My boyfriend and I are straight college students, and he’s always wanting to try new things. Recently, he asked to put a finger in my ass while we were having sex. Someone did that to me before, but it felt uncomfortable and it kinda hurt. I told my boyfriend that he could do it once and then I would decide whether to let it continue. So we tried it. It still felt uncomfortable and still kinda hurt. But I never came so hard in my life!

Now the question: If it’s uncomfortable, but it made me feel amazing and come really hard, what should I do? Continue with it? Or tell him to find some other way of getting me to that point again?

Presently Obsessing Over Totally Extreme Reaction

You could ask the boyfriend to stick a finger in one of your armpits—or in an eye, a nostril, your toaster—but unless your pit/eye/nostril/toaster is wired the way your butt appears to be, POOTER, no amount of pit/eye/nostril/toaster fingering is gonna jack up your orgasms quite the way that finger in your butt did.

So here’s what you’re gonna do, POOTER: You’re gonna breathe deep, you’re gonna take things slow, you’re gonna use more lube, and you’re gonna spend more time warming up the outside of your butt before anything goes in. (Tell the boyfriend he can finger your butt for 10 minutes after he rims it for 20.) Do it right, POOTER, and pretty soon you won’t be able to look at those 10 fingers of his without thinking about the kick-ass, anal-enhanced orgasms you’ll be having when you can only see nine.

I am a 30-year-old woman with a strange problem. I recently started lifting weights, and every time I use the arm machines, I have an orgasm. It is not obvious to anyone else (I think), and my sex life is great outside of the gym. I don’t know if I should stop using the machines, because it’s rude and kind of weird to have that happening, but it just seems to be a physical reaction to using those muscles. What should I do?

Fitness Freaking

Another 20 reps.

I’m a bi 18 year old female. I can’t cum during sex, I never have. Boys or girls it doesnt matter. I can get off by myself but with other people its just uncomfterable. Vagional penatration feels good but head or finger fucking is Not fun. I thought that it was just the people I was sleeping with. You know, age and a small town bla bla bla. I’m off to collage now and in a much biger city and nothing is better.

I Can’t Cum

Off to collage, are we?

Here’s something you may not know about vaginal penetration—besides how to spell “vaginal” and “penetration”—because it’s not something that’s typically covered in small-town high-school sex-ed classes: You can touch yourself during vaginal intercourse. Whatever you’re doing that’s getting you off when you’re alone, ICC, do that thing—touch yourself that way—whenever a sex partner is penistrating you vaginotionally.

And when you’re enjoying sex without penistration—when someone is eating your pussy or fingering your pussy—give that person direction, i.e., put your hand over his hand, place a hand on the back of her head, and show them just how to touch you and/or eat you to create the sensations that are intense or focused enough to get you off.

I am a 24-year-old straight girl. My boyfriend is 31. We have great sex—until the last two minutes. He can’t get off without jackhammering me, so I grab something and hold on for dear life until he comes. I’m happy to do it to satisfy him, but it also means he never gets off when I’m on top, and we can’t have slow, sappy sex every now and then, and it can be painful sometimes. I’ve brought it up a couple of times, but he doesn’t seem to be able to finish any other way. Has it just been too long with a bad habit, or is there a way to bring his dick back?

Holding On Tight

There may not be anything wrong with your boyfriend’s dick, HOT. Just as some women require intense, focused stimulation in order to get off (read: vibrators cranked up high), some guys gotta jackhammer to get off. If your boyfriend is one of those guys, HOT, then there’s no bad habit to break. It’s just something you’ll have to accommodate.

But he needs to accommodate your desire for some slow, sappy sex now and then. And here’s how he can do that: The boyfriend fucks you, long and hard, nice and slow, you get on top if you like, and after you’ve gotten off once or twice or three times… he pulls out… and doesn’t come, at least not inside you. If he’s aching to come, or you want to see him come, then let him finish himself off by jackhammering away at his own clenched fist.

I am a woman in a relationship with a woman. There’s someone else. I haven’t cheated. I’m not a cheater. But I cannot get them out of my head. They are directly in my life. And yes, by “they” I mean “him.” What the F, Dan! I dream about him, think about him. I try not to. I talk about my girlfriend and how much I love her in front of him. But inside I know the truth. It’s becoming hard to be in the same room with him.

So my question: What would Dan do? What would Dan do if he were mind-cheating constantly and experiencing intense feelings of attraction to someone else?!?

What Would Dan Do?

Dan would go to his boyfriend and say, “Hey, honey, it’s been ages since we’ve had a three-way…”

But that’s easy for Dan to say because Dan’s a man and so is his boyfriend, and anyone Dan couldn’t get out of his head would be a man, too. That makes any hypothetical mind- and/or body-cheating on my part less threatening to my boyfriend and less destabilizing to our relationship.

So you probably shouldn’t do what I would do, WWDD. Instead, you should masturbate furiously, avoid being alone with this man whenever possible, and don’t take the wife to see The Kids Are All Right.

Some women like porn and some women don’t mind it. For us women who are otherwise GGG but feel like vomiting at the thought of porn, telling us to use porn—or eat cupcakes—will neither relieve the pain caused by our partners’ use of porn nor meet our emotional and sexual needs if we decide to opt out of relationships with men entirely. I’ve tried my whole life to feel okay about porn. I don’t. I feel betrayed just the same as if the cheating were “real.”

Never Okaying Porn Ever

Porn isn’t cheating, NOPE—but let’s not argue about that.

Instead, let me just say this: You shouldn’t give up on men, NOPE, because I occasionally get letters from men who think a fag sex columnist is interested in hearing them repeat what the insecure, controlling women in their lives have trained them to say (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”). If you hang in there long enough, PORN, you’ll meet either a guy who honestly doesn’t watch porn or a guy who says all the right things (“There are men out there who don’t use porn, and I am one of them!”) and is conscientious about clearing his browser history.

mail@savagelove.net

172 replies on “Savage Love”

  2. POOTER’s going to have to do some serious neck-stretching to see the four fingers (of his nine) that are on the same hand as the finger that’s in her butt….

  3. I’m really just boggled by women that say their men watching porn “hurts them” and “feels like betrayal.” I mean, sure, be pissed if he’s kicking you out to yank it over having sex with you, but otherwise, masturbation is part of a healthy, normal adult’s life. And saying that porn is cheating is like accusing someone of cheating with the TV remote.

  4. I have the same problem as Fitness Freaking – except not with arm exercises: with hamstring curls and leg raises. It’s actually a serious problem, fun though it sounds. You try having an orgasm while holding heavy weights! If you use free weights instead of a machine, you drop them on yourself. And apart from that, orgasms at the gym leave me wobbly and incapable of lifting much else for the rest of the session. Plus I’m embarrassed about the possibility of someone noticing. In my case, the exercises are minor enough that I just don’t do them usually, and when I do, I do them last. But if it were all the arm exercises, it would be a bigger issue, since that rules out basically half the muscles you want to target.

  6. Could Fitness Freaking just save the arms for home? You know, invest in some decent free weights and a box of really high quality cigarettes and just do her thing in private (if privacy is a serious concern).

    I’m kind of fascinated that it’s her arms and not, say, her thighs that cause this reaction – and that it didn’t manifest itself until the age of 30! PS: Whatever position she’s using, I want to know about it.

  7. Men like porn. Men like porn. Men like porn. How many times must Dan explain this? Pathetic. As long as a guy isn’t watching it 10 hours a day and he’s considerate enough to exercise discretion; what is it to you? Go get a cat, Nope.

  9. For any women jealous of FF: as part of our fitness routine on my college sports team, we did an exercise called “Hanging crunches”, where you dangle from straps supporting your upper arms, with your arms at right angles, hands gripping the straps. Then you bring your knees up to your chest.

    Something like 2/3 of my team got orgasms, or at least exquisite stimulation from this exercise. (Sadly, I was not one of them – I just got a 6-pack) So go for it, ladies. Hope it works for you.

  10. A LOT of men like to watch porn, and some women get offended by this. On the other hand, A LOT of women like to use vibrators and some men get offended by that. If your partner does either and you are offended by it, you basically have two choices. Get the fuck over it or move on! Enough said..

  11. Savage, I’m torn. Half of me wants to smack you upside the head for pissing all over ICC and her dyslexia – or whatever the hell it is that mars her written communication. Alas, the better half of me must applaud you.

  12. @11 applaud away. She may not be responsible for her shit-poor education, but in “collage” she’ll be expected to be able to “spel”

  14. Pooter may want to ask her boyfriend to try spankings rather than rimming – see what he’s comfortable doing. But a nice long warm-up is a big help. Another help is for the boyfriend to put his finger at the entrance to the hole, with lots of lube all over, and then let her back up onto his finger when she’s ready.

  15. @11, dyslexia doesn’t prevent ICC from noticing the little squiggly lines under half the words in her email. Any real dyslexic would be well acquainted with spellcheck by age 18. Applause it is.

  16. God Damn! And I say God Damn! Dan is BACK!

    It’s columns like this that made me fall in love with Dan Savage in the first place!

    Simple questions. Simple answers. Snark delivered free of charge.

    Thanks Dan… complicated shit and political shit are fine now and then (and even really cool now and then) and it’s your column and you should do what you want, but please, I humbly request that you don’t keep stuff like this TOO far apart.

  17. Another technique POOTER could try is having her boyfriend grab one of her ass cheeks and “jiggle” or shake it a bit during sex or foreplay. I’ve found that this motion sends some very nice, subtle vibrations through the rest of the area! I can’t say for sure that it would be a good way to work up to ass fingering, but it might be worth a try either way.

    And, minor detail, but did WWDD say she was married?

  18. Another 20 reps – brilliant!!!

    Hell another 300!!

    damn, wish I could have an orgasm from lifting weights… I’d be able to enter body contests…

    I suggest weights at home and entering body building competitions….

  25. First, I can totally relate to POOTER. Same thing happened to me. Now we’re trying to work up to other things. But the orgasm is leagues better with slight anal penetration.

    Secondly, I can also relate to NOPE and was surprised by my own reaction. I love porn myself. I have a large old school collection of it since the days of VHS. I used to watch porn with my guy friends in college, etc. No big deal. And I don’t have a problem if my bf watches porn when he’s alone or talks about porn with me. But in my presence, him watching porn gives me a full-on nervous breakdown sort of response–crying, shaking, horrible. I have no idea why. Oh, and the best part is that this only happens if the porn has women in it (and I’m a lady, obvs)–gay male porn, no prob. My best guess is that there’s some sort of subconscious insecurity like “oh-I’m-never-going-to-look-like-a-porn-star-why-am-I-not-enough-for-you” sort of thing that isn’t logical or rational or something I experience in daily life. Sometimes, emotional responses are just not within our control, and so I think we should sympathize with her instead of painting her as unrealistic, prudish, or frigid, especially when we don’t really know her deal.

  26. @25 Your situation is different. You don’t try to prevent you SO from using porn ever, EVER — you just don’t want to see it together. What prevents me from empathizing with NOPE is that she is enforcing a thought-police — she actually, honestly, believes that it is not okay for her SO to masturbate to the thought of someone else. Which makes her a huge douche, in my opinion.

    And it is also related to Dan’s advice to WWDD. What Dan should have mentioned (and didn’t, because he said it many times before) is that the whole mind-cheating thing is total bullshit! A person should never feel guilty about *wanting* someone else — such a desire is both good and natural. As long as you don’t act on these feelings, they are nobody’s buisness…

  28. The advice to ICC sounds good on paper, but in my experience there are a whole load of physical problems with it in real life. For a start, everything down there tightens up a bit when a penis is hammering in and out of my vagina; I’m used to lazily rolling my clit around by myself, and that’s difficult to do during penetration because the loose folds of skin around the clitoral hood seem to get stretched out and disapear. Everything then is just way too taut for me to touch myself without discomfort.

    And there’s also the problem of getting your clit pinched between your fingers and his thrusts. Ouch. I’ve not yet found any position that completely avoids that risk.

  29. Also, NOPE might find porn a bit less disgusting if she tried watching gay porn – it worked wonders for me. Turns out the thing I really found disgusting in mainstream porn was the relentless focus on wailing chicks.

    I think it’s true that once you have a relationship with porn yourself, you are more likely to understand how your partner relates to porn and so stop being bothered by it so much. That’s why the more mainstream advice that couples should try watching the man’s favourite porn together is so off base. Making even their partnered sex revolve around the male participant’s private fantasy life? Yeah, that doesn’t really sound equitable or mutually fulfilling.

  30. Sorry but a woman who thinks porn is cheating is just as insane as the guy who thinks his girlfriend just talking to a guy constitutes flirting. Neither of these things are rational, and demands that they be accomodated are simply unreasonable. You know how many men use porn SO? ALL of them. That’s not an exageration. A study was once attempted to see how men’s use of porn affected their views on sex. They wanted a control group of men who didn’t watch any porn. They couldn’t find any such men.

    Your dad watches porn, so does your brother, your boss (if they are male), your uncles, your grandad, the nice guy at the grocery store, the sweet elderly widower next door. You have a choice to make. Either they are all disgusting or your view of porn is untenable.

    Dan often says that people need to get themselves to a place where they are capable of being date material. If you find watching porn to be equivalent to cheating, you are not in a place where you can be with men. The only kind of guy who you can be with is the kind who can lie effectively. I disagree with Dan on this; he should not be unleashing someone onto the dating pool who will go into full meltdown, freak-out at something this trivial.

    Otherwise you need to relax and find a guy who you can sit down and explain that porn repulses you. Then you DO NOT demand they not consume it but DO demand that a very strict Don’t ask Don’t tell be enforced and they will keep any consumption private and discreet. That’s as good as you’re going to get.

  31. Re: WWDD… why not just tell the significant other and use this attraction within the current relationship? My SO and I do this. If one of us is attracted enough to another person outside the relationship, we talk it through and bring it into our sex life as role play/fantasy, or just dirty talk. Works wonders! The outside attraction still exists sometimes, but the obsessive bent is gone. Good Luck!

  32. I have the same issue as Fitness Freaking, only with lower abs (which physiologically makes more sense to me, but I guess bodies are just weird). I thought I was the only one, and then I read the comment about the woman whose team did hanging crunches (which is exactly the sort of thing that would trigger that for me!)

    Bodies sure are weird.

  33. HOT – Can you get your boyfriend off with handjobs or oral (or a combination), or anything else for that matter? If you don’t feel like getting ‘jackhammered’, when he gets close get him to pull out and jerk him off, or suck him off or use both your hands and mouth to finish him. Or let him finish on your breasts, or your face. Hell, do whatever works.

  34. My advise to WWDD is to get to know the guy better. For me, nothing deflates an infatuation as much as getting better acquainted with my crush’s personality. The real person gradually replaces the fantasy person in my mind, and the real person is virtually always less attractive than the fantasy.

    Your mileage my vary.

  35. In terms of NOPE — I also felt like vomiting, at age 18, when I noticed my first serious boyfriend’s porn collection. How could this awesome, feminist, gay-friendly, totally-into-me guy be interested in cheezy, demeaning shit like that?

    Ten years down the road, I’ve got my own porn collection and realize that such things have nothing to do with respect or politics but that it’s just FUN. Porn is fun. Getting off is fun. I would wager (and hope) that NOPE is in her teens, and that given a few years she’ll mellow out.

  36. I agree with @28, the advice to ICC sounds good on paper, but it can be quite difficult for some folks to do the same things during PIV sex that one does by oneself. Also, giving direction can be difficult if you really can’t accurately describe the subtleties of what you do.
    I suggest ICC get comfortable enough to show her partner by actually going solo in front the partner. And I’m willing to bet some of her partners, if not most, will REALLY love it when she does.

  37. In terms of NOPE — I also felt like vomiting, at age 18, when I noticed my first serious boyfriend’s porn collection. How could this awesome, feminist, gay-friendly, totally-into-me guy be interested in cheezy, demeaning shit like that?

    Ten years down the road, I’ve got my own porn collection and realize that such things have nothing to do with respect or politics but that it’s just FUN. Porn is fun. Getting off is fun. I would wager (and hope) that NOPE is in her teens, and that given a few years she’ll mellow out.

  39. Dan wasn’t that snarky with ICC it was appropriately chastising, that girl, collage attendee cannot spell. Vagional Lol! If european women put out more the demand for porn would be a trickle compared to what it is now. As it is now, monogomous, white women masturbate to porn also, and their partner probably does too! Get together people! Or is it just easier to come to orgasm alone sometimes?

  40. I know “all guys” watch porn, but keep in mind that there are exceptions to every rule. Also remember that before porn was widely available most men managed to subsist just fine without it.

  41. Ha — when I was reading the fourth letter a utilities worker was literally jackhammering the sidewalk across the street. It was a nice, rough touch.

  44. …I think it has to do with the fact that he masturbated all the time to porn without having sex for years before he met me, and now that he has a partner, porn feels like a gip … I need my girl on girl and boy on boy action tho … so he’ll tag along for the ride, however begrudgingly … or sometimes, I will blow him will he looks at it.

    I used to feel threatened by porn when I was younger but then I started watching/reading it myself and also, when I had this relationship with a man who wanted so much more than sex from me…porn wasn’t threatening my entire sense of worth…

  45. @40: “Also remember that before porn was widely available most men managed to subsist just fine without it.”

    Before? There was such a time?

    I snark. But I can’t really think of a time when “most” men subsisted without some kind of pornography (except perhaps before the invention of the printing press). Keep in mind that the definition of “porn” differs from period to period and culture to culture. What we find tame now and here could be pretty pornographic or at least served a pornographic *purpose* at some other time and in some other place.

    And I think we’re all pretty aware there are exceptions, but the *point* of aggressively asserting that guys look at porn is to accept that it’s common and natural and plenty of relationships are completely healthy and fulfilling in its presence.

    If a guy really doesn’t look at porn, good for him. Really. I totally believe such men exist. But such a guy is rare enough that it’s unproductive to obsess about his type unless your partner watching pornography just completely DESTROYS you (*even* on his own time, even if he’s satisfying you completely).

  46. Some more advice for ICC from an old hag. Don’t feel bad, the older you get, the easier it will become. I didn’t think I’d ever orgasm during sex, although I continued to enjoy it a great deal! Finally had my first orgasm with another person (orally) at 24. Still had to wait another 3 years to have one during vaginal sex, on my knees and 6 months pregnant. But by the time I was 35, I could get one every time, so just remember, some things really do improve with age!

  47. i’m a straight female with a boyfriend who doesn’t watch porn. he regularly masturbates to a variety of fantasies (generally vanilla but sometimes kinky) and has an average libido– but he does not enjoy porn, has never sought it out, and when i convinced him to watch a little with me, in a nice situation with lots of other stimulation, he still found it distasteful.

    his (estranged, crazy) father showed him some porn movies at an early age in a misguided attempt at male bonding. he has a horrible association as a result, and never goes near the stuff.

    so yeah, there some guys out there who don’t like porn but it probably doesn’t have much to do with an all-consuming monogamous bond with their significant other.

  48. I totally agree that almost all men look at porn, that it’s good and healthy to do so, and that it’s quite obviously NOT cheating. Still, it took me a while to get to that point. When my husband and I were 15 and I first discovered that he looked at porn I was horrified and offended. Really, I was heart broken. It took a while before I figured out that he meant it when he said that it was just fun and didn’t mean that I wasn’t “enough.”

    Now here I am, a disgusting number of years later, and I watch porn on my own sometimes, I know he does too, and we’ve passed a number of lovely evenings watching porn in bed together. That said, I still sometimes get a twinge of discomfort when we watch porn together or he mentions something he saw. Truth be told, I have actually become incredibly nauseous when watching porn with him on occasion, usually when watching a fetish video (fisting, pegging with incredibly large toys) even though the videos depict things we incorporate into our sex life!

    When it happens I just focus on a spot above the screen, and pretend to watch, or go down on him as a means of escape. I’m trying to be GGG here, and I would never ever ask him not to watch porn (not since I was a 15 year old idiot anyway)but my point is, even with the best of intentions, it’s not always as easy as “just get over it, men watch porn.” I wish it was!

    Now I’m gonna go find some porn I think is hot for tonight.

  49. Do none of these porn hating women read romance novels??? men are simply more visual and prefer a visual media. get the hell over it!

  50. @40, porn has pretty much always been around, from crude drawings in a cave to Pompeii and Rome, to now. It’s a lot like prostitution that way. We are just highly sexual beings. It’s one of the reasons that many religions like to repress it, it’s a good way to control the populace. Remember, Roman culture was extravagantly sexual, then christianity came along and made us feel guilty about it.

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