I’m a 20-year-old straight male, but this isn’t really about me.
I was recently back home for a family event while my younger brother, age 14, was away on a mission trip with his church. My iPad died while I was home and my mother told me to look in the kitchen drawers for a charger. I couldn’t find one there, so she told me to check my brother’s bedside table. I opened the drawer and, with a little digging, found a charger.
I also found a few pictures of gay porn and a couple of pictures of male celebrities with their shirts off that had been clipped from magazines. It isn’t the gay porn I have a problem with—I fully support him coming into his sexuality, whatever it might be—but then I found a few things that were a bit more disturbing: a picture of our father in his swim trunks, and another one of a fully naked man with a cutout photo of my father’s face glued over the original model’s face. Needless to say, I was freaked out. I put everything back where I had found it, including the charger, and haven’t said anything to him about it. Now I’m in a tough spot. I know that telling my brother I found the pictures would mortify him, and I feel like telling my father would be a complete dick move.
Concerned And Scared
I can appreciate why those pictures squicked you out—a family member lusting after a family member? Ughers—but I don’t understand exactly what it is you’re afraid of, CAS. While your brother appears to have an inappropriate and—fingers crossed—fleeting sexual obsession with your father, can you picture a scenario in which your brother’s desires, however devoutly wished, could be consummated?
Unless something much, much squickier is going on back home, your brother isn’t a danger to your father, CAS, nor is your father a danger to your brother. The only danger I can see is in the false choice you’ve laid out in your letter. Saying something to your brother will only poison your relationship with him; saying something to your father will certainly kill his relationship with his son. And destroying either relationship over what is most likely a temporary bonerstorm-of-puberty-induced obsession—an obsession that will soon be a distant and unpleasant memory for your brother—seems a bit extreme.
If those pictures weren’t in a place where your parents might also find them, CAS, I would advise you to stuff this one way down the ol’ memory hole. But there they are, in a place where Mom and Dad—BUT ESPECIALLY DAD—might find ’em. So you’re going to memorize this and say it your brother ASAP: “Hey, kiddo, Mom told me to look in your nightstand drawer for an iPad power cord. I found one—along with what looked like gay porn. I didn’t peruse your porn collection too closely because I wanted to respect your privacy. But you need to get that stuff out of the house before Mom or Dad finds it. It’s cool with me if you’re gay, and I love you and it makes no difference—but leaving porn around is not how you want to come out to Mom and Dad, okay?”
Then tell him that grown-ups don’t keep porn in their bedside tables anymore: The internet is for porn, and he can access all the porn he likes safely and discreetly on his iPad.
I would like to know why my husband is divorcing me to marry an 87-year-old woman.
Extremely Humiliated
Only your husband knows the real reason, EH, but if I were to hazard a couple of guesses: Either this woman is extremely wealthy or your husband is a gerontophile. Sadly, neither makes this situation any less humiliating for you. But try to look at the bright side: No one who hears what your husband has done—and no one who knows you both personally—is going to think there’s something wrong with you.
I am a 43-year-old mother of three, married for almost 20 years. Three years and one child in, my husband confessed that he had a penchant for being a BDSM sub. My reaction was, “Okay, I’ll try it, but if you want to explore that with pro doms, be my guest.” Which he did.
Fast-forward a dozen years. I’m going bonkers because my husband is impotent. And don’t tell me ED can be fixed, because in our case it couldn’t. And don’t tell me there are alternatives (oral, manual, toys), because all of those are just not the same for me. My body needs a fully functioning and capable man. So my husband gives me his “blessing” to take a lover. I didn’t even have to ask! I just needed to be miserable and depressed for a dozen years!
Now I have two lovers. One lives far away, and I see him a few times a year; the other is local. The problem is that they are both married to spouses who don’t know. Like me, neither of my lovers is interested in divorce. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m not happy with the integrity of these situations. I know that what I am doing is considered despicable by many people, despite the fact that I’m probably a marriage-saving device for both of these women. (Their husbands are happier, I’m not trying to steal their husbands, and I’m not a financial burden on either of them.) I would love to find someone in an honest open relationship, but this has so far eluded me. So I guess my question is: How do I set up a situation with more integrity when the world isn’t really ready for people like me?
Normal Soccer Mom From Afar
The answer NSMFA seeks is obvious—there are hard-up single men out there, married men in honest open relationships, men in the organized swinging movement, and she should go fuck some of them—but I’m including NSMFA’s problem in the column for all the smug monogamists sending me angry letters in the wake of Mark Oppenheimer’s recent feature about monogamy and its discontents in the New York Times Magazine (“Married, with Infidelities,” June 30, 2011). While regular readers of Savage Love know where I stand on monogamy—with the realists, monogamous or not—not many readers of the New York Times knew where I stood.
Anyway, smugsters, here’s what I think is interesting about NSMFA’s letter: Everyone involved is perceived to be in a monogamous relationship, by their friends, family members, neighbors, bosses, coworkers, elected representatives, etc.; two of the women involved—the duped wives of the men that NSMFA is seeing on the side—may actually believe themselves to be in monogamous relationships. But not one of these three couples—not one of these six “traditionally married” straight people—is actually in a monogamous relationship.
Just something to keep in mind, monogamists, before you hit “send” on your e-mail to me about your beautiful, deep, and meaningful monogamous relationship, about how your parents never cheated on each other, about how none of your married friends would ever cheat on their spouses, and about how people like me have no idea what real love means because we’re not in monogamous relationships, etc., etc., etc.
Because you just never know, do you?
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
So, I’d like to know what all these serial non-monogamists and their partners do when they bring home ST diseases…nowadays it is estimated that 3 out of every 4 under-30s is carrying around at least one STD. Do these wives who let hubby chase around ever factor THIS into their equation? Funny, you NEVER hear about THAT part of it, yet, with all the disease out there it’s gotta be happening!
I wonder if EricaP has thought about what she would do if hubby brought home a screaming case of herpes? Cancer-causing genital warts? Or howzabout a roaring case of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea…I remember reading about women with “grapefruit-sized abcesses” in their fallopian tubes, from gonorrhea their cheatin’ hubbies brought home to them! Or, syphilis? An oldie but a goodie! Lots and lots of little goodies out there just waiting to be caught and spread around!
“I would like to know why my husband is divorcing me to marry an 87-year-old woman”. Uh, because you are an asshole?
Marmaduke@159, thanks for your concern trolling!
We’ve talked about all the STDs and pregnancy issues. We get tested every six months. I’m on the pill and we use condoms religiously. (Even at home, sometimes, so I can verify that he’s able to perform with them on.) But I mean, really, driving home is more likely to kill him, and what are you going to do, stay home the rest of your life? I’m secretly looking forward to getting herpes — there’s a cute boy I can’t have sex with unless I get herpes, because he already has it and volunteered the info right after we kissed.
@161: Odds are, you probably already have it, even if you’ve never been aware of having symptoms. HSV1 is near universal in sexually active adults.
Oh, Erica. So what if you’re educated, aware and careful?
Don’t you know that no matter what precautions you take, a wrathful God will surely smite you for being an adulteress? Double lightning bolts and abscesses for “letting hubby chase around” – although if it were my decision, anyone who uses the word “hubby” or buys into the concept of “letting” another adult do anything would move right up to the front of the smiting queue.
Also, and I only ask after lurking for months – is Hunter an ex of yours? Is there a backstory here? None of my business, of course, and feel free to ignore the question.
Not to be overly pedagogic, but everything has its cost. Ultimately you have to decide if you are willing to the price. Speaking of which every one has their price whether it be money, flattery, or whatever. Some people are just more honest about it (with others or just themselves) Given the right coinage people are willing to do just about anything. What would you do to save the most important thing in your life (like the life of your only Child)
A lot of posters like hypotheticals, so I posted the above in the same spirit. Trite BS maybe, but true none the less.
Lying here listening to Queen’s Somebody to Love repeatedly is making me incredibly sad for so many reasons (among them the lyrics; Freddie Mercury, what a tragedy)
@162 – And yet both me and my husband tested neg for HSV1 & HSV2 this past fall. Go figure.
@163 – I don’t know him aside from Slog. He started things off last summer by asking if I was fat, and followed that up by suggesting that I had a prolapsed vagina. I think both were odd attempts to justify my husband’s desire to sleep with other women. Now it has become a game to him.
@145 You could have responded by saying that in that case you’d go to Europe or some place more exotic for a month by yourself. He said what he was going to do and you responded in kind. By staying you enabled his behavior, by leaving you illustrated my earlier point that everything has its cost. He could play if he was willing to pay your price.
You make it sound like he made a unilateral decision and you could lump it or leave
@ 159 But the STD thing is really not a cheating issue, it’s a ‘sexually active’ issue. Anybody who has sex needs to be aware of them, even the people who think they’re in monogamous relationships.
@167 – your suggestions would suck more than his did. What I want is time with him. As much time as possible before one of us dies. There’s no way to get that by leaving him. Yes, I “enable” his behavior. His behavior is not evil, it is what he needs to do. Why shouldn’t I “enable” it, if I am able to do so without destroying myself?
EricaP you sound like you’re adjusting pretty well to the situation, even if it’s not your first choice. I am curious about a few things:
If you had your way, would you prefer a completely monogamous relationship with your hubby? Are you just doing this for him, or have you started to enjoy the open concept on it’s own merits? Are you in an explicit D/s relationship, or are you just naturally submissive, and that’s the way the power structure has settled?
EricaP
Your life should be a book “One Woman’s Life: Living with Infidelity.” I hope you are saving all your posts. You write so well and I seriously think it could be a best seller. Or else, a self-help book “Surviving Infidelity.”
EricaP @ 170, wow. The strength of your love just shines through that post. Reading it does the heart good. Thank you for continuing to share.
(Sorry Hunter. Suck it up.)
“@143 – I don’t have him under lock and key. How do you enforce a no? He was telling me what he was going to do. I could stick around, or I could leave.”
Well, you sound like a doormat rather than a partner. Take that as you will, but it does not sound to me as if he really had your feelings at heart, because it is clear you would rather have 100% monogamy.
@ 172 It doesn’t sound like she’s living with infidelity whatsoever. She’s in an open relationship. The two are not the same.
@170 The point of the object lesson was to teach your husband about the consequences of making unilateral decisions. Sorry, @168 should have come before @167
You know the comments thread has gone to shit when it’s just a bunch of back and forth attempts at oneupmanship with an “@” prefix. More @ signs = more thoughtlessness.
@177: Or, the @ signs could mean that people are listening and responding to each other.
@EricaP, do you have a blog?
Regarding monogamy, I was in a marriage with a guy who I never thought would cheat. And like the woman who believes that by having regular sex she can insure that her man never wanders, let me tell you, sometimes someone just wants someone new. And he went after someone who was married.
The betrayal was pretty devastating at the time and I wasn’t very fond of him or her. Cheaters are shitty people. Period. No matter who you are in the cheating relationship. The other woman/man or the one in the marriage. Shitty. the both of you.
On the other hand, don’t have any issue with open relationships—if everyone has agreed to it, I can certainly see how it could work just fine.
As for safer practices I suspect that if a person isn’t having multiple sex partners on the sly, sex practices might be safer because no one is in denial about what they are doing. Cheaters can compartmentalize their adventures and compromise their health and that of the unsuspecting partner–and adding to the victimization. Soccer mom might be giving more to her married lovers than she realizes. Besides who knows how many others the married lovers boink as well?
An open question to people in open or poly relationships, where do you find the time without short changing or stealing it from someone or something. Time is the one thing with an absolute limit for everyone. There are only so many hours, minutes, and seconds in a day or lifetime. Even if you are self employed, stealing work time is a bad idea for so many obvious reasons. How do you prioritize when life is so short? Once you subtract sleep time, work time, travel time, prep time, meal time, and all the other daily demands on time; you really don’t have all that much discretionary time. Weekends have their own demands and work often intrudes on your personal time. Children and family make additional demands on your time. Add time spent on the Internet and what do you have left? Personally, I have limited time and even less energy to spend on even one relationship. There are so many interesting things in the world that I’d like to do and experience. If only I had the time. Obviously, the importance of sex varies and affects how your priorities. Not having children simplifies things and you can always ignore the demands of family.
I’ve gotta go now and replace a leaky faucet. Bummer. To Hunter78, @181 were to referencing one or more posters. Or do you believe that EricaP is posting under more than one name. Your was kind of rambling and confusing.
AAAAAAHHHH! There’s no way CAS is going to be able to stuff the daddy sex paper dolls far enough down in his memory hole. I am now going to be plagued by it popping out of my own memory hole and I’m just hearing about it secondhand.
Although this does point out the necessity of Savage Love. I mean, who else was that dude going to tell about this particular problem?
jill
http://inbedwithmarriedwomen.blogspot.co…
@177, Seeds – Actually, I’ve found that the comment thread devolving into multiple @ signs just means that we’re no longer talking about the actual column, hell why would we? We’re, as usual, talking about EricaP’s sex life and marital relationship. See, the comment section of the Savage Love columns are actually “As the EricaP Turns” because nearly every section devolves into a discussion about her. However, Dan’s posts not about sex are wholly ignored by Ms.P.
And, I totally agree with @174, AR. “Honey, I’d like to discuss opening our marriage up” is totally different than “Honey, I’m going to have sex with other women, whether you like it or not. You can totally have sex with other people too! Take it or leave.” That’s not a discussion about changing the parameters of a marriage; that’s a unilateral announcement that one spouse is changing the parameters of the marriage. But hey, the guy doesn’t look at kiddie porn, so he’s a prince!
@171- I think if I had my way, we would go together to play with other people. But, yes, we have in an explicit D/s relationship for even longer than we have been married, and I play by his rules.
@174 – yes, we’re both shits. Good thing we love each other; no one else would put up with us for two minutes.
@172 – thanks for the kind words!
Spot on once again, Dan! Thanks for another great column!
@187 EricaP
Kind words @172, yes, but don’t you want to correct “infidelity?”
@174 AR
Has it occurred to you that maybe she doesn’t have her feelings at heart in the way that you would with your own?
I am a Gay human being on facebook and I came across a Jewish “friend” spouting anti-Gay hatred saying that he wishes Dan Savage gets aids and dies. I am fighting this guy and his nazi Jewish friends on FB – and I need help. This is my blog and my story outlined with them
I thought Dan Savage should know that these people are threatening his life and the lives and rights of gay couples all over the world.
http://wp.me/pDfsx-1oD
The FB “friend” is NOAH DAVID SIMON – I’m trying to get his and his friends off FACEBOOK – help me – we don’t have the need for more religious haters in the world especially on the internet. Faceless cowards who hate.
@190: I think that was sarcasm.
@191: Do you mean that it’s not as important to her as it would be to someone else?
@193 I’m confused why you mention that your friend is Jewish. That detail is unnecessary and is enough to make me scared to click on your link.
@194 BlackRose
Re: @191 I simply saw a presumption on AR’s part. I am not speaking for EricaP. However, different people obviously have different feelings. Why assume that everyone’s “at heart” is the same?
@Mr. J and BlackRose. I was sincerely thanking Amos101 for saying I write well. I don’t argue with the term infidelity because Mr. P did keep his infidelity secret for 4 months before we opened the marriage.
AR@174 thought Mr. P wasn’t being considerate, and I should stand up for myself. The D/s makes that hard for others to understand. I like shaping my life to Mr P’s needs, even when I don’t enjoy the immediate experience.
@Fans & Haters, Sorry, I’m not taking this show to a blog or book. Posting here is therapy for me, and something I hope to outgrow.
EricaP, I’m neither a fan nor a hater, and I hope that you don’t take this the wrong way. But this comment thread doesn’t exist to be anyone’s “therapy,” and when the blog turns into the EricaP therapy hour day after day or week after week, even if the original letter(s) may have little to do with your own experience, then I think you need to find a supplemental or alternate form of therapy.
I really do hope that you find a way to be inside your marriage that works for you, and i realize that from time to time the comments will veer from their original course. I also know that occasionally people’s own stories are warranted or make their way in here (it’s happened to me a few times).
But this blog doesn’t exist to serve the purpose you’re using it for and you are dragging a lot of people–some reluctantly–along with you as you hash through your marital issues. It isn’t fair.
@198 – life’s not fair. Welcome to the internet.
Comments on NSMFA
First of all, kudos on your desire for a situation with more integrity and a confirmation that there ARE situations like that easily available if you spend the time to look.
However, I would like to comment on your feeling that your body needs a fully functioning and capable man. I am not sure of your definition of such, but as a man who struggled with ED and its accompanying relationship issues for many years (pills resulting in strange vision, suction devices [really?], cock rings and small sections of rope, injections [wow, NOT the way to go] and finally the long term and immensely satisfying solution of a penile implant) I can say that, probably unless your husband dated Lorena Bobbitt, there is a solution available to him. Whether or not that will restore a monogamous relationship, or even if you would wish for that, I do not know.
The Eroticist
@198 When did you become Mr. Savage’s spokesman? Mr. Savage seems to me quite capable of speaking up for himself. If Ms. P’s posts were contrary to Mr. Savage’s view of what the blog’s purpose is, I think he’d have told Ms. P by now.
I’d certainly like /ignore functionality, but I wouldn’t use it for Erica.
Gee thanks, EricaP. “Life’s not fair, so I can just hijack any and all threads I like to suit my own purposes. I will do this all the time, despite the fact that I’m irritating people who had a reasonable expectation of something else when they go onto a particular site.” I’ll remember that. Good to note your sensitivity on this point.
@201: As far as what Dan wants, that’s almost beside the point where this issue is concerned. I’m not trying to speak for anyone else but myself, but *I* didn’t realize that the point of the Stranger’s blog was to give unhappy people a forum for discussing their marital issues. If someone wants therapy, she should go to a therapist; if she wants to express herself or write about her own experiences almost exclusively, she can start her own blog.
@202
Nocutename wrote “*I* didn’t realize that the point of the Stranger’s blog was to give unhappy people a forum for discussing their marital issues.”
I believe the whole f___ing point of Dan Savage’s column is to help people (both single and married, straight and gay) with their sexual problems so it’s perfectly appropriate for unhappy married people to discuss their problems here. But you must be confusing Erica with somebody else, because she doesn’t sound unhappy and she isn’t discussing her marital problems but rather her *solutions.*
Erica P., if you ever decide to write a book, I’d love to read your story!
I give up.
Clearly the majority of readers are delighted to read Erica.
@203, You already have.
@204, I’m clearly with you. And if “Life’s not fair. Welcome to the internet” then I never, ever want to hear EricaP’s fawning fans get angry with Hunter78 again. He’s a bully? Too bad; life’s not fair.
Why did you tame down the EricaP Marital Sex History Hour right after Dan asked you to email him, anyway, EricaP? Right after that comment thread, all your comment posts were, zOMG, actually about the column! Why is that?
Dan was just checking in that I’m all right. Christ. Everyone gets their say on the internet, me, you Hunter, Hunter’s critics, nocutename, the period troll, the Professor. Even poor 189/192 above got to have his say posted for a little while before the tech-savvy youth took it down.
Dan keeps posting about non-monogamous marriages. I’m discussing my non-monogamous marriage. Am I bringing in my issues with my children, or my parents, or my writing, or anything except my non-monogamous marriage? Am I wasting posts on Hunter or other meta-issues? As little as possible. But once you allege that I was slapped down by Dan — I can’t let that stand.
I don’t post here often, but I will add my voice to those saying that the EricaP love life story hour shtick week after week is getting tiresome. At first it was interesting, now I find myself rolling my eyes. I get it, EricaP, and you certainly have some insightful things to say, and I know that a bunch of people will shoot me down for saying this…but I am just lending my support to those who think it’s old now, and we need to stop beating the same horse every column. That’s it, feel free to yell at me for being a dumb bitch now.
I’m just so busy laughing at the last letter writer calling herself a “marriage-saving device”. What an arrogant idiot. I would never want my marriage ‘saved’ by some woman sleeping with my husband (if I had one and if our marriage was monogamous). I’d want to know the truth so I could make a decision about my own life. These men’s wives aren’t being allowed to make up their own minds about what’s happening, and that’s pretty disgusting.
@204: Count me as another one who is tired of it.
@203: if you read enough of it, Erica doesn’t sound happy at all, but rather desperate and willing to do anything to keep her extremely self centered husband.
@198 – life’s not fair. Welcome to the internet.
So, Erica, have you ever said whether you are indeed fat? And what about the uterus? Prolapsed or not? Inquirin’ minds want to know!
I rarely post in Savage Love threads, but I do read them. I agree that EricaP’s attention whoring is getting really fucking old.
Get a life, lady. You need to step away from the computer. And I say that as someone who spends a LOT of time in front of an LCD.