Comments

1
Tell her.
(and remind her she doesn't want to let this pile of crap knock her up)
2
@1 You're presuming the flatmate has got her facts exactly straight, and that the flatmate didn't downplay her monogamish relationship to avoid the embarrassment of explaining it to an audience she assumes (probably correctly) to be hostile. The guy may be a) playing by the rules they've actually set out privately b) working with a situation where the rules weren't sufficiently clarified anyway, and they're both working on assumptions that the other doesn't necessarily agree with. a) Gets him off the hook and b) shares the blame between the two of them for not setting out their ground rules properly.

Or are you just generally hostile to monogamish/open relationships and assuming the man is just getting his way?
3
@1 Forget I answered, I see you're a troll. Thanks for playing and goodbye.
4
If this guy is being so public about his other paramours, I'm sure roommate will find out eventually. She said she didn't want to hear any details, so don't give her any. The rest of their deal is up to them.
5
Yup I agree with 4. On top of that, if the bf is being so public about it, it might be because he's not worried about her finding out because he's not breaking any rules. I'd say that unless the room mate asks for info, the LW should not give it.
6
There was once a column where a woman wrote in about some sexual activity that she was sure no woman really liked because all her friends told her, "eew, yuck," whenever she asked a female friend. Dan responded that maybe all her female friends said, "eew, yuck," was because all her friends could tell that was the answer she desired to hear, and saying, "fuck yeah," was just going to make their life harder with that letter writer.

FRIEND's roomie may, for similar reasons, downplayed the extent of her non-monogamous relationship. Moreover, it's not clear that FRIEND's roomie's bf is actually breaking their rules. Not "seeking it out" may or may not be compatible with this couples rules, and FRIEND assumes that the rules weren't renegotiated in the six months that the relationship has been opened.

If FRIEND cannot keep silent, which I think she should, FRIEND should tell roomie that she is uncomfortable with the knowledge that roomie and her bf are non-monogamous, and even though she knows that it is not roomie's responsibility, FRIEND would like some assurance that roomie is happy with the arrangement. Who knows, maybe roomie will open up and confess that she's had a number of sex partners in the past six months, in which case FRIEND's concerns are wholly obviated. If FRIEND needs to probe the contours of their non-monogamous relationship, she should keep her questions on a hypothetical footing, for example, "I'd feel weird seeing you on a date with another guy, am I suppose to come up and hang out like it's totally normal?" If roomie says, "Of course you can hang out with me and a date." Then FRIEND knows dating is permissible without having to broach that topic directly.

7
I agree with Dan and Lava. So many times in life when you tell someone "I really don't want to know anything" or "don't contact me while I'm on vacation unless it's for real life or death", etc, it's always amazing how quickly people can come up with exceptions which are scenarios that they are absolutely sure never occurred to you and about which you will be ever so grateful for them speaking up.

But I especially agree with Dan's advice about asking rather than telling if LW has concerns about the relationship. How many times must it be said that friends, relatives, etc never know as much as the thing they do...
8
The fact that you're wondering whether you need to "confront her," your roommate, when she's not doing anything wrong but might be the wronged party here? That's a tell

---------

...as the kids said until they heard me saying it at which point they promptly stopped saying it...
I suspect two things: that LW is one of "the kids," and that some in her age bracket have a definition of "confront" that is less, um, confrontational.
9
My guess is that FRIEND feels somewhat threatened by her roommate’s arrangement. The threat can arise from “different values,” a different take on what relationships should be like, who knows- maybe there’s also some jealousy involved.
As such, she is eager to “confront” the gf and prove her point, which doesn’t sound like something a real friend would do.
10
@8
You totally destroyed my theory before I even published it.
11
2
You are creating endless speculative scenarios all based on the assumption that LW is too stupid to know what is really going on.
Tell her.
If there are extenuating circumstances the friend can explain it. Or not.
Whatever the rules are or are not she does not want to breed with this person.
You're welcome.
12
My god, that poor deluded other woman, naively believing her boyfriend is in an open relationship, when in reality, he just has explicit permission to have sex with other women. I mean, what kind of MORON would ever think that???
13
@11, troll or not. Why tell her? The LW might be close to her roomie, I don't get they are super close.
If they were, she wouldn't need to write to
Dan. Her heart connection would dictate
what she says to her close friend.
14
Re@23. That format was not intentional.
15
MYO(FUCKING)B
16
@14 i was like, maybe you're the love child of ee cummings and Maya Angelou
17
FRIEND, you can parse through all of Dan's ifs, but instead you should just shut the fuck up and butt out.
18
If the monogamishy is as described (big if), can we just note it's objectively bad due to vagueness?

Shouldn't seek it out, how the hell do you know when you'd cross that line. Can you sit down on the Small Couch of Plausible Deniability? Can you smile flirtatiously? Or just wander around with your eyes closed and your dong out hoping something might land on it?

No agreement can be foolproof, but some are more fool-prone than others.
19
I take the formula of sex with other people being permissible, but not 'seeking it out', in this case to cover a prejudicial arrangement in which the bf's more likely to have more sex outside the relationship than the gf.

It's too vague. What counts as 'seeking out'? If a guy hits on the gf at a party, and she likes this third person and her bf isn't in the way, can she have sex with him? Presumably yes. If he gets a little drunk on another night out and makes a pass at a hot woman--who's surprisingly receptive to his advances--can he fuck her? Probably yes, as well. The issue with any looseness of definition re 'seeking out', though, is that it can end up playing into the hands of gendered cultural norms, which, especially, perhaps, in the matter of sexuality, tend relatively to restrict and disempower women. What if the bf thought that his partner wearing revealing clothing, for instance, broke the spirit of the agreement by soliciting sexual attention? The 'seeking out' rule isn't sufficiently explicit to give the gf space for maneuver. In the absence of more readily interpretable rules for what their 'monogamish' set-up means, the tendency on average will be for the agreement to grant permission to the more powerful person--the man--to sow his oats in a manner not necessarily anticipated by his partner.

And it would seem that he is 'seeking out' other people anyways, contrary to her expectations.

Second-generation feminists in the 60s and 70s debated whether 'free love' merely gave rein to the age-old straight male impulse to fuck around. Now, I wouldn't think that for biological and socially and culturally immutable reasons, men want it more than women. I wouldn't think, in gross terms, that a monogamish setup favoured a straight man over a straight woman--in giving a blessing to the person with the greater appetite for sexual variety. But I can certainly see how some sort of 'monogamish code of conduct' or 'monogamish norm' could be manipulated by men in straight relationships. There may well be pressure on liberal and sex-positive young straight women to assent to them, without their knowing what will be involved (as, it seems, in this case).

As for what FRIEND should do, I'd agree that she doesn't know what's said between the couple and is likely venting her own anxieties in a confused and oblique way by fretting over his 'cheating'. If there's anyone she should talk to, it's the guy. Something like 'does [my friend] know you have an active Tinder profile?' 'Does she know you're packing condoms to frat parties?' (though, yes, you should pack condoms indiscriminately if you're sexually active). I see no reason in the letter why she wouldn't have the confidence or degree of acquaintance with the guy to come out with a line like this.
20
Why do you guys call troll on anyone who holds a different opinion? Why even discuss it if we all think the same? Isn't the value of the internet that we can express unpopular or unusual thoughts? If you are politically correct about all the other topics on which you have demanded that people are completely accepting, then accepting another's point of view should not be too difficult.

His opinion is valid. One-night-stands present significantly different emotional issues than do additional relationships. Open and poly can be very different.

Love, not a troll
21
Why why why why would you want to get yourself involved in this potential mess? For the love of god everyone's going to end up hating you if it goes badly (When does meddling go well? Are you expecting to be seen as the hero here?), and you're not her mom. Unless he's being abusive or she specifically asks you to spy for her why would it even occur to you to get involved?

The way to be a good friend is to find her some great dudes to fuck.
22
Con't from 21 - finding her great guys to be with also puts the pressure on her to have a conversation w/ her bf she has explicitly stated she doesn't want to have re: looking for it, if what you want between them is a Reckoning Of Truth! (tm).

She has said she doesn't want to know. What she may have meant by "not seek it out" is "don't take up time we'd normally have as a couple" aka "don't disrupt my life at all and you're fine", which is in line w/ the "I don't want to know anything" clause. He's not disrupting her life and he's not seriously dating the other girl bc she's not serious about him (she's in same sitch as him). Dan says generally guys do have to enter into relationshipish stuff bc it's much harder for them to find one-offs. So this is probably the best default anyway. The gf likely has plenty of offers of dick or could if she wanted to, her not taking people up on them is not any reason for her to somehow be suffering in this situation. Maybe she's just trying to get his overactive dick off her back, so to speak. If this was her idea and she's not acting on it, I'd guess that's why. If it was his idea, of course she knows he's got someone in mind. This would not be news.
23
@19 " If there's anyone she should talk to, it's the guy. " Seconded.
24
FRIEND sounds like a self-righteous stalker to me if she knows so much about the bf's activities. Despite the possibility of an alternate generational definition of "confront", "advise" or "inform" would have been more appropriate and less aggressive when dealing with her roommate.

In any case, I vote for MYOB.
25
@16, Sportlandia. Thanks: the machine got all poetic on me.
Even if this guy is bending the rules, this woman doesn't want details. And the rules are stupid, so why wouldn't he bend them.
26
That came out wrong. If this young woman doesn't yet know how some males interpret, then she might be about to find out, the hard way.
I hate seeing women lied to, then again, to survive in a Patriarchy, a woman has to toughen up.
27
Lava @4: Gold star comment. FRIEND, you know that your roommate has "been very adamant about not wanting to know anything." That's pretty clear to me. Stay out of it; it's none of your beeswax. Go get a love life of your own!
28
Commenter, I see you keep coming up with new aliases. Please get over your obsession with reproduction and go troll somewhere else.
29
Queen @20: It's the "don't breed" obsession, on top of the sex negativity, that make "Lou Raws" easily identifiable as a troll formerly known as "Commenter Commentatus," who would seagull into every SL letter with a judgey comment that inevitably started or finished with "don't have kids," even if, as with the current letter, kids were never even mentioned. Opposing opinions are indeed valid. This is not an opposing opinion, it's seagull shit.
30
Look, she says she doesn't want to know, so don't tell her. Simple.
31
I just realized something, I don't know how I missed this all these years.

Read Dan's answers and imagine them in Martin Sheen's voice. President Bartlett. It's amazing. It works perfectly.
32
Never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.
33
I'm with #24 about this one.

Something is off about the way LW is massively invested into other people's sex life while not actually having solid info about them.
34
It must be nice to have so few problems of your own that you can get this involved with someone else's life to this degree.
36
Just how did FRIEND come to know so much about her friend's absolute DADT monogamish relationship? How close is FRIEND's friend to FRIEND? Is it common for this kind of information to be shared and to whom would someone share this kind of information? Is this a TMI situation where FRIEND's friend has provided only some information (I can't think of any alternate source of this information)? Under what circumstances did FRIEND become aware of the information (was the roommate drunk, high, venting)? Doesn't It put FRIEND in the same awkward position (dilemma) of FRIEND of finding out her roommate's bf is fucking around, but without knowledge of the monogamish relationship?
37
Skeptic @36: This is, indeed, the sort of thing that young female friends discuss with each other. Relationships are hard and it helps to have second, third, and fourth opinions when you don't have much experience with them. And even when you do. FRIEND lives with her roommate, so she's better placed than other friends to know whether she's spending nights away or whether men other than her boyfriend are coming back to their place. I don't understand your last sentence; FRIEND does have knowledge of the monogamish relationship. And apparently lots of people have knowledge of the other girlfriend, so he can't be too afraid that "don't let me know about it" means "or I'll dump you."
38
2 36 and others - when I was a young woman, this is absolutely the kind of thing we shared with our best friends. The amount of talking, and the level of detail, shared among many young women and their close friends is pretty much limitless.

When I was 23, my best friend and I knew everything about each other's sex lives, and spent hours discussing them and dissecting them. Most of the women I know have or had a friendship like that.
39
If I had a girlfriend, knowing that all the details of our sex life are being shared with her BFF's would make me feel pretty uncomfortable.
40
RE @39: It's a good thing you don't have a girlfriend then. Some good advice for guys: Be nice to your girlfriend's best friend, because she knows exactly what size your penis is.
41
Thank you BDF @37 and agony @ 38 for the information, not being female, color me clueless. Would you characterize this as open relationship? Wouldn't DADT expect a certain amount of discretion be exercised, which PDA isn't. BDF my last sentence/question was awkwardly worded. So I will try again. I find your (both) statements regarding the sharing information on sex lives interesting. Extrapolating from that, wouldn't FRIEND know the parameters of agreement. When FRIEND says the bf is actively sleeping with other women, is she saying is the bf is actively pursuing other women for sex. What purpose does adding the qualifier (actively) to the bf sleeping with other women, which would not violate the agreement whereas actively pursuing other women would. I don't understand her dilemma if the bf is complying with the agreement. It does make sense if the bf is violating the agreement. This would put FRIEND in the same situation she would be in if she found out that the bf was cheating on her friend. Does she tell her friend about the violation/cheating?
42
BDF @40
RE @39: It's a good thing you don't have a girlfriend then.

Completely agreed! 😆
43
BDF @ 40 How would you feel if a bf shared detailed information about your sex life with his drinking buddies (and rating your performance or lack thereof)? My limited understanding is that most women would go ballistic if their bf did that. Personally I wouldn't be happy with someone else knowing more about my sex life than I did.
44
Re: sharing of information. What good does venting/complaining to your friend(s) do if you don't communicate with your SO?
45
BDF Let me rephrase that. I wouldn't be happy with some third party knowing more about my relationship than I do?
46
Whether you like it or not, it's really common. So if you are dating a young woman who has a best best best friend, just accept this reality.

My experience is that as people get older, and as their romantic relationships get more serious, start leading to marriage, this dies off some. A 28 year old who is engaged to the man she lives with is probably not sharing that kind of detail - she may still be very close to her best friend, but is sharing more the emotional resonance of the things that happen in her romantic relationship, rather than the details. And her closest and most intimate relationship will be shifting or have shifted to that with the man she loves.

But women, taken as a group because of course individuals may vary, tend to form close, layered, complex and very intimate relationships with their best friends. Whether it is culturally imposed or innate, I couldn't tell you, but I bet some sociology major could, because it's been studied - this is not a secret.
47
Skeptic @43-45: Agree that if the relationship is having problems, the person in it should not be talking to their friends INSTEAD OF their partner. Ideally she is talking to both. I am having this issue in my relationship, is this common? Is this a man thing? How have you dealt with it, if it has come up in your relationship? While also talking to the partner himself: this bothers me, this confuses me, I don't understand why you're behaving this way. Bear in mind that the young women in question are dating young MEN, whose communication skills are usually rudimentary to absent, because of the same societal rules that discourage men from learning to talk about their emotions, needs, problems. If he won't give you a clue, then maybe your friends have some insights. Agony is correct that women with 10 or 20 years of sex and relationship experience don't have as much need to consult with friends. Partly because (many) men with 10 or 20 years of sex and relationship experience have learned to talk with their partners.

I think many women would assume, falsely perhaps, that their partners have a few close friends that they (discreetly) discuss their sex lives with. This is not the same as a misogynistic "comparing performances with their drinking buddies" that you envision, because of the motivation behind it.
48
@asaac @34: It's not always venting/complaining. Sometimes it's sharing positive things, including even 'You might try this; we did it the other night and it was great!' I suspect many a man has had a happy moment the night after his girl went out with friends and heard a sentence that started 'Bob really likes it when I do....'

And if it is complaining, if the girl is lucky enough to have a truly good friend, the friend may be able to tell her when she's off-base vs. when she has a real problem that needs to be addressed. In this case the girl complaining to the friend can be an assist to the relationship, as it allows her to filter through issues and realize when she has unreasonable expectations.

Of course, there are female friend groups whose dynamic is to rile each other up over slights, real and perceived, and if you're in a relationship with a girl like that--well, good luck to you.
49
Also, wouldn't the knowledge that details of your sex life might be shared with friends serve as a nice little motivator to be a better lover? :)

Ciods is right, there are two main types of discussion: the "we're having a problem, what should I do" conversations, and the "wow my boyfriend is so awesome" conversations.

Skeptic @41: I neglected to answer your many questions.
Would I characterise this as an open relationship? Yes. They have explicit permission to have sex with other people. It is therefore not a "closed" relationship, and must be an "open" one.
Would a DADT arrangement preclude PDAs with the other partners? No. DADT means what it says on the tin: don't ask, don't tell. It doesn't mean hide. PDA in front of the girlfriend would violate DADT. PDA when with a partner you haven't told the girlfriend about would not. Sure, it may be risky, if you have mutual friends, and some of those friends are gossips. But having a date, and kissing on the date, fall within DADT if you do not announce to your partner that you are going on the date.
Wouldn't FRIEND know the parameters of the agreement? FRIEND does know the parameters; she seems to know quite a bit about them.
When FRIEND says the boyfriend is "actively" sleeping with other women, she is making a value judgment. She clearly believes that, despite his having permission, he shouldn't be acting on it. How does FRIEND know whether he sought out this woman or whether she sought him out? She doesn't know, and it isn't her business. (Personally, I would interpret "actively seeking" as maintaining a Tinder profile, etc. But it's not up to me to interpret what "actively" means, and it's not up to FRIEND either.)
What if the boyfriend was cheating? The whole point is that this isn't cheating; rules in open relationships are negotiated by the people in the relationship, and the people in the relationship only. The only rule FRIEND knows for sure is that her roommate ADAMANTLY does not want to know. Telling her would break that rule. So if she's concerned about rule-breaking, she should hold her tongue.
50
BDF You agree FRIEND knows the parameters of the relationship. FRIEND emphasizes "seek it out" and actively sleeping with other women. FRIEND therefore knows what constitutes a breach of the agreement. BF is acting as if the relationship is open and FRIEND's friend believes it is monogamish. Is there not a significant between the two (as in a second GF is possibly ok in an open relationship, but not in a monogamish one) GF2 apparently thinks BF is an open relationship. It may or may not matter to GF2, but FRIEND should let GF2 know that BF is not in a open relationship. How many women would be peeved to find out that BF lied about his relationship status? In the age of social media DADT (I don't want to know) requires discretion which may well be a problem since BF is not being discrete with GF2 in public. As in posting photos of them together on her media pages, sexting, sending nude photos to each other, etc. (which are not uncommon between BF and GF) FRIEND doesn't say how she found out (seeing him hitting on women in a bar would be one way since he isn't being publicly discrete) But what the hell do I know? FRIEND should not tell her friend unless it is common knowledge and it is inevitable that friend is going to find out anyway. Giving hypothetical permission in a monogamish relationship (which GF1 believes is the case) and realizing that it is seriously not hypothetical permission are two usually two very different things. Adamantly not wanting to know and not being confronted with it may not be possible.
51
There is more to the story (there always is) than FRIEND has given. Generally I would agree that FRIEND should stay quiet based on the information given, but the devil is in the details (which are lacking). The problem with giving generic advice is that it may not be appropriate (may even be harmful) depending on what the reality is. FRIEND obviously knows more about her friend and the situation than she has written. A general statement. Giving someone permission (believing that it won't be used) is a demonstration of trust in that person. Finding out that the person has actually used (is using) that permission can be devastating.
52
hoping that the permission won't be used

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