Recent Savage Love Letters of the Day: How should this daddy explain mommy's late-night moaning? And should this daddy be concerned about being a daddy? Also, last week's column and Savage Lovecast.

On big, fat pussy whiffs:

Dear Dan: Please never use the phrase "big, fat whiff of your pussy" again.

On my slamming the DTMFA button in a recent column:

Adore your insights and warmth. Lately, though, I've seen you quickly cutting to DTMFA very quickly in your advice columns, including in two cases this week where I, and I suspect many others, would counsel "talk first." The MFs your readers were asking about clearly have issues, but, as your tag line used to say, we all do. To assume that so many of these imperfect or even troubling examples deserve an automatic relationship death penalty doesn't to match with your own oft-expressed belief that we all (or at least most of us) can grow and learn, and we should treat each other with kindness. Especially in this culture, learning one's own kinks, then learning how to express and ask to share them, can take time and ESPECIALLY a communicative, open partner to help us. Yes, it can be unfair to suggest that the letter writers take the lead in addressing their partner's challenges and confusions, and of course the attempt might not work, but if someone isn't being blatantly abusive, isn't the potential for developing a deeper relationship worth at least an attempt? Perhaps the brutal political era we are living in is making you a bit more... unsparing than you used to be?

In my defense... it's advice, not binding arbitration, so the LWs are free to ignore my DTMFAs. And the column you object to was a Quickies — I had to cut to the chase/get to the point quickly. And my considered, professional, totally unqualified, and easily ignored opinion in both cases? DTMFA, while not compulsory, did seem to be, well, if not inevitable, then the best and most sensible option.

On giving kids the talk:

When I was a kid, I wanted nothing to do with "the talk" from my parents. They gave me a book about it, which I read, and when they said, "Any questions?" I said, "Nope". If I had any questions, I asked them in biology class where we covered the whole shebang, from mechanics to emotions to acne. I had sex-positive parents, probably more so than most of their generation, but I still didn't want to think about them "doing it".

I don't recommend your parents' approach — because what if you hadn't read the book? There's only one way for a parent to be sure that their kid(s) know what they need to know: have the talk. It's less a conversation in my experience and more of a monologue; you tell your kid there are certain things you need to make sure they know about birth control, STIs, consent, etc., and you make them sit and listen while you rattle them off. If your kid objects or wants to argue or insists they already know everything, you tell 'em that's something kids say whether they know everything or not. So arguing with you only drags out the convo they don't wanna have.

And:

Eight is not too young to have "the talk." My son was molested by the neighbor boy (anally raped) at age 9. I had given my son only the barest outline of what sex was. He didn't have the words to talk about it and certainly not the courage to disclose because it was 'private' and not something we ever talked about. It was six months later that the molester's brothers let the cat out of the bag: they bragged about it at school. My daughter is six years younger than my son. Because of what happened to him, every step of the way in her life, I have been very explicit on sex — what parts are called, what biological function they have, how people commonly use them, how to say no, what's right and wrong, what's safe and unsafe and why — giving lessons to BOTH of them, usually at the same time. She's 11 now, very self-confident and very well-educated on the subject. My son has just turned 18. After years of therapy, he remains sex-averse but at least he can tolerate hearing about the subject. If I could go back in time, I would have given him better tools to deal with the situation up front (to know what was happening, to leave or ask to leave, and to tell people about it immediately) and of course I would have never allowed him to be taken advantage of in the first place. But 8 years old is old enough to be victimized. It's old enough to be told what might happen to them, how they can prevent it, and what they should do about it.

For NOISE, this isn't a conversation to have just about consensual mommy/daddy sex. It's one you need to have about all possible sex vectors. Under normal circumstances, no parent can protect against everything without severely isolating their child. My son was next door with two age-similar friends he'd been playing with in the yard for months. I knew there was an older teenage boy there, but he didn't play with the 'little kids' and so I thought nothing of it. I knew the parents somewhat. They were floored by what their son did. An 8-year-old has a vital, valid need to know.

On intergenerational dating & Call Me By Your Name:

Call Me By Your Name didn't seem like a daddy/son or intergenerational relationship to me. They were only seven years apart in the book. (I haven't seen the movie because it's not showing in my area.) Granted, seven years is a lot when you're seventeen and twenty-four, but it didn't seem much different than my best friend sleeping with her grad student TA during our freshman year of college. They were both young, and experiencing the intensity of infatuation and lust for the first time. Call Me seemed more like a story about first love (for both characters.)

I sloppily cited CMBYN as an example of intergenerational love, which it didn't portray. It leapt to mind because it of the significant age difference between the two characters who fall in love. Seven years isn't that significant when you're, say, 23 and 30 (Terry was 23 and I was 30 when we met), but it's pretty significant when you're talking about 17 and 24.

For an older episode of the Lovecast:

Episode 538: For the woman who didn’t like her IUD — there is a fertility indicator made by a company called Luna that is a non-invasive way to control whether or not you get pregnant. it’s a mini microscope that you put your saliva on, and wait for it to dry. if there is a fern-like pattern as you look through the viewer, that means you are ovulating - so you can avoid having sex during those couple of days. I have tried this, and it really works - gotta love science!

On saving marriages:

I, a straight, cis, married, female (doesn’t get much more vanilla than that) found your podcast through an old episode of My Brother, My Brother, and Me. I was hooked immediately. I brought you home and forced my husband to binge the Savage Lovecast with me on a leisurely Sunday drive. During the third episode we heard, my husband reached up, pressed pause, and said, “We need to talk.” He then came out to me as bi. Not just bi-curious, but completely bisexual. Before our marriage, he had experienced much homosexual sex as well as heterosexual sex and enjoyed them both immensely. I high-fived him for finally telling me and for having this super cool kink. We immediately started talking about it, in tandem masturbating about it, and fucking about it. We are now monogamish so that he can fulfill these desires with men or women and pegging and I can fulfill my desires to be sub with someone who is not my husband. We are closer than we have ever been and we have been absolutely reignited.

There’s more to it than just that. Our marriage had gotten pretty rocky. I am a very independent person, a mechanic and a feminist, with lots of male platonic friends. He had become jealous and controlling. We had seen two different marriage counselors. My sister was encouraging me to divorce him, and I had secretly seen a divorce attorney to see what things would look like if I decided to move forward (he still isn’t aware of how close things came to ending). After he came out to me, he said he felt like most of our issues stemmed from this. He said he felt like if he had a secret like that from me, if he was lying to me, I could be doing the same to him. Over the past few months, I’m starting to think he was right. His behavior has mellowed and he really isn’t jealous at all about the monogamish stuff we do. We only chat with people in apps or on websites where we can both read what the other is up to so everything is open and on the up and up. We only meet with people when the other knows about it and we have rules about not sleeping with friends or ex significant others to ensure there’s no emotional connection made. I don’t know that this will last forever, but I know that for now, you’ve made an environment for us that changed our lives. My husband feels accepted for the first time and I feel less trapped. So, thank you for everything you do!

You're welcome & thank you for your lovely note & tell your hot bi husband I said hello & please don't call bisexuality as a kink because it's a sexual orientation, not a fetish, and I'm sure that was a slip of the tongue but I had to say something otherwise bisexuals activists would jump up and down my throat for the rest of my life because I let a monosexual call bisexuality a kink without correcting her and it doesn't matter that she's married to a bi guy and supportive of him because describing bisexuality as a kink and not a valid sexual orientation is an act of bisexual erasure and, gee, another run-on sentence...