Savage Love

1. 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?

2. Did Dan just make a column of rehashed SLLOTD/QOTD from the Savage Love App? I could have sworn I read CW2D before, and I KNOW I read LaS before (people accused LaS as being FRAUD, the contributor to an earlier column, which I know not to be true).

   I’m sure this isn’t the first time, and hey, it’s demanding to read and answer countless letters and emails that come in for both the column and the app, but I’d at least appreciate the usual “I’m too lazy/busy/inebriated” excuse as a heads-up that the column is a rehash.

   Oh well.

3. @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…

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

5. spoon for the win!

6. 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?

7. 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?

8. 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.

9. 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?

10. 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?

11. @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.

12. 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.

13. @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…

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. A lot depends on the unknown nature of CW2D’s marriage. People often hear what they want to hear and not what they are really being told. I am skeptical of her assetions without corroboration from her husband.

    I’m not sure she understands just how much power and control she’d be giving TPS. She has much to lose and little to gain from this situation. She should honestly ask herself how she would react if the situation was reversed.

18. 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!”

19. 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.

20. @16 Sarah: I’m with danfan @19: You do sound like a cool Mom! Kudos!

21. @19 how did she (or you) know it was time to go?

22. 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. 😉

23. 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….

24. 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.)

25. HARD, I grew up as a fundy xian. I’m a Domme now. It’s possible to overcome the brainwashing and shame, but it takes work. I would suggest Margaret Windell’s book, “Leaving the Fold.” It’s written by a psychologist and has a lot of helpful exercises.
    As far as the kink being a response to the guilt and shame…maybe. But maybe not. As it’s still possible to be psychologically free from all that baggage and maintain your kinks.
    I do.

26. Personally – I find being called a queer straight girl an honor!

27. 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…’ 🙂

28. 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!

29. 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.

30. @cyranothe2nd, that sounds like a journey worthy of a book. I hope you’ll write it; I’d love to read it. 🙂

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

32. mydriasis @11: I’d like that book recommendation, even if EricaP doesn’t. 🙂

33. 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.)

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

35. @ 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.

36. 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.

37. @2 – yes, that’s not terribly uncommon. Two of these are not repeats, which is also par for the course.

    @4 – Perfect!

    I think CW2D is making a big mistake trying to re-heat the souffle. I think it’s gonna blow up in her face when this guy won’t shove off after she gets tired of him.

    The advice to HARD is spot on: the kinky is hard-wired to some degree or not. Sure, taboo heightens things a bit, but it’s more the seasoning, not the substance.

    I had permissive parents, did not get into anything harder than smoking pot, and generally stayed on track in life. I also knew I was a perv from a very young age and it had nothing to do with repressive upbringing – not a word about any of that was mentioned. In fact, I’ve slowly (because I really don’t want to look too closely) come to recognize and realize that I am far from unique in my family; realizing your grandparents made extensive use of the Kama Sutra as a manual (these were 19th Century people) kind of clues you in.

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

39. 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.

40. @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.

41. 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?

42. @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.

43. @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.

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. 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.

47. @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!

48. “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).

49. @35, Gaudior,

    It’s even worse for people who married expecting to be monogamous for life, and had to work out changes in the rules informally, on the fly. Explaining to another man, even (especially) one you’ve known all your life, that your wife is sleeping with someone else, and you’re okay with that, is beyond difficult. Even if they’ve flown the freak flag before, it changes the way they look at you. Not to mention the fact that you have to explain why she’s not available to him, in particular.

50. @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? 😛

    @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…

51. 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.”

52. @ 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.

53. @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.

54. 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

55. @ 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.

56. 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.

57. @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.

58. 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.

59. 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. 🙂

60. @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?

61. @Snarky –

    While your logic is reasonable, as someone who has been married for 15 years and known my spouse for over 25 years, we have had multiple successful 3-somes.

    We don’t advertise it because it is not socially accepted. In fact, when some people find out about it, their minds tend to accept cheating and deception over a married relationship that would allow each of us to explore others.

    What it has done is further strengthened our communication and understanding of each other. It has also improved upon an already incredible sexual relationship that we enjoy with each other.

    I remember being out with a group of married friends and we seemed to be the only couple that was still affectionate with each other and actually enjoyed the relationship we have. That being said, I fully believe that everyone else has to be true to themselves and that this would not work for everyone.

62. @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?

63. 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.

64. @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.’ 🙂

65. “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.

66. 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!

67. @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.

68. 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?

69. #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.

70. 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.

71. “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.

72. @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.)

73. @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.)

74. (sorry for the double posting there)

75. 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.

76. 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.

77. 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?

78. 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.

79. 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.

80. 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.

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

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

83. 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.

84. @70, how can a four-person relationship be simultaneously three-couple? It sounds mathematically confusing. Am I missing something?

85. @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?

86. @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.

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

88. @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?

89. 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.

90. 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?

91. @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.

92. (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 🙂

93. 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.

94. @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.

95. @84
    John&Yoko / Paul&Linda / Yoko&Linda
    John&Yoko / John&Paul / John&Linda
    John&Yoko / Paul&Yoko / John&Linda
    etc.

96. I guess I pissed everybody off…?

97. @96 not me! have you started working on your exercises from last week’s column? anything to report back? 🙂

98. Not me either. And the Newman quote is indeed funny. 🙂

99. @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!

100. @#4: Sure you can. It just never tastes as good as when you baked it up the first time.

101. Anklosaur–hi again! I love your posts, too!

102. @100: That sounds pretty half-baked.

103. Ms Erica – I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with that approach, although I would maintain that *some* people *can* be *too* open-minded for their own good.

     I acknowledge that, in this sort of area, personally I have had excessively high stakes thrust upon me to be able just to go with the flow. Having defeated reparative therapy into which I was thrust against my will, I hope I can be allowed to declare that path permanently off limits without being prejudiced, evil or stupid.

     Before my retirement from the battlefields d’amour, I used to worry about it out of an expectation that, given my romantic preferences, it just seemed highly likely I’d come across a potential “right woman” at some point, or at least more likely than for most. Probably what kept that from happening was that I never went about sproinging at strangers. Even in my sproingiest days, my attractions were always far more highly emotional than normal.

     I can acknowledge the possibility of turning out with somewhat different capacities had my history been less pushy. The image you suggested in the trans discussion about somebody being blindfolded is the sort of thing about which I never fantasized, but found an interesting hypothetical, especially as it would have suited my particular activities of preference (which I shall spare everyone) peculiarly well. To this day, it seems impossible to say for certain whether, had opportunity knocked, it would have proven irresistible to discover whether or not such a situation could have had a successful outcome. And now nobody will ever know…

104. @99 it’s all in last week’s SL column, @284 http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Savag…

     @103 never say never 🙂

105. @97: Ah! I finally got to it! @284, from Dan’s previous column, Busted!
     Thanks! I’m on it.

106. I’m looking again at where Cw2D’s sext partner says that he never stopped loving her. I’ve heard that story more and more often now that facebook &al make it possible for the long lost to reconnect. I wonder that so many of us individually don’t know how common that is collectively. I’ve never forgotten my first love. It’s been 35 years, and there’s probably something every day that makes me think of him. But some time, oh, about 25 years ago, I realized that that wasn’t a compliment, and he probably didn’t want to hear it. Is there anyone who isn’t still a little hung up on their first love? I’m not talking about first sexual experience. I’m talking about the first hard-hit, pit-of-the-stomach, butterflies, crushing, in-love, love. (For me, first love and first sex were the same.) Some time around 15 years ago, I realized that I felt sorry for anyone who never had that experience even if it means walking around with the memories. Some time only recently, I read in an advice column how the idea of declaring your love to the long-lost first may come from an optimism of wanting to rewrite the past, of thinking that everything will be alright if we could only go back and get a 2nd chance.

107. @18, 98: Completely irrelevant point, but NASCAR? Newman was a NASCAR driver? In his dotage, he was part owner of a Winston Cup car, but he was known for Can-Am and sports car racing – 24 Hours of Le Mans and the like. He won at Daytona, but it was the 24 hours of Daytona, not the Daytona 500. OK. I’m done. I’ll go away now.

108. @EricaP
     As someone who has always enjoyed your input, let me throw a little advice your way in the hopes that you find it useful. Full disclosure, I do not have kids of my own, but I have been in a long term relationship that involved a kid from a previous marriage and I’ve spent 10 years in higher education mentoring young adults making the transition from teen to full blown grown up. There is no “one size fits all” approach to every child on earth, but there are things that are truths assuming your children fall within the bell curve of “normal” behavior. First of all, as an adult/parent/mentor you should never dismiss the feelings of your children. Looking at their behavior from the vantage point of age, experience, and hopefully a little bit of wisdom, it is often too easy to dismiss a teenager’s discovering love as just a crush, or their anger at a friend for some perceived sleight on Facebook as the ramblings of a hormone addled, juvenile mind. But make no mistake, as inconsequential as these incidents may be in the big picture trajectory of life, these feelings are very much real and the intensity with which they are experienced should never be discounted. What kids need to know is that their parents are in their corner. They need to know that you will listen to their concerns. That does not mean, however, that you have to agree with them on every point.
     This brings me to the second truth in child rearing. Kids need boundaries that are consistently and fairly enforced. As the parent it is up to you decide where the boundaries are, and they must be laid out in no uncertain terms. I’ve heard my friends from broken families lament that they didn’t have a dad to kick them in the ass when they needed it. I’ll leave it to the social workers out there to comment on rehabilitating criminals, but from the conversations I’ve had and the comments I’ve heard from people that land in jail, a common theme is that they lacked a strong disciplinarian in their lives. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as libertarian as they come. From my experience the thing that consistently works with the youngsters in my life is that it is essential to keep the rules to the absolute minimum, but strict enforcement of the rules makes them very real. Arbitrary enforcement of the rules tempts kids to go spelunking for boundaries. Consistent enforcement removes temptation.
     The third truth is that is absolutely essential that kids learn to laugh at themselves and the world in general. I always love a laugh at my own expense and in this regard I always encourage the youngsters in my life to swing for the fences. It’s good to take chances and failure is always an option. As the late great Will Rodgers said, “Good judgment comes from experience, and most of that comes from bad judgment.”
     Regardless of your stance on drugs it is incredibly important that your kids understand the repercussions of their actions. I think our nation’s drug laws are appalling, but that does not change the fact that they exist. As things stand, drug and alcohol related convictions at any age have vast and long lasting repercussions. All kinds of opportunities, from student loans to numerous forms of employment to name a few, are taken off the table with a drug conviction on your record. And in this day and age of digital record keeping, convictions will follow you into every aspect of your life for the rest of your life. As cool as our nation can be, there are still armies of people out there all too eager to brand a scarlet letter on your forehead.
     Lastly, give your kids the benefit of the doubt. One thing about human nature in general, and kids in particular, is that people have an amazing ability to surprise the hell out me. Given the chance to kick ass, kids almost always do. I have no doubt you’ll butt heads with your kids, but if you conduct your home life in the same level headed manner as your thoughtful advice and observations, I see no reason for you to worry.

     Cheers!

109. @107: Okay. Thank you for the clarification. My goof. I just knew that Paul Newman was into racing, and that he once owned a late 1960s VW convertible that he had rebuilt with a Ford engine for racing–and even drove it to at least one Oscar ceremony in L.A. with his lovely wife, Joanne Woodward.

110. @108(bugdog), that was a very wise post, full of ideas that I hope to be able to live up to. (I suppose what parents are often most afraid of is that something we do, some poor decision we make, may end up having big repercussions for our children. Sometimes it’s hard to be a parent and relax…)

     @106(Crinoline), I know exactly what you’re talking about. My first love (which was also my first sex) left memories and, yes, scars that haven’t really disappeared. I won’t say I think of her every day, but hardly a week goes by without me reliving some memory or little incident from ‘those times.’ I haven’t seen her for over 20 years, and I wonder how I’d react if I ever did. I sometimes did think of approaching her, but always decided not to, for similar reasons to what you mention: the ‘need for closure’ sounds more like an illusion, and not a very sharp one at that (what exactly would I like to hear from her? what exactly would make me feel better about the whole thing?)

     I’m not sure it was better having it than not having it. But I do think that this first love shaped many things in me, some of which I actually like. Hm… on second thoughts, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m glad it happened, despite the suffering. Buttlerflies are pretty, even if they flow from your stomach up to your nose and make you sneeze… and cry.

111. @44 wrote: “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…”

     Many people seem to be telling HARD to simply ‘turn off’ the shame or even to ‘eroticize’ it. But seriously: how does a person DO that? How does something that makes you feel ashamed turn into something that doesn’t? Is it just practice? e.g., just keep doing that ‘shameful’ thing over and over and, eventually, you’ll get over the shame (like aversion therapy or something)?

     My husband and I get up to some weird sh*t (maybe not for some of you, but for ME) and while it turns me on in the midst of it, afterwards I also feel rather embarrassed (ashamed?) about it, not only that we do it at all but ALSO that I like it! I imagine our friends/family thinking, “holy sh*T, that’s weird/gross/etc!!”

     So how does one actually “get over” stuff like this?

112. I think it is funny when people question my sexuality because I support gay rights.

113. @108 bugdog,

     AHHHHHH, WHAT IS IT WITH TEENAGERS THAT THEY ALWAYS HAVE TO PUSH THE BOUNDARIES!!!!!

     It is amazing that given all the possibilities and freedom presented to my teenagers, they end up pushing the boundaries of acceptable behavior (nothing outrageous, just something like no yelling at the dinner table) and I get stuck into ratcheting up the penalties (I have to give time outs, to a 15 year old??!). I encourage freedom of expression; I want to hear their opinions. BUT, I want to have them civilly, and without hurting my ears.

     Peace.

114. 108-Let me add to bugdog’s excellent essay. Remember that your children are on their own journey, not yours. You want to be on hand if they need your advice/help/input, but your help shouldn’t be so available that you have to invade their privacy to give it. Naturally if you see a kid on the path to self-destruction, you have to step in, but if your kid is merely having a rough time in one aspect of their life and for a short while, give them room to work it out for themselves. Your children are not problems to be fixed.

115. Thanks, bugdog and others for expanding on this discussion. I’ll add a couple of resources that came to mind when reading @113’s frustration.

     The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child – if you have a lot of problems with your teenager, this provides an effective system for changing the family dynamic in a positive way. But short of the implementing the full “points” system, my take-away was to provide far more clarity as far as my expectations, and far more praise for anything and everything they do right. The book reminds you to be always looking for things to praise, instead of looking for things to criticize about your kid.

     Michael Riera, Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers, this takes a softer approach, but similarly emphasizes clarity and gentleness in communicating with teenagers.

116. 110- On contacting the first love or the one that got away– I have to remind myself that the man I continue to think about is a 19 year old boy. The reality is a 50 year old man. He’s a nice enough guy, and we do have some things in common, but mostly he’s on the gruff side and certainly not take-my-breath-away attractive. I’d like to say that I would have been better off with my memories/illusions, but the truth is I still have them. Meeting the reality did nothing to change my illusion filled past.

     This is what I’m drawing on when I say that Cw2D has nothing to gain from sleeping with her long-lost ex. Ex thinks he’ll gain insight and closure from consummating the sexting, but he’ll likely stay just as obsessed with the young woman he’s been dreaming about for 23 years.

     For a meditation on closure, look at last night’s Big Bang Theory. Leonard hears from the bully who tormented him and wants closure, wants an apology. He finds a man who’s an unhappy loser of an alcoholic who’s still a bully and who can still do some damage. No closure there.

     I still think that the information that would make me feel better about the whole thing would be getting to know who he was then. Not knowing why he broke up with me (he danced around some of what was wrong with me, then assured me it was him and not me and that he had a crisis in which he realized he was an awful person) left me thinking about my inadequacies– which were my insecurities– which I figured must have been my sexual performance because that was the only thing that was new from before when we were flirting.

117. all i can say is that, during my (first) separation from my husband, i contacted 2 old flames on facebook and fucked them both, consecutively. the sex with them was hot when i was in my 20’s, however, the sex with them was a complete bust with them in my 40’s. go figure. i’m guessing this is pretty common phenom. as spoon@4 so rightly said, you can’t reheat a souffle.

118. @117 ellarosa,

     Your comment points out a primary reason I wouldn’t consider anything beyond friendship with an old flame: I am not the same person I was way back when, and neither are they. Fantasy is a wonderful thing in small doses, but what you experience comes from reality.

     Peace.

119. @284 (SL “Busted”) & @97 SL this week): Thanks, Erica! Once I pay my monthly bill, I’m on it!

     My report to you and Dan regarding your link on vaginal / clitoral squirting exercises: It’s amazing what a little opening up and letting go can do!! I’m NOT asexual after all, but have been desensitized, sexually. This was due to bad, abusive sex with previous unloving partners. But that was over ten years ago. A post by wendykh put my situation into proper perspective: after living in denial for so long, I actually became turned off to sex. I just wasn’t attracted to anybody for a long time, and entered a dry spell. But that was then, and this is now.

     I’m still uncomfortable with dating. Over the last decade, I have also grown quite happily accustomed to being single. So, for the time being I’m exploring what I like, masturbation-wise. It isn’t that I don’t feel attractive; I just don’t know anybody I want to have deep, meaningful sex with (fantasies don’t count here).

     Thank you, and bless you, Erica, Dan, and wendykh!!!

120. @Erica

     Did you have a look?

121. NPR’s Story Corps had a bit this morning about a couple who broke up after high school, then 22 years later, he found her up on FB. They decide to meet, and, after verifying that physical beauty hasn’t vanished, realize that they still love each every bit as much as they did when they were 17. And they’ve been inseparable ever since.
     My cynicism gland was throbbing.

122. http://www.npr.org/2011/12/09/143380626/…

     Yes, that story does leave some unanswered questions. For one thing, I want more detail on why they broke up.

123. mydriasis @120, I appreciated his assessment that attachment isn’t just a phase for young kids — it’s healthy for young adults to have an ongoing emotional closeness with their parents, even as they go through adolescence. But I found the books I mentioned @115 to have more practical tips for how to maintain a close relationship.

     Gabor Maté says: “To help the child separate we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking.” That’s inspiring, but the Riera book gives more concrete examples: instead of asking “how did you do on the history test,” ask more learning-oriented questions like “what did you think about the topic” and “did the assignments help you understand it better, or did you feel they could have been better designed?”

     In a broad sense, Maté is advocating a wholesale reevaluation of our culture. I found it an interesting read. But on a day-to-day level, I also like practical advice on how to reframe our parent-child communication to be warmer and less antagonistic.

124. I appreciate HARD’s questioning his kinks. I’ve often wondered the same thing about mine. Would I be into my particular kinks if they weren’t taboo subjects to begin with? Probably not, but I certainly don’t want to change them and I’ve never actually felt much shame. In fact, I sometimes wonder why I don’t feel the shame that seems so common with being bisexual and into kinky shit. I didn’t have overly strict parents, they supported my decision to have sex when I chose, and educated me appropriately. And my parents and I are atheist. Because of my upbringing, I believe that it’s just who you are.

     Maybe the specific things that turn HARD on are a product of his upbringing, but I think the core reasons those things turn him on, taboo, power and control, etc are just who he is.

125. In the past year I have been wondering about the dynamics of BDSM and self-worth. Partly because I had been in not so great relationships while using these tools because it turned me on. I also noticed my other friends who are into this also were having troubles with self-worth. So I wondered about the relationship between self-worth and BDSM.

     I could never believe that BDSM was for people who have ego or low-self esteem issues.

     And I think your response here to HARD helped to understand a bit better. Thanks for your insight!

126. EricaP,

     A book you may want to look at:

     Not Under My Roof : Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex
     by Amy T. Schalet

127. @106: I’ll be honest: no. If there’s one thing I’m definitely not doing, it’s carrying around a torch for my first love.

     I’m betting it’s a fairly common phenomenon to still think about your first love, but it certainly doesn’t happen to everyone. I think the guy I fell in love with first is perfectly nice, but I was a pretty different person when we were dating than I am now. Also, he broke up with me for relationship-related reasons. Often, a person’s first relationship breaks up because one of them moves, which doesn’t really provide the right kind of closure.

128. @126 – thanks! I read & enjoyed a piece by Amy Schalet in the NYT last summer. I’ll be interested to see how she develops the idea further in her book.
     http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinio…

129. @Hunter78: you’re sounding awfully mystical there, but I’m not sure I understand you. Are baby-boomers getting childlike as they age, or something?

130. @119 Looking forward to hearing more about the deep, meaningful sex you have with yourself 🙂

131. @85 @88 – nope, I don’t think it’s good to stay married to her which is why I’m in the middle of a divorce. Tired of all the shit.

132. @132: Right now, it’s mostly Brad Pitt-like fantasies (“J.D.” from Thelma & Louise: “yep, yep…..that’s him goin’…..I LOOOOOVE watchin’ him go….”).

     Ohhh, crap! I just said those don’t count, didn’t I?

133. @129: I’ll keep that in mind when I turn the big 6-0.

134. Rarely do I agree with you, Hunter78, but on the “Lucy-on-the-podcast” you’re spot on. I have nothing against her, and her giggle is charming, but it changes the nature of the show. She isn’t Dan’s equal–she’s not an expert in anything he’s consulting, like a Dr. Barak, or the wonderful woman from Planned Parenthood, or Mistress Matisse, or Alice Dreger, and she’s not a peer or colleague, like Mary Martone. She’s an underling, a hired assistant–an Ed Macmahon to Dan’s Johnny Carson, laughing, albeit more fetchingly, at his jokes without adding anything of substance.
     She’s too inoffensive to have complained about, but the show has lost some bite with her.

     FWIW, I want to be Dan’s co-host. He’s a married gay man; I’m a single straight woman. We’re roughly the same age. I just don’t know why he hasn’t picked up the phone and asked me to join him!

135. 111-Manzana– How does one turn off shame or eroticize it? I wish I knew, and when I figure it out, I’m going to make a million dollars selling the secret. In the mean time, it might help to know that this is no different from any of the other psychological near-impossibilities in the get-over-it category up there with “how do forgive my mother” and “how do I let go of my fear.”

     The only thing that helps, I’ve found, is the long haul of cognitive override. You start feeling the consuming shame. You draw a deep breath. You talk to yourself. You remind yourself that fantasizing about being tied up and forced to do perform painful acts in the name of a sexual turn-on is fine, even common. You remind yourself that no one can see your thoughts and that you don’t need to share them– unless you want to. Maybe you talk to others who have the same fantasies and have gotten past the shame. Maybe porn helps such that you can see how many others are turned on by the same thing.

     Having someone explain that you have nothing to be ashamed of once generally doesn’t do it, but you return to the book or the therapist or the porn over and over until the message starts to get through to that deep part of yourself where it matters. Then you repeat for a lifetime.

136. @111, @138,

     To overcome shame you can start by looking within yourself at all the things that you perceive to be good and right, and continue by questioning why the negatives should be judged as such. It helps to include “covers” of “none of their business” as well. Consider the whole, not just the negatives.

     For the interpersonal problems, do your best to right your wrongs. Sometimes that may be the best you’ll get.

     Peace.

137. @138(Crinoline), I’ve found that actually being able to live some of the shame in an environment where this shame isn’t dangerous, or even funny, also helps. If you’re ashamed of BDSM desires, and you are with someone who can make you laugh at them, at yourself, and at those who would shame you for your desires, somehow it takes the sting away. (I’m thinking of a Brazilian girl who learned not to be so ashamed/afraid of swearwords because of an American boyfriend who kept repeating them for her in unexpected moments; and, indeed, to a Brazilian, hearing a Portuguese swearword pronounced with a thick American accent is a hilarious experience. She laughed so freely at the words she used to be afraid/ashamed of that the shame and fear were slowly washed away, as it were.)

138. I love Lucy. It’s just so great to get such a bright, fresh, young perspective — and from a WOMAN!! She’s a great addition. But Dan, please stop announcing on the air that there are people that don’t like her. I’m sure it upsets Lucy to hear that.

139. I love Lucy. It’s just so great to get such a bright, fresh, young perspective — and from a WOMAN!! She’s a great addition. But Dan, please stop announcing on the air that there are people that don’t like her. I’m sure it upsets Lucy to hear that.

140. Ms Cute – I hope you’ll forgive me, but right away you’re manifesting part of the problem (I presume unintentionally). Wanting to be Mr Savage’s co-host (however admirably someone with Sparkian insight would perform in the position) even in jest plays into the implication that Mr Savage NEEDS a co-host, or that it would materially improve the program without any negative side effects. I maintain that, particularly at this critical political moment, any such move would be a drastic step in the wrong direction (as Sandra Bezic once characterized Viacheslav Zagorodniuk’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice program). I’m sure you’d make an excellent GUEST host, but this is not the time when we can afford to let a Great Gay Success dilute itself.

     [N.B.: I am on friendly terms with someone who runs a reasonably popular M/M site. After trying all the purist measures he could think of, he has just added F/M and M/F sections in order to keep afloat. It’s probably the beginning of the end; the odds greatly favour that before long the M/M will get pushed completely out. I’m sure this is intensifying my post, but I think I’d still be on the same page anyway.]

     Recalling the recent red-state conservative LW who was impressed that a gay man had saved his marriage where Ms Gallagher and all her ilk had been of less than no help, how grateful would he have been had he been thanking a mixed doubles team? Ms Lucy might even have ended up being given the lion’s share of the credit.

     If such a mixed team really would be so highly desirable, then let some highly popular straight person of note bring in someone from the Alphabet Soup as co-host. They have 99% of the media; let them share theirs instead of horning in on ours.

     As for Ms Lucy herself, I thought it was interesting the first couple of times to hear her take on the role of Larry Angelo to Mr Savage’s Dr Westheimer. Afterwards, it seemed as if he was playing up in order to stick it to the haters. I should not mind at all quarterly appearances or updates, or temporary runs during road trips as basically just happened, but please, not a permanency.

     This is a slightly depressing note on which to close, but one wonders how many of the most enthusiastic pro-Lucy cheerleaders, if completely translated, would be largely, equally or perhaps even primarily pleased that her presence makes the podcast (at least in the perception of the enthusiast) considerably more straight (as opposed to more balanced).

141. Oh, Mr. V, to think that I would ever even try to steal Dan’s thunder . . .

142. Ms Cute, I’m sure you wouldn’t try. There are probably quite a few listeners who would give it to you without even waiting to see if you tried or not.

     I suspect the situation could be made into a halfway decent twist on a Robert Rodi novel, but then I’m always thinking of plots.

143. Mr. V, Dan doesn’t need a co-host, and I don’t think the program would be significantly improved by having one–I just think I would have fun!

     I find it interesting that one of your concerns is that the presence of a straight woman would be a “dilution” of a “great gay presence.” It occurred to me that I’ve never fully appreciated that aspect of Dan’s potential reach in the way I might if I were a gay man. You make a valid point, which I guess was confirmed in the Savage Love letter written by the red-state Christian who thanked Dan for saving his marriage.

     How would it be with you if I only guest-co-hosted once every two months or so?!

144. @132: Hey—here’s an idea on how to possibly kick start the enjoyment of deep, meaningful sex with myself: is there a “Brad Pitt doll” currently on
     the market? Babes in Toyland, maybe?

145. CW2D should be cautious in this matter. Being in open relationships for many years now and watching married men come-on to my wife I have to question her old flame’s intentions. My bet is he’s just trying to get some and telling her what she wants to hear so he can get in her pants. As long as she approaches it as such she won’t get hurt. If the feels there is more beyond that I’ll bet dollars to donuts she is going to get hurt as soon as he gets some from her.

146. I’m confused as to CW2D’s situation, since TPS was married when they began sexting does that mean he’s no longer married now?

147. Ms Cute – That might be rather fun. If that ever came to pass, I might send you characters to see if you could find callers who reminded you of them. Or you could organize whole podcasts with calls that related to a particular book – Loitering with Intent might be a good choice.

148. Lucius Scribbens@148 – I’d be interested if you would expand on this: “he’s just trying to get some and telling her what she wants to hear so he can get in her pants.”

     What is the “some” that married men want to get from your wife? Just one time intercourse? Or a regular thing? And how is it different from what she would like to have from them? I have been very intrigued to see the difference between how very charming men are before we have sex, versus their silence afterwards … so that three months later when they try to woo me again it does them no good. I gather they want “no strings attached” (at least with me), and getting to know each other would be a string. But they really shouldn’t complain that it’s hard to get laid, when they won’t put ten minutes a week into maintaining access to “almost-NSA” sex. Since they won’t do that, it feels like what they really want is the chase itself. Having said yes, apparently I can no longer scratch that “chase” itch for them, so then I have to wait until they are really desperate for intercourse itself — and let me tell you, that desperation is really appealing. Not. Okay, everyone, sorry for the Sunday afternoon rant.

149. Addendum: it feels like with each new woman, guys believe that This Time, the sex will cure what ails them, will make them feel at peace with the universe, or at least stop hating themselves so much. When they find out that with this woman (as with other women), sex was just sex, they move on to someone else, hoping that (sex with) this new woman will be the cure for their existential troubles.

150. 152-EricaP– I hear what you’re saying, but would you limit your comments to men? In my experience, (some) women also hold out for that knight in shining armor who is going to rescue them from themselves and dissolve all their crazy.

151. EricaP,
     I’m sorry to hear that even when you’re married, dating is just the same. Unfortunately, your experience is not unusual. I think men and women (or at least the men I’ve known and I) have differing understandings of what NSA means. To me, it always meant no expectations of a real relationship–we don’t meet each other’s parents, etc. and no one expects an engagement ring at Valentine’s day. But to all the men I’ve tried to have an NSA sexual relationship with, it seems to mean that the very second you’re finished orgasming (or, more precisely, he is), you don’t hear from him again until the next time he’s desperate for sex, which is often two to three months later. And if you try to initiate any sort of communication, you get treated with a distant politeness or outright ignored.

     It made me decide I can’t do the NSA thing–not that way.

     And it is one of the things I would think would be a perk of being in a “real” relationship–like your marriage. When my ex-husband and I were house-hunting, it was such a nerve-wracking, dispiriting experience. When we had finally bought our house, we were so relieved not to be doing that anymore: competing against all those hopeful, equally desperate, perhaps more financially solvent couples, all hoping to get their dream house. About three years after buying ours, we wandered into a few open houses in our general neighborhood one Sunday, out of sheer curiosity and were plunged back into the same world of hopeful, desperate searchers, trying to convince themselves that the overpriced, too-small house with the dry rot and the foundation damage and kitchen with the charmless formica countertops was just what they’d always dreamed of and were damn lucky to get if they could. We went back to our home, cute, if a bit small, and heaved a giant sigh of relief, ecstatic to not be in that competition anymore.

     I’m truly sympathetic to your dating difficulties, but at least you have a husband and opting out of this farce doesn’t leave you all alone.

152. I realize that my “at least you have a husband” remark makes me sound like a woman circa 1954, and that’s not how I think of myself. I just meant that there’s nothing like dating to remind you of how yucky dating can sometimes be, and if I was not dependent on it for the possibility of any sort of intimacy, meaningful connection, or sex, there’s not a chance in hell I’d sign on voluntarily.

153. Ms Cute – Change “husband” to “primary”?

     It somewhat reminds me of the bi/gay debate (which is actually one of the biggest reasons I’m highly skeptical about ever attaining equality, as that would be surrendering one of the biggest wedges between us), but I cannot continue this, as I am off to the dentist.

154. 151 I’m not sure what accounts for the difference in our experiences with men, but the ones I dated (back when I was dating) did not want sex with me once followed by silence afterwards and did not enjoy the chase more than the relationship/friendship that followed. I’m familiar with the stereotype. I know what it is to be pursued, and I know what it is for a relationship to go bust a short while into it and after sex. I’ve never concluded that the relationship went bust because of the sex and that it would have continued if I’d put off sex longer.

     I’m familiar with rejection. But I have never gotten to the “all men are scum” state that you seem to have. In my experience, men are a lot like women emotionally. They want the chase, connection, friendship, sex, a continuing relationship, and the occasional no strings attached.

155. @153, Yes, I’d extend it to some women; I haven’t slept with them, though.

     @157, I don’t think men are scum; I think (many of) the one’s I’ve dated are unhappy with their lives. I’m glad you’ve had better experiences.

     @154 – thanks for your post – I appreciate it. Good luck out there!

156. ones, not one’s

157. @157 – also, it seems like you’re comparing your apples to my oranges. The question is not: why don’t these guys want to be in a relationship with me. The question is why, if they do want sex with me, don’t they see that they could have that on tap in exchange for a little more effort on the back-end (as it were).

158. Or, to put it another way, I’m looking for X+Y, where X = occasional hot sex, and Y=a few emails a month, just light chit-chat with each other.
     Why is Y such a high price, that most men don’t seem willing to pay it? Or do they not understand the transaction? If not, shouldn’t those pickup artist classes include five minutes of instruction on how to keep a woman happy enough that she’ll come back for more when you want it, rather than badmouth you to her friends?

159. @ 152: You make a lot of sense. Great sex, or even anticipating mind-blowing nirvana-state sex, is one thing. It only fills the god-shaped hole for only so long, and then people are again faced with the inevitable prospect of tending to what troubles them, and leaves them devoid of any real satisfaction, or longer-term health and happiness.

     If people came into relationships knowing who they are and their true wants and needs, then a lot of the above would be eradicated. I guess it takes life experience, time and a blessed connection with a significant other to initiate this realization.

     Well said, how you said it; and with many less words than I did lol. Thanks for a good read everyone. Cheers to one and all who read…..

160. @147: Did Babes in Toyland go out of business?

161. For most people, successful relationships, marriages in particular, require a lot of work beyond dealing with the daily hassles that is life.

     I don’t know if I’d make the effort or sacrifices for a poly, monogamish, or nonmonogamous relationships; but then that’s just me and how I’m wired.

     There are a lot of demands on a person’s time and everyone has to prioritize things and people. Priorities change constantly and it is very easy to lose track of time or take things and people for granted (consciously as well as subconsciously)

162. Ms Erica – I sense a book deal somewhere here.

     Unless you cater to more (or less?) of a niche market than one might expect, it’s hard to imagine you having to resort to the kind of men who take PUA classes (or is that what you like?). Had this been some other sort of man, the answer might be to date PUA class instructors, but it seems almost impossible to imagine you with someone who is best described by words I don’t use.

163. @auntie griz: I think this is what you’re looking for (it’s just Babeland now!):
     http://www.babeland.com/

164. @166 – people who write books anonymously are always outed. I don’t want to be outed, so I can’t publish in any serious way. But thanks for your kind words.

     I had an interesting talk with Mr. P. over lunch about my desire for ongoing email contact. We decided that (a) maybe I should learn more about sports, to provide a topic for the idle chit-chat; and (b) maybe I don’t want the chit-chat as much as I think I do. I decided that I like the guys who write once to say “glad to hear you got home safely” and then write again (even after a month or two) to say, “I’d love to see you; can we find a time in the next week or so?”

     It’s the ones who only write at 11pm, to say “Are you free now?” – that’s what pisses me off. Seems to treat me as a widget, not a person. But that’s fine; maybe it works for them. Even if two people find each other attractive, they may not be a good match; that’s a basic rule of dating. I just have to keep it in mind.

165. @167 nocutename: Thanks for the link! That’s right–I’d forgotten that they changed to Babeland. I’m subscribing to their newsletter.
     I’m still in search of a Brad Pitt doll…..sighhhhhh.
     Oh, well. A girl can erotically dream.

166. @EricaP:

     First of all, if you don’t want to make sports chat ordinarily, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try and learn enough about a subject you’re not interested in for its own sake to try and make chit chat you hope will keep an inconsiderate boor interested enough in you to cough up a modicum of interaction.

     Second, I don’t think that men find making sports talk sexy or flirtatious, and as far as I can tell, that would be the best goal of the conversations, right? I mean, you’re not looking for a friendship based on shared political views, or office gossip, or a mutual love for an arcane subject. You’re looking for an ongoing fuck buddy, an FWB more about the benefits than the friendship. So what you want from the idle chatter is to keep the flirtation going, so that you’ll both (a key word, given the scenario you’ve described so well) feel desired and want to get together and enjoy each other again. Sports chat isn’t going to do that.

     Thirdly, I have to question whether anything you study up on to make yourself more “follow-through-worthy” is ever going to work with someone so inconsiderate and boorish or (with apologies) “just not that into you.” I think you’d be better cutting your losses, refining your search and more carefully vetting to begin with your partner pool.

     But I have to say, that if the sports chat was Mr. P’s idea, than I have to question his intentions. I know he’s your Dom; does he want to humiliate you? Not want you to have a regular, steady extramarital partner?

167. @161

     Erica, I never had that kind of experience, I typically had a lot of the opposite. (I wanted NSA they wanted me to be their girlfriend)

     The kind of behaviour you’re talking about is probably from them having too much of that kind of experience. So they’re extra dickish as a preemptive measure (so you don’t get any ideas in that pretty head of yours). A lot of women (and men) get into NSA and then develop the feelings. They’re probably just doing a shoddy and immature job trying to prevent that from happening.

     In my own experience the cliche that guys act distant/assholey once they’ve slept with a woman is complete bull. I found guys were much nicer/friendlier/etc after I slept with them. So your story intrigues me.

     I might hazard a guess that it has a bit to do with the personality you’re going for and you might want to weed out that type of men pre-encounter.

168. @mydriasis

     “Try doing lines in my underwear in the middle of the afternoon, off the top of my head.”

     Sounds like an impressive trick.

169. @EricaP: You said:
     “It’s the ones who only write at 11pm, to say “Are you free now?” – that’s what pisses me off. Seems to treat me as a widget, not a person. But that’s fine; maybe it works for them.”

     I suggest that it isn’t “fine” at all. You aren’t a widget, and you’ve just said you don’t like being treated as something one step above a fleshlight, which is reasonable. So why do you immediately back-pedal and cut them some slack. Because it allows you to continue to put up with behavior you’d never approve for your friends, your sister, or your own daughter. You are always counseling women who write in to this column to have more sexual agency or make themselves and their *pleasure* more a priority.

     Yet you don’t take your own advice, and try to talk yourself out of a perfectly understandable irritation, which should lead to your unwillingness to have anything further to do with these bozos and instead set yourself up to continue taking expressions of disrespect as your due.

     I know you like to sub, but this isn’t really the form you want that subbing to take, is it?

170. @171/173 – the sports was my idea; I was trying to think about what I would want us to chit-chat about, and then I questioned why it should be my chosen topic, rather than something of interest to them. You’re right – sports isn’t my thing and would seem fake.

     @172, Some guys clearly do this (see @154, as well as my recent experience). And, yes, I should be weeding them out, not figuring out how to get them to do chit chat.

     @175 – I don’t say yes to their booty calls. I just mean: I don’t need to try to persuade them of the error of their ways. If they’re doing it that way, maybe that’s working for them (with other women). Not my problem.

171. @171 – “You’re looking for an ongoing fuck buddy, an FWB more about the benefits than the friendship.” Actually, I’ve come to prefer real friendships that also include sex. I have that with a couple of people from my BDSM circle, and that’s working out well. I got annoyed with a couple of other men, whose company I enjoyed in and out of bed… and I guess I got ahead of myself in thinking we were becoming friends-who-fuck, rather than just a booty call.

172. @178:
     Sorry I misunderstood your earlier posts.
     I didn’t mean to give unwanted advice.
     Hope it works out the way you want it to.

173. nocutename, your advice @171 was right on, and helpful. I just wanted to clarify my position on sex with friends 🙂

174. @176: Why not? Guys–and gals—into sports would love it.

175. @181 I wonder if there’s a sports blog for people who don’t keep up with sports much but want to avoid asking stupid questions. A place that explains: these are the ten things people will be talking about this week, and why.

176. @182, found 1 so far

     http://www.businessinsider.com/sports-we…

     It seems to give some highlights. It might at least give you an idea of things to read further into…

177. Whoops! Thats an old link. Probably better just to hit their main page:

     http://www.businessinsider.com/sportspag…

178. Though, I do agree that learning about a topic that doesn’t interest you just to make conversation is probably not a good idea, it may be worthwhile to learn a bit and see if it does pique your interest.

     Personally, I enjoy football, but that’s about it for sports. And, while I’ll watch pretty much any team, I’m really only concerned about 1. The other games/stats are just so I’m familiar with how things affect “my” team. But, I’ve learned that I can appreciate other sports as well. When I lived in a house full of basketball fans, they were impressed that I came to understand the game so quickly (they thought I was just reading or playing on my phone). So it is possible to find that, with the right people sports that seemed boring to watch before can be interesting.*

     *I still can’t find anyone to make me enjoy watching golf…

179. Man, I find sports painfully boring. The only thing I find even slightly interesting is fighting. Mostly because you generally don’t need an in-depth understanding of rules to follow it and also because who doesn’t love violence and blood?

     @181 Call me old-fashioned but no guy (or gal) who wanted to get in my pants bothered to try converting me to sportsfandom. They also didn’t seem disappointed that what they were angling for is actually my sport of choice.

180. @ 170: I’m with you. If one or the other within a couple is into sports and the one is not, it makes it possibly annoying to have stop the action and explain things to someone who maybe doesn’t get it at all, and maybe never will.

     I’ve found over time that it’s sometimes less about what a couple’s individual interests are than it is about their shared ability for being into what they like and do.

     Sometimes people can turn you on to something that you used to find disinteresting. I’m not that versed in sports myself, but if I am around someone who has an infectious-enough way of enjoying it all; having a passion for what they like; it can rub off on you and get you into it all by way of naturally-spreading enthusiasm.

     Learning about not only yourself but the world through someone else’s eyes: it can be a beautiful thing. If you’re lucky, you can find the right match who complements you without it ever becoming static, stagnant or passionless.

     I dig it when anyone knows what they are talking about. Knowledge: knowing your shit. I gravitate towards that sort of thing.

     Great chain of replies this week in here, not that other weeks aren’t any good or anything lol 🙂 .

     Take Care, Everyone. Cheers. +~+~

181. @ 170: I’m with you. If one or the other within a couple is into sports and the one is not, it makes it possibly annoying to have stop the action and explain things to someone who maybe doesn’t get it at all, and maybe never will.

     I’ve found over time that it’s sometimes less about what a couple’s individual interests are than it is about their shared ability for being into what they like and do.

     Sometimes people can turn you on to something that you used to find disinteresting. I’m not that versed in sports myself, but if I am around someone who has an infectious-enough way of enjoying it all; having a passion for what they like; it can rub off on you and get you into it all by way of naturally-spreading enthusiasm.

     Learning about not only yourself but the world through someone else’s eyes: it can be a beautiful thing. If you’re lucky, you can find the right match who complements you without it ever becoming static, stagnant or passionless.

     I dig it when anyone knows what they are talking about. Knowledge: knowing your shit. I gravitate towards that sort of thing.

     Great chain of replies this week in here, not that other weeks aren’t any good or anything lol 🙂 .

     Take Care, Everyone. Cheers. +~+~

182. @183/184 – thanks! bookmarked.

183. Ms Erica reminds me of Dr Joyce Brothers, who deliberately became an expert on (if memory serves) boxing statistics in order to win legitimately on the $64,000 Question.

184. @EricaP: Regarding your NSA issues: I just ended a FWB situation. I met a cool, non-psycho, attractive woman through a sex site. We had enough in common to do more than just fuck–phone conversation, text, hang out, fix dinner after, catch the occasional movie, etc. Then she started staying overnight. Then she invited me to her father’s house for Thanksgiving. All this after we had an explicit conversation about the NSA nature of our relationship.

     It was nominally an NSA arrangement, but things were drifting in another direction. That can happen and there’s nothing wrong when it does. But I felt like a dick whenever I made an effort to alter that course.

     It’s a fine line keeping things on a “just friends” basis. There’s a lot of social conditioning to overcome regarding the progressive nature of relationships. Besides, to borrow from Woody Allen, relationships are like sharks–they move forward or they die.

185. Where are our manners? @EricaP: I would be happy to answer any questions you have regarding sports.

186. @182 re my post @181: I meant that as a compliment. You’re so cool and upbeat, I thought you were also into sports. You offer really good suggestions, tips, and advice.

     I haven’t been up on sports since my divorce, but get occasionally curious as to how the Mariners, Seahawks, Huskies, and Thunderbirds are doing.

     @192 repete: So—-how are the UW & WSU football and basketball teams doing? Will the Seahawks make the playoffs? It seems like the only time I ever see hockey anymore is if I’m watching “Slap Shot” on my DVD player.

187. “Most married couples want to be perceived as monogamous even—especially!—when they’re not.”

     Soooo, how do you go about being non-monogamous when everybody you know thinks you’re monogamous (and thus a cheating pig for behaving otherwise)?

188. @194 OKCupid. Or AdultFriendFinder. Or attending swinger parties / poly get-togethers / sex clubs. And you don’t fuck crazy, because crazy is likely to sit on your doorstep in tears after the inevitable breakup.

189. @186 mydriasis: Nobody is pressuring you into being a sports fan.
     Just as I wouldn’t automatically expect you to be a rabid hockey fan if you’re Canadian, eh?

190. @186: Did you not see my post to EricaP in @193?

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