knows that the first one both isn't seeing/fucking anyone else and thinks that number 2 is doing the same, and is using that technicality of "we aren't necessarily exclusive" as a rationalization for doing whatever s/he wants with whomever s/he wants. Which either is or is not what this week's lw is doing.

It also depends on how long monogamy-by-default has been in practice. Maybe three months is too short to assume monogamy. What would be a reasonable time frame to you?

Imagine that you and your guy have been steady partners not for three months, but for three years. So, The Talk just never quite happened because it seemed obvious what was developing. Then out of the blue, at thirty seven months and three days, an opportunity arises and one of you sleeps with someone else. Do you honestly expect that the other one isn't going to feel shocked and betrayed by that? Or that they are going to gracefully accept the argument that since monogamy hadn't been officially demanded and accepted, it therefore wasn't fair to expect it, even though it had been the assumed and actual practice for the whole time?

@DG

Where I come from, a church just isn't a church without a rainbow flag out front.

So I just went to the website of a local church aaand:

http://www.amazon.ca/What-Bible-Really-a…

@avast2006: Thank you. I'm sure I'm posting in the wrong place, so I appreciate your accommodation and kindness.

Cheers,

DG

@3 and @29 NAILED IT. I spent the last year in Costa Rica, and everyone lives with their moms. I went home with a guy once with a 2 bedroom all to himself and I asked him like 14 times if he was sure if his mom didn't live there. When it was proven that she did not, I tried to put a ring on it SO FAST. Alas, I am back in los Estados Unidos without a Latino husband on my arm.

"if they're actively searching for a unicorn"

I don't know, it definitely sounds like this is a bad situation for that even still, considering how much she's crushing and wants to be a part of that family. This is more all-consuming than a ONS and she's too wrapped up in them all.

@23: She's definitely not as cool with flings as she thinks/claims to be.

And why the hell not-

@26: "Without dragging out all the details (such as the lack of Judo deaths from frequently applied choke holds and the CDC research that indicates that the deaths of teenagers from the choking game come from practicing it alone), breath play can be done *safer* and is no more risky than many other kink activities."

Of course it can. In none of those situations you mention do the participants demand you choke them harder and more continuously and refuse to struggle when it gets "too much".

Sounds like this situation, the partner (as described) demands it go further every time, demanding he ignore her body's safety checks.

@39: Assuming ~anything~ with a relationship makes you a shitty partner whether you're poly or mono.

@129: Because I'm on a tear, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist…

The person have to be a sincere Christian and actually read things to understand their arguments and biblical discussion, though. That might be asking a lot.

Very excellent blog, lots of philosophy and non-vomitous discussion of Christian values (not "values").

@15 I assume you choose the places you live based on whether there are ready ATMs nearby?

Don't do it, LUST. I found myself in your exact same situation with abclose, married friend. It was new years, we were drunk and she was into me but she couldn't deal once she sobered up. Loosing her and her family as friends literally took me years to get over and was incerdibly painful. I am finally over her, 2.5 years later but if I could go back in time I would not have made the first move. A false step like that can be incerdibly destructive.

With all this talk about whether exclusive yet or not, lets not forget that if you are looking for exclusive than don't fuck around. Nothing derails a budding relationship faster than a fuck around, whether you're exclusive yet or not.

Haven't you ever seen that movie where the guy likes the girl, or visa versa, and catches them with someone in a precieved romantic setting and it fucks up the whole thing...? An issue older, or just as old as prostitution.