I’m a happily married woman. I have a great sex life with my husband of many years. He’s helped me discover things I didn’t know about myself sexually. The problem: Three years ago, my first love contacted me after 23 years. He was married at the time, although he didn’t want to be, and told me that he never stopped loving me. We have been having sexy e-chats ever since. My loving, GGG husband says that I can help my old flame out if I wish. What would you do in this situation?

Chick With 2 Dicks

What would I do? Besides thank my lucky stars, kiss my loving, GGG husband, and fuck the shit out of the other guy?

A few things, CW2D.

I would think hard—brainhard, not junkhard—about the potential powderkegginess of the situation. Not the powderkegginess of the having-sex-with-someone-other-than-my-husband-with-my-husband’s-consent situation, but the possible-shitstorm-that-could-ensue-after-fucking-this-particular-someone-who-isn’t-my-husband situation.

This Particular Someone says he’s still in love with you, CW2D. That’s nice. Are you still in love with TPS? If not, what happens if fucking TPS reignites dormant feelings for TPS that, oh, three years (!) of texting and sexting haven’t? Even if you don’t feel any more strongly for TPS after fucking him, CW2D, what if TPS decides that you really are the one-and-only love of his life and that he absolutely, positively has to have you all to himself?

TPS isn’t some rando, as the kids say. You two share a history, CW2D, and TPS could present—or become—a threat to the stability of your happy, GGG marriage. So could a complete stranger you met on the street or online, of course, but the emotional stakes and potential for complications are much, much higher with TPS than they would be with some other dude.

So before you do TPS, CW2D, you need to think brainhard about these issues and discuss them at length with your husband. And if you decide to go ahead with it after hashing this shit out with your husband, CW2D, be clear with TPS about what it is you want. If all you’re interested in is a friendship, some affection, and a little non-cyber sex for old time’s sake—if leaving your husband, or being poly, is out of the question—TPS needs to know that before you “help him out.”

(A note to everyone already composing angry e-mails about the qualified “go for it” I gave to CW2D: 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.)

I am 22, standing in a bookstore on Castro Street—this is many years ago, just after I dropped out of Bible college and hitchhiked to San Francisco—looking at a gay BDSM magazine for the first time in my life, trying to hide my erection, reading a story about a Master who makes his naked slave carry to his Master’s friends a six-pack of beer that’s hanging from a rope that’s tied to his nuts. To my horror, I shoot a load in my pants without touching myself.

My problem: A bit older now, I’m still very much that boy in the bookstore. The things that turn me on are what my own mind—still brainwashed by Southern Baptists—deems “bad.” I tell myself it’s okay to embrace my “kinks.” I tell myself to stop analyzing why I’m turned on by forced-exhibitionistic-sex-slave fantasies and just accept them. The problem is that I perceive my fantasies as reactionary: They exist by definition in reaction to my upbringing. What is my hard-on but a big “fuck you” to the preachers, prudes, and family members who made me miserable?

What would turn me on if I could get free of the whole fucked-up system? Am I asking questions that shouldn’t be asked? Should I just enjoy the fact that I’m turned on by humiliation and seek safe and sane situations to act out my fantasies?

Having A Rough Day

There are people who do not share your craycrayfundy/biblestudy life experiences, HARD, who are nevertheless turned on by the exact same things you are. Human beings are primates, our cultures and societies involve all sorts of overt and covert power dynamics, and almost all humans wind up eroticizing those power dynamics to greater or lesser extents. Some of us eroticize them in subtle ways (pleasure taken in “servicing” a partner, a desire to be held down, a mild foot fetish), others more baroquely (elaborate D/s scenarios complete with props, costumes, and clearly defined roles), but power, as a gross old man once observed, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Even if we could determine that your kinks were shaped by your upbringing, HARD, the shit that turns you on is still going to turn you on. And if your kinks are a “fuck you” to the preachers, prudes, and family members who made you miserable—that’s a “fuck you” they earned. Let them have it. (I mean it: Take pictures. Mail ’em to that preacher.)

And remember: There are people out there having vanilla, hetero, missionary intercourse in unhealthy, abusive relationships, HARD. You can explore your sexuality in healthy or unhealthy ways, but you can’t escape who you are and what turns you on. So stop beating yourself up, HARD, and go find a nice, kinky guy who takes that responsibility off your hands. (Here’s some great advice for gay guys just beginning to explore BDSM: tinyurl.com/bensten.)

Reading your column made me a supporter of the LGBT community. The LGBT community deserves equal rights, just like any other group of citizens. Period. However, I must protest Kate Bornstein’s comments in a recent column. She said that sex-positive heterosexuals who support the LBGT community are not “straight” men, but “queer heterosexual” men. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get people who are not gay to support LGBT equality because they’re afraid that someone will call their straightness into question. Don’t make it harder.

Liberal And Straight

Being a big ol’ queer myself, LAS, I viewed Kate’s suggestion as a compliment. But your point is well taken, everyone gets to choose his or her own label, and you’re straight in my book.

DID YOU MAKE AN “IT GETS BETTER” VIDEO? If you identify as LGBT, you’re 18 years of age or older, and you made or appeared in an “It Gets Better” video, science—science!—wants to hear from you about your perspectives and experiences. If you have 15–20 minutes to spare, please take this survey: http://z.umn.edu/itgetsbetter.

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.

mail@savagelove.net

@fakedansavage on Twitter

190 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. 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.”

  2. @ 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.

  3. @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.

  4. 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

  5. @ 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.

  6. 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.

  7. @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.

  8. 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.

  9. What a great thread!

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

    Ankylosaur – nice translation.

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

    Plus I kind of like the monogamish closet. It’s hot having a double life. 🙂

  10. @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?

  11. @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.

  12. @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?

  13. 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.

  14. @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.’ 🙂

  15. “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.

  16. 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!

  17. @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.

  18. 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?

  19. #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.

  20. 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.

  21. “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.

  22. @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.)

  23. @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.)

  25. 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.

  26. 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.

  27. 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?

  28. 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.

  29. 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.

  30. 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.

  33. 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.

  35. @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?

  36. @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.

  38. @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?

  39. 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.

  40. 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?

  41. @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.

  42. (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 🙂

  43. 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.

  44. @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.

  49. @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!

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