I’m in a bad place. I have been in a monogamous marriage for 19 years and have two kids. At least I think we’re still monogamous. My husband is an avid reader of your column and loves to bring up the idea that it is perfectly normal to have outside sexual relationships with other people as long as you stay committed to your spouse.

We started our marriage saying that we would always be truthful and faithful to each other. I’m GGG, he probably gets more blowjobs than most married men, and I love having sex with him. He is far less likely to initiate sex than I am (which makes me think he is spending time with someone else). If one partner decides that they need outside activity, regardless of how much sex they get at home, is it okay to go ahead and do that without informing the partner they made a monogamous commitment to? He thinks if my needs are being met, then I have nothing to complain about. My main need is for honesty, and it doesn’t feel like that need is being met.

When I ask him if he is having affairs, he gets angry and accuses me of being insecure and immature. (I would like to know if I’m at risk of getting a sexually transmitted infection.) He says you agree with him that it is okay to lie if the other person has their needs met and doesn’t find out. I am at my wit’s end and am deeply unhappy and think about leaving him, but I don’t want to end a relationship that works in so many other ways.

Lonely At Home

Before I can answer your question, LAH, give me a second to spit out all the words your husband has stuffed into my mouth.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhcckk—p’toooo.

Okay, LAH, here’s a little something I recently wrote that sums up my position on outside sexual relationships: “Cheating is permissible when it amounts to the least worst option, i.e., it is allowed for someone who has made a monogamous commitment and isn’t getting any at home (sick or disabled spouse, or withholding-without-cause spouse) and divorce isn’t an option (sick or disabled spouse, or withholding-without-cause-spouse-who-can’t-be-divorced-for-some-karma-imperiling-reason-or-other) and the sex on the side makes it possible for the cheater to stay married and stay sane. (An exception can be made for a married person with a kink that his or her spouse can’t/won’t accommodate, so long as the kink can be taken care of safely and discreetly.)”

As you are not sick, disabled, or withholding without cause, LAH, and as your husband doesn’t have a kink that he’s outsourcing to spare you, please tell your husband on my behalf that I think he’s a cheating piece of shit, a word-stuffing douchebag, and an emotionally abusive asshole. Mr. LAH may read my column avidly, but his behavior and lame rationalizations indicate that he’s also reading it selectively. If your husband walked into my office, LAH, I would be tempted to slap him with my laptop.

It is, of course, perfectly normal for people who’ve made monogamous commitments to want to have outside sexual relationships. It’s perfectly normal to daydream about fucking other people, to masturbate to thoughts of fucking other people, to check out other people who you would be fucking if (1) you weren’t in a monogamous relationship, and (2) they wanted to fuck you. And it’s perfectly ridiculous the way people make themselves miserable scrutinizing their partners for evidence that they want to fuck other people. (Jealous types, please note: Your partner sometimes thinks about fucking other people, just like you sometimes think about fucking other people. Going ballistic over a little discreet and considerate porn use or meaningless flirting is an idiotic waste of your time, it’s unfair to your partner, and I consider it grounds for DTMFA’ing your ass.)

That said, LAH, it is perfectly obnoxious to go ahead and fuck other people in violation of a monogamous commitment unless you have grounds. And while it doesn’t sound like your husband has grounds, it certainly sounds like he’s fucking other people. I suspect that your husband is fucking someone you know—a coworker, a neighbor, a friend, a relative (shudder)—and, realizing that it’s only a matter of time before you find out, he’s bullying you into retroactively giving him permission to fuck other people and unfairly dragging me into it.

In your shoes, LAH, I’d be thinking about DTMFA. Not because of the cheating—monogamy isn’t important to me—but because of the lying and the bullying.

I grew up masturbating in the digital age. So in any given week, I get off on “Wincest,” hypnosis porn, and erotic literature involving cat people. I’m also a young husband who’s gone a few years past your recommended date for laying down his kink cards. I’ve been deliberating whether to out myself to my wife, but there’s a rub: The last time she found out I had masturbated to someone other than her, she hit me. I cried and swore I would never look at porn again. Of course I just became more careful about hiding it.

Is there a limit on the necessitated disclosure of my wet dreams? I don’t have to tell her the one where I’m having sex with her best friend while she, having been turned into a dog, looks on stupidly, right? Can I settle for “I masturbate to women who aren’t you”?

Wife Abusive, Not Kinky

Fuck full disclosure, WANK. Your wife can’t deal with you masturbating about others and she hits you? DTMFA.

I’m a 50-year-old married man with adult children. My wife and I live under the same roof but sleep in separate bedrooms. We have become roommates. Perhaps we will stay together, or perhaps we’ll divorce once the housing market improves and we have a slightly bigger pie to cut in half. But we hardly talk and never have sex. Where does a man in my situation find women to have sex with and spend time with? I don’t mean an escort or a hooker. It’s not all about the sex act for me. I tried some websites like AshleyMadison.com and SugarDaddy.com with no luck. Do you think there are women out there who are single or divorced and would enjoy being treated like a queen by a healthy, respectful, decent-looking man who is technically married?

Please Help Me

I know there are women out there who would be up for what you have to offer, PHM, because I get letters from them all the time. Some of these women are in the same boat you are—married in name only and looking for some companionship and intimacy. If you didn’t find one during your first internet search, my advice is to keep looking.

And Mr. and Mrs. LAH? PHM’s situation is a good example of a circumstance under which cheating is not only permissible, it’s not even cheating. He may be married, technically and legally, but the sexual dimension of his marriage is over. He is in no way betraying his wife, or putting her at risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection, when he seeks outside sexual relationships.

Can you see the difference between what you’re doing, Mr. LAH, and what PHM is doing?

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net

167 replies on “Savage Love”

  1. @104 – He has a right to keep pushing ahead with his current approach, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working for him. He might want to consider why women like me and tinowman (and the ones he has met online) are getting turned off by his attitude.

  2. @105: tinowman specifically wants single men, regardless of attitude, so there’s not much he can do about that short of getting divorced. I’m not sure what it is that turns you off about him. But online dating is a difficult skill that takes time to learn, so it’s normal for him to not have much luck at first.

    If he does need to change his attitude, I suspect he needs to seem less needy and desperate (as indicated by his “treated like a queen” line), which is why I think he needs to feel more worthy of the women he prefers, as opposed to less worthy, which sounds like what you’re suggesting by hinting he’s not good enough for single women. He is, and he needs to know that to improve his outcomes.

  3. @106 – tinowman was pointing out that he seemed to want more commitment from his prospective partner than he is able to provide in return. I was assuming he wants to date around, from his line “find women to have sex with and spend time with.” If he wants to sleep around but he wants fidelity and availability from the woman, he’ll be looking a long time.

    But if he’s looking for a long-term monogamous relationship then he’s right to look for someone single. And if he’s able to go out to restaurants & the theater & travel with her (rather than sneaking around) then he’ll probably have plenty of luck once he rewrites his profile.

  4. @99: I DO have experience, and yes, hearing the truth from your partner voluntarily makes a much better start on healing the pain of infidelity. The people I know who had to find out from a friend, colleague, their own detective work or sometimes the affair partner have a difficult time believing the cheating spouse would have ended it on their own. This is a huge stumbling block to reestablishing trust and healing the relationship, which must begin with both spouses *deciding* to recommit to each other and the marriage.

  5. @68: “Aside from that, knowing that WANK runs with /b/oards for his source material is a little disturbing.”

    What, you think she might have gotten so incensed because he was looking at the darker side of 4chan?

  6. @110: Almost as much as you love self-promotion apparently.

    Also, what’s Wincest? It’s not something to do with the Weasleys from Harry Potter is it?

  7. I’m amazed that more people don’t talk about how there are more than 2 ways to use porn (I keep reading about “using it to spice up your relationship” or hiding to watching it in secret behind your partner’s back) — what about all of us who watch it openly and with some regularity just because we feel like it?

    Having nothing directly to do with our relationship, but both partners are fully aware, engage in it, and occasionally discuss it later. It generally happens when one of us is away, but there’s never an element of secrecy. I just don’t get the narrow views of porn.

  9. WOW, lots of comments on this post. I think it’s too obvious a solution to conclude that you DTMFA. How long have they been together? What are the complexities we’re missing in a one sided, 3 paragraph email. Sorry Dan; I love your advice until it becomes a simplistic- IDK, just get out.

  11. in re lah:

    we hear your side. we have no idea whether you are telling the truth yourself or giving us spin. for all i know you may be initiating 10X a day, not giving the guy time to breathe, or once a month. you may be giving a very cursory BJ or the BJ to end all others. you may have weird kinks or be so vanilla you’re a bean. you may be obsessive jealous searching his phone records and pants pockets or truly perplexed. you could be amazing or the bitch to end all bitches.

    having been in a similar situation myself [husband cut me off, told me to take care of myself] i can tell you IT DOESN’T MEAN HE’S CHEATING. there may be lots else going on and maybe DTMFA is the answer, but cheating is not necessarily why. as for me, i left.

    WANK: GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN. she hit you for masturbating? next she’ll come at you with a knife so you can’t do that again.

    Please Help Me: go to okcupid.com, lots of techno marrieds on that site.

  12. “But I think for monogamous-minded folks, the idea of having your partner literally fantasizing about fucking others feels like a small step away from betrayal and is a big turn off. “

    I’m monogamous minded and nope, it doesn’t feel like that to me at all.

  13. I’m not expecting you to endorse the sexual morality of the Talmud, Mr Savage—I certainly don’t—but I think you might want to get some acquaintance with its concept of a “fence law”. As the name implies, it is deemed necessary often to create a restriction to keep persons away from breaking a very important restriction—the fence law is more “breakable” than the underlying restriction, so (for example) an Orthodox Jew would sooner, in a survival situation, eat chicken cooked in milk (violating a fence-law) than pork (a primary prohibition).

    In this wise, the fence-law would be, “Never have an affair without telling your spouse.” That’s the rule; it can be broken in exceptional circumstances, particularly to save a marriage worth saving.

    (And why is chicken with milk forbidden under Halakha (the Jewish Sharia, complete with our own courts and such…just no violent power, just like American Sharia courst)? It is so because someone who knows the law well might otherwise eat chicken with milk but be observed by someone else who’s not so well-versed and furthermore thinks that the chicken were veal…this is another lesson relevant to you, Mr Savage: when someone is accounted wise in some matter, what she might say or do needs to be explained _carefully_, lest others who are not wise get the wrong impression. I doubt that this could have helped the husband in the first case this week, who I think will do as he will but wants someone to tell him he’s right, and will look until he finds someone he thinks is doing so, but for every extreme jerk there may be ten normal jerks who might be open to persuasion.)

  14. WANK: GET OUT. NOW. Just…. go.

    PHM: Seriously, go hang out where there are lots of single middle aged ladies. I suggest taking lessons at a higher-end horse barn. My old riding instructor used to comment that the largest female dating pool in the NATION was being overlooked simply because men in the U.S. don’t ride horses…

    Or join some other club where you’ll meet someone with common interests. Take a class. Old fashioned, yes, and kind of square, but a great way to expand your social circle. If you’re socially inept, you’d better work on that, because women don’t go for that.

    And… just get divorced already! Move out! You’re looking like a wishy-washy geezer who wants it BOTH ways by sticking with your defunct relationship. You will become 100000000000000% more datable by reasonably sane widows & divorcees INSTANTLY.

    It’s kind of hard to swallow that creepy “treated like a queen” thing when the guy you’re dating is still living with his lawfully wedded wife. I mean, it would make for an awkward “night in” if you were to run into the Mrs. in the kitchen at breakfast….. How “respectful” is that to ANYone?

  16. I’m monogamous and the thought of my SO fantasizing about someone else is allowed but depending on who it is – it could definitely feel like betrayal a little bit.

    Cute girl at work? Fine. Actress? Sure. Porn star? Duh. Someone off the street? Why not. Former ex/hookup? Meh.

    Someone close to me? That would bother me.

  17. Fred @ 2 & 52, in case you’re still reading…

    If you didn’t find one during your first internet search, my advice is to keep looking.

    Short advice, to be sure, but I’m going to guess that a) that’s the only advice that can be offered, short of suggesting other dating websites similar to the ones PHM tried, and b) the main reason it was published here was to show Mr. and Mrs. LAH a concrete example of what Dan was talking about, and NOT so much to give advice. Which may kind of suck for PHM, but it’s probably lucky that he got any kind of answer at all, given the volume of emails Dan likely receives.

  18. #11 Well said, & amen. I’m beginning to think I was kinky for NOT wanting/fantasizing/lusting after anyone but my partner. Glad to know there’s at least a few of us weirdo mono’s left.

  20. @124: It isn’t a big deal in most straight relationships. Just ones with some psycho, controlling women (and maybe a few men as well) who can’t deal with it.

  23. It doesn’t bother me that my boyfriend watches porn or if he thinks about others while jerking off sometimes (I assume most people do from time to time), however, I would have to disagree with Dan on his stance on ‘innocent’ flirting. Unless it’s something that both parties have given the ok for each other to do, I really don’t think it’s right to flirt with others if you’re in a monogomous relationship. Yes- even if that flirting isn’t going to be going anywhere. It’s disrespectful to the person you’re with and can be hurtful.

  24. Hunter: no, stereotypes persist because most people fit them…not all. And/or because people are ignorant fucktards.

    Everyone else: when my bf told me that he fantasizes about fucking other women, it did feel kind of icky to me…because I only fantasize about fucking someone if I’d actually do it, and I don’t want to have sex with anyone but my boy. But he says his fantasies aren’t connected to what he’d do in real life, and I’ve accepted the fact that our brains work in different ways.

    The twist is that we have recently gone monogamish – I’ve made out with someone else a couple of times (and I actually have like five other guys I want to kiss, but I’m pacing myself for now because the monogamishness is so new), and he’s free to do the same…except he hasn’t. He doesn’t seem to have anyone he’s interested in yet.

    So my interest in other people is both more broad and more tame than my boyfriend’s. Or something.

  25. LAH- I am not married but hats off to your 19 years! Thank you for writing, I was feeling the exact same way you were. My BF brought up the idea of an open relationship last year sometime and decided NOT to mention to me that he was also having sex with someone else. I agreed to it so OK, but for the last few months I have had that CPOS gut intuition telling me something was FUCT UP. We never have sex and Im always made to be the boring one- but if I dont feel wanted and beautiful in my partners eyes than WTF, I do not feel like myself and sexy like I used to with him. Anyhow, we talked and I told him that the lying was the ABSOLUTE problem not the sex act. I just want the security of US and that nothing will take that love and commitment from me, when inevitably that’s exactly what happened-someone else came along and all of the sudden I am not on the radar and I was made to feel insecure or WEAK, no thanks. I really want for us to be happy , all else- GAME ON and we can explore anything, Im up for it. I hope your husband sees the error of his selective reading. Thanks again for writing Mr. S and Mr. S thank you for being you (Dan)!

    WANK: Your wife is certainly not supportive of what pleases you and in my eyes that is part of her wifely DUTIES (and you,her)! You have obviously tried to be more open and honest. I’d give it one more real, honest, ‘you cant help who you are on the inside’ try to include her. If she can work it in, great; if she can not, I agree with Dan, DTMFA. There are a few of us sexy, strong, exploratory beautiful women out there. It depends on the person what turns them on, for me its my MAN- and for my best friend its ANY HOT man with a BIG DICK; we are all made up different and we should all be our BEST selves even if that means being open to new ways to please your spouse-yes that person THAT YOU CHOSE (speaking to all- that give their spouses shit about their desires)

    PHE- Life is too short, I left a relationship I couldn’t afford to leave. I had to go out and get an extra income to do it but I made it happen because its not healthy to stay UNHAPPY especially in front of your kids; you want to show them that they should NOT stay in situations when they are not being built up and supported from their life partner. Why should you accept anything less? You are just as important as everyone else in that home. Good luck!!

  26. What is with the need to share that you’re masturbating while fantasizing about other people? Is that really a need to know situation? I get that everyone has the right to do it and all, but why on earth would your partner want to hear about it? Why are you sharing with your SO? Its not particularly flattering. There’d be a lot less of these arguments if people just kept that info to themselves. Telling me that kinda seems to me like a sad attempt to make me jealous by an insecure SO. Its not the act itself that bothers me.

  27. What is with the need to share that you’re masturbating while fantasizing about other people?

    I’m betting that about 99% of the time, the person isn’t volunteering the info; he or she is simply not lying when asked. Either someone stumbles over their partner’s porn stash and wants to know what’s up, or someone randomly feels insecure and asks “Do you ever fantasize about other people?” hoping for a no.

    I asked my bf about his fantasies and his porn usage because the only way to get over my insecurities was to face them – and it worked. 🙂

    Telling me that kinda seems to me like a sad attempt to make me jealous by an insecure SO.

    Yeah, mentioning it unprovoked is a pretty sketchy thing to do…unless the person is in the kind of open or unjealous relationship where their partner would find it hot.

  28. @26 I think 43 already addressed your comment, but put it in different words than I would. IMHO, you need to find better women (yes, there’s an implied “like me” there).

  29. @71: Really?

    “What’s the worst that could happen?”

    Oh, I don’t know – how about this? A small child has to cope with their home being broken, their parents becoming enemies (possibly), their sense of security being shattered…

    You don’t have a child, do you? I don’t mean that as a pejorative, but I do find your “worst-case scenario” laughably, lamentably uninformed.

  30. WANK:

    Call a friend, pack your stuff NOW and get the hell out. She’s fucking crazy and not in the Marla Singer “dirty whorish fantasy” sort of way.

    She’ll continue to hit and for less and less provocation as time goes on.

    DTMFA immediately.

  31. @71 I have two kids, actually. Perhaps I phrased it badly, but I meant to provoke Steeeeverino into thinking about why he was reluctant to divorce even though his wife was not interested in fucking him anymore.

    I think children are resilient. And I think there are ways to get through divorce without becoming enemies. I do not recommend divorce lightly, but when a husband says that he wishes his wife could learn to “enjoy fucking [him],” that’s not a time for business as usual.

  33. Matt @123:

    Good points. I wasn’t so much knocking Dan as nudging more qualified sloggers than I to offer PHM some suggestions. And I was charmed by this gem:

    Perhaps we will stay together, or perhaps we’ll divorce once the housing market improves and we have a slightly bigger pie to cut in half.

  34. Hunter73,

    If stereotypes were inherently true they wouldn’t be stereotypes. That’s not the reason why they persist. Please reformulate.

  35. @ Giddy – quoting you: Maybe I’m a freak, maybe I’m lucky, or unlucky? But I think for monogamous-minded folks, the idea of having your partner literally fantasizing about fucking others feels like a small step away from betrayal and is a big turn off.

    Here is an article the Kinsey Institute refers to: http://www.defenseforsvp.com/Resources/P…

    You can check the frequency and top fantasies for men.

    So, as a male that talks with other males and females about sex and based on the article your guy is an outlier OR you are so obvious about you being turned off that he does not dare or care to tell you the truth.

    If it is the later you may be creating an environment, where it is unsafe to be honest. Which will likely create bigger problems than you coming to a deeper understanding of your partner’s sexuality and overcoming your turn offs.

    My guess is that you’re not just a freak, but probably a control freak. Ideally he is an outlier and gets turned on by your behavior and you’re both having a great time.

  36. I am sure I am not the first person to say that this Dan Savage is riding the rocking boat of all who find their greatest peace in sharing sperm and other bodily juices and excrement with one another. Isn’t there a greater liberty that affords a greater peace? Aren’t we part of a civilized democracy? Or shouldn’t we remember that we ought to be? The way that you use such a cheap, pop-culture mode, the lazy acronym, (DTMFA), to reduce the complexities of entire lives and histories unfolding as a divorce would need to be considered is yet another aspect of the cheap, throw-away world we suffer in as this is being written. Everything easy, right? Everything convenient? This discarding of so much sanctity is sickening and dangerous. How sad, you priest of perversion. What is the healing balm for those who have been nearly killed by perversion? For those who still grieve the loss of life because of perversion. Can’t you see that this level of comfort with so many kinds of perversion simply inoculates the masses against protecting themselves and their young against the lethal dose?

  37. Lonely At Home: not convinced Dan’s read the situation right. You say you mostly initiate sex: maybe you want more than your husband and he’s trying to say it’s ok for you to go elsewhere, but he doesn’t want to know.

  38. @147: “The way that you use such a cheap, pop-culture mode, the lazy acronym, (DTMFA), to reduce the complexities of entire lives and histories unfolding as a divorce would need to be considered is yet another aspect of the cheap, throw-away world we suffer in as this is being written.”

    Sounds like a douchebag who wants his or her partner to stay with them through horrible behavior.

    “This discarding of so much sanctity is sickening and dangerous.”

    Yup, at the very least a mental abuser.

  39. @71: I get it. Sorry, I guess it’s obvious that’s one of my hot buttons. My own childhood would have been infinitely better with only one parent, but I see so many, many people just wrecking their kids’ lives for greener grass or whatever the hell they think is more important at the moment… Maybe I’ve been teaching too long.

  41. Hunter78,

    it’s perfect but it’s false. Doesn’t that bother you? (That’s also an epigram, by the way).

    Ah! Stereotypes… Can’t live with them, can’t live without them (cf. neurocognitive research). Can only try to keep them in check.

  43. To @1 (and many, many others):

    Telling someone who’s constantly questioning your fidelity that it comes across as insecure is not necessarily a sign of a cheater. Maybe the guy just feels that being questioned about something so basic to his moral code is insulting. Would you react well if someone asked you every couple of days whether you’d killed anybody recently? To some guys out there, and I assume this is going to come as a shock to you, the idea of cheating on the person we love is just as distasteful as the idea of killing somebody.

    Granted I don’t go around pressuring my partner on the idea of sex outside marriage, but you don’t seem to be making any distinction; and frankly it does make you come across as a bit insecure.

  44. To @1 (and many, many others):

    Telling someone who’s constantly questioning your fidelity that it comes across as insecure is not necessarily a sign of a cheater. Maybe the guy just feels that being questioned about something so basic to his moral code is insulting. Would you react well if someone asked you every couple of days whether you’d killed anybody recently? To some guys out there, and I assume this is going to come as a shock to you, the idea of cheating on the person we love is just as distasteful as the idea of killing somebody.

    Granted I don’t go around pressuring my partner on the idea of sex outside marriage, but you don’t seem to be making any distinction; and frankly it does make you come across as a bit insecure.

  45. @154 – The quick answer is there are many groups, some for people striving to understand their cheating spouse:

    http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/rebu…

    http://www.experienceproject.com/groups/…

    http://survivinginfidelity.com/forums.as…

    Others for people learning about polyamory or swinging:

    http://lists.polyamory.org/listinfo.cgi/…

    http://www.lovemore.com/links.php

    FetLife.com group: Practicing Polyamory

    http://www.grapevines.org/home.htm

    But I can’t vouch for any of them, as I haven’t found them particularly useful for me. If anyone here has a group they’ve found helpful, I’d be interested in hearing about it.

  46. @Dan: Ruh roh. LAH is a perfect example of the danger I wrote about in your sometimes-endorsement of lying in relationships a few columns back. Clearly your intent was not this sort of situation, but you must understand that if one person is writing in about this, there are at least dozens of LTR partners out there who are justifying their douchebaggery via this imaginary source. Someone like you, I think, must be sure to conscientously use his powers for good. Your response IS an example of “making it right,” — yet you still stress it is sometimes okay to lie as if it is somehow “karma-imperiling” to be straight up about one’s sexual needs with a sick/disabled/curmudgeony partner. Why? (Not that I have anything else bad to say about you, and I still fantasize about you being straight and available on occasion. 😉 And what @119 said.

    @11, 30: “Energized by the attractivenes and appeal of others,” to me, is synonymous to “thinking about fucking other people.” What else do you think energizes you aside from the possibility of sex? Think about what @54 aptly stated regarding fantasy/action distinction.

    @44: “The Bible is big on thought crime.” lqtm. You are awesome.

    @62: “Any partner who expects to have a say over what goes on inside somebody else’s skull is a massive control freak.” THANK YOU. The newly separated zell_zyte badly needs to internalize this thought.

    Shameless self-promotion alert: Mindwinds

  48. @160: The only one I know is called “life”. It is based on personal experiences with people of the opposite sex. It demands a lot of participant observation, a lot of thinking (both emotional and rational), and the capacity to draw conclusions without jumping to facile generalizations. After a while, it does pay off, though.

    If you have specific questions, we might address them. 🙂

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