Wow, that first answer spot on. Move away from the man, LW.. ASAP

I don't know why people seem to think that because something is extra-special private, it must be extra-special true. That's not the case. People put in journals things that they wish were true, things that they're working out, emotions that are white hot for a short time and later become so meh that they're hardly worth noting. I hope SCARED remembers that there's nothing wrong with saying harsh things in a private journal.

As to whether or not he should dump his girlfriend-- She's got some pretty huge things against her. She violated his trust with some pretty extreme snooping, then, instead of apologizing like crazy or quietly acknowledging her guilt and never bringing up what she found, she acted like the results of her snooping were something they should talk about together. She doesn't seem to understand that what she did was WRONG. Even with all that, I could see overcoming, forgiving, and moving forward.

Here's the part I can't get past: She's got SCARED feeling guilty for something as innocuous as writing in a private journal. It's like holding it against a guy for having a private negative thought. Talk about a controlling bitch! Dump her FAST!

Mistress Matisse, cool name, clear words- thank you.

Dan, Dan- relationships have to be honest. This girl, poking her nose where it shouldn't have gone, got a whack between the eyes.
If she can handle this mans truth, and accept what he (youLW) write to yourself, and learns from it, all good. Just ask her in future if she could butt out of what's not her business.

Letter 3 answer, Dan, I bow to your intimate knowledge of these matters.

@1 that blows: Good suggestion to NSFW.

@2 LavaGirl: I second it on Mistresse Matisse's comment and Dan's response to DOMME--DTMFA!

Wow--thank you, Mistresse Matisse, and Dan, for your spot on responses--particularly to DOMME. I'm not a dominatrix, but the LW's situation still struck a chord with me, too. I can certainly relate to leaving a controlling, abusive man. I have gotten on with my life, but really feel for those dealing with the situation.
DOMME, I hope it works out for you. Never back down from doing what you love. You've got to live your passion.

Anyone who snoops through their SO's private journal/computer/whatever should be dumped.

@7 eastcoastlibrarian: I'm not actually out looking (happily single), but I can sure as shit relate to your current dating frustrations.
My current problem seems to be from guys I once knew back in the day in public school who were really cruelly abusive creeps. Now after all these years, these same jerks--my ex, too, are scoping me out on Facebook, friend requesting me! Yeah, right. Thank god and goddess for the delete option!
I haven't heard any more from them online lately. I'm hoping that's the end of that.

I'm turning Big 5 fucking-0 this month and dammit, this girl just wants to have fun jerk-free!

@7 "I am so fucking sick of wearing the pants 24/7."

Yes, that's probably the problem. Middle aged guys are also sick of wearing the pants. Well, many of them are.

@7 & @11: I could live in my yogas 24/7.

LW #1/ DOMME: Listen to Dan & Mistress Matisse!

There's a saying - "When someone shows you who they are - believe them."

Your man has shown you who he is, & people - unless actively doing the hard work involved with changing longtime patterns of behavior - don't become *less* of who they are as they age, they become *more* whatever-they-are. I'm not saying it's impossible that your beau could change, but my own experiences with controlling & sometimes abusive men tell me this isn't likely. This guy is the thought police, & he wants you for his prisoner. He's shown you who he is. Believe him.

I'm sorry it's hard. I'm sorry your heart will break. But I promise from all the way over here (the east, just outside DC) that the pain of leaving now will be a thousand times better than when it doesn't work out a year from now or a decade from now.

It would be way, way better to be with the *right* guy, & worry about fertility (or adopting or whatever the options are) than to have kids with the wrong one, unable to leave. BTW, people are havin' babies later in life these days than they used to. It's important to think about health issues but geez, that's no reason to stay with someone who makes you feel trapped. (Also, my SIL conceived at 41; a neighbor, 43.)

Go, girl, go. Cry your tears over it & then give yourself some time to get back to the happy, confident, whip-crackin' you, that you know you are. There's someone out there who will love you - all of you, as you are - & not ask you to give up your autonomy.

Someone who wants to walk beside you, not control you.

(Sorry for length. This hit a nerve or eight.)

Ms Librarian - You make me think of Mr Ramsay and the image of his having mentally arrived at Q and striving for R; my first guess is that, if we place you with Mr Ramsay at Q, the men at P who would interest you are likely looking for women at O.

Ms Grizelda - But do you actually *do* yoga? (I'll avoid wandering into the murky areas of whether such pants are or aren't acceptable professional wear or the appropriate Social Justice attitude towards lululemon.)

@15 vennominon: No, I don't actually do yoga exercises; black yoga pants are just comfortable on me. One pair from last year is now loose-fitting.
I'm not sure I have lululemon.

I go mainly for comfort first, fashion second (I'll pass on hoop skirts, corsets, nylons, and high heels, thanks).
My 30-year-old niece actually does yoga exercises on a surf board in a local lake where she lives! Now that's discipline.

Ms Grizelda - Good for your niece. I used to do yoga quite frequently with a television programme before that channel was pulled from my cable options. I was not quite so flexible as when I could pull off a classic trick that I won't specify in mixed company, but my Boat pose was impeccable.

Okay, everybody: Last week I wore a nice 3/4 sleeve length summer top, leg-length black yogas (like leggings or stirrup pants), footie socks and Nikes to a summer meeting with my broker. Dumb question: Was that fashionably bad? I know that none of the commenters on this thread saw me, but was that fashionably bad? Nothing was too tight fitting; I thought I looked presentable, seasonably summery, nice & clean.

It's not like I was on 5th and Pike Streets in downtown Seattle! I don't have a 3-piece power suit and pumps and have never worn such an outfit to my broker's firm (it's in a rural county north of Seattle).

Okay---back to the current thread in this week's Savage Love, regarding DOMME, SCARED, and NSFW.

@18: You weren't in Milan, London, or Tokyo. You were presentable.

Did someone hiss at you, or something?

LW1-What confused me about your letter at first is that he met you as a client but had you purge your gear. Does that mean he no longer wanted to "play" with you and expected you to become a vanilla girlfriend? It sound like he is ashamed of who and what he is and is taking out his self loathing on you. I recommend you leave at once, because you already know that he has to much baggage to accept you as you are. Be mentally prepared for a nasty scene and character assasination and thank your lucky stars you did not have a child with him. I have a close friend who is a professional Domme, met her ex-husband as a do me, who is now in a horrible custody battle with him. After she had enough of his narsasistic behavior and left him, he sued her for full custody of their daughter and used her past as a Domme against her to show she was a sexual devant and morally corupt. She only has visitation with her daughter and is having all sorts of trouble with him and his new wife.

Auntie Griz-
Well personally I wouldn't have worn it but I live in NY. Today it was 90 degrees out and to the office I wore a pair of wide legged black pants, a purple button down campshirt, a pair of black Clarks Sandals, and a black summer sweater. It was light, classic, and office casual, perfect for any meeting. One of my pet peeves is that people have forgotten how to dress in a casual office setting. I see so many people in logo tee shirts, yoga pants, jeans, sneakers, sleep pants, mini skirts, shorts, cami tops and rubber flip flops. If the show, What Not to Wear was still on, they would have 3 seasons of shows in my department alone.

@13, heartfelt writing- With passion and sense..

MR Venn, your boat pose? Now you got the mind wondering..

21 bxtorr19 -- You bring up an interesting question when you mention character assassination. In the world of the courts and public opinion, is it worse to be a domme or a domme's client? It's pretty obvious that with vanilla straight sex work, the female paid worker has far less status than her male customer. I could easily imagine a judge giving custody to the father who merely paid for sex over the mother who made her living accepting money for same. In DOMME's situation, her boyfriend could try threatening that he'll make her former profession public as a means of control, but to do so, he'd have to come clean himself.

I'd like to thank DOMME for writing. She gives one more example of the isolate-criticize-black eye abuse pattern that we know so well from every other domestic violence situation. It makes me wonder if this is the abuser's plan from the start, if DOMME's boyfriend was thinking "I need someone to beat up. I know! I'll target that nice DOMME I met. She's perfect. Gosh, I'll have to start by demanding that she quit her job."

Ms Lava - Depending on how high one gets one's legs, one resembles either a letter V (or an inverted A) or a boat (I'm thinking in Russian this morning; I first typed letter B). It's a core pose.

As I don't think anyone is going to disagree with the general overview of the first letter (and full credit to Mr Savage and Ms Matisse for not suggesting that LW resume the profession; I half thought he would), a point that struck me was the contrast between:

[Long story short, we are still together after a year and a half, after I closed my practice and sold (most of) my toys because he didn't want to be with a woman who was still practicing this kind of physical intimacy with others. Fair enough.]

and:

["He's made her {my emphasis} give up things that were positive and meaningful to her, he gets angry when she sees her friends, and now he's trying to tell her what she's allowed to think? This flaming hypocrite isn't just chipping away at her self-esteem, he's going after it with a jackhammer!"]

It seemed that trickery best fit the case, but the expert witness presents his (thoroughly reprehensible either way) conduct as force. Interesting.

(Quick aside - that Mr Savage put controlling before S-shaming was a mild surprise, but I can't figure out what was stupid about the second LW; stupid would have been writing those complaints in an email to his mother or someone else he wanted to support the idea of the pair as a couple. This all seems to have turned out rather well, at least in a Good Thing This Happened Now sort of way.)

@3: I think the snooped on, or inclined to snoop, should break up--I like Hax's distinction that if you feel like you have to snoop, the trust is already shattered to an extent that it likely can't be repaired even if you find nothing.

But there is a balancing act between offering each other zones of privacy in which we don't deliberately snoop, and being careful about putting things in those zones which we know would hurt our partners (usually applied to things like flirty IM chats with exes) even if we believe they will never see them. I'm thinking of an LL letter in which a woman left her super-secret journal perched on end on the bedside table, and one morning it was lying flat! A number of commenters noted that bumping the table was the most likely explanation, followed by a critique of her pointedly writing her super secret thoughts each night while sitting across from him, then carefully arranging it in a place of prominence--if she wanted her boyfriend not to be curious, a little more discretion in using and displaying it would help. Here, I could see a scenario in which he occasionally writes things as a way of clearing his head and she couldn't stand the thought, and also one where he is clearly mad at her, says things are "fine," and then goes off to write in his journal, IM with someone, etc, all while glaring. That she eventually wonders what's in the conversation being angrily shielded from her would be pretty human, even if I still feel the correct answer would be for her to break up with him.

So I do take Dan's point about things that cannot be unsaid or unread: if you let them out of the inside of your head and leave them on the bedside table, your FB chats, or poured out verbally when you didn't realize your partner could hear you through the vent, you don't get to stuff that back into the box of things they should convincingly pretend never happened.

I feel bad for DOMME. It seems like it would be easy to think that because her boyfriend was into BDSM (and presumably a submissive) that he would be sex positive; many if not most people who are into BDSM and out about it are.

So I wonder if her bf's submissive streak was a deep, dark secret of his, like the lawyer/dom character in Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhaal. (In that movie, Mr. Gray was deep in the closet, disgusted by his own kinks.) Also, DOMME met this guy when he had his sub hat on; so his off-putting, controlling behavior was likely not apparent, and when it became so, she had these memories of the bf-acting-as-sub to return to, to reassure herself "he's not really like that."

But she needed to ditch him yesterday. He's a lousy partner and he'd make a lousy sperm donor; if he had kids he would probably see them as 'his' genetic property, and a handy lever to force DOMME into an even more restricted role.

If she's got the money, egg banking now could preserve DOMME's fertility later; or she could DIY and get a real sperm donor to do the job now. If she's tough enough to run a dungeon successfully, I'll bet DOMME's tough enough to paint a nursery.

If you read this, DOMME, hang in there. I'm pulling for you.

Why are people assuming that @7 is a woman? The “almost as smart, with a bigger dick” requirement might mean he’s a size queen or it might mean she’s really not fussy about dick size as long as the enthusiasm is there.

eastcoastlibraian @7, they’re out there but as EricaP points out, in middle age they might be a little battle-weary. If you don’t need a monogamous, full-time relationship then you have your pick. The guy I’m dating now was looking for a dominant partner. I was dubious because it sounded like too much work but it works out fine. He fucks the hell out of me on request — which is about half the time — and I get my turn fucking the hell out of him. It’s pretty equitable. I don’t have to worry about intimidating him because he likes that. I don’t have to worry about pants outside of bed because we don’t live together and don’t want to. He pays his bills and worries about keeping his life together on his own time.

If you do want a monogamous, full-time relationship then yes, finding one who meets all your requirements might be harder. People do find them though, so don’t give up.

DOMME, one reason it’s so hard is that you are questioning your own judgement.
1) If you chose an abusive partner then your judgement must really suck. How could you survive if you left him?
2) If your partner is not actually abusive but you are oversensitive to the point of delusion, then your judgement must really suck. How could you survive if you left him?

You will survive when you leave him. You will spend some time recovering — I took over a year to recover from a bad 1½ year relationship — but you will spend that time figuring things out about yourself and your relationships with other people. Yeah, you picked the wrong guy. So do lots of smart people. Now you can empathize with them nonjudgementally because you understand how it can happen.

I rethought my whole worldview after my own catastrophic breakup. I learned things but felt I had paid too high a price for the lessons. That was twenty-three years ago and now that I have a life I’m pleased with I’m proud of it all. You will be too.

So how much commission did Mistress Matisse earn for this week's column?

Nobody has a "right" to snoop on their partner. And everyone would be wise to act under the assumption that their partners will snoop.

LW1 : one of the reasons why people stay longer that they should with abusers, is the sheer surprise of it all.

It's very hard to allow oneself to think, that this someone who was all lovey-dovey in the first times, was just pretending.

But he was.

And he's probably already told you a thousand times that you're out of your mind, whenever you've questioned his motivations. That's the way they act when they're afraid of being discovered : they lash out at their partner's sanity. "Who do you believe, me or your own eyes ?"

Congratulations for having understood that he was an abuser after only one year and a half. Most people stay glued to manipulators for a lot longer.

NSFW -- you say you can deal with the taste, sounds like it's not exactly delicious? Some guys taste quite delicious, others not at all (of course taste is also a matter of your preference), and what they ate recently can affect the taste of ejaculate too, if they are on medications, etc.

Same for the wet fists -- might require lube, and lubes vary a lot in how they taste.

The choking -- some people can learn how to overcome their gag reflex completely for unlimited deep throat thrusting. I haven't been able to, but if you google, there are lesson plans available online! mostly involves re-training your gag reflex with a toothbrush or dildo going a little deeper each time when you can control it

You also might try having your BF rest on his back, and you can bob up and down, so his thrusting is limited.

Dan says "A successful marriage is basically an endless cycle of wrongs committed, apologies offered, and forgiveness granted. All leavened by the occasional orgasm."

So, yes, people will snoop, and they'll discover lies, and both people will have to apologize, forgive and move on. The moving on is made easier by the orgasms.

Great advice to #1. The red flags are just waving until she mentions he doesn't want her to THINK something, and then they burst into flames and we all run screaming.

NSFW: I've been with several men who enjoy blowjobs and want to come in my mouth (and I want them to, too), but need a different sort of stimulation to get them all the way over the top. So oftentimes what we do is I suck him for a while and then when he needs more or faster or a different type of stimulation, he pulls out and strokes his shaft while I continue to lick the head of his penis rapidly. When he knows he's past the point of no return, he tells me, and then he re-enters my mouth and all I have to do is suck the littlest bit for him to come and me to be able to swallow. You might want to try that.

As far as the thrusting goes, all blowjobs, if they are going well, get to the point of him thrusting into my mouth, and yes, it makes me gag. I've discovered that many men like the knowledge that you've gagged on their cocks. It is probably a combination of feeling very well-endowed and also the submission implied by being willing to be choked a bit. Just remind yourself that you can breathe if/when you need to, that you won't actually pass out. Also, even if you can't learn to suppress your gag reflex (I haven't tried to learn to do this, but it's not super well-developed in me, I think), learn to recognize that a little gagging isn't a horrible feeling, and that it won't necessarily lead to vomiting (which I concede would not be a sexy thing). Gagging also produces a thicker, more viscous saliva, which floods your mouth, making things more slippery and a bit easier on you. It also makes things more sloppy. I tend to let it dribble out of my mouth and onto the base of the penis, and most of my partners have commented on how hot they find that. So there are some benefits to gagging.

@eastcoastlibrarian: I hear you, brother (or sister)!

Also, I am open to a certain amount of openness in an established relationship, but I'm not poly. Lately it's been a cornucopia of poly types with at least one primary and multiple satellite relationships contacting me who understand the kind of sex I want. I mean, once upon a time, I was able to find someone who was kinky and monogamish. Lately that seems like more of a unicorn than a woman who's willing to have an FMF or FFM threesome and indulge everyone equally and without becoming attached emotionally.

So my follow-up question to yours:
Why are all the kinky people also the poly people?

@20 clashfan: Okay, thank you for the reassurance regarding my wearing yogas in public. I guess my broker was just being a prick because I haven't been earning him Koch brothers' level shitloads of money, but instead focusing on taking care of myself and my own healthcare needs (including outpatient surgery this year for the much-improved--another story).
After my rent is paid and birthday celebrated, I'll put my nose to the grindstone again. Although for me, life is not primarily about money.

Auntie Griz: Are you saying that your broker--a guy who works for you made a snide comment on your apparel? Fire him and find someone who puts his energies into making you money.

Seriously.

@22 bxtorr19: Thanks for the fashion tips. I have bombed out on a lot of previous job interviews from poor fitting fashion-don'ts in the past. My clothes fit well on me now, after dumping 45 lbs., and I go out with a casual but sportier look. I guess I'll have to add some more conservative garments and accessories to my wardrobe for an office or a downtown business-related setting.
Feisty as I like to believe I am, the 3-piece power suit look just isn't me, though. Grr.

@41 "there are some benefits to gagging" is not really okay. If your partner is uncomfortable with thrusting, no thrusting. If you can't hold back on the thrusting when asked and reminded, then maybe the blower has to withhold blowjobs until the blowee becomes a good partner, i.e. listens and responds to what the blower is comfortable with.
If the blower is open to learning to relax the gag reflex, great for both of you, if not, you don't get to unilaterally override that.

@46: Of course if your partner doesn't want you to thrust into his/her mouth you shouldn't.
I was giving my experience in case NSFW wanted some pointers. I wasn't trying to force anyone to accept something he or she is uncomfortable with.

@Auntie Griz: Perhaps I misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about an outfit you wore to a meeting with your broker. If you were on a job interview. . . well, you don't need to wear a suit, but that outfit does sound a bit casual.

@eastcoastlibrarian: There was a bit in This American Life about two grad students in the Harvard physics department who went through the trouble of quantifying how many potential girlfriends existed for them, given their various criteria. It wasn't anything complicated - start with population of women in their city, then filter by age range, then take the approximate percentage that are single, etc. You might try doing the same - at the very least, the results would enlightening.

The two students then ran the numbers for their faculty adviser, a single woman who was tall, very smart, and refused to date men who weren't as tall or as smart as she. The number they came up with - 0.

I didn't actually like the answer to the second letter.

The letter writer should tell the girlfriend that the journal wasn't intended for her. He needs to work through some stuff from time to time and that's how he does it. His day-to-day thoughts aren't necessarily how he feels about her now, but he IS pissed at her for reading it. If there was anything in there that he wanted to tell her, he would have, to her face.

After that, it's up to her. If she wants to open a conversation and work through things, fine. If she wants to leave, fine. But, if she wants to stay, she has to promise to leave him some personal space, including his journal, which I hope he didn't just leave lying around in the open.

@44: While my broker was indeed rude, inexcusably insulting and verbally condescending, it wasn't about what I was wearing to my abysmal quarterly appointment. It was more along the lines of my expenses this year toward my fledgling website promotion and healthcare improvements exceeding any actual gains.
I brought a musical instrument I had purchased as a long-term one-time investment for the ensemble I perform in, and also brought a finished product that I am marketing: bound scores and parts to my composed sheet music that can be downloaded online to show where the money went. I am not in the hole because of this. I have less in one account than what I'd had, but am still better off than where I was thirteen years ago.

My broker balked, however, loudly berating me as if I was living a hopelessly desperate spendthrift pipe dream beyond my means. He actually viewed me with contempt, sarcastically yelling 'what if you needed a loaf of bread and a carton of milk?!' He abruptly gestured at his computer screen, spewing figures.
I told him that at my age, I have to live and pursue my passion, adding that if he REALLY wanted a financial horror story, okay--I'll give him one. I told him about my gold-digging older sister and unscrupulous brother-in-law who have already filed bankruptcy once (which I have never had to do and hope I'll never have to). My sis is so desperate for what she thinks is a free windfall, she's hired an attorney to move quickly on a land-selling scheme that's nothing but a bottomless industrial-sized can of liabilities. Luckily, I don't have to be financially responsible for my older sister or her family.
My only comfort upon coming out from that shameful meeting was that my broker ended up looking shaken as if I'd slapped him hard enough to loosen a few teeth.

@39 - Yep! The hubs and I struggled a bit in the beginning, working under the assumption that the myth of absolute honesty was actually a truth. It wasn't good for us. We snooped, we forgave, we demanded/divulged too much information, we learned to hold back. We've learned the value of privacy, and it makes the intimacy so much better.

@49 nocutename: No, I wasn't wearing yogas to a job interview---that was what I had worn to my broker's office last week. Again, no mention was made of what I had worn that day. The receptionist gave me a look, so maybe I really don't have much in the way of fashion sense. But I'm not blowing money I don't have on a designer wardrobe, either.
I meant that I hadn't dressed well or appropriately in past job interviews. Those were separate occasions.

@50 of sometimes one meets and falls in love with a person completely different than one would ever have picked from one's criteria list. :-)

Back in the villages and tribal societies where humans evolved there might have been a few hundred people you'd ever meet in a lifetime. Maybe 50.

Evolution couldn't have selected for us to be so picky as to live in cities with millions and still not be able to find love or sex, if our ancestors were so fussy we wouldn't be here.

I feel for SCARED - BTDT, in a slightly different variant. The things which could not be un-read instantly and immediately blew apart the relationship. I wasn't in any position to decide what to do - it was decided for me. The lesson I learned was that, unlike what @29 claims, since I didn't ever want those thoughts being "voiced" for realsies...I needed to heed @36's advice: expect anything you write down to be read. It was a painful lesson, because even though @30 (and Hax) is correct that by the time you arrive at the snooping issue, the relationship is toast, and that I am better off (boy howdy!) now, it still really felt like crap at the time. Being treated with suspicion and snooping by someone you care for, and then feeling guilty about "saying" things to them you never intended to say...being treated poorly and made to feel guilty and responsible for your treatment: it does suck!

nb - Dan, when is Hax going to be your guest 2nd opinion?

@47 - there is an old saw my parent's used to tell me and it's appropriate here:

This is a story of John O'Day
Who died maintaining his right of way
He was right, dead right, as he sailed along
But he's just as dead as if he were wrong.

The point being: no matter what expectation of privacy you should have about your journal, you can't count on it.

Dan's advice is spot on, and really, SCARED is better off just ending it. I don't agree with @Snooper at all; thank goodness we can't read minds.

DOMME, I have a very good friend in the UK, who is in exactly your situation, he is married to a sex worker. He loves her, supports her, is there in the house when she has clients, to make sure she is safe. Granted, this might be unusual, but it's not impossible to find.

He never feels a shred of jealousy! In fact, he kind of gets off on it.. ;-) One of his kinks, I guess.

SO, there are good men out there, who will marry you, love you, support you, strengthen you, not undermine and demean you.

Get out now!! DTMF..

And I am 42, you have plenty of time. I am just starting out in a wonderful new relationship myself, with a guy who knows exactly who I am, and can live with that.
There are good men out there DOMME, don't give up.

@42, no, they're not all poly. There are some monogamish kinks out there.

@AuntieGrizelda, it sounds like you need to DTMFBA.

I always wonder, when a LW writes a litany of horrible traits about a guy and then follows with, "but I love him!"... what the hell is there to love about this guy?

DOMME says that her controlling boyfriend made it seem: like I needed to give [dominatrix work] up to have a marriage and family, which, as I get into the later half of my 30s, seems like I better get going on if I want this to happen.

A couple of points in response:

1) You may well have to give up many things--you unquestioningly will have to give up many things for children if you have them, but you don't need to give up everything. It's possible that you put the Domme work on hiatus for a while or that you shift it. It's also possible that you can continue to bring intimacy and satisfaction to paying clients in your workplace environment and come home to your children a loving, nurturing, fulfilled mother. Just like any other working mom, especially those in service industries that can take a lot out of you such as social work or psychotherapy.

2) It is absolutely not necessary to give up your dominatrix work to be married. Your pool of potential mates will undoubtedly be smaller than it would be if you were in a different line of work but if being a Domme is essential to who you are, you need to find a partner who accepts you--hell, not in spite of, but because of who you are and what you love and what is important to you. If you can find him to date, you can find him to marry.

3) You say you're "get[ing] into the later half of [your] 30s," which to me says you're below 37 or 38, maybe even younger than 37. While it's true that fertility starts to decline, many women are having babies into their early 40s relatively easily.

4) Do you want to have a child with a man like this, just to have had a child? Dump him and have one on your own. Bank some eggs. Give yourself the emotional and logistical availability to meet a better potential father.

I agree with the person upthread who said that maybe you were misled about this guy's character because of the conditions under which you met. You may have assumed that he was sex-worker positive because he met you when you were working as his sex worker; you may also have assumed that since his role was the submissive one, his ordinary personality was accommodating and that he was going to be happy to let you take the lead in the relationship (although at this point, it's no longer a question of taking the lead in the relationship; it's become an issue of you having any autonomy or self-agency whatsoever. Seriously: you can't write? Fuck. Are you allowed to think?). But you fell into the trap of believing that people's sexual persona correspond to their more outward, public, non-sexual persona. As any feminist with rape fantasies can assure you, that's not always the case. That's okay; it's a pretty easy trap to fall into. But you don't need to stay in it, even though you've been in it for a year and a half. Cut yourself some slack: some people can't climb out for decades.

DTMFA, and stop beating yourself up--remember that your job is beat others up.

@52: Agreed with 62. Fire that asshole. He works for you, not the other way around.

@59 I've heard it said:

Here lies the body of John O'Day
Who died defending his right of way
His cause was just, and his will was strong
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong

I think of it fairly often while navigating Seattle traffic :-)

auntie grizelda, I am sure your broker was rude and condescending. That’s a bad thing.

I suspect he may also have been worried about you. That can be a good thing.

If the two of you come to some sort of understanding, where you yell at him for treating you as less-than and he backs off, his concern for you might be worth hanging on to. (Or not. He’s your broker, not mine.)

@ LW3, yes, some guys do need extra stimulation. It was fine for me to use hands and then mouth at the end when he was ready.
Dan, where was this info when I was 16? Would have saved me some lockjaw ;)

@Griz, @62, @65: FTMFA

Surely I wasn't the only person who didn't get too far into DOMME's letter before thinking, DTMFA, DTMFA. Glad she realizes it. I totally empathize. But he's trying to control you, a classic abusive trait. He probably is/was ashamed of his fetish for being dominated and maybe thinks being in a relationship will cure that. Dump the guy. And surely you can find someone who will accept your past.

@18 re yoga pants:

My (probably flawed) philosophy is that if you're not somewhere with an obvious dress code (work, the symphony, a wedding, a funeral, Manhattan, etc), and if you can't be naked, then dark opaque yoga pants are probably the best possible attire. To be clear, I do workout daily, but I'd wear them even if I didn't (they're particularly well suited for lounging on the sofa while eating sea-salt & caramel icecream and watching Netflix).

NSFW:
The boyfriend might adjust with practice. Nothing is really graven in stone. Some others have given good advice already. My 2 cents:

With my ex, I couldn't come for her at all for several weeks. With the kind of practice #41 suggests, we got to where she could practically snap her fingers and I'd spill.

I don't know that EVERYONE needs/wants to thrust every time. I got used to not doing so at all with that partner. With another I did all the work almost every time, no choking required. Here too, if you take it easy and don't make it into an ordeal, you may find that the two of you can work up to quite vigorous irrumation without gagging or choking.

Journal Man, sounds to me like you wanna work on this relationship- so, these obsticals ( sic) that come up, are the work. Writing to yourself, is, I feel imperative to keep that line of communication open. But comes a time, when those feelings need to be shared.
And guess for you two, this is one of those times. Just be authentic( and not manipulated ).. And hope your woman will be the same.

re: SCARED - I have to admit that a couple decades ago I read a boyfriend's journal - he left it lying on our dining room table. From it I learned that he had been cheating on me and that he was really still in love with a previous girlfriend (not the one he was cheating on me with, though). That knowledge did a lot to reduce my feelings of guilt over reading his private journal. The relationship was already on the rocks, and the Journal Contretemps was just another wave that helped pound it to pieces.

re: NSFW - as someone who is getting back in the swing of blowjobs after a 5 year hiatus, I appreciate the pro tips (so to speak) from Dan and other commenters.

I am not a fan of deep throat gagging. My ex found out the hard way I have a quick gag reflex when decided to imitate his favorite porn star and thrust in my mouth so fast and hard,well let's just say we revisited the chili I made for supper. He was alternately disgusted and appologizing while I was crying and scrambling to get him cleaned up enough to go to the shower.

You guys all go to bed/ and my evening is spent painting and enjoying over and over The Black Keys last cd.
Some heart ache with these boys, and some real tenderness comes thru in the beat, in the voice.i appreciate the work that goes into keeping the creative link of songs to heartache..

@67 - I like that version a lot, and yes, I most often think of it in traffic too.

@yoga pants: I lurv them...srsly. Especially at yoga class.

I'm willing to bet that some of the issue with DOMME's (hopefully ex) boyfriend is that he is ashamed of "having" to pay to see a pro and is taking it out on her. There's so much sex negativity in the culture, and the idea of outsourcing your needs and paying someone to fulfill that can be such an ego blow to so many men. On top of that, we have a misogynistic and slut shaming culture where men are not only allowed, but encouraged to blame women for their sexual desires and actions. And as we've seen in some famous cases, there's much more forgiveness offered to the client of a pro than to the actual pro.

I've been a Pro Domme for about four years and I don't see many clients anymore because I see so much of that. Potential submissive approach me in this very passive-aggressive way where they won't say what they want to explore in an assertive way, and then when they don't get what they want, they blame the Domme. Or, when I bring up anything on the business side of things, I get accused of "just being in it for the money" or "not a true Domme."

I swung with my ex. We divorced. He said no decent man would want me. People have pulled that manipulative carp for years. If it wasn't the dominatrix stuff it will be something else.

@42 and @61, Correct me if I'm wrong but monogamish IS a form of poly. If a couple is monogamish, doesn't that imply that they are involved in a loving primary relationship while also accepting of one anthers' satellite relationships in other words, they may appear to be monogamous to the outside world although privately they have agreed to a more open arrangement. Poly doesn't necessarily mean always making love in groups of 3 or more. Polyamory literrally means many loves, that a person or couple is open minded about pursuing multiple love connections simultaneously. I think if you want monogamish, you are asking for a poly arrangement. I'm currently reading "The Ethical Slut- AGuide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Adventures" by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy (recommended by our wise sage Dan here) and from what I gather based on my reading and Dan's previous comments on the subject, I believe there is some confusion on the subject. Is it just me?

@84: I have never thought that polyamory means "always making love in groups of 3 or more." In fact, I doubt that I would ever characterize that scenario as polyamorous. Because of the "many loves" meaning, I have always thought of polyamorous relationships as being relationships between several partners, either all together, or with each member of the primary partnership having ongoing secondary (and maybe tertiary) partners--picture a family tree.

What I mean when I say monogamish is that there is a couple in a committed relationship who have made an agreement to be able to have extra-relationship sex under a specific set of mutually determined and agreed-upon rules. Maybe they only have sex with others when they are out of town; maybe certain acts are allowed and others aren't. Maybe the sex has to take place with both of them, like a threesome or a couples' swap. Maybe the number of times one can have sex with an outside person is limited. There are boundaries that are negotiated.

I suppose that strictly speaking, it's a form of polyamory but I think of monogamish relationships as ones that allow for a little bit of variety and novelty on occasion, while truly poly relationships are long-term, ongoing, loving relationships that involve multiple partners for some or all people, in which each act is not specifically negotiated (though I guess depending on the relationship, they are). The "ish" of monogamish means to me that the relationship is primarily a monogamous one and that the extra-relational sex happens infrequently, and is without emotional attachment. "Ish"= "just a little bit" or that the thing being qualified by the "ish" is mostly, or quasi, or almost. ("Are you hungry?" "I'm hungryish.")

Still another point on the continuum would be ethical non-monogamy, in which both parties have extra-marital sex, perhaps more frequently than the couple in the monogamish relationship do. This is probably pretty hair-splitty, though. I guess it's quite likely to be used interchangeably with polyamory, but to me the kind of extra-marital relationships implied by the term "ethical non-monogamous" don't carry the same emotional weight as those in a polyamorous set-up do.

I would like to be part of an almost-monogamous couple, who every so often, in a sort of "let's- spice-things-up-a-bit" spirit goes to a sex club or party, or has a threesome or allows one or the other or both to pick someone up for a one-off. But I don't want to share or dilute the intensity of the emotional connection by having both parties constantly crushing out or developing infatuations (what the poly world calls NRE: new relationship energy), or have my partner constantly going out with other women. And I most certainly don't want to be involved in a situation where people are identified as primaries and secondaries, etc. and everybody has to do the work of making sure that no one is neglected or feeling left out or resentful and calling what sound like town meetings to me (no doubt I've just pissed of all the poly people reading, but that's the image I get).

I haven't met anyone available that I'm drawn to in over 2 years, and the few men who were available to have long-term, committed relationships that I dated for only a few months apiece were far too vanilla--we were too sexually incompatible. So for now, I'm dating a few guys who are poly or ethically non-monogamous, just for the sex and the laughs and conversations--not with any sense of real or lasting relationship or its possibility. But if something more substantial comes along, I'd cut these out.

briweb@mac.com @84,

Yep, I think you’re wrong.

There are different types of sexually non-monogamous partnerships. Polyamory is a subset.

You know how people negotiating open relationships will often set rules and boundaries, like “no overnights” or “safe sex only” or “no falling in love”? If you’re polyamorous, falling in love is the whole point. Polyamorous relationships are stable the way monogamous coupled relationships are but are neither sexually, socially nor romantically monogamous. There’s a lot of talk required to keep these more complex webs going.

Open is a general term for a relationship where either member of a socially monogamous couple can have sex with other people. Terms are negotiated and will vary from couple to couple. For instance, sometimes it’s DADT, sometimes disclosure or permission are specifically requested.

Monogamish is more like a couple who are socially and romantically monogamous, and sexually monogamous except for the occasional guest star invited for a threesome. For most practical purposes they are plain old “monogamous,” they just aren’t pedantic about it.

*** *** ***
Yes I know people will have different interpretations, though these understandings are shared by most people I would use them in conversation with.

I find differentiating the terms useful because then I can talk about different things. If “open” “monogamish” and “poly” all mean the same thing then why bother having different words at all?

Thank you, Allison Cummins. Your explanation was more articulate than mine and furthermore had the ring of authenticity, whereas mine was based on my own interpretations of the terms.

@62 portland scribe: I am seriously considering it, especially after all the personal and professional benefits my investments have given me, if not him.
@65 clashfan: Actually, one reason my current broker may be pissed at me (!) is because, for the past 6 months, I have had to do business transactions with other brokers at the firm due to his lack of availability (i.e.: he's not in, just left for the day, on the phone, went to lunch, out sick, at another office, etc.). Yeah, well, tough for him. I'm indeed ready to DTMFBA.
@68 Allison Cummins: I considered my broker's concerns about not my having anything left for age 70. Okay, but while I have spent in some areas I have been thriftier elsewhere. I have had to focus on my health this year; my insurance premiums went up, I'm taking vitamin D and B12 supplements, and have been put on addition prescription medications (Thyroid med and Progesterone). My body mass index is now 22.8 (I stand at 5'8", and now weigh 150 lbs--I guess there's muscle in me in there, somewhere, although I'm also big boned). What good is having shitloads of money for retirement if I'm a gasping and wheezing chronic diabetic unable to enjoy the fruits of my labors when the time arrived? What about preparing for retirement age while staying healthy now?
My expenses have gone into infrastructure and maintenance, and I feel that's well worth it in the long run.

@72 Mako & Muddlerow: I agree. Thank you!
I certainly wouldn't wear yoga pants to weddings, funerals, NYC, the symphony, workplace, etc. But for me, they're comfy, and in the demographic where I live, are generally accepted otherwise (I reside near a university).

@80 A Finch: Yep---I love my yogas, too!

@70 chi_type: Thanks. I'm ready to move on.

nocutename, when I saw that we’d posted at the same time I thought I shouldn’t have said anything because you’d covered the territory so well and from a personal [authentic] perspective as opposed to my technical one.

bisous!

@7: I feel your pain.

@18,72: 3/4 sleeve tops and bootcut black yoga pants are pretty much my everyday uniform, for work, play, or whatever.

@50: As a tall, smart, plain single woman in yoga pants, that's why I feel 7's pain!

@93 Cynara: I can relate to you & @7 eastcoastlibrarian.

Re agreements to avoid falling in love -- those don't work well. People can't control their emotions. They can control their actions, however.

My personal recommendation is to keep each other informed about what you each want, and update as your desires change. Also, don't fuck people much crazier than yourself.

Sage advice as always, EricaP!

@95: It's true. Having a "no falling in love" rule is naive and unenforceable. But having other rules, such as the number of times or the frequency you're allowed to be with other people or any one particular extra-marital partner*, or limits to the amount of contact you're allowed to have (no texting except to set up a liaison, no online chatting, no skyping, no phone calls, etc.) can help keep that possibility of falling in love lower.

*I say "extra-marital," even though the couple may not be married, for lack of a less clumsy way to express the situation.

Naive and unenforceable or not, that’s what most couples who are thinking about open relationships *want.* They want to open up to other sexual partners, they don’t want to be left or to worry about being left.

People in poly relationships think that restriction would ruin everything. They want to be in love with several people and they think it’s marvellous when their partners are in love with other people too. Rather than fearing being left, they build a redundant network so that even if one relationship turns not to work out they still have others.

When I mentioned negotiating rules against falling in love it wasn’t because I thought it was realistic, simply as a way of distinguishing polyamorous folk from yer more run-of-the-mill sexually nonmonogamous explorers.

@Allison Cummins: Oh I know and I agree. One of the reasons I wouldn't want to be in a fully open relationship, but only in a monogamish one is because I wouldn't want my partner to fall in love with someone else. Outside sex or attraction I am okay with, but an outside emotional connection I would find more threatening or upsetting.

I once met a man whose wife had said he could have sex with other women, but that they weren't allowed to cook for him. Cooking was how she showed her love, and she considered it an intimate act far more meaningful than, say, a blowjob or an act of PIV sex. She also felt that for him to accept another woman's cooking was an act of betrayal. When he told me I thought "this is so not going to be a problem for you, buddy!" But I understood the impulse behind her insistence.

@7 & @93 - we are out there, but tend not to stay on the market very long. Some of us kind of dig taller women, even moreso in yoga pants. My takeaway from the same PlanetMoney/TAL episode was: you might have to loosen your constraints. Literate and sex-positive aren't so rare, but literate!="Harvard faculty member in physics". I'm not even sure the latter is a subset of the former.

I am, hopefully, permanently off the market, and while I do not wear the yoga pants, much as I admire them, I might've been persuaded to. Mrs. Finch probably wouldn't appreciate them on me, based on her comments regarding the running tights I do sometimes wear.

@100: What was notable about the TAL episode is that the physics professor didn't relax her constraints. She'd rather remain single than date a man who wasn't as tall or smart as she.

This is not an uncommon point of view. What's the point in having a man around if he isn't taller and smarter, or at least earns more money, than you?

@100, 101: People want what they want. Things that may be important to one person might be very unimportant to another. Every one of us has a list of unacceptables; some of those lists are long and detailed, and some of those lists seem to have only "no pulse" on them. Most likely you can think of several traits or characteristics, whether physical, or having to do with personality, habits, work ethic, religion (or lack of it), sexuality, education level, employment status, quickness or slowness to anger and how that anger is expressed or how quickly resolved, desire for children, attitude towards pets, etc. which either the presence of or absence of would constitute a "deal breaker" for you.

I think that being discerning is not a bad thing, and that the ability to tolerate being alone if your bottom-line criteria isn't met is a good thing. Conversely, we've all known people who seem so desperate for a boy/girlfriend that they seem to be willing to settle for anyone, rather than be alone. Some people seem to have an endless set of criteria or insist on some combination of things which seems fairly rare to find, or includes an item or more which would seem to significantly reduce the pool of potential partners, but who are we to judge what is vitally important to another person?

Yes, it can be tempting to roll your eyes when someone complains that he can't find someone and then you hear what he's looking for or not willing to compromise on, and it seems outrageous or unattainable, or he's looking for someone that people might judge as "out of his league" given his stats. And yes, I think we all end up settling for some things that we didn't want or settling for not getting some things we really wanted, but the determination of what those things are and how crucial they are is an individual decision. So you can mock the tall physicist who can't find a man who meets her requirements all you want, but she has a right to want what she wants, and as long as she is willing to hold out until she gets an approximation of it, why do you care?

@101 - yes, that's exactly what I was kind of subtly trying to say.

@102 - people are free to want what they want and there is nothing wrong with choosing or preferring to be alone. There is also nothing wrong with eyerolling in response to complaints about clearly self-defeating behavior. As Dan has commented more than once, you round up to "1" and you hope others do the same for you.

These are also not either/or behaviors...there is a healthy middle ground.

NSFW, your English is excellent. Some good advice here from other commentors with more technical experience than mine.

SCARED, do not put criticism of your next partner into any written form. Vent to your buddies if you must, or talk to her if there are actual issues. But text exists only to be read and that kind of stuff will do much more harm than the "good" it appears to be doing you in writing it down.

AFinch, WoofCandy,

What is self-defeating about preferring being single over partnering with someone unstimulating?

We can’t get everything we want. The physics professor might have preferred being coupled with someone who could look her in the eye and make her think, but if she couldn’t have that she’d rather be single. Maybe she enjoys being single so there’s no sacrifice in staying that way; maybe short, less-than-brilliant men repulse her sexually so that ‘rounding up’ would be a huge sacrifice. I don’t know, but I don’t see the self-defeat there, I see real-world choices.

The only people I see being ‘defeated’ are the less-tall, less-brilliant men she’s not selecting. She is under no obligation to ‘round up’ someone she finds unattractive to make you guys feel better.

Maybe you could just line up in the corridor as she walks to her lab, order her to talk to you and when she declines, call her a stuck-up cunt?