Perfect answer, Dan. Honest hope that another human being is not suffering such maltreatment mixed with the direct advice she (if she exists) desperately needs.

Let's suppose that the letter (from 2014) was fake. What would it say? That there are people for whom 'polyamory' is a synonym for deceiving your partner, sleeping with 'prostitutes', forcing them to put on sexualized shows, insisting on sex roughly once a day (on pain of 'no longer satisfying them'), shame, pain (the bad kind), shithousery, fuck-uppery. Some people cannot distinguish between negotiated relationships and this kind of self-justifying abuse. Why is this? Are some people so terrified of negotiation in relationships, as an alternative to hewing to some pre-given arrangement? Is there a fear of being asked to think and to respond, to be fair, to be unselfish?

This one is easy.
In fact, you should be ashamed for even having to ask; perhaps some personal counseling to help you develop a spine would be appropriate.
Dump his ass.
Yesterday.
Get the marriage annuled.
You're welcome.

Even if there are women who have similar sexual interests as the hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-husband, I don't see any healthy woman who is thinking straight being into such a calculatingly manipulative, selfish a-hole. He obviously knows exactly what he's doing and is doing it with malice aforethought. He waits till just after they're married, then all of a sudden insists he can only have sex how he likes it; he gets her to give in to his selfish demands by threatening her with cheating; he gives himself lables like "sex addict" and "poly" (once he feels like she's trapped) to suggest all this is just an uncontrollable part of who he is; he tells her she's being prudish bc she was raised catholic to make her seem like the unreasonable one...and so on.

Situations like this remind me how glad I am that divorce has been, and continues to be, destigmatized. He tried to rope her in (and trap her) under false pretenses. If she's just staying bc she's scared to leave or divorce she should try to realistically imagine the future if she stays. A guy this selfish in one area isn't magically going to care about her feelings elsewhere, even if he is able to keep up a charade that indicates otherwise - for now. Plus, there are plenty of men who will easily be able to give her what she wants and who will appreciate all the effort she's willing to put in.

Also, no response to the second letter?

LW1, I wonder, how long were they together before getting married? I get a strong whiff of "escaped a relatively repressive and mostly religious community" coming from her - not like, mormon-level lockdown, but nonetheless one where sexual naivete was a desired part of her marriage. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been together 18 months or fewer. Cum Fast, Leave Fast, that's what they say, right?

Dadddy's ex-wife wrote in!?

Hope WTBO got out and quick. And yes, where was the advice to the bi woman? Dan, should she go find someone who is completely poly or accept that this is a pretty sweet deal and include any cis men she's attracted to under her husband's terms? We need to know!

Wow what a narcissist on a hundred diff levels!!! That is not bdsm. BDSM has everything to do with negotiation and CONSENT. And if you do concentbone time, that doesnt mean every day forever. You are not concenting to any of this.
You are being bullied and lied to and coerced.
He has lied to you b4 marriage. He's still lying. You need to dump him. You can never agree to everything and anything he wants. Or he will find some sex circus to have elsewhere. That is bullying. He is not honest, not caring about your feelings at all. He is only concerned with his fun. I doubt he is even loyal to you. He is like a 2yr old demanding his sex. These are huge issues, not little.
I'd get a lawyer, get an sti check immediately and move one to someone you can trust. It is not him.

I also hope the letter is fake. I also wish Dan had pointed out that even if it isn’t, “polyamorous” isn not just a synonym for selfish, manipulative asshole.

Not only fake-or-not hubby gives bad name to BDSM and polyhood, he does the same to sex addiction.

I too hope that LW1 and her husband do not exist.

It has to be fake, no one is crazy enough to believe such a husband is "a wonderful man"

OMFG DTMFA

WTBO: "I grew up in a strict Catholic family and was never exposed to different types of sex." I'm not Catholic, but I am pretty sure that no one growing up in a Catholic family is being exposed to any type of sex whatsoever.

Poly Woman: "I want total relationship and sexual freedom, but my GGG husband only gives me three-quarters of the wide-ranging independence I desire. Worse, the sexual and relationship freedom I want does not work for any new man I have meet. What do I do?" Compromise.

"...a wonderful man who...hid both his addiction and his tendency to be polyamorous from me until a few days after we got married."

And then it just keeps getting worse.

Oh for fucks sake.

Dan is a Saint.

No. Way.

@3 - exactly. If you even have to ask what to do with this marriage, then you’re not the only fucked-up one in it.

@17 Your husband’s not the only fucked-up one in it, that is.

She sounds like a loser! I know I could change him.

I don't remember this one from 2014. Maybe I missed it.

Unfortunately for Dan and humanity in general, absolutely nothing about this letter rings false.

I was in full DTMFA!!! mode by the second word of the second sentence ("hid"), but this sentence made me question that:

"He has promised me that as long as I meet his sexual needs he will not cheat."

HAHMA (Hire A Hit Man Already)! At least have someone beat him badly.

FWIW, if the LW is/was so Catholic that she wants an annulment my limited understanding is that deception like hiding some fact about the husband's intent in the marriage is the kind of thing that the Church looks to as a reason to grant an annulment. They focus not on actions after the marriage, but on conditions that indicate that the marriage never should have happened. The deception in hiding demands like this until shortly after marriage (because he thought she wouldn't marry him if she knew) sound to this person with no real knowledge of canon law like the kind of facts that should make an annulment possible.

Me @20, Curiosity overcame me and I looked it up. Canon 1098 covers people induced to marry through fraud or deceit. Other Canons might also apply, but this one seems like almost a gimme under these facts.

If she didn't have him killed, I hope that - to the extent the church recognizing the invalidity of her marriage could comfort her - she sought and got an annulment quickly and easily.

I'm not a Catholic, but the way this guy sprung the news right after marriage makes me think the husband was exploiting the Catholic church's position on divorce to get a sex slave who couldn't leave for fear of damnation. I don't think the church is that cruel. and wouldn't want anyone in her situation to think that they had no escape sanctioned by the church.

An "otherwise" would really have served LW1 well.

While LW2 can make it a price of continuation, or at least follow Lady Middleton's example and give her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day, or even decide that the hundredth sheep is so important to her she'd rather risk having none than settle for only ninety-nine, I'm not sure what willsuit her best. H2 can, like Mr Ramsay, reach Q. Very few people get that far. Maybe, with effort and luck, he can reach R. On the very little evidence provided, I wonder if LW2 really wants to insist on Z or bust. I would incline at least to pointing out that any relationship with one other person (or more) is going to be negatively limiting in some manner or other. Are we seeing some kind of Magical thinking here?

Until I got to the part of the letter about the LW1 being Catholic and the husband wanting a gangbang I was terrified MY husband would come across this and think I'd submitted it. Other small details in the letter are slightly different from my situation, but he'd have written that off as me trying to throw him off. I very much believe that LW1 is real. She also probably genuinely loves him, has likely been quite isolated, and most of all, felt totally and completely trapped. I hope her situation improved in the years since she wrote in.

NotMyReal@23~ So the general consensus DTMFA applies to you too! Are you gonna do it?

Why would the first letter, as opposed to any of the other outlandish and depressing letters in this column, be fake? It seems totally in keeping with all the “I’m married to a wonderful person who abuses me” letters we see every week.

I was raised in "Mormon lockdown" and 100 percent think this is real.

I'm shocked anyone would think that first letter is fake. I've met numerous men over my last three years of dating and have run into almost every aspect of that guy in some form. No wonder I'm still single. I'm just mostly surprised, after all Dan's read/heard of that he would even entertain the notion that it's fake. I hope she gets out fast.

If Darth vader was a nymphomaniac he would be your husband. Get rid of him and go on a date with Luke skywalker. This is the mist clear case of DTMF I've ever read.

@8 coercive sex is not necessarily rape. She is making a choice to have sex with him, and it is a choice, so she is consenting. She has the option of leaving him, she is not doing it out of necessity. I don't think it's constructive to conflate "sex with an asshole" with rape.

RE: LW1
I wonder...
*If she had sex with her husband prior to marriage? If yes, did he seem bored or have trouble with becoming aroused and maintaining arousal? Was he able to orgasm even though they were having vanilla sex? (If the answer was yes to these questions, it is apparent that he has been, in a way, gaslighting her.)
*if she broached the subject of couples and individual counseling (and engaged in it) with her husband. There options such as therapy and 12-step programs for sex addiction, which won't make him “vanilla” but could help with his addiction.
*if she ever told her husband that to GTFU and COMPROMISE (because that is what must happen in any kind of non-business relationship between adults).
*if she wound up DMF (or murdered him cuz her description of him is of quite the obnoxious narcissistic asshat.

@29: Um, what the fuck? Coercive sex is LITERALLY rape. "Coercion" is compelling someone to do something against zir will, with threats or acts of force or violence (physical or psychological). Is someone who has a gun to zir head and agrees to blow you technically "choosing" or "agreeing" to blow you, rather than get shot in the head? Yes; that's still assault/rape. Coercion is literally the thing that distinguishes consensual sex from rape/sexual assault.

The fact that you could make that comment in good faith - and I believe you did - is why we describe our culture as a rape culture.

Slow clap @31.