Savage Love

1. Dan, you ARE aware that pot turns lots of people into nervous, paranoid wrecks, right? Pot turns regular me into a twitchy panicky paranoid owl, I can’t even IMAGINE what I would be like if I were also nervous to the point of puking.

2. I wouldn’t recommend marijuana to someone with anxiety. Back in the day when I smoked, I would be much MORE self-conscious. Preferred it alone. Now, alcohol helps alleviate anxiety! But thank goodness we’re not recommending that to a 19 year old. I would recommend she just try to get over it. Or, worst case, see a psychiatrist — but beware that makes for a preexisting condition if you’re diagnosed, and must be reported on some things (for example, a bar application to be an attorney).

3. Have you people who say that pot makes you more anxious experimented with different strains? I used to think pot made me super paranoid and self-conscious… then I tried an indica rather than a sativa, and got a really great body high instead.

   @88: Agree totally about the spirit of exploration. How does the (a)/(b) distinction you describe fit in with BDSM: for instance, what about someone who is a passionate submissive? What if submitting and pleasing their partner *is* what you’re passionate about? Does that still work?

4. @103
   The dangers of today’s pot are well documented. I think Dan refers to homegrown and/or older days when the stuff was milder and actually made people relax and “open up to the possibilities” (yes, pun intended).

5. @104: Many state bars only require disclosure if you currently have a condition that impairs with your ability to practice law. The trend is toward greater privacy in mental health, but every state is a little different.

6. @97,98 (Frederica Bimble),
   I’m honestly mystified.

7. I totally get the sneezing fetish! I’ve masturbated ever since I remember, but before puberty I never connected it to/thought about anything sexual, and sometimes I would think about people sneezing! Its completely like an orgasm, kind of–the build up, the explosive release. In retrospect, I think that’s why now I’m really into thinking about the moment of orgasm when I fantasize, and find it sexy to think of climax as an almost involuntary release. I totally get it.

8. Great comments today. Well done, Sloggers!

   On the (a)(b) theory of GGG– well elucidated and very reasonable. It leaves BUNNE in an unfortunate position. EricaP and others identified (correctly, I believe) that BUNNE is afraid for his marriage, perhaps dreading the day when his wife wants someone else. Insecure? Probably. Common? Also probable, at least in cases where a known incompatibility exists. Is a GGG partner who has more (b) than (a) obliged to accept nonmonogamy in order to be GGG? Is his partner (presumably also GGG) obliged to suppress their kink? In a real relationship, these competing interests will be negotiated and hopefully a solution can be reached. If both partners are GGG, does the vanilla one’s right to, say, monogamy as a sexual preference at least equal the kinky one’s right to his/her kink? Supposing the kink is “optional” (ie not a fetish) and nonmonogamy is a deal-breaker for the vanilla partner, it makes sense that the kinky one should sacrifice his/her kink, but if monogamy is negotiable then the kinky one can be kinky with someone else. If neither monogamy NOR kink is negotiable (e.g. fetish) then the couple should split without delay.

   So within each couple, you should try to determine (pretty soon) 1) is there an unshared kink? 2) must it be satisfied? 3) is monogamy required? Unfortunately many people like BUNNE are neck-deep in relationships before they ask these tough questions. What to do when the answers are (yes)(yes)(yes) are the hardest emotionally. Looks like BUNNE is (yes)(no)(yes) which is workable. He does need to relax and talk to his partner about this!

   Food for thought: I like monogamy and, psychologically, suspect I need it in order to get aroused. The thought of my husband with another woman is so revolting to me that I could not be sexual in that condition. Do I have a monogamy kink? Or maybe a monogamy fetish since it is truly nonnegotiable. Does it get more respect as a fetish?

9. Actually, i think she might be able to get pregnant from that. My mom got pregnant with me without any penetration. He came on her leg. The Dr had to pop her hymen to deliver me. True story.

10. @110: If the thought “My husband is not having sex with anyone but me” actually turns you on, then it’s a kink. If you really need that thought to get turned on, it’s a fetish. Nothing wrong with that as long as you realize not everyone feels that way.

    But, if it’s just that the thought of non-monogamy, or the thought of your husband with someone else, turns you off, then you don’t have a kink or a fetish. It’s an anti-kink, sometimes called a squick. It’s not monogamy turning you on. It’s non-monogamy turning you off.

11. @110 wxPDX

    Can you please explain more about your feelings concerning your husband and monogamy? Why is the thought of sharing him “revolting?” Were you two virgins when you married? Anything you can add would be helpful.

12. It sounds like Nervous in Candlelight has social anxiety disorder and take it from me, having someone make fun of you when you tell them about it is NOT helpful.

13. I’m trying to imagine what lies behind your words, wxPDX @110.

    A) monogamy is important to you for exchanging body fluids?
    B) monogamy is a natural consequence to how you were socialized?
    C) concerns about emotional commitment and fidelity as primary partner?
    D) All of the above?
    E) None of the above? The above is just silly.
    F) This one will sound odd. An old female friend of mine has expressed the same sentiment. In her case monogamy is about security and keeping her home and family together. She’s finally willing to acknowledge that she has no interest in having intimate relations with her husband (2 years) and that she started losing interest back in her 30s after their second child was born. She doesn’t know why, the kid is 14 y.o. now, and the change in family dynamic hasn’t altered things. I’ve asked if the idea of non-monogamy is revolting is because she no longer finds sex desirable and wishes for her husband to feel the same, it is a threat that he’ll want to change the life she sees for them? Does she fear that we will talk behind her back? Is she afraid he’ll fall in love and divorce her? She hasn’t answered any of my questions, she changes the subject. I find it all very sad. And, I’ll confess that I’m angry for her husband, who is also my friend. The inequality of their relationship is too much, as I see her having made a unilateral decision. I’m not saying or suggesting this situation is in any way like your’s. Only that the word “revolting” came up with her, and it is a strong word.

14. @82
    Thank you for your post. I my boyfriend smokes a lot and I see it as a coping mechanism. Sometimes it makes me worry but because we’re both so young I try not to focus on it until it becomes a problem that affects me directly.

    @112
    That’s kind of a blurry line though isn’t it? I’ll grant you the theoretical legitimacy that monogamy is a kink (though I think that’s a wee bit dubious) but how do you seperate the “squick” of “he/she is sleeping with someone else” from the “kink” of “he/she isn’t”. Does that make sense? Kind of hard to explain…

15. @116: I don’t think it’s dubious at all that monogamy could be a kink for some people. Some people are turned on by the thought that their partner isn’t sleeping with anyone else: you think no one is?
    (I didn’t say that it’s “kinky,” which has a different connotation altogether.)

    Here’s an example that might help you distinguish. A lot of people, like Dan, are really turned off by scat play. It’s pretty clear that this is a squick: in other words, they don’t get excited by the idea that there is no scat play going on, they get turned off by the idea that there is.

    The reason I think 110 has a squick is that she expressed revulsion at the thought of NOT having monogamy. If she had a kink, she would have said “I get really turned on when I think about us being monogamous. It’s so hot that he doesn’t have sex with someone else.” That’s pretty clearly not the sentiment she expressed.

    In short: feel revolted by something? It’s a squick. Feel turned on by something? It’s a kink.

16. BUNNE is interesting! My reactions
    1) You can be as GGG as you want and still be incompatable
    2) Some ‘self-doubt’ apprehensiveness is implicit in that he is seeking help -not a terminal flaw
    3) Growing-up well adjusted full of the fruits of the spirit rather than riven with flaws and conflicts ought to be good even if that doesn’t get you into BDSM! Some people would die to have a partner that is erotically selflessly flexible compared to one that is rigid stuck in a groove.
    4) The bottom line is really they both need to randomly explore loads of erotica and grow out of what they do have in common to what they can have in common.
    5) Beyond finding a solution to improve things don’t fixate on it or the whole marraige will become defined by the <1% of what doesn’t work at the total expense of everything else.

17. @Redheadwglasses, comment nos. 39, 40: Thank you for your kind and informative response in regard to GGG.

18. @117

    Okay I think I can put it clearer now. I find that most monogamous people have both, but usually not either by itself? I don’t know… maybe they all just have the squick factor.

19. The anxiety-inducing effects of pot smoking are well known and documented in the scientific literature. You can look up as much research on this as you care to read on PubMed. Chronic pot use can also initiate long-term paranoia. This was just flat out bad advice, Dan. In contrast to a totally unregulated street drug that has a good chance of exacerbating the problem, there are a number of carefully regulated, FDA approved, anti-anxiety pharmaceuticals that have changed the lives of people like me, with moderate to severe anxiety. I know you intended to be funny, but next time, please be a little less casual when advising on serious medical condition, okay?

20. @24 “skepticism is all well and good, but the story as originally written is quite plausible. Stranger things have happened…..”

    Like what???

21. @111 and my MIL got engaged 2 days before she discovered she was pregnant. Honest, complete coincidence (if you believe my in laws)

22. mydriasis, BlackRose

    I think the whole kink/squick analysis misses the point when it comes to monogamy. From what I’ve observed monogamy has nothing to do with sexual desire or sexual revulsion. It’s solely a matter of emotional security (or insecurity if you like).

    I am poly. I don’t care in the least if my wife wants other men and I am so secure in my commitment to her and her’s to me that other people have no bearing on our marriage. She on the other hand is mono and views my sexuality as her personal property, even if she were to never have sex with me. It’s unthinkable to her that I would have sex with someone else. She would absolutely divorce me if she thought I had done so.

23. I should add that Dan is quite correct to question whether society should view this belief that monogamy is more important than marriage as normal.

24. @kim in portland, I know a couple who is almost exactly in the same situation — except that the wife has finally come round to allowing her husband to have sex with other women, provided she can pretend nothing is happening. So he has it very infrequently: only when he goes to a far-away conference, and even then not always so that she doesn’t associate his absence with “that”.

    In other words, she sorta kinda said to him that it would be OK (she never said the words out loud, it was more about looks and sighs and OKs and “if you must”s and implicit meaning). As a result the husband is walking on eggs to make sure nothing is visible to the wife, and to their two children (boy age 14, girl age 19).

    I did ask her once about it, and she avoided the topic. The husband tells me she does when he tries to bring it up to.

    It is indeed very, very unfair to the husband, who has always been a model of love and devotion to her, and who could bring himself to have sex with other women only very gradually and with a lot of difficulty (his own dad had abandoned the family to go live with a lover he had been having for a while, thus hurting him, his mother, and his brothers and sisters; he had sworn he would never do such a thing).

    But I can also see the viewpiont of the wife. She lost sexual interest in him about 10-15 years ago. She is 6-7 years older than him, and (at least to my taste) less attractive than he is. He was always been bombarded with attention from females (at the university where he teaches, first-year female students flocked to him when he was the undergraduate advisor), and (I imagine) she has been afraid for quite a while that he might want to leave her for a younger model. I can imagine her looking at herself in the mirror and feeling afraid of the little foxy 20-year-old who would eventually steal her husband.

    And when we’re afraid, we sometimes run away. We avoid the source of fear, because fear is uncomfortable, fear hurts, fear makes you cry. Maybe it started for her as denial — if I pretend there’s nothing then maybe this will disappear… Then it became a habit. And on it goes, as a means to avoid pain.

    Avoiding pain is often the way to more pain.

25. Mr. J @ 124, and ankylosaur @ 126, I think you have both helped to move the discussion of monogamy, unilateral decision-making, and (relatively) sexless marriages into a thoughtful direction.
    The whole “is it a kink or is it a squick” thing doesn’t seem to pertain to such a complex issue as long-term marriage, loss of sexual desire, jealousy, insecurity, fear, and love present in the situation Kim in Portland described @ 115, and which many people have experienced variations of.

    Kinks and squicks seem reserved for particular acts or role-playing games. I have a shoe kink; I get squicked by the idea of adult babies.

26. Black Rose, & others:

    Maybe we should call the (a) and (b) different words; (a) and (b) just sounds a bit too uninformative. Let’s say (a) is passion, and (b) is love. Passion is an appetite, a kind of hunger, a need to have something. Love is a connection to someone/something, a link, that makes one’s happiness depend on the happiness of this other person/thing.

    If you take this vision, then a ‘passionate submissive’ is a person whose passion (= hunger, need) is to submit. S/he hungers for the sensation of submitting to another person’s will, of being used as an instrument of the satisfaction of another person’s passion.

    In fact, the submissive’s kink is for the passion of the dominant: the more the dominant expresses his/her passion in what they’re doing, the more the submissive connects sexually with him/her and feels fulfilled. It’s not that the submissive simply enjoys pain: if s/he, say, burned or cut him/herself while cooking, this wouldn’t be erotic. But if his/her dominant drops candle wax on him/her… and smiles and enjoys the, and laughs (all external signs of passion inside), then the submissive is in heaven.

    If, on the other hand, the dominant is all care and concern for the submissive — ‘am I spanking you enough, darling? or do you want more? should I go get the pad?’ — then s/he can see there is no passion in the dominant, and since the submissive craves this passion in the dominant (expressed specifically in the form of spaking, humiliation, etc.), its absence is a powerful turn-off. Everything stops, the sub stops asking for more sex, and feels frustrated.

    Just like, in a vanilla relationship, the person who is having vanilla sex with a partner who closes his/her eyes and ‘thinks of England’. It is possible to go on — if one enters one’s fantasy world and forgets the person one is with. But this is hardly what we’d call ‘good sex’.

    If you’re GGG with love but without passion, then it feels like you’re sort of sorry for your partner. ‘Oh, poor darling, he needs his kink. Why don’t I do what he likes, as a good lover should?’ (One of my worst relationships was with a girl who reacted like that to some of my kinks. It was… sad, to put it mildly.)

    Now, I’m not saying that things can’t change. You can start thinking like that — ‘poor darling’ — and then gradually change into something else. All kinds of things can happen. But it’s usually better if you can be GGG not only because of the ‘poor darling’ factor, but also out of personal curiosity: what’s in there for me? Maybe there is something in there for me. Let’s give it a try…

    And if you can’t — if whatever kinks your partner has are squicks for you — then indeed there’s incompatibility. Then you probably should think about keeping your relationship non-sexual.

27. I suppose the worst thing in dealing with the ‘poor darling’ kind of GGG is that it’s difficult to express what it is one doesn’t like. How on earth can you say to someone who is willing to do what you want, someone who obviously cares about you, who is trying to bring you sexual fulfillment… that there still is something missing? ‘Oh darling, is it my fault? Am I doing something wrong?’ It’s very difficult to answer this question sincerely in a way that doesn’t sound unfair or whimsical. One fears one is wrong, or hurting the other person, if one gives a sincere answer.

    And so one finds oneself in the situation of BUNNE’s wife above. What can she say that won’t hurt him — when he is in fact doing nothing wrong, he just isn’t as passionate about spanking as she is?

28. For NIC, what about an anti-emetic? It sounds like a vicious circle-type thing – getting anxious triggers nausea, which makes the anxiety much worse – and very much like the problem I had for the better part of a decade.
    In my case, the doctor prescribed tablets to deal with the nausea and, over a few months, the anxiety decreased and the nausea went away almost completely. It didn’t matter if I started feeling ill because I had something to stop it, so the idea of being in a nerve-wracking situation wasn’t as terrifying.

    As for psychiatric help, I’d suggest that if the initial anxiety is particularly bad, but otherwise an anti-emetic might be enough.

29. Mr Ankylosaur – (I’m not sure why you felt the need for the unnecessary heteronormative bit, but I’ll pass over that without comment) As someone who has found that b) often feeds a), I’d perhaps phrase it as being willing to discover how far one can go with authenticity in most new directions. After all, there will come a time when one will have gone to the new restaurant enough to be familiar with the menu. You seem on to something in general, and I like Ms Cute’s invocation of the woman who became more vanilla as her relationship deepened. I’m slightly apprehensive about Mr J, although I can appreciate where he’s coming from given his circumstances. To spend one’s entire sexual life going from hotel to hotel in search of increasing thrills and never having a home doesn’t seem all that much better than never leaving the house, but again, one understands that his particular patch of grass is rather more brown.

    One concern, though, is not to set up the paradigm in such a way that what comes across is that the Vanilla Partner has to (or should) Get With the Program. Great if it can happen – being open to exploration for its own sake is fine, but I don’t want to see it set up in such a way that implies that Vanilla is Less Than, or that the inability to go beyond one’s point of maximum authenticity in a partner’s kink is a failure (whether however far one can go is enough or not and what to do about it is a separate matter).

    The previous SLLOTD which comes to mind is the one from “Peggy”, whose BF (whom she had gotten into dressing up and being pegged) had gained weight and didn’t want to put on his red dress for a while. She didn’t want to agree to the vanilla period he’d requested, and wrote to Mr Savage appearing to expect his okay for her impulse to tell him to shape up or be dumped. If memory serves, there was a sentence at the end very similar to, “I didn’t sign on for vanilla,” or something to that effect.

    It’s funny, because even though I did occasionally practise unilateral accommodation, I worry about whether it carries a bit of danger about with it. I woke up in the night thinking of “The Gift of the Magi” and the wife who cuts and sells her hair to buy her husband a fob or chain for his heirloom watch that’s his one prized possession. Only, instead of finding that he’d sold the watch to buy ornamental combs for her long hair, suppose he’d just appreciated her gift only to discover that he needed a new waistcoat because his old one just looked too tatty, and then that he needed a new suit to go with the new waistcoat, and before long, who knows what she’d be selling?

30. Oh – when I started #131, the last post up was #124.

31. Mr Ankylosaur @128/129 – But then what happens when one knows how far one can go, and it’s not as far as the partner? (I’ll grant your point about the difficulties with the infantilizing brand of GGG.) Take, say, Mr Ramsay, who can in the great realm of Thought, demonstrate command as far as Q, even if he never succeeds in attaining R. (Will people find Mrs Woolf less objectionable than Miss Austen?) Let’s say that Mr Ramsay can reach Q in the kink where Mrs Ramsay gets all the way to Z – then what? Does Mrs Ramsay joyfully accept Q and produce the eight Ramsays of the next generation, try to drag Mr Ramsay kicking and screaming to R, leave him for a man who can reach V, hold Z in her mind as a lovely dream probably unattainable…?

32. Poor Darling GGG: I love it.
    Also the fact that GGG might just be the new “being a good wife” i.e. lie back and think of England.

    Vennominon’s insight that (in Savage Loveland, anyway) the vanilla partner is always being told to “get with the program” (but I don’t think this is the attitude with the culture at large; it’a probably the reverse) is a good one, too.

    What with GGG chits, pseudofucking, bonus babies and passion vs. love, this has been a good comment thread.

    I agree that Poor Darling is the death knell of good sex, and it’s ironic, as it seems to stem from the correct place and attitude. Back to my theory of selfish sex.

33. Mr. J, it looks as if you’re living a cuckold lifestyle — wife gets to have sex with others, but you don’t. Is that how it works? And are both parties happy with the result, without friction, residual tension, etc.? (If so, I’m happy for you.)

34. Oh Mr. Vennominon, you and your literary allusions. Thank you for them!
    Austen, Woolf, and I think there was once someone else, too. But how many Savage Love readers are going to get the “To the Lighthouse” references? Mrs. Ramsey is never going to get to Z–she’s never going to try. Her gifts are her beauty and her nurturing love. She would probably practice the Poor Darling variety of GGG, don’t you think?
    Stick with Austen: Emma Woodhouse and Anne Eliot would never do a Poor Darling. But don’t venture into Bronte territory: you can bet your habit-clad ass that Jane Eyre Poor Darlings it all the time!

35. ankylosaur @135,
    I have been reading Mr. J as saying that while he would not mind at all if his wife had extra-marital sex, she isn’t interested in having much sex of any kind with anyone. He’s unhappy and loves his wife, and has been courageous enough to share his thoughts and feelings with us, a group of strangers. I hope you weren’t belittling him.

36. Mr Vennominon (I suppose by “unnecessary heteronormative bit” you refer to my use of titles like “Mr” — it is indeed just a quaint little feature of mine without any good or bad implications, it only harkens back to the good old days when I was still learning to speak English),

    I indeed agree that there is a connection between (a) and (b), or between “passion” and “love” as I have now framed it. And the connection is indeed an old one: it is reminiscent of unrequited love, this oldest of all traps in the human heart. If A lusts for B, but B does not lust, but does care, for A , what is B to do? Or, in BUNNE’s situation, if his wife has a passion for spanking that BUNNE does not share but is willing to satisfy because he does love her, what can the wife do?

    I agree that there are connections between passion and love, and that one can lead to the other — I am reminded of Dan’s last podcast, in which a young woman called to say that some women do want to date and have sex with their male best friends. Indeed one can lead to the other. If they were hermetically isolated, there would be no reason to try to be GGG — it would never work.

    My point was simply that it sometimes does not, because passion and love, though connected, are not the same. There is some space for sadness and suffering in this fact, as all of us come to know in the fullness of time.

    I also (despite not being vanilla) am concerned with the possibility that the Vanilla Partner might be seen as Less Than. Since GGG — in the wake of Dan’s success as the source of a new sexual ethics — has become a desired feature, the danger that its shadow side (the fear of not being GGG enough) may make some people think they are Less Than. Which would ironically be the very opposite of Dan’s intention when he first came up with the topic.

    Maybe the solution is to realize how the whole topic is really about something as old as humanity: the capacity to share certain things, but not others.

    I am, for instance, deeply, totally, head-over-hills in love with foreign languages. They are an enormous source of life energy for me, without which I cannot imagine myself. Yet most people I know — including my beloved wife — do not view foreign languages in this way.

    If she tried — if she someday said “let’s learn Sanskrit / Armenian / Lithuanian together!” just to please me, just to ‘be GGG’ — I know it wouldn’t work. The passion isn’t there; she would soon be bored by conjugation tables and syntactic patterns and other arcana. All the fun of sharing something I love with someone else would disappear — because this fun is only there if the person also loves the thing I share with him/her.

    Of course, she might learn to love Sanskrit / Armenian / Lithuanian as much as I would (if we started learning these languages together). It is worth a try, or two, or three. But if in the end it turns out as I expect, then sooner or later we have to admit foreign languages belong to my world, not hers. We can share many other beautiful things, but not this one.

    And maybe this is what spanking is to BUNNE and his wife. Something they cannot share, through no fault of either of them: neither BUNNE nor his wife are ‘guilty’ of this fact. They may share a number of other beautiful erotic things, but not this one. And if this is important to his wife, then she should go on to explore it with other people — just as I go on to learn languages by myself, or in language courses, without my wife.

37. @135 ankylosaur

    No, we are monogamous. I was talking about my feelings, not actions. It wouldn’t bother me if she was with any number of other folks. To me, that has nothing to do with our commitment. At heart she is monogamous so it’s a moot point. She wouldn’t want anyone else even though she is free to do so.

38. @nocutename, no I wasn’t belittling Mr J (and if I gave him this impression, then I haste to present my apologies). It was my impression/hope that he was simply describing his life arrangement with his wife, one that I can relate to since it is also one of my kinks.

    The ironic thing you mention with “Poor Darling GGG” — that it seems to come from the right place and attitude — highlights the fact that what we want, what we need, when we want sex (and especially some specific form of kinky sex) is not simply the mechanical act itself, but a feeling of harmony that emerges when this act is carried out with someone who appreciates the symphony for its own value in the same way we do.

    Or, as someone else put it, sex is not about bodies as much as it is about minds; it’s not about fucking as much as mindfucking. And the beauteous mindscapes that it creates as bridges between human beings.

39. @Mr J, thanks for the answer. (My wife feels the same way, which is why my own cuckold kink is the stuff of dirty talking between us, but no reality.)

40. I’m just wondering if “chits” is a term that has been around for a long time or if Dan got that term from Waterworld like I did. Well anywho, I’m gonna go grab a sip of hydro.

41. I’m just curious if the term “chits” has been around for a long time or if Dan just referenced Waterworld while giving sex advice? Anywho, I’m going to grab a sip of hydro. Nice column this week!

42. how do you seperate the “squick” of “he/she is sleeping with someone else” from the “kink” of “he/she isn’t”.

    I think the distinction is that you can’t have a kink for someone not doing something (or a squick for someone not doing something). Kinks and squicks are active.

    Monogamy, especially, is kind of a theoretical concept; a monogamous couple having sex and a poly couple having sex are both just…two people having sex. The two sex acts are physically indistinguishable from each other. What makes the couplings different is the future: the poly folks might go off and sleep with other people the next day, but the monogamous folks will not. In that exact moment, though, it’s all just two people fucking.

    So having a monogamy kink would be akin to saying, “I get turned on knowing that my partner won’t be flogging me in the future.” It kind of doesn’t work.

43. ankylosaur, between the kink of yours you’ve mentioned, your love of language-study, your knowledge of medieval troubadour themes, your ability to cogently parse a complex concept or two, I’m developing a serious crush.

    (Now Frederica Bimble will blow his/her stack)

44. @146 nocutename
    I don’t know about Frederica, but now I’m jealous of ankylosaur. Love stinks, yeah, yeah…

45. @26: Agreed. I’m not anti-pot, and it works for a lot of people, but in people with anxiety problems pot can actually make the anxiety worse.

46. I was struck by Dan’s comment that “no one has ever contracted a fetish—like a cold?—just because someone uttered the name of it aloud.” Because that was exactly my reaction fretted in his podcast that seeing a centaur in an ad might cause his kid to develop a centaur fetish.

47. Err, ‘my reaction when he fretted in his podcast…’ rather.

48. Hi,

    I’m BUNNE (it was originally BUNNEH, which may give you a bit more idea about the dynamics of our relationship) and I’d like to clarify a few things. I tried to keep the initial letter brief, so I left out some details. So, now I’d like to fill in the blanks.

    Dan’s answer just left me with two further questions:
    * If I can’t make her happy, what’s the point in being GGG?
    * What do I do next?
    The comment thread has been really helpful for me in finding answers to those. I considered phoning in to the Lovecast so I could have a real conversation, but I have a fairly distinctive voice and I don’t want any coworkers who happen to be listening to know the intimate details of my marriage.

    My primary goal in my sex life is to keep my wife happy and fulfilled. I’m not doing it for “GGG chits”, I’m doing it for her. We’ve discussed that due to her much wider range of interests, we may hit a point where I’m unable to do that on my own. When we’re there, I’m open to her looking outside for either play or sex, as long as she talks to me first rather than just running out and finding a partner. This we have all discussed – and my thinking is that since she hasn’t told me she needs to look outside, she doesn’t feel that way yet. Because of this, I’m not scared that our marriage is in imminent danger of falling apart – we have several layers of safety nets.

    At present we are monogamous. My wife feels a strong connection between the physical and emotional sides of sex, and that’s not something she wants to share with anyone but me. I wouldn’t object to her looking elsewhere, but it’s not something I really want for myself – I just don’t think I could give two partners the love that they deserve. One of my wife’s closest friends is poly and kinky, and she and her boyfriend have invited my wife to 3-ways. My wife has declined, partly because we are monogamous and partly because there’s already some emotional baggage there.

    I did talk to my wife (magic!) after sending the letter and we identified a number of issues aside from the energy thing.
    * For a lot of our intimate time we are kind of… silly. Which she likes in itself, but kind of kills any mood for kink.
    * I’ve been on various antidepressant meds. The ones I’m on now are working, but for a long time my sex drive was even lower and she didn’t want to put any pressure on me.
    * Some of the details we’d worked out for our previous sessions weren’t working for her. I didn’t know, now I do.

    We’ve been together for 6 years and married for 3, not 8 and 4 – so less young and more soon. Her kinkiness long predates our relationship.

    To answer specific questions from the comments:
    4 + many others) The willing vs passionate discussion makes a lot of sense – but I don’t know what I can do about it. I can’t MAKE myself be turned on by subbing.
    5) It’s been something we’ve talked about, but emotional intimacy in sex partners is very important to both of us, so finding a third who would meet that bar is going to be really difficult. Not saying it could never happen, but meeting the right person will be really tough.
    7) I care if she’s spanking me (tying me up, gags and blindfolds, etc) because I want her to be happy and fulfilled, and she’s incredibly reluctant to go outside for it. She has been initiating vanilla sex more frequently recently.
    13) Yes, the age question was anticipation, since Dan has often railed against getting married too young. And yes, I overthink.
    17) I have asked. She would like to. Never actually happens.
    18) Oddly specific, but good suggestion. 🙂 I have suggested some similar things which she’s been open to in principle, but I guess without my enthusiasm it’s going to be less of a turn-on for her.
    23) Thanks for the thoughts.
    53&54) I’m very much her type (as far as men go). I know this because I have seen the other men that she likes. If she wants to be whipping someone else, then I want her to be able to whip someone else, which she isn’t doing at the moment.
    56) You’re right. I’m a bastard for wanting to make my wife happy, and for seeking advice on how to do that.
    59&63) She’s told me what her desires are. I am doing my best to meet them here. Yes, I’m insecure about my ability to do so, which is why I asked for advice.
    66&68) Some of the things I omitted for conciseness seem to be bothering you. Hopefully they’re mostly answered by the items above. The thing I like most about my wife being bi is sharing similar tastes in women. You know, it’s nice to have things in common. And yes, I was kind of weirded out by the “GGG isn’t enough” response.
    74) Absolutely – it’s not about me, it’s about her. But I can’t start getting that conditioning unless it, you know, happens.
    75) I am well aware of how in-demand she is, thank you. 🙂 And I am TRYING to enjoy it. Just not very successfully.
    78) Thank you.
    95) You understand the situation perfectly, and thank you for the advice.
    101) I’m totally willing to go there. I’m asking how to train myself, and I’m getting some answers.
    105) This is kind of my question too. I care more about pleasing her than I do about any specific physical activity.
    110) I think the answers to your questions are a little less straightforward. In our case monogamy is highly desirable but not required. Similarly, she can live without kink but we’d both rather she didn’t have to.
    118) Thank you for the advice. We tend to recommend various videos to each other and sometimes even watch together, but they’ve tended to be vanilla rather than BDSM. And yes, putting it all into perspective is helpful.

    So anyway, thank you all for your thoughts. And sorry for the wall of text.

49. @ 147 Mr. J,
    Ha! Is the “J” for “J Giles Band?”
    Don’t worry, I’m still in love with you (and Mr. Vennominon, too, if he swung that way!). If any of you lived in California, in the Bay Area, I’d say let’s meet for a drink.

    Frederica accused me (back @ 97 & 98) of “TROLLING,” by which I assume s/he referred to my expressing admiration for some of the contributors to this thread, since I can’t otherwise explain that designation. In the usual context of this thread, a troll is someone spewing hate or trying to bait sloggers or Dan, none of which I think I was doing (at least I wasn’t trying to do any of that).

50. BUNNEH @151,
    Thanks for checking in. It seems that there is always so much more background and nuance to these stories, and for whatever reason (probably wanting to keep things concise) the stripped-down versions of issues that make it into the column lend themselves to misunderstandings of the full issue or the subtleties of it, which leads to at best incomplete or inept advice.

    On the bright side, you and your wife sound much better off than your original letter suggests, and the fact that you’ve now talked with her about this issue is encouraging.
    Try thinking of submitting as an adventure with something in it for you–maybe take it as a challenge: how much can you stand? How far can you push your limits? This is ankylosaur’s point of view, and it might help you get to your own desire. Also keep in mind that if you are submitting to something you don’t really find arousing, you’re submitting to HER DESIRE in terms of how the sex will play out. Since it isn’t your real preference, it really is submission. If you turn it into a mental fuck, it will be so much better, because the real payoff for dom/sub stuff is almost wholly mental.
    And then wait for the Pavlovian/Skinnerian effect to kick in . . .

    If you can find an antidepressant without the collateral libido-lowering–have you tried wellbutrin (which only works on depression, not anxiety, so which may not be right for you, but has no libido-dampening effects)–I predict you two will be fine in no time.

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