I am a married white guy in my 50s. My wife and I do some role-playing where I am “Ted,” her real-life father. In her script, I yell at my “bad daughter” (my wife) over some infraction and send her to her room. Later on, I sneak in and tell her that she could “make Daddy very happy” if we were to do some “secret, special things” together. I usually end up fingering her still-virginal butt while “forcing” her to suck my dick. Then I roll her over and rape the hell out of her.
I’m being GGG, and she absolutely gets off on it. We’ve done this scene a few times, with increasing frequency, following her script every time. I do have some concerns, Dan: (1) It’s creepy, and (2) I’m worried that this might all be “based on a true story.”
What to do? Keep a good thing going or confront her about her father? I’m going to feel like an idiot if it’s all just a harmless fantasy.
Concerned “Father”
What if it is based on a true story?
Let’s suppose your wife was raped by her actual father and—after years of processing the abuse and the trauma—she emerged happy and healthy and stable, but… saddled with an all-consuming, high-creep-quotient incest role-play fetish. Your wife isn’t alone: A small handful of rape victims develop fantasies about rape role-play scenarios, an even smaller number of Holocaust survivors developed Nazi role-play fantasies.
Sometimes our erotic imaginations are as inexplicable as they are powerful.
Now let’s suppose that your wife is healthy enough emotionally and sexually to safely explore these deeply creepy fantasies—because now she’s in complete control, because now she’s with someone she loves and trusts—and that she isn’t traumatized by reenacting these deeply creepy scenes from her childhood. Shouldn’t she have just as much a right to enjoy and explore her sexuality as any other person, CF, regardless of the forces that shaped it?
I’d say the answer to that question is yes.
All that said, CF, you have a right to ask pointed questions—particularly if “Ted” is still alive and you have to sit next to him at Thanksgiving—and she has a responsibility to come through with detailed, honest answers. You’re not some casual up-for-anything stranger your wife recruited online. You’re her husband, and you have a right to know just what sort of land mines you’re stomping on or around, even if your wife considers them defused and harmless. Because there are huge potential consequences for you—emotional and sexual—if your wife is being traumatized by the role-play games she’s asked you to participate in.
And, finally, here’s hoping it’s all just a fantasy and that your wife wasn’t raped by her father, CF, although that isn’t going to make her fantasies any less creepy or Thanksgiving dinner with Ted any less awkward.
I’m a 23-year-old, single gay man. One of my siblings (with whom I was close) passed away about a month ago. I want to start dating again, but I’m not sure how to tell if I am or when I will be ready. I don’t want to be unloading my issues on potential first dates (that’s why I’m starting to see a therapist), but during the getting-to-know-you small talk, siblings always seem to come up. How do I handle this without seeming unmoved by my sibling’s death and without scaring off the other guy?
Trying To Move Forward
While you don’t want to burden a potential new boyfriend (PNB) with the full weight of your grief, TTMF, the only PNBs you’ll scare off by mentioning your grief are PNBs with empty lube bottles where their hearts should be—that is, PNBs with no potential, PNBs you should be anxious to be rid of.
So when the sibling talk comes up, TTMF, mention your recently deceased sibling, accept your PNB’s condolences, and then change the subject. What that communicates about you, PNB-wise, is this: You’ve been touched by grief recently, but you’re not paralyzed by it, and you’re ready to date.
And I’m so sorry for your loss, TTMF.
Please help me. I can no longer stand the thought of having sex with my fiancé. He’s a great guy—very kind and good. The problem is the sounds he makes during sex. Little whiny girl sounds. Like, not even woman sounds—which, being attracted to men, would be a big enough problem for me. No, he makes noises like a tiny little baby kitten girl. It has gotten really bad. I avoid sex (we usually don’t even sleep in the same bed, although we live together). When we do have sex, I spend the first half dreading the moment the girlie sighs start and the second half trying to ignore them. So, basically, I’m checked out for both halves—which he notices and obviously doesn’t like.
I know this sounds trivial, and it wasn’t such a big problem for the first year of our relationship. But it has grown from small annoyance to giant grating huge turnoff. I don’t know how to tell him to stop. I have brought it up before, but it sounds so stupid, and then he gets self-conscious and I feel bad. I can’t marry him under these circumstances, though. What do I do?
Ears Plugged
Your great and good fiancé deserves the truth. And come on, EP, what do you think is going to make him feel worse: you leveling with him about the damage his tiny little baby kitten girl sounds (TLBKGS) are doing—to his sex life, to his relationship—or you calling off the wedding because you just can’t fuck him anymore?
Here’s what you need to do: Tell the fiancé again, calmly but firmly, that the TLBKGS are a huge turnoff. It’ll hurt to hear, for sure, but he’ll hurt worse if you let the TLBKGS destroy your marriage before it starts. Then the next time you’re fucking him and he starts to make TLBKGS, stop everything. Don’t pull away from him physically, don’t push him off you, don’t scowl or grimace or roll your eyes. Just stop whatever it is you’re doing and say in a flat, nonsexy, nonaccusatory tone, “That sound you’re making is a huge turnoff. It kills sex for me.” Wait for an appropriate response—”Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll stop”—and then immediately pick up where you left off.
Repeat as necessary until the TLBKGS are an unpleasant memory. I’ve seen this approach work—call it the “full stop”—on biters, screamers, scratchers, and gratuitous-mid-fuck-ass-spankers. It’ll work on tiny little baby kitten girl sounds, too.
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@23
I can sort of buy it. I mean, if my girlfriend grunted like a linebacker during sex, it’d be a big turn-off, but that seems like something that should have been obvious before getting engaged. And to pull the selfish bullshit of “change your behavior to please me, or I’m gone” is just sadistic. It’s emotional blackmail of the worst kind, and I’m perturbed that Dan would not only stand for it, but suggest it.
None of us get to make demands of our partner’s for sex, at least not if we’re decent people, we don’t get to leverage it to alter behavior. If making kitten noises makes it pleasurable to him (or is something he can’t avoid), it’s up to her to either fix herself, or leave him the hell alone. Cruelly ordering him to fix himself for her is something none of us should abide.
@31
Imagine for a moment that she had some quirk (or lack of quirk) during sex that made it less pleasurable for him. Maybe she doesn’t like the same kinks, and he really wants to pretend to be a little baby girl while she pegs him. Would you ever accept it as reasonable that he (even kindly and non-accusatorially) said “this vanilla sex thing is turning me off, I need you to start pegging me while I pretend to be a baby girl”? Hell no. You’d think he was being way too selfish, to try to force his weird and freaky kinks on her against her will.
What’s the difference? I never thought I’d read comments here that seemed so drenched in heteronormative standards, where it’s reasonable to say “your feminine sounding moans turn me off, change them”.
like a car wreck, i am back to see the responses to my insults…
1– @11 says i make too many assumptions? To respond to the editted version of any of these letters, you make assumptions. Or, you refuse to make assumptions and make vague comments that are meaningless. If this were a 22 year old, or a new wife, or both, making sure she wasn’t an abuse victim reenacting is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT.
2– A big part of my problem is that Dan spends a chunk of time telling the girl how to talk to a guy making kitten sounds but has never mentioned how to ask or deal with someone who has physical/sexual abuse in their past, with problems persisting into their relationship. 10-20% of adult males and females were sexually abused before age 15. and there are some studies that suggest that PTSD ‘only’ strikes one-third to two-thirds of trauma victims (for @38). So that gives a range of 3-12% of the population are likely to have abuse related problems.
Realistically, Dan’s advice is just lame and i also overreacted.
But, Dan, you would do well talking about how to deal with the ‘i was physically/sexually abused’ conversation. Maybe i have just missed it. If so, i am sorry.
smaller number of Holocaust survivors developed Nazi role-play fantasies
really? I gotta think the Holocaust is fetish proof for everyone that isn’t themselves a nazi; & survivors? No fucking way.
@55 Sorry, but that is for real. Literally, as they were starving to death, some of the death camp inmates were trying to imitate the guards. It is much like the “Stockholm Syndrome” where the hostages start worrying about the safety and protecting the very people that had taken them hostage.
That sort of role reversal and reenactment is similar (not the same) as how an abuse victim becomes an abuser.
Check out “The Night Porter” (1974)
earplugs should make a show of putting–er–earplugs in before sex. when and if he asks why, she can say “oh, i use these because of the baby kitty girlie noises you make when we fuck. do you want me to stop using the earplugs? then i’ll be needing you to change the timbre of you sex noises, as it’s just such a turn-off for me. your choice.”
@58: Passive-aggressive shit like that would piss me off to no end. She should ovary up and just tell him how big an issue it is, like Dan suggested.
Did people miss this? “I have brought it up before, but it sounds so stupid, and then he gets self-conscious and I feel bad.”
All this talk about how she needs to tell him the truth seems to be a reading comprehension fail. She did tell him the truth. Simply telling him didn’t work. Now she needs to find additional strategies.
My opinion, EP, is that if you are going to try the “full stop” treatment, you had better show him some pretty overt enthusiasm about the idea of sex with him — before, during, after, and at other times of day. All the messages you have been sending for quite some time are to the effect that you find him repulsive. With that as his base environment, he has no incentive to change. Given your more-than-evident lack of desire for him, I’m surprised HE isn’t the one writing in, wondering if he should call off the wedding and dump you.
So, no more avoiding sex. If you want him to change to suit you, you need to indicate that you are actually eager for what is to come. I think it would be fair to expect you to initiate regularly and enthusiastically, to indicate that. No more sleeping in separate rooms — unless you honestly lose sleep in the same bed, and even then, make a point of seeking him out for sex or cuddles before retiring somewhere that you can go be unconscious. No more being noticeably signed out during the act.
Yes, some of that may require some behavior mod from you. If you expect him to consciously change his behavior to make things work for you, you can share the burden of making it worth his while, by consciously changing yours during the training period.
Someone made a good point about how one’s personal traumas can somehow manifest themselves later on as sexual fantasies. You figure the sex drive and anger are so intertwined that, while anger towards trauma and wanting to do the nasty are two distinctly-different things, the cauldron that fuels them isn’t. Hey, I prolly have a few Daddy fantasies up my sleeve, but not as anyone re-enacting being my own father (he’s dead, and even if he wasn’t, I’d pick some other template for the Daddy Fetish).. If you are with someone who gets you enough to know that its just something that gets you hot, and that you Don’t have a desire really to f*** your family members.. It all depends.
The lady about the kitten noises her guy makes: I think she’s affronted by what she could consider his demonstrating un-masculine traits during a masculine act such as a man and his woman making love. Someone said the lady’s just being a bitch. I second that. She’s inverting the ol’ play of “I’ll just make him hate me so he’ll dump me first although I really just want to dump him, but I don’t have a good enough reason to.” The lady’s a c***. I hope she doesn’t get any for a year, how ’bout that? ;-D
The one guy whose sibling passed away recently: you have my compassion man. At this point, although having enough objectivity to is tough enough with all that grief can bring, it’d be best to be sure to align yourself with people who have a sympathetic, kind aura to them, if you will. Someone who will listen, and, furthermore, understand what you’re going through. You’ll find your way, and I wish you the best. Take care everyone. CB
@6, in reference to the spankers and biters… yeah. No accounting for quirks, but if it’s too much for me and too fast… no. Reminds me of the guy who REALLY got off on hair pulling… second date, we’re making out in the hallway, and he starts yankin away. Sorry but there are some things you need to phase in a little more slowly!
Having said that – I LOVE Dan’s “full stop” advice. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Recondition him and I betcha the problem goes away.
Truly disgusting. I can’t believe they let commie perverts like you guys run a paper. This great country deserves better
Meow meow
@63 & 64: SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!
Great advice as usual, Dan.
@54: Good points, all. I just wanted to point out (in 38) that you can do as much harm by “inventing” a mental condition that doesn’t exist as you can by ignoring one that does.
I guess, as a sex advice columnist, Dan did point out the mental health aspect which is VERY important to keep in mind, but he focused on the sex advice bit.
my father was loving, but harsh by the day’s standards with physical discipline (hard spankings). i was never sexually abused in any way shape or form by anyone…but that first letter sent me masturbating – one can have these fantasies without any history of sexual abuse. as dan says, desires can be explicable.
i hope she realizes how LUCKY she is to have such an accommodating partner.
Wow, how fucking petty can Ears Plugged be? He’s been making these noises since you first met him and, in the flush of first passion, it didn’t bother you. But now that you’re “settling down” it suddenly becomes this huge issue? Seems like there’s something else going on.
Second, of course, is that if you say, “Hey, your sex noises are creeping me out” you can kiss his boner goodbye because 1. they probably aren’t voluntary and 2. he’ll be thinking of your massive disapproval during sex rather than getting off. And the one thing that kills sex faster than anything is criticism. So…yeah, good luck there Peppermint Petty.
Speaking as a dyed-in-the-wool dyke, I find -women- doing loud kitten noises offputting in the extreme.
@68, yeah, people do put up with a lot of stuff in the hormonal honeymoon phase. And yes, it’s annoying when you come out of it to realise that behaviour X is really super-irritating. But these things happen. Also, like a constant drop of water, it may be insignificant at first, but become increasingly more painful.
So, yeah, it’s worth trying Dan’s advice, although I’d probably have “the talk” in advance to let him know what’s going to happen. Hopefully he will break the habit, although it may be it’ll be very difficult for him. Although amazingly enough, in my experience, even the most noisy people can generally manage to have almost silent sex under their parents’ roof. Retraining yourself isn’t impossible. What others have suggested about encouraging him to substitute different sounds may be good too.
If the wife of the guy in the first letter is much younger (and I think she probably is), I’d be even more worried. They say women like to marry their fathers, but wtf.
I didn’t care for Dan’d advice. If the woman was raped by her father and is re-enacting with a father substitute, it needs to stop NOW. For about a million reasons!
@…JustPassingBy
I am a female survivor of sexual abuse. Abuse by my father. You, too, are hitting one of my hot buttons. You see, I have force fantasies, and there is very little that can make me angrier faster than an individual rearing his or her head and declaring that if someone who was abused has fantasies that relate to their abuse, then that person must be damaged and must not be allowed to make their own sexual choices. I’m not sure that you’re saying this, but it’s what I’m hearing. “If she has been sexually abused by her father, then her husband should not do these roleplay sessions with her, even if that’s what she says she wants.” That’s what you seem to be saying. I apologize if I’m wrong. I tried to read your comment with a clear head, but I don’t know if I succeeded.
Whatever the case may be, let me tell you, as a sexual abuse survivor, being told that my sexual fantasies are unacceptable because they result from my being a damaged sex abuse survivor is incredibly painful. I spent years going through therapy, taking medication, and working on myself to get to a point where I was functional, and that did not include viewing my sexual desires as some kind of injury that I needed to change.
I have to agree with the ‘This is massively uncomfortable and likely dangerous to her mental health’ crowd. As an abuse survivor myself, the very idea sends huge warning bells through me. Even accidental reenactments can bring on flashbacks: I shudder to think of what deliberately -trying- to push those buttons would do. As to how you ‘accidentally reenact’: Having your SO bring in a third you’re pressured to accept and who has way too many similarities in preferred positions and looks to the abuser, for one. Thats how it happened for me. My ex never even noticed I was in flashback till the third noticed the whimpering and my whispering ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be good’ over and over. It was pretty shattering for me.
I will consider buying the Savage Love iPhone app when the ad copy for it is changed from “Fresh Smut Everyday” to “Fresh Smut Every Day.”
Thank you for your kind attention to this matter.
Maybe this guy started making TLBKGS for himself when he was a masturbating, single dude, because he likes cartoon porn/anime girls or whatever, and making those sounds for himself put him in the mood when porn was not readily available. Now he doesn’t know how to stop. Maybe she could try making TLBKGS instead and see if that satisfies his subconscious need to associate those sounds with the sexual act.
obvious solution for Ears Plugged: ball gag. nuff said.
There is no such thing as a gratuitous-mid-fuck-ass-spank.
from age 7 onwards, i was a pedophile MAGNET. neighbors, family friends, grandfather, uncle… never my father, thank god.
i am now a 39 year old woman, and the only thing that really gets me off is re-enacting the abuse in my mind, or role-playing daddy type fantasies.
i have had years & years of therapy to deal with what happened and the shame i have felt for getting off on the fucked up memories.
i cannot help that my very first sexual encounters were sick and fucked up. i cannot help that my brain hard-wired itself to be aroused by the very incidents that almost destroyed me.
i choose to not traumatized by these memories anymore. when i use them in fantasies, i am the one in control, the one who wants it. we all deal with abuse in different ways. some women are turned off by sex/men completely… ..some become hyper-sexual. there is no right or wrong. we are all just humans trying our best to deal with the shit we’ve been dealt.
@71 and 77,
Thank you both for your eloquent, heartfelt comments. You said what I was trying to say.
If sexual abuse survivors can find a way to live happily without perpetuating the abuse on other children, NOBODY has the right to judge them.
@70 I said this a little earlier to someone else, but I would like to rephrase. While I understand that you have only the best intentions, I don’t think you know what it feels like to be told that you do not have the right to make your own sexual decisions because you have been “damaged” by someone else forcing themselves on you sexually. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by my father, and I have force fantasies. It triggers me (kind of like a flashback) when people say something along the lines of, “I know what is best for you, so I’m going to determine how you can have sex, no matter what you say.” I had enough that of that from my abuser. If you want to avoid traumatizing survivors of sexual abuse, it is important that you not try to make their sexual decisions for them. If this woman wants to have roleplay that involves force, that is her decision. You’ll only cause harm if you say, “Well, if a NORMAL woman wants to have force-roleplay, that’s fine, but if a SEXUAL ABUSE VICTIM wants to have force-roleplay, she clearly is damaged and must not be allowed to do anything that might harm herself.”
@78 Thank you. ^_^
if kitten-man’s meow;s are too much for her to handle, she might consider TALKING TO HER PARTNER IN AN OPEN,HONEST way and try to find a way for both of them to be happy. maybe go to a sex therapist,sex club? a little effort could go along way to emotional and sexual happiness(but only if BOTH sides act adult and mature). or maybe, turn on a radio,t.v., porno to mask his sounds if you can’t come into a solution.
The meowing man was a strange follow up to the pedophile role play, but the advice in both cases was sound. These are difficult issues involving embarassment and failure to communicate. Intimacy often involves a level of discomfort as we rub up against the unfamiliar. We will never be able to peer into our partner’s soul and we should probably be glad of that.
Ears Plugged got off easy. I’m trying to imagine the reality in which my partner could tell me what my “right” sex sounds are and not end up looking at a looooong dry spell.
1 – They’re the noises your husband makes when you’re rocking his world. That’s a good thing. Shifting your attitude can make it a hot thing, too.
2 – What kind of sounds is he allowed to make? Manly grunts? Manly silence? Manly profanity? Why do you get to decide? How is that being a GGG partner? Because having your partner enforce gender norms on you in bed is not much of a turn-on.
3 – Something else is not working in your relationship. Lack of desire can turn all kinds of kinks/sounds/quirks into dealbreakers. It also fuels the kind of disdain that reeks from your letter. Figure out what’s keeping your passion in check and get it worked out, because when you’re aroused, making a grown man mew like a kitten is going to be fun again.
Dan,
You rock.
I’ve been the top guy in an abuse fantasy. There’s an aspect of this you didn’t mention: The emotional damage to the faux abuser. After months in an intensly sexual relatioinship I found that I was profoundly effected by my role as abuser, that it started to change my personality and that i didn’t like the implications of my ‘role’ as it seeped into our nonsexual life and self-image in general. Caution to all those S&M-curious.
Dan,
You rock.
I’ve been the top guy in an abuse fantasy. There’s an aspect of this you didn’t mention: The emotional damage to the faux abuser. After months in an intensly sexual relatioinship I found that I was profoundly effected by my role as abuser, that it started to change my personality and that i didn’t like the implications of my ‘role’ as it seeped into our nonsexual life and self-image in general. Caution to all those S&M-curious.
I’m a 23 year old woman who lately has been getting off on thoughts of daddy roleplay with no prior sexual abuse. With a little bit of introspection I found that I’m mostly drawn to the idea of having a stable, affectionate relationship and my mind equated those characteristics with a daddy-type figure. And judging by the negative comments about this, this kink is still seems quite taboo so I probably get off on that factor as well. 🙂
I’m not ashamed of this at all, nor do I desire this scenario in reality (unless the right guy shows up). I kinda envy the wife of ‘Concerned Father’. If she’s got the right state of mind for this kind of roleplay I hope she’s having fun.
Please excuse me while I get my psych rant on.
#7 – Whoah. Let me say from my own background and career in psychology, you’re overreacting in the extreme. Could something very fucked up have happened in her past, and could her husband be playing with a landmine? Yes. But that is not the only possibility, and even if it is the truth, going so far as to theorize that he’s probably really fucking a multiple personality is completely uncalled for. Freak outs like that are what give so many people a bad impression of the psych community, AND what can fuck up families and relationships that were otherwise fine.
Childhood sexual abuse is a subject that our culture DOES NOT handle well and sanely. It is one of the hot button subjects that people tend to react to in the extreme, often causing more harm than good. I’m talking about the tendency to assume and react to the worst possible scenario if there was even a remote suspicion of abuse. Just saying this could get me burned at the stake in certain company. Is child sexual abuse one of the worst, most horrible crimes? YES. But people today react to it in the same way as medieval people reacted to the suspicion of witchcraft. This is the thought process that causes our society to make all kinds of horrific, irrational mistakes, from banning gay adoption to preventing non-acting pedophiles from seeking treatment, to taking children away from innocent parents based on foundless complaints by a jealous ex. If the very thought of possible abuse comes up, whether currently or in someone’s past, it’s considered justified to have a completely irrational reaction and treat it as an automatic worst case scenario. This kind of thinking has devastated peoples lives as surely as real abuse has. Our society sanctions it, because it’s “for the children.”
I should mention that over half of the psychological community does not believe that DID is a legitimate diagnosis, but a cultural construct and the result of suggestion. There is a great deal of evidence for this, such as the fact that DID “personalities” only tend to surface AFTER working with a therapist who believes that trauma results in DID, or the fact that incidents of the diagnosis spike when it becomes more visible in the popular media (United States of Tara, anyone?), that it is almost exclusively diagnosed in the US and a little in Canada, etc. There is plenty more, but anyone can research it if they really care.
Although creepy, being “raped” by a family member is a VERY COMMON adult fantasy, including fantasies about real family members. Assuming it stems from actual abuse isn’t much different from assuming that a person with an anonymous rape fantasy must have been raped, or that a person who likes spanking must have been beaten as a child. Might she have actually been abused? Yes, just as many people who react with disgust to such a fantasy might have been abused. When people assume that there MUST be trauma, it causes trauma. I have seen this in action first hand. Thinking he should assume the worst and rush her to a shrink is the worst possible advice. How about just, oh, I don’t know, TALKING TO HER like Dan suggested? If she says it’s just a fantasy, you should take her word for it. Even if she’s lying, assuming that she was abused anyway and pushing her about it can cause more harm than good. And if she was abused, but is currently healthy and happy, but left with this creepy fantasy? She is an adult now, not a child, and has just as much a right to make her own sexual decisions as anyone else. Likewise, her husband has an equal right to be fully informed, and both parties should know and accept the potential problems that it COULD (but might not) cause if it is based on a real scenario.
To end that tirade and go on to something more innocent – the TBKGN. Like others, I suspect that this is evidence of issues she may have with her fiance. Honestly, I’m surprised that Dan didn’t say DTMFA. Let’s look at the facts – she says the noises didn’t bother her in the FIRST YEAR of their relationship, but now they do. It sounds like they got engaged after only a year. The first year is the time when all those new happy love chemicals are flowing, which allows people to be oblivious to all kinds of things that would be dealbreakers to them, from innocent TBKGN to abusive behavior. Research has shown that women who are losing interest in a man will often begin to find some arbitrary/uncontrolled part of him a huge turn off – usually it’s his scent, but sex sounds could easily be another possibility. The fact that she can’t even sleep in the same bed as him, just to sleep, because she can’t stand the thought of sex with him is a huge red flag to me. We can probably all think of little things our partners do that drive us nuts, but if an arbitrary thing drives us this far, there’s probably more going on. Maybe she needs to feel like her BF is hypermasculine as others have said, maybe she is using his TBGKN as a scapegoat for other negative feelings she’s having towards him now, rather than face that the engagement was a mistake, or maybe she just honestly can’t get into sex that involves TBGKN. It doesn’t matter what exactly it is, I think that in the very least this is a sign that they should PUT THE MARRIAGE ON HOLD and examine their relationship, maybe call things off entirely. After reading Dan for years, I just can’t wrap my mind around the number of people that had horrible sex problems BEFORE marriage, but decided to plow ahead full force. Fix things or call it off before you legally enmesh yourself with another person, please! Even if it’s simply that you can’t handle TBGKN, it’s better to end a relationship for a reason that might seem shallow or arbitrary if you’re being honest, than it is to feel bad about your reasons and tie both of you to a sexless marriage.
Spot-on. Well done this week, Daniel.
Who kidnapped Dan?
Imean, this is good advice but not very Dan like. Wouldn’t the real dan tell to EP that she shouldn’t marry an uncompatible man and that he should look for someone who likes TLBKGS or something like that?
I am a gay man with a similar problem to Ears Plugged. I am always the passive partner during intercourse and I like to make female sounding groans while its happening. The trouble is my active partner boyfriend started making the same sounds which was a huge turn off as I want him to very much be the man in the situation. But i have found it very counter productive to criticize during or about sex. So I just tried not making any sounds except when coming and now he has more or less stopped as well.
So it more or less solved the problem, touch wood.
@86 : I agree on all points.
I think that the 1st husband’s main concern isn’t about whether or not this is healthy for her. He seems ok with the fact that she wants this, and that it’s not doing her any harm (and he’s married to her, so he can probably tell). It’s about the fact that it icks him out, and it’s “increasing in frequency”. I think he simply needs some reassurance from his wife that HE isn’t abusing her, and that she still wants him when he’s playing himself.
I think it has the potential to do HIM some damage if he doesn’t get the reassurance he needs. I think the best thing to do is talk to her during a non-sexually charged time, and just explain that, while he’s not weirded out by HER, and that he’s really happy she can be so open about her fantasies, this fantasy is bringing up uncomfortable feelings for him, and that he needs some reassurance that she isn’t going to start associating him with actual (non-play) abuse (historical or fantastical).
She can’t be too surprised by such a talk. The woman must know this is creepy; that can’t be news to her.
The full stop works. Almost every single time.
I absolutely LOATHE being spanked during sex and I make this clear before I’m ever naked with someone. However, the occasional guy forgets and smacks my ass. I use the full stop…..and it works.
I’ve only had one man smack my ass twice. He ended up on the porch, naked, with his clothes in his hands.
@58: worst advice ever. Just as 59 says.
@63: troll harder.
Great advice, Dan. I can’t really see how EP hasn’t figured out how to solve that problem, though. Seriously, just bring it up.
What’s the big deal about incest? I was never forced into it. It just happened and I was too young to know that it was taboo. I was old enough to know that it felt good and I wanted as much as I could get.
Society has brainwashed the masses into believing that incest is a bad thing. Let me tell you that is not so. I had a relationship with my mother that lasted 53 years. We had 3 daughters together who eventually also became my lovers.
@92
It depends on the relationship, and kind of on importance. Spanking (which is actual physical pain) is something it makes sense to say “nope, not gonna continue if you don’t knock that off”; especially if you were upfront about your rules to begin with.
The woman in question here (EP) didn’t lay down any ground rules, and so can’t really expect to change up the dynamic now quite so definitively. I’m positively shocked that Dan gave her such an easy pass on what essentially amounts to “we’re going to have sex on my terms, or not at all”.
Imagine for a moment that her boyfriend really enjoyed some kinky fetish, and did the “full stop” method unless she agreed to let him choke her during sex (or whatever). Dan would be among the first to say “you don’t get to force your partner like that”. And yet, when it comes to the “kitten noises”, she gets to sexually blackmail him. Bullshit.
Maybe it’s that I’ve truly bought into the “if you’re having sex with someone, you don’t get to be manipulative about sex”, but I don’t accept withholding sexual favors as being a viable way to influence behavior; at least not if we’re talking about two people in a relationship.
92: Dan’s description does not seem to reconcile well with “ended up on the porch, naked, with his clothes in his hands.” It’s possible that it might take a couple of promptings during one session, especially with something apparently involuntary like “breathing wrong.” More than twice, I can see you saying, “Look, you’ve killed the mood for me. Let’s try again tomorrow.” But naked on the porch with clothes in hand is not what you do to someone that you want to train to treat you the way you want to be treated. It’s what you do to someone you never want to see again.
In your case with the slapping, I can see you getting angry on the second one, because he’s clearly not listening and not taking you seriously. Also you already warned him in advance, so he technically got one full-stop before you even started. Still, I’m trying to imagine what you did to force him onto the porch so quickly. Hit him multiple times, maybe? Threw things at him? Seems a bit disproportionate to react to a mistake in sex play with genuine assault and battery.
95: There’s a huge difference between “you don’t get to do that because it turns me off” and “you are required to let me do that because it turns me on, even though it also turns you off.”
This isn’t about withholding sexual favors; it’s about temporarily interrupting the actual session to let them know they are killing the mood for you. It’s pretty hard to characterize something that happens during sex as withholding sexual favors. In your scenario the one performing the full-stop far more likely would be the woman, saying “take your hands off my neck,” and then resuming where they left off.
CF’s letter is one of the many reminders that “if it feels good, it’s all good” and “proceed carefully because you may cut the wrong wire” are the two tensions in the scene, and what’s *always* wrong is making one or the other the absolute truth to fit all people and situations.
CF’s wife, like 71 and 79, may be just fine. But she may not be, and her husband has a responsibility through his love and commitment to her to find out. And as 83 astutely commented, there’s usually 1 or 8 or more people involved in these fantasies, and the impact on *them* matters, too. I personally have always avoided roleplaying of this kind because I know myself and that it wouldn’t be a good thing for me to do, even if all other lights were green. That’s not true of everyone, but it’s true of some.
Anyway, sincere good wishes to CF and his wife for a happy and healthy outcome.
I agree with 30 on the kitten noises. If everything else were going great this would not be a problem. It’s cold feet and this is the easy thing to say. If she’s really bothered by it, just frehch kiss him to shut him up when he’s making them.
@94:
All right, you’re probably a troll (at least, I hope like hell you’re a troll), but I’ll bite. If you were too young to know that incest was forbidden — and I think that most kids are aware of this particular taboo by the time they hit the double digits — then you were too young to give meaningful consent to sex. Period, full stop, end of story.
Also, there’s a very good reason that incest between close relatives is almost universally reviled. Continue your experiment in genetic isolationism for a few more generations, and you can find out for yourself!
The sad thing is, he makes those sounds because he assumes they turn you on. You probably said something the first time, you probably thought those sounds to be “cute” at one time, and you’ve let him think this ’til now. Or else, his last partner liked it, or fakes it, so he assumes.
Do you fake it? You fake it, don’t you!
Take some responsibility for your sex life now, before it’s too late to not get a lawyer.
A small and basically inconsequential habit has suddenly become a huge turn-off too big to ignore. SOunds to me like the sex noises aren’t the problem; the relationship is. A lot of the time, when a person is getting on our nerves, little things get blown out of proportion. He chews too loudly or she snorts when she laughs. Thes can be tiny endearing traits or they can be huge pet peeves, depending on whether they’re just one bad straw or the one that broke the camel’s back. She is having these feelings now, before the wedding, and it’s such a huge turn-off that she can’t bring herself to put in earplugs (“I find it distracting when traffic noises burst through my subconscious during sex”) and fuck the man she claims to want to marry. In fact, she can’t even enjoy the kitten-noise free first half of sex with him. She doesn’t want to marry him. She should take this as a sign from above and move on because either this is a symbol of all that is wrong with the relationship, or she’s such a perfectionist and so picky that this guy will never make her happy for a lifetime anyway. I mean, what if he gets old and his dentures slip when he talks, or his hip pops during sex, or he just plain ages poorly?
@86… I did come back and say I overreacted… i have been in a world of people who were badly damaged by abuse… i was pretty screwed up by my abuse. Witness @94 as an example of someone who thinks they were not screwed up by their abuse, or are more likely just a troll. 😉
After reading responses like @79, and my own comment that not all ‘trauma’ victims develop PTSD, etc., i would accept that being ‘healthy but still into sexual behavior that may be reenactment’ is possible, but with some qualifications… like @84’s comment about what being the dominant in an abuse roleplay sexual relationship did to him outside of the sex part.
Also, @86, i would agree that DID is overdiagnosed and misdiagnosed… but so isn’t anything that can be labelled anymore, especially if there is a med still under patent for a company to run ads for the treatment.
I will repeat my suggestion for Dan to put together a column for partners, friends, etc., on how to handle the “sexually/physically abused” conversation. Most of what you see online or in books are what @71, @77, @78, and @79 are complaining about, the “you are damaged and need fixed” model. There needs to be a new middle ground, a new model for how to treat people who were or are being abused. We all will face it unless we put our heads in the sand.