My boyfriend and I are in college and doing the long-distance thing until June 2013. Over the years, he’s granted me increasing amounts of freedom to be intimate with women—I’m female, and date women while we’re apart—but I still don’t have full autonomy. It’s much better than it used to be, but lately another one of my “needs” has been eating at me: my masochism. He’s repeatedly refused me permission to let someone lay into me with a flogger. That’s all I ask!

I don’t even want to have anything sexual with the person who flogs me! I just want them to beat me! And this might be relevant: He has the freedom to do whatever he wishes but—God only knows why—he never indulges in anything more than the odd vanilla woman here and there. Also, I’m not allowed to attend fetish clubs because he knows I’ll make bad choices if I do (I’ll play!), but the burner and fetish scenes are converging here in Los Angeles and I’m going to get in trouble soon!

University Pain Slut

You’ve given your boyfriend permission to do who he wants, what he wants, when he wants. But you’re not allowed to do half of humanity—the male half—or get your ass beat at a BDSM club?

That hardly seems fair, UPS.

But my knees don’t automatically jerk when I hear about a couple with an arrangement that appears to be “unfair” on its face. If Person A enjoys more “freedom” than Person B, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Person B is being wronged. Some people get off on the tension that an erotic power imbalance creates, and nothing says “you’re in charge” quite like your partner having the freedom to do people and things that you’re not allowed to do. Or maybe the idea of you being with other men makes the boyfriend feel threatened and insecure, while the idea of him being with other women turns you on. If that’s the case, UPS, then you’re not doing something that makes him unhappy (sleeping with other men) while he’s doing something that makes you happy (sleeping with other women).

For me, UPS, it comes down to this: If you’re happy—if you’re getting off on your unfair deal—then I’m happy.

But are you happy? Or are you still happy? If this deal isn’t working anymore, UPS, then it’s time to negotiate a new, perhaps slightly fairer deal. His insistence that you mess around only with other girls while you’re apart is understandable—I don’t think it’s fair, UPS, but I can understand it—but the “no flogging” rule seems ridiculously arbitrary. Battle your sexual submissiveness and negotiate from a position of strength: Tell your boyfriend that you’ll continue to stick to his no-other-dudes rule on the condition that he lift his silly flogging ban.

I’m a 21-year-old college student living in San Diego. I have some sex-related issues/questions that I’d like to talk with a counselor about. These issues are complicated—porn consumption, sex work, ability to orgasm, etc.—but I hesitate to go through my insurance; since I’m still on my parents’ plan, that would involve me talking to my parents about this. They are very nosy and also very traditional, so I can only imagine the shitstorm. Is my university health care something that would cover this? Would my university report back to my parents about what I was seeking counseling about?

Uneasy Collegian Seeks Discretion

Rules about patient confidentiality apply even to college students, UCSD, so your student health center is not going to rat you out to mom and dad. But you don’t have to take my word for it.

“I want your reader to know that care provided at UCSD Student Health Services and the Counseling and Psychological Services is confidential,” writes Regina Fleming, director of Student Health Services at the University of California, San Diego. “We don’t bill insurance for visits to Student Health, though sometimes the cost of lab tests are put on the student’s account; these charges do not specify what type of tests were done. [And] all services at our Counseling and Psychological Services are free.”

My girlfriend of four years cheated on me. I’m in college now; we’ve been dating since high school. She and a male friend hooked up four times when they were both drunk. This guy was supposed to be her best friend, and it turns out he was into her. I asked her once about their relationship, and she assured me that nothing had or ever would happen between them. That was a few weeks after she cheated on me. She rationalizes the events in a manner that makes her seem like she’s not to blame and she constantly tells me how much she really loves me. Do I hook up with another girl and tell her about it?

Cucked Over College Kid

No, COCK, you don’t hook up with another girl. You ask yourself this question: How many adults—people over 30—do you know who are still with and/or married to their high-school sweethearts? The answer is either zero or approaching zero. A breakup was inevitable-ish all along, COCK, and now seems like a pretty good time to pull the plug. And while your girlfriend is telling you she loves you, and while she may still have feelings for you, she’s slamming her hand down on the self-destruct button because—consciously or not—she wants out, too.

In your advice to The Straight Best Man, you suggested that the first gay couples to legally wed in both Canada and the United States ended up divorcing, and that this fact was largely unknown because anti-divorce and anti–gay marriage evangelical Christians have essentially dodged the issue in a bid to divert attention from their own spectacularly high rates of marriage implosion.

While the first American same-sex marriage ended in divorce, I can happily report that the first legal same-sex marriages in Canada are still going strong 10 years later. A gay couple, Joe Varnell and Kevin Bourassa, and a lesbian couple, Anne and Elaine Vautour, were married in a joint ceremony on January 14, 2001, at Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto (MCCT). At that time, the government was still refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. To solve this problem, the church, on advice from their legal team, did an end run around the pre-authorized license requirement, using the ancient, but perfectly legal, Christian tradition of proclaiming the banns of marriage. While the government refused to register the marriages as valid, on June 10, 2003, the Ontario Court of Appeal declared that the marriages had been legally performed, and ordered the Province of Ontario to register them immediately. The court also ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and ordered the province to begin issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples that same day.

Both couples remain happily married, having renewed their vows in a public ceremony at MCCT on the occasion of their joint 10-year anniversaries earlier this year.

Nice Thing To Be Wrong About, Eh?

I’m happy to stand corrected—I’m delighted—and I’d like to send my belated congrats to Joe & Kevin and Anne & Elaine on the occasion of their 10th anniversaries. Here’s to many, many more happy years together!

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net

130 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. To UCSD, regardless of who the insurance policy goes through, confidentiality in your sessions still holds 100%. Unless you’re a minor, there is absolutely no way, no how your parents could be notified about what goes on your counseling sessions unless you tell them, or give your counselor written permission to release the information. Even insurance companies don’t know what goes on in your sessions, they only receive notification of a specific diagnosis (and that’s only if they require it to pay for the therapy sessions).

    If you still do need information about your insurance policy from your parents, it’s honestly really easy to just tell them you’re going through normal life problems (existential, where am I going with my life, etc.) that you would like to talk about with a professional. Honestly, that’s a “normal” reason to seek counseling. What you really cover in your sessions though, that’s up to you – and nobody else has to know about it except you and your licensed professional counselor.

  3. Can you PLEASE bring Lucy back to the lovecast? I really love the co-anchor banter dynamic you had going, you should hire her full time.

  4. Please bring Lucy back on the lovecast again! I really loved the co-anchor banter thing you had going, you should employ her full time somehow.

  5. The only time a counselor/therapist will violate confidentiality is if the patient makes a credible threat to harm themselves or others, but even in that case, they’re not going to run directly to your to your parents: they’d talk to cops or a hospital. Sure, your parents would probably find out if either of those things happened, but just don’t threaten to injure yourself or anyone else, and you will be totally fine.

  6. Kind of boring stuff today, although I am pleased Dan was wrong about the Canadian marriages.

    I don’t know who Lucy is, but I do think Dan, you seem understandably, either burned out or over-extended (probably both).

    I see no shame in getting some help doing this column and would welcome the possibility of more letters, different POVs and the possibility of your assistants finding better letters.

  11. I remember Matisse, the anti-douche lady, the Planned Parenthood lady, the woman who says everyone is a squirter, the one who said Dan should have been more skeptical about the one who said everyone is a squirter…which one was Lucy? And why are all the cohosts–except Adam Corolla, who was treated pretty harshly and Dr. Barak–women?

  12. I feel like Dan was a little quick to write off the relationship of the college kid whose girlfriend cheated. Not to minimize her cheating, but it seems a little hasty to say “you guys should break up” when neither of them has said they want to break up.

  17. I’m glad the University of California is so adamant and public about its confidentiality laws, but I would like to counsel UCSD that just because something is a law doesn’t mean everyone follows it. From what I can tell, the patient confidentiality laws have created a nightmare of paperwork for health care providers without doing much more for actual confidentiality than some common sense educational seminars would do.

    It comes down to what your options are if someone who works in the college’s counseling center’s office runs into your parents and happily babbles away about your frequent visits there and how your file says something about orgasm and porn. What are you going to do, sue? You can go on and on about how that’s not professional behavior, but the person who leaks the information is not a professional. That person is a receptionist or a data entry secretary.

    More than that, the laws say that confidentiality is off if there’s any reason to think the patient is a danger to him/herself or others. That sounds great on the surface, but it creates a loophole. One patient confides that she fantasizes about being spanked, and another says that he sometimes thinks about raping someone, and the therapist misinterprets and gets to tell everyone. I don’t know how to screen a professional to make sure they’re on the same page as far as sexuality goes.

    That said, I hope I’m not starting a “let’s hate on psychologists” session. I believe some of them can be helpful. I had an excellent experience with one once, something I’m still grateful for. But I’m not sure how to find out about the bad ones ahead of time.

  18. @17, I think you’re seriously overplaying the risk to both the LW and to patients in general. First, the LW sounds like San Diego is not her hometown–the medical transcriptionist is not going to run into Mom at church.

    Secondly, confidentiality is a *strong* emphasis of training in counseling and therapy centers. It’s not just the clinicians who get that training–it’s everyone. If nothing else, the fear of getting fired and/or personally sued will keep folks’ mouths shut.

    As far as the ‘danger to self/others’ (a Tarasoff warning), there has to be a specific, credible threat for a practitioner to break confidentiality. Someone saying they fantasize about rape might ring alarm bells, but a decent therapist would then ask more about that fantasy, and what it means to the client. (As they would about any violent thoughts.) It’s a risk assessment. I’m not sure what your hypothetical about a patient who wants to be spanked has to do with anything–any counselor who thought this was evidence of self-harm is a wackjob who wouldn’t hold a license for long.

    There may be a few horror stories about broken confidentiality, but the risk is SO tiny. I think it’s a real disservice to dwell on it, especially without any red flags about a particular clinic you can cite.

  19. Lucy was great, but Mary Martone is still my hands down favorite cohost. I think I’ve listened to episode 101 of the Lovecast about 25 times! Can Mary please be my best friend!?

  20. Blech – first letter seems immature & pushy. Boyfriend isn’t comfortable w/ you being sexual w/ a lot of other people. period. but he’s okay w/ chicks because you’ll never be in a relationship w/ them & it seems harmless/sweet/hot.

    So are you really right for each other? I can see you guys in a relationship where you’re always pushing his boundaries, because seems like you like to. Be on your own & explore your own boundaries or find a guy who is also wild & free.

  21. Re. COCK’s letter: my response to that would have had the same conclusion, but slightly different logic.

    First of all, no, you don’t find someone to cheat with to get back at her because two wrongs don’t make a right.

    Second, while it is possible to make it work with your high-school sweetheart (I married mine), that won’t be the case if said sweetheart talks out of both sides of her mouth. DTMFA.

  23. Re counselling:
    A greater concern that somebody ratting you out might be the chance of it coming out in family law proceedings such as support or custody or related matters. Most states have provisions in their codes of civil procedure maintaining the confidentiality of counseling records, and most state appellate courts have strongly reinforced the importance of that confidentiality … and most trial and motions judges just blow right past them to rape the privacy of litigants in family law cases. If mom and dad start arguing over custody of the LW, or who should pay for her education, she should be prepared to have those records come out.

  24. following up on my @23:
    If she gets into a relationship and it results in court action, out it will come. If she gets into a beef with her university (say,an allegation of harassment or assault) then her records will “leak”.

    I’m not saying that counselling’s a bad thing: it is often helpful and sometimes vital. All I’m saying is that courts and bureaucracies don’t give a tiny shivering rat fuck about our privacy or what the law says. Until people — including judges — are fired for privacy breaches as fast as they are for other serious misconduct then such nonsense will continue and grow.

  26. Generalized knowledge of (through American lawyers) and personal experience in one state. If I’m wrong I’d be surprised, but I’m open to data. I’ve never heard Yank lawyers complain that judges are too strict on personal medical privacy; quite the opposite, in fact, given that generally American discovery rules mandate disclosure THEN determination of relevance. (In a non-medical context, see Clinton, Bill: pretty much every question he was humiliated on in the Jones lawsuit was later determined by the Arkansas court to be irrelevant … after it was all public, of course.)

  27. @16 I’d love to respond on that page, but I’m fairly certain it’s futile. Having a discussion with 1 or 2 close minded people is one thing, trying to get hundreds to even care what you have to say while the rest are trying to tear your points apart is another.

    @17 Actually, medical professionals are not the only ones held by HIPAA laws. I work for a company that deals with medications and everyone that has access to the building (cleaning people and construction included)have to sign confidentiality statements and can be held accountable for any information they may share about a customer/patient. Also, loopholes for disclosure still restrict the people you can disclose to. I can disclose things to a patient’s doctor, not their best friend.

  28. UPS and her boyfriend seem poorly matched. She puts up with his control (while longing for ‘full autonomy’) because he flogs her when they’re together. But she wants to be flogged regularly, and he’s not providing that. He doesn’t seem very into BDSM at all (his other interactions are vanilla), except insofar it lets him control her sexuality. She seems on the point of rebellion, and she should be encouraged to just honestly break it off with him first.

  29. And, hey, Tech-Savvy, At-Risk Youth, or whoever’s in charge — why does this week’s SL column have the exact same title as last week’s column (“Pathological”)?

  30. SAFETY FIRST

    I think it is *really important* that we remember that many kinds of kink require trust or at least a very explicit agreement which both parties keep in mind
    UPS – – I understand the flogging ban. Think of it this way: You boyfriend is far away, he doesn’t know what level of trust or communication or friendship you have with a potential flogger. If it’s your roommate, ok. But if it’s a stranger you meet somewhere, esp in LA (some people worry about cities), and let’s say they’re not as into flogging as you are, but more into sex (consensual or otherwise), or have another agenda. Your boyfriend could just be very worried about you getting hurt– you should have a conversation about whether it’s a safety concern or a control thing.

    Also, allowing someone to get violent with you on any level requires a certain amount of trust and maybe that’s what your boyfriend wants to keep exclusive to the two of you.

  31. 18-Clashfan– Thanks for the reassurances. This is one of those situations where I’d be glad to be wrong. I hope confidentiality is as strong as you say it is.

    Many years ago I saw a therapist who ran her practice out of the same office as my regular physician. This is the psychologist I spoke highly of as being so helpful. When I was injured in a car wreck, I signed papers giving the office permission to share my medical record with my lawyer so we could sue for damages. The office workers dutifully photocopied every page of my psychological record. This had nothing to do with the car wreck, but my chances of winning a penny were down to nil because all the other lawyer had to do was say that I was crazy. My lawyer made that clear.

    I asked my parents’ physician for the name of a specialist when my own primary care proved unsatisfactory in that regard. I specifically asked for confidentiality as I know my parents cannot be trusted with any personal information about me. The doctor was terrific about it and asked someone in her own office to help make the referral and set up the appointment. When the specialist’s receptionist wanted to get in touch with me, she ignored the phone number I’d emailed to her and called my parents’ doctor for my number. She was cheerfully given my parents’ home phone. Disaster ensued. What was I going to do, sue?

  32. @12

    COCK says that his girlfriend cheats on him and tries to rationalize it away, and his immediate response is cheat on her and then tell her about it? Presumably to really hurt her feelings? Sounds like two people who need to break up in a hurry.

  33. The first letter writer needs to work on her self-esteem and with that work, she will grow up a bit. So dreary these “self abusers.” Work through that malarcky, child.

  35. Two letters about permission, of a sort.

    Re: UPS: Clearly you gave him all that freedom (which he doesn’t want) as a bid to extract the same level of freedom from him (which he doesn’t want to give). This isn’t “unfair,” it was a lousy bargain. To play the “look how unequal this is” card now, in order to force new concessions (or as Dan ever so diplomatically terms it, “negotiate a new, perhaps slightly fairer deal”), be prepared for resentment and possible loss of the relationship. (Which might not be such a bad thing. You two don’t sound ideally suited for each other.)

    Re: COCK: No, revenge sex would be wrong. If cheating is wrong for her to do to you, then it’s wrong for you to do to her. On the other hand, people who cheat pretty much give up the right to complain about being cheated on. If you want to get drunk and hook up with another girl four times, hey, that’s exactly what she did, so obviously she has no problem with it as a concept. However, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you do this, you are implicitly saying the same thing, that you agree that it’s no big deal. If that isn’t true for you, then don’t do it. If you think cheating is wrong, and you cheat anyway to show her how it feels, that would make you a) just in it to punish her, (in other words, an asshole), and b) a hypocrite.

    Be that all as it may, the real question is, can you have a successful relationship with someone who has shown that she is willing to cheat, lie, and rationalize? FOUR TIMES? This guy wasn’t just a mistake. Your choice at this point is to either accept her as she is (i.e. open the relationship) or to not accept her, and end it.

  37. @33 – you’re saying all people who get off on getting flogged have low self-esteem? Do you say that to marathoners?

    @34 As Dan says, it’s not about what’s fair. Sounds to me like this long distance relationship is not fulfilling their needs — his for security, and hers for floggings.

  38. Wow, Crinoline, your story is terrible. (Although even if your own lawyer was given access to your psychological file, something sounds awry here: how would an opposing lawyer have access to the records, what defines “crazy,” and what does anyone’s psychological health have to do with who is at fault in a car accident?)

    But USCD, most of the time, records stay confidential. The custody issues that were raised by seeker6079 wouldn’t seem to apply to a 21-year-old.
    Your parents might be nosy and traditional, but they are unlikely to try to find out everything you discuss in therapy, especially if you tell them that you’re going for help with anxiety and stress–typical side effects of being a college student!

    And if they do find out that you talked about–gasp–orgasms, what can they really do? How big a deal is that, really? You are an adult. Becoming a sex worker is slightly different, in that they may disapprove and may cut off financial support, but presumably part of the reason for becoming a sex worker is for money, anyway.
    If you’re old enough to want to work some of these issues out through therapy, you’re old enough to not care what mommy and daddy would think if they found out.
    Good luck.

  39. Here’s what stands out for me in COCK’s letter: She cheated on him when she was drunk, then rationalized that she wasn’t to blame. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t want any sort of relationship with anyone who blames anything on being drunk. If you can’t take responsibility for your actions when drunk, then don’t get drunk.

  40. COCK: don’t hook up for revenge but think long and hard about your relationship.

    Dan’s right that many high school relationships do not last “forever” but some actually do work out much longer term and some of those are actually healthy. I would not recommend breaking up simply because you’re young and will likely break up sometime but I would recommend giving each other space to grow – individually – even as your relationship does. I have not been commenting much (just signed up last week!) but my first comment (I think) was how my wife and I had a don’t ask/don’t tell type of understanding when we were in college – the deal was that when one wanted out or when one got involved with someone in a way that would impact our relationship, we’d let the other know. She may have slept with many and she has no idea how many I slept with but we are the sum of our parts (and experiences) so when we decided to get married, the people we were at that time worked as a couple (we celebrate 20 years of marriage next week) (and, especially at that time, I had no desire to know her history as I was in love with the person she had become).

    In your case, COCK, maybe 4 times with the same guy is a message to you (and to her) that THAT is the more important relationship or at least that your relationship matters less to her right now. You have to decide whether right now is a period for each of you to screw others, date others and/or maybe even date/fuck each other. Or maybe you need a break from each other and then maybe you’ll get back together later on. There’s a lot of growth that you both need right now – we all do, at all times, but none as much as when in college – and if you stiffle each other (or allow a gross asymmetry to prevail) and you DO end up together, both of you will have missed a great period of maturation and, if like many relationships I have seen that have followed that pattern, you will forever be like in HS. And a 40-year-old HS boy (or girl) is just depressing.

  41. @Erica re: 33

    No, I got the impression she sensed low self esteem from the way her letter is written and the fact that she’s letting her boyfriend prevent her from indulging in her kink, etc.

  43. mydriasis, UPS just seems young to me. (So many exclamation marks! So excited that she will get beaten soon, regardless of her boyfriend’s wishes! — ‘I’m going to get in trouble soon!’) Bratty, certainly, but not lacking in self esteem.

    I didn’t much care for Frederica’s quip: “So dreary these ‘self abusers.'” Dreary? To each her own, I suppose.

  44. COCK: The lady has very kindly told you by direct action that “you aren’t important enough to me to stop fucking this guy … I will continue to do so”. Do you want to stay?

  45. COCK, if you are wondering whether she’s going to cheat on you again with this guy, you might want to consider this: one occurrence of an event is happenstance; twice is coincidence; third is direct action; fourth is status quo.*

    * – Shamelessly stolen, paraphrased and added to from the original in the novel “Goldfinger”.

  46. It may be true that confidentiality will keep the parents from finding out why the insurance was billed, if the UCSD doesn’t just go to the free mental clinic on campus, but it doesn’t keep the parents from finding out that the student went to the doctor.

    When I was 25 I was on my parents’ insurance while in college. I ended up in the ER one silly friday night and the insurance bill was sent to my parents. It didn’t list WHY I was in the ER, but it did say I was there. They wanted to know why…and I had to not tell them or lie. Hard choice when it’s their insurance you are using.

  47. @29 EricaP: Good question. I was wondering about that, too.

    @NTTBWAE: Although it’s not the same thing, this year I’m happily celebrating a 10 year anniversary too— my divorce from a bad marriage! Congrats to Joe & Kevin and Anne & Elaine!

  48. I have never understood why beating the shit out of someone is hunky dory long as it’s for orgasms, but if a couple decides infractions in their relationship will result in beatings, and protests any concerns with “I just need to be a better wife/not make her mad/I deserved it” everyone cries “omg low self esteem/abuse!”

    And that’s from someone who used to be into being smacked around during sex, for the record.

  49. @50 can you explain a little? are you saying beatings are appropriate punishment for someone who doesn’t like them, as long as it’s consensual?

    If I felt that the couple was happy together, I’d leave it alone. But one can certainly consent to unsafe situations. If my friend was in that situation, and unhappy about the beatings, I would try to talk her/him into leaving…

  50. @50: The person who is trying to be a “better wife/not make her mad/I deserved it” does not actually want to be beaten, does not enjoy being beaten, and is modifying her behavior (albeit unsuccessfully) to AVOID getting beaten.

    The person who wants to be flogged…uh, WANTS to be flogged.

    See the difference there?

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