I am a 30-year-old woman,
married for five years to a man eight years my senior. Lately I have
become more aware that I am turned on by the idea of bondage,
specifically men locked up in chastity devices. I am ashamed because it
seems pretty perverse and disturbed.

My husband is a pretty dominant alpha-male
type. I am a relatively dominant personality, but I’m a bit submissive
around him in order to keep the peace, as he will not tolerate any
disagreement in certain situations. So I am wondering: Is this new
fetish springing from my frustration at being dominated by the man in
my life, or am I just becoming more aware of my proclivities as I get
older? Is this a sign of a psychological problem? Should I discuss this
at all with my husband?

Turning The Tables

The emotional dynamics in your
marriage—he won’t tolerate disagreement in “certain situations,”
you bite your tongue to avoid conflict—sound a hell of a lot more
perverse and disturbed to me than your growing awareness/acceptance of
your interest in bondage and chastity. Your interest in consensual
power exchange is as sexy as it is common, TTT, and your kinks don’t
require his constant submission, e.g., he’s not tied up once you untie
him, his dick isn’t locked up once you unlock it. His inability to
“tolerate any disagreement in certain situations,” on the other hand,
does require your constant submission.

No relationship lasts unless both partners
are willing to bite their tongues from time to time in the interests of
keeping the peace. But when someone says her husband “will not tolerate
any disagreement in certain situations,” that worries me. The list of
situations in which your husband won’t tolerate disagreement may be
short now, TTT, but if he realizes that he can control you with this
anger, the list is likely to grow. Be careful.

On to your fetish: It sounds like you were
always turned on by the idea of controlling a man; you write that
you’ve become “more aware” of this fetish, which leads me to believe
that you’ve had some awareness all along. Why is it coming to the
forefront now? It could have something to do with hitting your sexual
peak, which women do around 30, and it could be because your kinks go
so strongly against the grain of the established emotional dynamics of
your marriage.

I would encourage you to discuss your kinks
with your husband. They’re not anything out of the ordinary (or the
extraordinary, I should say), and lots of dominant dick
swingers—guys like your husband—secretly fantasize about
submission. The cliché about the high-powered CEO who goes
crawling to a professional dominant to get his ass beaten is a
cliché because it’s frequently true. Your husband could be one
of those guys—but you’ll never know until you ask.

I won’t bore you with the story of my
19 years in a sexless marriage. That must be one of the most common
complaints you get, and you’ve given plenty of good advice on the
topic, some of which I’ll be taking any minute now to keep me from
blowing my head off. What I want to know is, am I… is everyone
entitled to an active sex life?

He Only Really Needs Your Okay

I don’t need the whole story, HORNYO, but
you could’ve bored me with a few relevant details. For instance, has
your marriage been sexless for all 19 years of its existence? Or did
your sex life collapse at some point during those 19 years? Did the sex
end a year ago? Five years ago? Ten years ago? Fifteen?

But to answer your question: No one is
entitled to an active sex life. We are all entitled to freedom of
sexual expression—consensual sexual expression—but to
express your sexuality with others, you have to find or marry or rent a
willing sex partner. And while each has the right to seek sexual fulfillment,* HORNYO, sadly not all who seek shall find. Some
folks are unlucky or unfuckable or wind up trapped in marriages that
always were or have become sexless—which is where compassionate,
understanding sex workers and/or the Ashley Madison Agency (www.ashleymadison.com) come in
handy.

Back to your marriage: If you were doing
something wrong, HORNYO, if you destroyed your wife’s attraction to you
through neglect (or something worse), then you are obligated to make a
good-faith effort to undo the damage. But if the wife cut you off
because she simply isn’t interested in sex anymore—or if she
never was interested in sex—then you are entitled to seek what
sexual fulfillment you can find outside your marriage.

* Offer not good in Saudi Arabia or
Jamaica.

My boyfriend and his best friend are
close. Last summer, I noticed that when my boyfriend gets drunk he
tries to grab his friend’s ass, throws his arm around him, and sits
close to him. Then one day I found a pair of underwear in our bedroom
that belonged to my boyfriend’s best friend. My boyfriend said he
didn’t know how they got there. I figured he and his pal messed around
and he didn’t know how to talk about it honestly because he’s pretty
macho. I was jealous, but I asked myself if I could accept a bi
boyfriend and decided that I could.

So a few days ago, my boyfriend’s best
friend asks me if I tell my boyfriend everything he, the best friend,
tells me. I say no, not necessarily. So he asks me to promise not to
tell my boyfriend what he’s about to tell me. I say that depends. He
brings up the underwear incident and says that he called a prostitute
that night and fucked her in my bed, and that’s why his underwear was
in my room. He tells me that my boyfriend let me think they were gay
for each other rather than tell me that they called a hooker. And he
tells me my boyfriend didn’t touch the hooker—to which I say yeah
right.

Why did he tell me this? And what do I do
with it now? Please give me some advice. I feel like I can’t trust
either of them right now.

Secrets And Deceit

Why would your boyfriend’s best friend come
to you now, SAD, so many months after the Underwear Incident, and tell
you this involved, incriminating, improbable story and then swear you
to secrecy? Either he’s gone rogue on your boyfriend and made up all of
this crap about the hooker in an effort to sabotage your relationship,
SAD, or he and your boyfriend are concerned that you’re onto them and
this is some bizarre effort to cover their tracks, i.e., to offer some
excuse for the sole piece of incriminating evidence that indicates they
may be something more than best friends.

Fucking each other or not, your boyfriend’s
best friend is fucking with your head, and you’re under no obligation
to keep this conversation secret from your boyfriend—and your ass
is more than covered by that “that depends.” Talk it out with your
boyfriend, SAD, and tell him you want the truth. Is he
bisexual—emphasizing that you can live with bi—or is he
gay? Or is he really such a scumbag that he’d tag-team a hooker in your
bed with his best friend? Give him a chance to come clean and/or come
out. And if your gut tells you he’s lying, SAD, end it.

mail@savagelove.net

91 replies on “Savage Love”

  3. Good response to TTT. I must the comment about the spouse being unable to tolerate any disagreement in certain situations does concerns me.

  5. I was thinkin that SAD’s boyfriend put his BFF up to telling this preposterous story, made more “believable” with the “please don’t tell him I told you” caveat. Only a self-loathing homophobe would rather have his woman believe he ordered a hooker(whom he of course didn’t touch) than that he succumbed to some greek exploration.
    Too bad…if he wasn’t such a chickenshit, she could get in the middle of a manwhich and have some fun! OOOH!!! They could perform the sex act of my dreams, but for which I have no name… she and boyfriend are 69ing, BFF enters her. What’s that called? Anyone?

  10. @1: Jamaica and Saudi Arabia are very different countries; however, when it comes to the treatment of homosexuals, it is simply atrocious in Jamaica. It is common for citizens and police to violently beat (or even murder) homosexuals across the country. Nobody is really sticking up for them either. There are still numerous anti-gay laws, banning men from having sex with each other, and politicians routinely blame gays for their own victimization.

    I think there is a video about it, and it’s likely on youtube. You can go look it up, if you want.

  13. Another possible explanation for SAD:
    Perhaps her boyfriend and his ‘friend’ were fooling around but had a fight, and the ‘friend’ decided to get back at him by spreading lies to you.

  14. ggg, that’s called P*L*E*A*S*U*R*E 🙂
    now the reply to SAD sucks.. really, unless they are in an open relationship, ho is it less cheating to fool around with someone of the sme sex? if the boyfriend was in bed with his best friend, he was cheating on her. that’s t, it’s not about accepting a bisexual boyfriend, it’s about accepting being cheated on (which I would say you should not).

  15. Sounds to me like SAD’s bf is probably hiding his bisexuality. BUT, there is no way SAD’s bf had sex with that hooker, here’s why:

    Clearly, it’s weird to confess to this hooker thing out of nowhere, especially when there are a million less creepy excuses for leaving underwear at his place; shitting or pissing your pants is a necessary evil of living an interesting life.

    But if SAD’s bf had actually had sex with this theoretical hooker, there is no way in hell the friend would have ever told of it. That also eliminates the possibility that the best friend made all this up to seduce SAD, he would never admit to a hooker either.

    This is looking more and more like it has to be a secret gay life, or an implausibly true story.

  16. @1

    Yeah, I personally like the story of one of the Jamaican community organizers for Gay Rights… Who was beaten to death in his own home, and while his body lay there, the good ol’ Jamaican boys & girls partied outside all night.

    Jamaica is a sick country filled w/ ignorant rednecks. That they happen to be black & like ganj makes no difference.

  17. yeah, it sounds to me like SAD is under the thumb. And @12, perhaps it’s happened hundreds of times, and this is the only time they’ve been careless.
    It really does sound like the boyf and BFF are in a concurrent relationship. Or the BFF is into him, and left the jocks there on purpose…

  22. sounds like SAD is pretty GGG. She’s okay with her BF being either 1) Bi or 2) into Tag Teaming hookers. She’s really only upset with the lies. Why can’t I find a girl like that? She needs to ankle the BF and his BFF and find sum1 honest…

    …and I need to stop using netspeak.

  23. Great advice to SAD! I have some additional thoughts though:

    It’s almost obvious that your boyfriend is bi/gay – since you said that you could live with having a bi boyfriend, if he comes out to you when you ask him, you hold all the cards to make this work. Relationships like this seem like they could go bad if there’s no ground rules established, like, who’s the main partner, who’s the side partner, or, if you want a permanent poly hookup with your man and his BFF.

    It seems to me like this could work out very well for you if the idea of your guy being with another guy turns you on, but if it doesn’t, and he’s bi, you might need to end it.

  24. @23 – not that I’ve dealt with this type of thing personally, but it seems to me like bisexual and “straight” men who find a good woman are usually encouraged to suppress the need/desire for dick. He doesn’t know if she’d be cool with it, so he hid it. I think it’s foul, but I understand it.

    Now, if he comes clean and admits it when she asks, if she lets him know that she’s down for all of that, and it turns her on, then it could all work out.

  25. “Jamaica is a sick country filled w/ ignorant rednecks. That they happen to be black & like ganj makes no difference.”

    Free advice: stop using insulting terms for lower-class, laboring Southern whites that are as hate-filled and foul other racial epithets. You look ignorant when you do that, especially since you apply that epithet in the absurd context of saying black Jamaicans are like lower-class, laboring, typically Baptist Southern whites. Um, no, they are not, not even in how they express their contemptible homophobic violence against homosexuals.

  26. It sounds to me as though TTT’s husband is a controlling jerk, and (if she’s financially capable) she needs to leave him. Like Dan said, it’s only going to escalate. I’m wondering what happens when she dissents from his opinion or direction. Does he yell? Hit? What happens when he “doesn’t tolerate” something? A person with that kind of partner cannot and should not tolerate THAT crap.

    She sounds like a strong woman who has (probably unwillingly or unknowingly) let her husband chip away at her self confidence, self esteem, and strong-willed personality so much that she would just defer to him than get into another screaming match that won’t get her anywhere. I had the same relationship with my mother until I moved out. TTT, stand up for yourself! Assert your independence from him (once you’ve got a financial safety net) and leave! 10 years is too long to live like that. If you’ve got kids (which I sincerely hope isn’t true), take them with you. It’s time to throw in the towel.

  27. Why didn’t SAD’s boyfriend offer some reasonable explanation to the “Underwear Incident”? Like “at the gym after showering I realized I didn’t have a clean pair of underwear but my friend had an extra pair and lent them to me”.

    Makes a hell of a lot more sense than “I don’t know” or the hooker story. And the BFF telling that ridiculous hooker story months later? What purpose did that serve? Sounds like he was stirring trouble for whatever reason. Can’t see the motivation in the boyfriend putting him up to that.

    Dan is right, get it all out in front of him and demand (in an understanding, open way) an explanation.

  28. @26: “lower-class, laboring, typically Baptist Southern whites” is not the definition of “redneck”. It has differet shades of meaning, depending on who is using it, but it never means anything so general as you think. When used disparagingly (by southerners), it usually means the kind of person who would likely beat someone up for being gay.

  29. Years back I was involved with a closeted guy. His “best friend” was even more twinky than he was, but I never got to know him because my bf always kept the best friend at a distance. That is, until the fateful night when they decided to take their girlfriends out on the town–to our town’s only gay bar.

    That lovely evening? The topic of conversation was how the best friend’s family would disown him *if* he was gay. The boys went to the bar together, leaving me at the table with the other girlfriend, who began crying about how she worried that her boyfriend was gay. As I was trying to console this perfect stranger, I watched as my boyfriend stood arm in arm with his “best friend” at the bar…at one point they were jokingly taking turns slapping each others’ asses. Cuz, ya know, when in Rome.

    The next day, I tried to discuss the situation with my boyfriend, and he exploded in a rage and accused me being emotionally abusive! That was rich, seeing as I freely admitted being turned on by bisexual men, have had sex with women myself, etc. Needless to say, we broke up. He is now married to some poor unsuspecting woman. But, the fallout for me was considerable, as this guy badmouthed me to many people we knew as this “emotionally needy and unstable” woman who “accused” him of being gay. It was quite a lesson–abusive partners not only project their abuse onto their partners, but they also rationalize their control issues and rage by calling their partners “unstable.”

    I’m telling this story because, wow, it so totally pales in comparison to this one–this utter bullshit of “Oh, we’re not gay, we just tag-teamed a hooker, but please don’t tell your boyfriend I told you.” Wretched! It’s just more evidence of how much damage closet cases cause to themselves and the people around them. I got off easy compared this nonsense. Although, truth be told, it’s probably only because I never really knew the extent of the deception and self-loathing.

  30. @26 – What? No more hate-filled epithets??? Wassamatta U… sensitive? The relatively mild term “Redneck” (he could have said something MUCH worse) is the last more or less acceptable “hate-filled” (??) terminolgy for the non-PC crowd. Now go away and leave us alone.

  33. @15

    I agree. SAD’s letter, as well as past letters, make me wonder: what’s with the assumption that when someone in a relationship is bi, that automatically makes their relationship open? I’m not bi, so I can’t speak for people who are. However, it seems like it would be frustrating to be stereotyped as someone who, because they are attracted to both sexes, can’t be monogamous. These assumptions often seem to come from people who suspect their partner may be bi — to them, the logical next step is opening up the relationship. I’d be interested to hear thoughts on this topic from people who are bisexual.

    Also, I just want to be clear that I’m not criticizing open relationships, just the idea that that’s the only kind of relationship a bi person could possibly want.

  35. Wait a minute…how did she KNOW that it was her boyfriend’s friend’s underwear? Has she seen the friend in his underwear? Does he write his name in his underwear?

  38. What I think is interesting is, how did SAD know it was her bf’s friend’s undies? Most women can id their own panties out of a lineup, but how many women can id their bf’s undies? Most (straight) men’s underwear, be they boxers, briefs or what have you, are pretty similar to every other pair of underwear they own. So, what was the deal with these underwear that she, a) knew they didn’t belong to her man, and, b) knew they belonged to his bf. Weird.

  39. “The cliché about the high-powered CEO who goes crawling to a professional dominant to get his ass beaten is a cliché”… ORLY?!

  40. Oh that’s right, Jamaicans are ‘phobes, I was wondering how they got grouped with the Saudi’s. My favorite is how all the Rasta’s I know refuse to you condoms, cause it’s, y’know, the devil. Okay pal, if you don’t want to use birth control, that’s fine, but it means 18 years of 9-5 work and child support, because where is dad when little Ziggy is hungry? He’s across town getting stoned with his mates bragging about how he doesn’t use birth control!

    Beenie Mon’s well documented defense when he was queried about his militantly homophobic lyrics was that in Kingston, the only homosexuals in Jamaica are rich white men who come into the ghetto to rape little boys. Sounds like most of the gays I know (sarcasm).

  42. Your partner dont allow disagreements then you should leave them…your partner wont have sex with you then leave them…partner cant eplain friends underwear in his drawer then leave him..Why do people waste so much of their life trying to drag sex and confessions out of their partners..just leave them..breaking up is easy to do I`ve done it..I no longer waste a minute of my time with unreasonable people…

  43. This is directed at SAD: both of Dan’s theories are plausible, but that story was so outlandish that it’s also possible they want to stop with the secrets and deceit, but are too cowardly to just come right out and tell you so they’re actually trying to get caught.

  45. Just to be clear, y’all on what it means to be a Redneck. I use that term because it’s the group I was exposed to as a kid growing up in semi-urban, semi-rural western Washington. They were people who felt that ignorance was a Virtue. They were always quick to blame someone else for their misfortunes, never taking responsibility for themselves. If the ‘misfortune’ was a societal one, then the blame was assigned to a larger group, a minority group that may or may not be powerful (“jews control the world,” or “liberals control the media,” etc.) They find pleasure in violence, either watching it in sports, movies or real life, or committing it. They do not value aesthetics, equating it with being weak, or female, or both. Finally, they have no ambition, and find it virtuous to remain in their current station (while always complaining about it & blaming others for it.)

    These folks are found world-wide. (Yes, I’ve traveled & met ’em for myself.) In Europe, Asia, Africa & the Americas. Some have money, most do not, but inside, they’re all Redneck.

  46. For the first question, clear case of DTMFA!

    If he doesn’t “tolerate” your opinion, and you find your opinion is essential on those issues (which you clearly do), you need to DTMFA!

    Fuck pathologizing your anger into a sexual fetish. Don’t hang with a guy that insults you repeatedly, and Expects you to take it!

    No one has a right to control or ignore or intimidate you. Period. DTMFA!* Dump the Mother Fucker Already!

  48. Not every Jamaican is homophobic, so please stop lumping us all into one category. Further, not every Jamaican who doesn’t agree with homosexuality is gonna beat down or kill a gay person. You can’t hold a whole country responsible for the views of their politicians and musicians. And we do not all smoke weed, that gets real annoying.

  49. HORNYO left out details because he wanted the okay to cheat. He clearly didn’t give details because he didn’t want his situation to be examined thoroughly, since he probably wouldn’t get the answer he is looking for.

    I also don’t think cheating is a great answer here. Let’s assume that he is not a victim of “the frigid bitch” – sexless marriages usually come from SOMEwhere – shouldn’t there be a discussion? Considering there is a 19 year relationship (at minimum) and a reasonable possibility of children at stake?

    For example:
    If we do not start having sex, I propose an open marriage, or to start having sex (for real, not you lying there while I jerk off into you) or a divorce.

    OR

    How can you and I make this work? I want more sex and intimacy and either you are incapable of giving that to me or you don’t want to. If you are incapable, we can try to work something out (doctor? sex therapist? couples counseling?) but if not, I think an open marriage should be considered. If you just don’t want to then I think it is fair to consider a divorce.

  50. The SADness is your response to the woman. Good grief, why prolong her agonizing realization that he’s gay and trying to hide it? Plain as the penis in your pants! The hooker story is soooo old, it was probably used by some Greek in the Illiad (can’t spell Pelipponis…..) Let them go sweetheart SAD, with the knowledge that they are out to you and those with whom you associate. That should make honest men of them. Rasstis/NY

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