My husband is a very kinky submissive man. When we were dating, I found out that he had been talking to multiple people online and that he had met up with a professional dom a couple of times. I felt betrayed that he had done this all behind my back, even though I had told him that I would be down with him seeing a dom. (I even offered to buy him a session for his birthday!)
We got through it, and now our sex life is amazing. I tie him up, I lock his dick up, I dress him up. All I ask in return is that he be honest with me about who he’s talking with online. Is that unreasonable? I know he chats with “women” online as a “woman,” and I’m okay with that so long as I’m made aware of it. But today I found pictures on his phone of his cock in the chastity device I keep him in. He tried to lie but he came clean: He was chatting with a woman, it came out that he was a man, and she wanted to see pictures of his cock in his chastity belt.
Why lie? Honest to God, if he would have just told me the day he sent the pictures that he sent someone pictures of his cock, I would be okay with it! I also found another e-mail account he never told me about that he’s using when he chats online as a woman. Again, no big deal! But I was under the impression that he used just this one chat program for chatting! Why hide it? My vanilla friends will be no help in this matter, and I feel pretty heartbroken. So I’m asking you.
He Isn’t Telling Me Everything
Before I can respond to your question, HITME, I’ve gotta sacrifice a goat to the snooping-is-always-wrong Gods, or the snooping-
is-always-wrong jihadists will cut my head off. It’ll just take a sec: Snooping is always wrong! You invaded your husband’s privacy! That was wrong! WRONG!
Moving on…
Your husband hit the jackpot when he met you, HITME. There aren’t a lot of women out there who would embrace—much less marry—a man with his particular collection of kinks. You’ve been GGG and all you’ve asked in return is… total transparency and the immediate, real-time disclosure of all outside flirtations and contacts as they happen. Why can’t the kinky ingrate honor this agreement? Only he knows the answer to that question, HITME, but I suspect one of two issues is at play…
Your husband may be ashamed—he may have been brutally shamed in past relationships—about the extent of his kinks and about just how much of his time and erotic energy his kinks consume. You may be completely sincere when you tell him you’re okay with everything, HITME, so long as there’s immediate and full disclosure. But he may fear that sharing the full extent of his online activities will leave you feeling either squicked out or threatened. So he downplays and minimizes, disclosing some but not all, because he doesn’t want to lose you. If this is the issue, impress upon your husband that hiding shit from you represents a bigger threat to his marriage than full disclosure ever could.
Or…
Having and keeping sexual secrets may turn your husband on, HITME, and having a secret life could be another one of his kinks. Even if this is the issue, HITME, I think you two should be able to come to mutually agreeable terms that accommodate both his desire to have a secret and your need for full disclosure.
Here’s a potential compromise: He doesn’t keep anything from you, HITME, but he doesn’t disclose in real time. So long as he’s not being unsafe or neglectful, so long as his online activities remain online-only, he can carry on flirting and texting and pic swapping. But every few months, you get to depose his submissive ass. You get to sit him down and ask him questions, and he answers all your questions truthfully and opens up about any current secrets that your questions didn’t uncover. This way, he can have all the erotic secrets he wants (he’ll just have to make new ones every few months), and you can have the transparency you need (you just won’t have it immediately). Good luck.
I’m a 29-year-old gay guy who’s not sure where to find what I’m looking for. I’m turned on by the idea of a dominant guy, but most of the guys I attract are pure vanilla. When I look online at the fetish-friendly dating sites, most of the dom guys say shit like “If you have a list of things you will and won’t do, you’re not a sub.” I want to give up control, but I don’t want to be some guy’s “bitch.” Can there be dominance without degradation? Is a boyfriend who’s an equal in life but in charge in the bedroom a unicorn? Where do I look?
Needs Include Controlling Empathy
The dominant boyfriend you’re looking for is out there somewhere, NICE, you just need to keep looking. And remember: Sometimes, dominant boyfriends are made, not born. By which I mean: Don’t rule out the vanilla boys you attract. A guy who likes you is gonna want to meet your needs, sexual and otherwise. If you give a vanilla boy a chance, and if you’re honest about what turns you on, you may find that you awaken something in one of those vanilla guys that was there all along—a little dominant streak—but would’ve lain dormant if it weren’t for you.
And you were right to run from those dominant tops who insisted that “true subs” don’t have preferences, limits, or lists, NICE. Not even submissive guys who are into degradation and being someone’s “bitch” should fall for—or submit to—that kind of crap.
Your question last week from the guy who “stumbled over” his brother’s femdom sex blog reminded me of a funny story: My little brother came out to my conservative-but-not-particularly-religious Jewish parents in 1995. It was rough. Our parents refused to help pay for my wedding because I insisted on inviting my brother and his boyfriend. Mom and Dad are now rightly embarrassed by their behavior and they worship his husband. (It helps that my brother married a doctor—some stereotypes are true.)
Last year, my parents found out that my older brother—their straight son—is kinky. A vindictive ex hacked into his e-mail and sent a letter to everyone in his address book. Big bro has a dungeon, his current girlfriend is his slave, he’s made BDSM porn. The e-mail came with pictures no mother would want to see. Mom, completely distraught, called her gay son: “Why can’t Josh have a normal relationship!” she cried. “Like yours!”
So far as Mom is concerned, her gay son is normal and her straight son is a freak. Is that progress, Dan?
Brothers Done Shocking Mom
I don’t know if it’s progress, BDSM, but it’s hilarious. And I trust that you’re sticking up for your kinky straight brother now just like you stuck up for your gay brother back in the day.
Be sure to listen to me interrogate Ira Glass on the Savage Lovecast this week—when he’s allowed to make fart jokes, he’s a whole new man: thestranger.com/savage.
@fakedansavage on Twitter
Man, I definitely feel where NICE is coming from. I’m kinda switchy, and there are a lot of elements of kink that appeal to me from both top and bottom perspectives, but humiliation and degradation are HUGE turn-offs.
I don’t know, man, hang in there. Maybe look around for somebody who’s a little bit sensitive and switchy, not specifically for a top. Like Dan said, somebody can learn to be a top even if they don’t think of themselves that way already.
@46, 51 — part of the problem is alluded to when Dan talks about monogamish relationships and monogamy being hard: it’s difficult for someone to be everything for someone else. Not simply because we can’t, but because the person for whom we would like to be ‘everything’, er, doesn’t want that either.
I sometimes think it’s better to let go of any absolute aspirations (in the philosophical sense) and concentrate on the good things we do share, when we’re thinking about ‘we’; and be proud of the fact that our SOs also have their own ‘I’ place of autonomy. Whatever my SO ‘truly’ is, it’s more than what I see; and so am I. And in that there is something that is fundamentally positive.
I love the advice to HITME. Spot on, I think.
NICE: The truth is no relationship is ever the fantasy you would make it out to be. The Dom you are seeking is out there but being human he will fall short sometimes.
Regarding letter number 1, you left out a 3rd possibility, Dan. Maybe he’s a complete jerk who is flirting with other people online and doesn’t care how his partner feels about it, even though he has it pretty damn good.
@31, I object to “the snooping is ok if you find something” bit.
I understand she feels violated; I think she probably has been, but I also think expectations have to be appropriate. He is engaging in activities that she has essentially cleared in the singular, but not the plural. I think Dan is onto something when he talks about how much time and energy the husband invests.
@51 EricaP
Is full disclosure at all times necessary for there to be complete honesty? Does simply not being able to know some things, even things that are not a violation of your boundaries, drive you crazy?
@54 ankylosaur
Beautifully put.
NICE, what @24, @27, & @56 said in spades.
Particularly while you’re a newbie, do not engage with someone who uses the phrase “not a true sub” or gives you any dismissive attitude about your limits.
It’s a little hard to determine where on the kink scale you’re falling. There’s nothing wrong with being a scene sub (which sounds a bit like what you’re describing). It also sounds like you’ve done your research. At this point what you need is patience, a bit of luck, and a large enough pool to fish in. If you’re not in a metro area where there’s a visible kink community, go to an event (I’d suggest something medium scale to start with rather than IML or Folsom–they’re too damn big and all tourists). Go with a wingman if you can. Go without expectation. Chat with people. Talk about what you’re into (or think you’re into). See what presents itself.
And yes, dominance without degradation is totally possible. It’s not terribly common (there’s an implicit element of degradation in D/s). When does the line get crossed into degradation for you? Be as flexible as you can with that in seeking partners. They don’t know where your boundaries are, and their experience may be with someone who wanted the degradation, so keep the lines of communication open.
Good luck and have fun.
@58 it was #8 who said snooping is okay if you find something. That’s not my point.
Me, I think people should evaluate early on if they are snooping-compatible with their partners, and not expect that other person will change radically to meet their needs. People soon figure out that I’m endlessly curious; if someone sees that curiosity as unacceptably intrusive (or as a sign of paranoia), they should just dump me. Same if they see me as too indiscreet. It’s not likely to change.
I think that the husband in the first letter has it pretty darn good. He ought to be more appreciative of his partner and consider the feelings of someone other than himself.
@59 None of this drives me crazy. Preferring to know what’s going on in his life is different from going crazy if I don’t know.
And I’m getting more used to the idea of reasonable transparency rather than complete transparency.
But there are consequences: I don’t trust him implicitly the way I used to a few years ago. I watch his actions, rather than assuming he’ll keep his promises. That disturbs him, but he understands what it comes out of.
I said snooping without just cause is wrong and eliminated jealousy and paranoia as justifications for snooping. I repeat, no one has the right to so break trust with someone that they endanger that person’s health, well being, and/or life. It is the same standard used by police and the government with respect to criminal activity and mental illness. A person’s right to privacy has never been absolute and is always curtailed when their actions represent a danger to themselves or others. I don’t say snooping is always justified or always wrong. It depends on the circumstances.
I feel like these discussions tend to devolve into trying to find a bright-line rule, and I think that gets away from Dan’s goal of trying to find a workable solution, so with that mindset…
@63 I agree with you completely – they should find out early on if they’re compatible with the level of disclosure/privacy each partner needs. You can remove all of the sex/kinky from the equation and substitute any other relationship issue you like, and this question is just as important. I definitely think she’s got a right to be upset, which lead me to…
@64 …he does have it good. She’s been flexible and met him, he needs to be much more considerate of her feelings and needs.
I am just reminded of the parable of the scorpion and the frog (not in the bible, I know), and thinking she may find it easier to adjust her expectations.
I would just like to say that this is yet another Savage Love/SL comment thread that has given me immense insight on my own marriage.
Also, it seems to me that, as a general rule (with plentiful exceptions), women tend to be more on the “I want to know everything as it happens, and I tell you everything as it happens”, whereas men tend to want more allowances for secrecy. Anyone agree/disagree?
My boyfriend and I don’t invade each other’s privacy, but we don’t maintain or expect ridiculous amounts of it either. He can look over my shoulder when I’m typing, answer texts on my phone, check something in my email if I forget and have to call him for it, etc, and I do the same. And hell yeah if I saw an email with a suspicious tag line, or he was acting all weird about his phone, I would definitely snoop.
@68 the cheesegirl
That’s my feeling– that I want a little privacy. She says she wants the real time data thing but doesn’t exactly walk the talk. I trust her absolutely but she really should admit that she doesn’t tell me everything.
I am a woman who values privacy, independence and solitude and who (for the time being at least) knows my bf isn’t looking for anything beyond my mad skillz. (Yes of course he has fantasies.)
But still. Anyone who says they can run across an SO’s open email or other account and resist the temptation to look is either lying or superhuman.
And anyone who expects complete transparency is delusional. For one, that presupposes the SO knowing what they want/feel themselves, which is rare enough.
I agree with EricaP that snooping compatibility needs to be discussed early on. I’m not an overly private person, but I do feel that my email account is sacred. I’ve told my last two girlfriends that if I ever discover that they’ve been in my email account that it is a deal breaker and there will be no second chances. I was very upfront and honest about it, “you can go through my clothes, wallet, phone, whatever, but the second you look through my email account uninvited we’re over.” I never leave anything open on a shared computer, because I feel that if you do that then you’re just asking for trouble. My last gf was overly inquisitive, but since she knew how strongly I felt about it, never (to the best of my knowledge) went into my account. My current gf wouldn’t have even thought of doing it anyway, so it isn’t an issue. Its one more important thing that needs to be discussed early, and potentially often.
As regards HITME’s letter, here’s another possibility, which is how I was reading it: maybe she claims to be (and wants to be) more GGG than she is. Maybe she gives permission to indulge his kinks because it’s what she believes she SHOULD do, but each time he tries she finds some reason why THAT way was not acceptable, and so he feels the only real way to indulge his kink is to do it in secret.
Basically, maybe she is, deep down, bothered by the kink, and is using his not telling her of every instance individually as a means of rationalizing her displeasure after the fact.
I think Dan missed the point with HITME. There’s no right or wrong answer regarding whether or not she has the right to know about the chatting, but she definitely has the right to have her husband behave as he’s agreed to behave. He agreed to disclose, then he passive-aggressively didn’t disclose.
The real question is what information does she want and why will it make her not feel heartbroken. She claims that she’s OK with the chatting and sessioning, but clearly she’s not. She hit the roof when she first caught him, and she’s taken to spying to try to catch him. Is it any wonder he hasn’t taken her at her word that she’s OK with it?
Would she be OK with a blanket, “I chat every day. Just assume that.”? Because that’s probably what we’re dealing with here. What about not knowing about the chatting breaks her heart?
Once she figures out why this bothers her so much, they need to make a new arrangement that they can both live with. Maybe she really doesn’t want to know when he’s chatting. This would be like the arrangement I have with my wife with respect to masturbation. She doesn’t want to walk in on me, so there’s a certain amount of intentional ignorance, i.e. if she wakes up at 2am to go pee and I’m not in the room, she doesn’t go try to find me!
Maybe another option would be that he needs to ask for permission. He wants her to own him. Maybe that would be showing her enough respect that she wouldn’t feel heartbroken.
@74 – “She claims that she’s OK with the chatting and sessioning, but clearly she’s not.”
Perhaps it’s not the chatting and sessioning that she’s upset by, but the fact that her husband is deliberately witholding information from her. Personally, I’d be way more hurt that my partner was hiding things from me after agreeing to be completely honest and transparent.
@EricaP, who wrote:
Indeed. But since human beings are so convoluted, I learned early on that we have to watch other people’s actions. Not because other people are ‘bad’, but because… because we ourselves often don’t know exactly why we do what we do. If asked for reason or rhyme, or at least a pattern, we come up with something that later on we’ll have to adhere to in order not to sound inconsistent, and that feels like a constraint.
Implicit trust is a good idea in principle, but because we’re such beings with an inherent element of chaos in it, it ends up never lasting very long, or then being restricted to only certain things. (I have implicit trust that my wife will take care of our daughter to the best of her knowledge in my absence; she has the same trust in me. Whether or not she’ll keep her promise of not working till late at night on Saturdays and going to sleep at a more reasonable time, that I don’t know. Because I can’t also really guarantee that I’ll keep my own promises, even though I fully intend to.)
@EricaP, in fact, if personal observation is taken into account, it is interesting to note down precisely what things end up being difficult to adhere to, what promises are difficult to keep (even though you really wanted to, and you agree it’s a good idea). Both for ourselves — we may learn a few things about ourselves we don’t know yet — and for our relationships — we may learn a few things about our partners that they aren’t articulating, or maybe even don’t know themselves yet.
I think @71 is saying the same thing I am about being realistic about what to expect from other human being.
@74 – I like your take on this. Everyone has taken her at face value when she says she encourages and supports it, but there is the art of damning with faint praise, and she may not in reality be accepting of his kink.
@ 57: truthspeaker. If I may quote you:
“Regarding letter number 1, or a guy named Bi-Bi Bob, you left out a 3rd possibility, Dan. Maybe he’s a complete jerk who is flirting with other people online and doesn’t care how his partner feels about it, even though he has it pretty damn good.”
Spot on truth you speak here. Well said. Because what you spoke of is how I think and feel about the above lovely mindfuck of man (BB Bob), I now feel even more right and confident about letting go of that sort of cruel nonsense.
…. @ 79 continued….
I’m gay, not bi. Doesn’t matter who you are, what you have or what bullshit you try to sell me: I won’t be with someone who pitches for both teams. In other words, I think this is over.
Another possibility for the first letter is that the person writing in isn’t as GGG to their BF as indicated. They seem on the defensive “I’d approve if he just told me!” I think he may have told in the past and not liked the response.
Just listened to the podcast. Hearing Ira Glass say “Take the cock out of your mouth” was the best thing ever. Hot and adorable at the same time.
Dan, you need to have guest hosts more often–it really freshens up the podcast; it makes you funnier to have someone there to riff off of. I loved the Lucy shows mostly b/c having her there made you that much more entertaining.
@48 – As a sometimes x-dresser and heteroflexible guy, yep, you’ve pretty well nailed it. Minus the bondage and chastity part, but just speaking for me.
Are you a man or a woman?
for Dan and Terry–Mazel tov!
Hey… HITME here. I was worried to log on here and possibly find people completely slaying me but I’m pleasantly surprised to see there was definitely some more good tips. Thanks everyone. The first post made me laugh out loud.
@o76923 @81
>> They seem on the defensive “I’d approve if he just told me!”
>> I think he may have told in the past and not liked the response.
I agree with you. I think that’s what happened when he actually got himself a Dom. She freaked out, despite saying she was okay with it and would even pay for it.
HITME here… thanks for being nice, and the extra advice is appreciated too. I loved the first post!
NICE, I’ve never found the fetish dating sites particularly helpful. They’re filled with fantasists who never go further than their laptops and who have an unrealistic, overly simplistic, binary understanding of BDSM. They just. don’t. get. it.
I’d say keep going with the vanilla–they can be surprising and a lot more authentic. Another option would be to look for a local “munch” (Google: BDSM munch) which is a *social* gathering for BDSM folks. It’s not a play party, it’s usually held at an un-sceney restaurant, and people don’t dress up for it. It can be a great way to find actual kinksters.
Good luck!
Welcome, HITME! Thanks for joining in… if you have more to add about your situation, or your thoughts on how workable the advice seems, we’re all ears 🙂
@87: Welcome HITME. Here’s my perspective, FWIW.
My wife couldn’t be any less interested about what I do with my computer – porn, chat, hookup sites, whatever – as long as it doesn’t involve kids, a real-life relationship, or me losing all of our money.
But if she did, I would tell her that she should just assume that I have done or will do just about any kind of computerized sexual interaction she can think of, and hell no, I will not file a report every time I do.
@76/77 – good advice, ankylosaur. I’m working on finding the right tone when he promises something. I don’t want to be dismissive/contemptuous of his promise (to be home for dinner, or take me out Friday night, or whatever), even as (internally) I don’t want to rely on it. I’m trying for a brisk manner, moving the conversation along…
And as you point out, there’s a similar issue when I promise things… I don’t want to undermine myself by saying something like: “Honey, I’ll pick up your dry-cleaning today, unless of course I forget [because I’m a ditz].”
I like your advice to note what things “end up being difficult to adhere to,” even as I also don’t want to obsess about our screw-ups and rehash it endlessly.
Growth while living in the moment… maybe I need to go back to my cognitive behavioral therapist for a touch-up…
@ 90, seandr: Sounds like someone I know, and would rather not know anymore, with all due respect to the scenario, and you, by extension:
“My wife couldn’t be any less interested about what I do with my computer – porn, chat, hookup sites, whatever – as long as it doesn’t involve kids, a real-life relationship, or me losing all of our money.”
That about says it all.
@84 – what’s the happy occasion?
Goodbye Bob. I’ll save you the trouble of running away from my ever wanting or needing you by me being the one to cut out first. Besides, I don’t belong here in any capacity. Sorry everyone: I needed to say this.. Peace.
The end as a beginning is still an end.
HITME, a question for you to seriously ponder: What exactly do you think you are gaining, by requiring full disclosure of an act that you claim to have already given the green light to?
I have a pretty strong guess at the answer to the converse of that question — the converse question being, “What do you think you are losing by his failure to disclose as per his agreement?” and the answer to that being “The loss is trust, as in what else isn’t he telling me about?” But is there in fact a corresponding gain for you when he does follow through and inform you? Or is the loss of trust when he doesn’t inform a one-sided, “lose-only” transaction?
It’s just that you have chosen a kind of odd place to draw your line in the sand. If you really were okay with him doing this, he shouldn’t have to inform you of it every time it happens, any more than he would need to inform you every time he went to the store for Oreos. For the sake of the analogy, he loves Oreos, and you don’t much care for them yourself, but you don’t mind him buying them…as long as he tells you? Does that not strike you as a weird thing to insist on?
Now, it isn’t entirely that simple; for starters, a session with a dom probably costs a hell of a lot more than a pack of cookies, and you have a right to make sure he isn’t draining the joint accounts. But I suspect that finances isn’t what worries you. Clearly there is an aspect to this behavior that you find threatening, and the wish to be informed whenever it happens is an attempt at obtaining some sense of control (however illusory it may be).
So my question to you is, what exactly (and I do mean exactly, as in “be specific”) do you hope to gain (or control) through the medium of full disclosure? Is there in fact anything to be gained by compliance, in contrast to the loss from non-compliance?
Second, related question is, how exactly does this activity make you feel threatened? And related to that, why isn’t he telling you, especially when he said he would? Are you doing something to make telling seem like a losing proposition to him?
Is there anything he could do to alleviate that feeling of threat for you? Perhaps something other than immediate disclosure?
BTW, his other online account for chatting “as a woman” is probably primarily for his own protection from the rest of the world, who probably wouldn’t be as understanding of his kinks as you are. Not in order to hide from you.
If that helps you relax and reduce the score of apparent lying by one item, I advise you to take it in that spirit.
The amount of mental gymnastics that sometimes go into elaborate explanations of personal ideologies.. It’s a bit like a blast of dead, dry leave bits in a gust of wind.. Trying to count how many bits of leaf are coming at you (because you can), but at the end of it all, it’s all just wind and leaves. Verbosity for the sake of it, and may the truth be damned for it bores us. Why I don’t relate and why I’m sure it will be no loss to anyone if the likes of me gets lost from these parts. Consider it done. Cheers.
“If that helps you relax and reduce the score of apparent lying by one item, I advise you to take it in that spirit.”
What if it’s more than one item, and you’re going on a multi-year resentment basis? Good time to cut your own shit loose and start over else, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah: I’d say so, so there you go then. Goodbye.
Hitme, got a girdle I can borrow?
@ 96:
“Are you doing something to make telling seem like a losing proposition to him?”
It sounds like she’s overanalyzing what doesn’t need to be overanalyzed: just tell the truth with a minimum of bullshit. True, it does bore some, resorting to that sort of thing, but it establishes character, trust and all-around-likeable integrity.
To some, that sort of thing doesn’t matter enough. More about the delightful mental circus and tricks galore for personal perverse amusement, and beyond-old claims of being much more complex than they actually are…
Saying so much, yet never saying anything real: the real boredom, devoid of any real heart.
A thumbnail synopis of an asshole like *YOU BI-BI BOB*/several zillion other names. Just waiting to get to a 100.
Ah, nevermind.
Literally.
@93 more than just opposite marriages are legal now in Washington state.