Two good lessons today, the first being that honesty is generally a good policy before anything else happens, the second being, sex in itself isn't a marriage proposal.

If LW's paramore has an agreement with his husband, then I don't see why he has any obligation to disclose his marital status to a hookup.

One caveat--he SAYS his husband knows.

No returns when you buy on clearance, everyone knows that. Don't tell me you are in your thirties and don't know that.

@3 My guess is it's almost certain that his husband knows. A guy who's skulking around behind his spouse's back does not send wedding pictures to his hook-up.

LW, this guy was basically treating you like you were another guy. The kind of behavior he displayed is very common among men in relationships with other men. I'd go so far as to say that open relationships, at least to some degree, are the rule rather than the exception. So those were probably the expectations that he brought to the hook-up.

And LW, to be honest, you were kinda acting like a stereotypical gay guy on holiday in a new city yourself. You "had a lot of fun talking to guys on apps and going on dates." You "slept with three men whilst I was there and had a lot of fun." Swap the genders around and I can hear those words coming out of the mouth of many of my acquaintances in a gay bar.

You yourself said you were "very aware that it was potentially only one night."

So what are you complaining about? You had a night of meaningless, recreational sex. By definition, that does not involve any deep connection with your partner, which includes getting to know anything about his family situation.

Maybe it will turn into something more than that in the future (though I doubt it). But for now, this is what you chose. Why are you complaining?

The problem is that women's bodies sometimes bond with the guy they are Fucking even if the woman's HEAD is not interested. This is a biological issue that can cause confusion for women sometimes. The OTHER Issue is that this woman is in love with a fantasy of what Could Be. And when she found out what REALLY was, she was mad. She is feeling used but really.....she wanted it to be more and now realizes it can't be. She should be mad at only one person here: herself.

Seriously. GURRRRL.

Calm the fuck down. It was just a hookup. He didn't commit some massive betrayal. Calm down. Maybe his husband will want to fuck you too. Then you get a twofer.

5 nailed it on the head. The husband has to know. Gay men are much more casual about this sort of thing. There are people who judge me for having an open relationship (and tell me so on Growlr and Scruff sometimes) and I find them massively tedious.

I'm not sure who deserves a Reddy Award (not a reference to "I Am Woman" but to "...No Way to Treat a L***" - pardon me for avoiding the double negative) here, Mr Savage or some of those commenting, but it would be a shame to waste something freshly conceived; I'll just declare one bestowed.

Freudian slip man, sending the wrong pics.
LW you can be upset as you need to be. And I doubt you will hear from this man again. Hook up culture rule no one: nobody owes you nothing past what you had and you must know that.

sending pics to the wrong person.
LW, if you are interested in hooking up with this man again I think you should write him an oops text. As in oops “sorry I was a little overbearing re my last response. It’s just I really enjoyed our night tog and got a shock when I saw the pictures. Your husband looks as sweet as you.. is he bi as well?”
Might be way too late LW, you know how freaked out some men get if they smell attachment after one liaison.

Someone told me long ago, most stress in life is caused by cognitive distortion -- the difference between what we expect, and what we get.

https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-applause-b9aScKLxdv0Y0

I don't see how a random hook-up the night before you leave town has any obligation to disclose anything. If he treated you kindly and wore a condom, then he was a decent human being. If he was looking to form some kind of relationship, whether it was being a third in an open relationship or just friends, then he owes you some more detail about his life. But since you were on your way out the door anyway, his personal life isn't your business.

You might profit by some introspection as to what specifically about a married man puts him off limits in your head.

Is it because you don't want to be The Other Woman to some hapless spouse? Well, you weren't that here. His husband knows. Apparently they have an agreement. So he doesn't owe you Not-Being-The-Other-Woman, because by definition you can't be. Your shock over "you're married!" sounds more knee-jerk than it does justifiable outrage.

Is it because you thought there might be something special developing there, and you got cold water dumped on your burgeoning aspirations? Hint: it was a hookup. YOU were a hookup. If that makes you feel suddenly-not-special, cool your afterburners there, Top Gun. It was a plain old hookup by your own design when you hopped into bed with him and the other two guys on the one-per-week plan. Nothing wrong with doing that, but dammit, you don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to go into it approaching it as a hookup yourself and then get all angry at him for taking the hookup that you were offering at face value -- after the fact when the butterflies in your stomach start flapping. He didn't do anything wrong here. Not even by the rules that you yourself were supposedly playing by when you started the evening.

If you can come up with some other attribute of being a married guy that entitles to you righteous anger, go for it, if you think it will get you anything worthwhile, but frankly I think you will do better being angry at yourself than at him.

It isn't clear why this issue is so important to LW that she is so upset about it.

Her rational head knows it was a no-strings hook-up, she knows he will probably see other women and she doesn't on principle have a problem with queer guys.

The sense I get is that she sees casual hook-ups as a fair mechanism for searching for the 'one' and that on this occasion she thought she may have found the candidate.
There is certainly nothing wrong with this 'try before you buy' approach (or maybe 'temp to perm') but the risk is precisely what has happened - a disappointment.

The key thing is that this isn't any fault on his part; the terms of his marriage are his concern, not hers.
So this really leaves her to deal with the fact that the time she had with him was so good that she got surprised and disappointed when she realized that his status didn't match her expectations.

She should bear in mind that this shouldn't be about her definition about being married - his husband may be fine about it.

That the guy went silent suggests she went a little bit crazy at first and she needs to own that, and learn how to manage her own expectations better.

Oof, Dan missed the mark on this one, and a lot of the commenters are just tiresomely enjoying piling insults on someone vulnerable. Victim-blaming much? Get a better hobby.

Sex is based on informed consent. If you're in a situation where you know a lot of people wouldn't consent to have sex with you if they knew you have a spouse (or something else along those lines), and your response is (!) to withhold that information in order to get consent you wouldn't otherwise receive, then you're 100% responsible. Telling the person on the receiving end that it's her fault because she should just know that people are lying assholes on dating apps or when they plan one-night stands? That's bullshit and it's dangerous.

It doesn't matter whether she would or wouldn't have consented otherwise, and she says she doesn't know. It doesn't matter whether she'd want the sex again. It doesn't make everything OK just because the husband knew (although if he didn't, the lying dude in this story would be violating the husband's premises of consent too). All that matters is the onus being on the person withholding information to get informed consent.

The guy in this story should have simply stuck to people who were willing to have sex with him despite knowing he had a husband. I don't care if that narrows his pool of options. Giving him a hall pass because it's harder to find consent under those circumstances is beyond creepy.

The casual thing doesn't matter either. The idea that you don't have to give someone information they'd likely want to take into account before they make a decision to have sex with you is abhorrent, and it doesn't make a fuck of a difference whether it's a one-night stand or a serious date.

Finally, Dan's "you let yourself get carried away" scolding and some of the comments here (ugh, @12) jumping to stereotyped conclusions about how this woman read into it because she used the word "romantic" stinks of misogyny. Flings can be romantic too, in a different way. I can't help thinking the hurt-shaming in much of his response and the comments has a whiff of misogyny too.

You do realise womanchego @16, this was LA. And where is there a victim? The LW got emotionally involved because she had a romantic night with a man she met online, and it was the night before she flew back to the UK. What do you think her intention was going into this meeting? Leaving the next day, it was obviously her last fling with a American man.
Even the men I got with way back in the 70s, meeting at a music venue or a party, our version of hook up, no mention was made by either person of any marriage. Nor STIs..
These days being upfront about STIs I feel is imperative. Telling a person who is putting themselves out there for a one off, anymore than that, unless they ask, seems way beyond how people are around hook up sex. Or how I assume people behave around hook up sex.
Not sure what planet you are speaking from, womanchego, and as noble as you may believe your expectations are, they are not realistic.
Personally / them I’m old but still I’m good for sex, and must be some hook ups out there close to my age/ I need a medical update on STIs before any cock touches my vagina. I’ve avoided getting STIs, at least any that have made themselves known to me, and I’d like to keep it that way.
This young woman enjoyed her time with this last guy she hooked up with. No mention of how it went with the other two. She had a good time and lucky her. A romantic sensual evening and what? She’s pissed because the fantasy she had spun in her head.. he texted her as she was getting on the plane, he enjoyed her company as well.. was a fantasy. On some level this guy wanted her to know, hence sending the photos by mistake. Unconsciously he wanted her to know, because perhaps he fancied her. Then she went mad on him like he’d promised everlasting love to her.
She’s a woman in her thirties, she knows how this is played. Hook ups lie to each other. Surprise.

If you were upset at being unwittingly duped into helping someone cheat, that'd be one thing - people have a right to refuse to participate in actions they find immoral. But it seems he's on the up-and-up, and your main upset is that there isn't a future here, and "Even [your] attempt at a "fun" reply about how [you] don't care as long as he fucks [you] again wasn't read."

For that, I have to agree with Sportlandia @4. It's alright to be sad that the espresso machine you bought at the garage sale broke down after a few days, but... well... that's what can happen. Buying at the garage sale voids the warranty. You had a one-night-stand that will never be a more serious part of your life. Sucks, but that's what happens some times.

Wait, why does somebody in a one night stand have an ethical obligation to disclose he's married?

If the sex carries high risks, sure he should disclose that. If he's cheating, I can see he should even though realistically he won't. But being in an open marriage, what's the need with that?

I just don't think it'll turn off many sex partners. It's more like, if you don't fuck gluten-eaters, that's on your side to ask. Am I wrong?

BIB, you realize that it is quite possible that the other two guys you fucked, as well as some of the guys you saw on dates that week, were also married or otherwise in a committed relationship. So why express anger at just one of them? And just curious, did you tell guy number three that you had fucked two other that week? I’m guessing no, should he be angry at you for your failure to disclose?

@ 16 - The difference between your comment and other commentors' is that they're talking about real life, whereas you're talking about an ideal that is very rarely reached.

Living one's life based on unattainable ideals is a recipe for disappointment, heartache and, very often, STIs.

There's no victim-blaming here, merely a little slap on the cheek for someone who truly needs to wake up. Basically, if one wants to play the hook-up game, one needs to learn and respect the rules by which everyone else plays it, whether one likes the rules or not.

Corydon @5: Supposedly, the wedding photos were meant for someone else.

Despite my usual bias in favour of maximum honesty, I don't think Mr Married was obligated to disclose his marital status to someone who lives eight time zones away and was returning to her own country the following day. The reason one should disclose pre-existing relationships is to let the other person know one is not available for a potential LTR. The fact of the huge distance already ruled out a potential LTR, so what would an (open) marriage have changed? He should have told her when they started making plans to see each other again, however. That's when the possibility of an LTR rose from zero to more-than-zero, and she did need to know.

I suspect she may be more upset about HOW she found out than the fact that she found out. I'd be shocked to find out that way, too.

And what was with the "jokey" lie that she didn't care as long as she got to fuck him again? Gurrrrrl, get some self-esteem.

Also, the letter is unclear, but I think Mr Married did disclose his bisexuality, just not his marital status.

File under lessons learned and move on to someone, ideally, who lives nearer.

Very honourable response Dan, except is the LW upset because he is married or because of the fantasy she allowed herself to run away with? Hook up culture, as I understand it, is not for the emotionally vulnerable. And your suggestion for the LW to get to know a man before she has sex with him, is spot on.

BG @6: Yeah, because men don't produce oxytocin. Massive eye roll.

Lava @9: Good call.

Woman @16: Did you miss Dan's third paragraph? I'll reproduce it here:
"You're upset because this guy lied to you. By omission, but still. You're the kind of woman who's down for one-night stands and you're up for fucking queer guys but you don't wanna be sleeping with married men. This guy didn't tell you about his husband—and you didn't ask—but he apparently told his husband about you. So he was playing you. And that means whatever connection you felt was either obtained under false pretenses and/or entirely one-sided. You were open and honest, BIB, he was shitty and deceitful (and clumsy), and finding out you were played is always painful and humiliating. And that—or most of that—is on him."
Doesn't sound like victim blaming or lack of sympathy to me. One can be sympathetic AND realistic. Yes, omitting one's marital status is underhanded. But the status omitter isn't the one asking for advice here; the hooker upper is. So the only possible advice FOR HER is to be more vigilant because there are, indeed, a lot of liars on apps.

Beaver @19: In general, yes, you're wrong. Quite often, hookups lead to LTRs, and a great many hooker-uppers have that hope. If that's not possible because one is already in an LTR, one should disclose that. However, this wasn't a potential-first-date hookup; it was a what-happens-in-Vegas hookup. The distance changes the obligations.

Sublime @20: Bingo!

@15. Truck2. Yes, a very level-headed and probably insightful comment.

@16. Womanchego. It depends on which matters the consent for sex has to be 'informed' about. This very much looks like a one-night-stand just before the LW leaves the country. I'd guess that the guy is under an obligation to inform her if (for instance) he has an STI, if not using protection; if he has a condition like epilepsy that might alarm or place a burden of care on her ... and then to seek and negotiate specific permission for any form of sex they might want to get up to.... Beyond that, for an apparent single night, does he have to disclose an open relationship?

No one so far (and not Dan) has brought up the LW's experience of sexual abuse. She is in her 30s and says the best sex of her life is a one-night thing with a person about whom she knew next to.nothing.... This would seem unusual in many people that age; the best sex they've had is sex they've worked on, with a partner with whom they share a basis of trust and disclosure... These two sets of circumstance--the valuation of 'romantic' sex with a stranger and the writer's personal history--have to be (somehow) connected...? Perhaps she has only recently given herself permission to have casual sex, without feeling her dates' interest in her is selfish or exploitative? Perhaps she supposes that the beginning of something important to her has to be casual and relatively free-form, as if lacking the confidence to determine or negotiate the terms on which she will get into a sexual relationship? But I think that she could tell someone for whom she had feelings e.g. 'my first exposure to sex was bad--I was abused. But I'm over it now, at least in the sense that I have happy sex, even in casual and short-term relationships'. Someone who was really into her would not be put off but would enter into something with her with that knowledge under their belt.

The 'fun' text she sent in the aftermath of registering her shock wasn't fun, but came over as crazy or desperate. She should probably cut her losses on this guy and find an 'artist' in Blighty ... and use her reaction to his wedding pics to ask herself how she wants to date, what barriers or blockages she wants to overcome in her dating, in the future.

@16 / womanchego: "The casual thing doesn't matter either. The idea that you don't have to give someone information they'd likely want to take into account before they make a decision to have sex with you is abhorrent, and it doesn't make a fuck of a difference whether it's a one-night stand or a serious date."

The one-night-stand fair makes a difference because it usually affects what sort of "information they'd likely want to take into account before they make a decision to have sex with you." People up for hookups generally don't want as much information. If they wanted more information, they'd want more information-gathering time. It's reasonable to assume that any given hookup doesn't care about open relationships unless they state otherwise.

@22. Bi. The guy's thinking behind the wedding photos was, 'hey, let's stay in casual contact. Here's my husband and us on our big day. Maybe we'll stay in touch and become fuckbuddies!' It was a thoroughly reasonable thing for him to send. Her response will have made him think, 'oh-oh, here is someone who's unreliable, who's even potentially unstable'--and he will have rowed back on his reasons for sending something friendly.

There's just about some possibility that the guy understands that he has been constructively or manipulatively ambiguous about how he committed he could be for the future, and is sending the pics to set her right that there's no chance of a long-term primary or committed relationship. OK, for the people suggesting this, this might be a bit off--but even then it wouldn't by itself, and in the absence of other factors, merit the LW's exacerbated response.

The irony is that if she only just wanted to have great sex with this man again on her next LA holiday, she said exactly the wrong thing. Both with the 'WTF' and the joke about his doing what he likes as long as he fucks her....

So the questions are: What information needs to be disclosed? Does the information about what needs to be disclosed change depending on whether we're looking for a one-night, ongoing casual sex, or a long term relationship? I see this as a spread sheet with various points about information on one side (bisexuality, criminal record, history of sexual abuse, likeliness to bond, kinks, marital status (monogamy), marital status (open), STDs, etc.) And on the other side: one-night stand, ongoing casual sex, long term committed relationship. I suppose there's a 3rd side which would include what BIB needs to disclose to Mr. Artist and what Mr. Artist needs to disclose to BIB.

Correction to my post @22: "I ... explained to him that it wasn't the bisexuality which I found so shocking, but the fact that he's married." So he didn't disclose his sexual orientation or his marital status, which makes him sleazier than I had first concluded.

As does HIS texting HER while she was about to board the plane, saying how much HE would like to see HER again. Not cool, dude, not cool.

Harriet @27: "The guy's thinking behind the wedding photos was, 'hey, let's stay in casual contact. Here's my husband and us on our big day. Maybe we'll stay in touch and become fuckbuddies!'"
IS that the guy's thinking? If so, why did he "explain that he meant to send those pictures to someone else"? I do strongly suspect that it wasn't a mistake, but he should have used his words in the initial text, not made up some excuse about wrong recipient error. She didn't get her hopes up; he got her hopes up, then slapped her in the face with them. If he really did feel a connection with her, he should have sent her a full-disclosure e-mail saying, "I would like to see you again if you're open to being with a bi man in an open marriage." Perhaps this will be a learning experience for him too.

@Bi: Why is not disclosing that he's bi creepy? Seems to me the same ideas apply. He was up for fucking her; there was no indication that it was going to be anything other than a one-night stand. How is it her business who else he enjoys fucking, anymore than it would be if he were straight?

Dan often deals with the question of whether potentially disqualifiable (but not immediately harmful) information can be withheld for a little while, in order to give someone the chance to know you.

There's a lot of disagreement on the issue, but there does seem to be a rough consensus that disclosure should come before sex, except in the context of a clear one night stand. this case really does seem to be a clear one night stand - the night before leaving for halfway around the world, to your home, is not when most people would be looking for a boyfriend.

I agree that she really needs to look at why this matters so much to her, but the immediate advice, for while she does this, is - you've discovered that this matters to you. Therefore, before hooking up, "Are you married?" is a question you need to ask. Your reaction to the answers you get might help with figuring out why you feel the way you do about what happened here.

Dan, what part of this NSA fuck with a hookup app guy (in an undisclosed open [I repeat, OPEN] marriage) was a "shitty and deceitful...false pretense"?

Only were the marriage closed would he have the burden of unprompted disclosure in such a case. Since it's open, the marriage presents no ethical concern it would be up to him to offer without being asked.

I understand the motivation to help BIB feel better...but ethically that was very fuzzy thinking.

Ciods @30: I didn't say creepy. Many women, as Dan noted, have an (irrational) objection to getting involved with a bi man. So he hid two common potential dealbreakers from her, not just one. If he was going on the principle that certain things don't need to be disclosed to a one-night stand, he should have left it as a one-night stand, no?

It seems like the guy sort of tried. He wasn't obligated to disclose his marital status or bisexuality prior to the hookup, and he made a clumsy attempt to disclose it while negotiating to see her again through the medium of wedding photos. It backfired supremely. Sometimes pictures are not worth a thousand words.

@16 victim blaming typically requires a victim.

@30 Some sex is just mechanics, some sex is a series of test drives, and some sex is driving the car home from the dealer. Just give me a tune-up if I ask for it, but if I'm thinking of taking it home, show me the carfax.

Dan gives us another brilliant neologism: "screw diligence"!

I agree with everyone above that says that in hookups, the expectation is that it's just a hookup- not personal. If both people know this might be the case and are down for an NSA thing- then this is not a violation of consent to not disclose an open marriage though I do think the married person is required to answer honestly if asked, even on a hookup. If it's important to you to know the relationship status of your hookups, then it's on you to ask that- it's the responsibility of the concerned person to ask, not on the married person to disclose it in a NSA hookup. It's only on them to disclose if it seems like something more might be going on- that's dishonest. Certainly if there is anything beyond just the hookup including conversations later or talks about the future, then you need to disclose ASAP. It's unclear if that was the case here.

As to this LW's feelings that this was more than it was, it sounds like a lot of projection to me. It's easy to reflect on a hot night and see whatever future you'd like to see. Obviously this was not reality, and yes I'd step back and consider a little why this bothered her so much. Maybe she's not the sort of person that should be having hook ups in the first place. But more likely she just needs to be more clear when/if the hookup is strictly NSA. I'd suggest she simply ask if her potential hookups are partnered already. She might find that the clarity going in makes the marriage not problematic to her. Like, perhaps the problem is not that this man is married but just that she didn't know it, and if she'd known in the first place, she would not have had these projections anyway.

@29. Bi. I can't say that I'm 100% on the sequence of events here. The LW and Mr Married have sex the day before she's flying back home. Then they have a friendly exchange, in which he tells her how much he'd like to see her again, just as she's at the airport. She is delighted by this; the sex was great, she felt an emotional connection and hopes there may be something longer-lasting in the relationship. Then ... continuous with this exchange..? after it, after he's thought about it for a bit? she gets a text from him in which he showcases his gay wedding pics. Does she open this after she gets home from the airport in Britain? Does he in fact send it one day later? She is horrified and texts 'WTF'. Does she then phone him and cry? She says she gets in touch with her 'friend'--is this the guy in LA, her brief lover, whom she's met once? She calls her best LA-living friend by another term, her 'bestie'.... I got the impression she does phone this guy and cries; he is alarmed, perhaps guilty, horrified at what he's getting into and disclaims any idea that he sent her the wedding pictures deliberately.

And what does 'fortunately I work from home' mean? Of course she works from home; she's an 'artist', either unemployed, underemployed or taking on precarious work to finance art that, as yet, does not sell, which she cannot monetise through professional relationships e,g, sponsorship, publicity, taking on ad work or graphic design, gallery representation, fine art sales etc. What is 'fortunate'? That she can call her friend? That she can call out the guy she slept with on his texts (the wedding photos) and take him to task on them? Ask him what he was thinking? None of these things are fortunate....

There are deeper issues here than a ONS with a guy who turns out to be unavailable. People writing in often do this ... present a scenario where it's evident what they should do, or feel, in a spirit of absolute perplexity; the issue has become a displaced focus of attention for the complex that's the real problem. Here the LW is not at all clear what she wants in love or sex or how to get it, and (after abusive childhood and teen experiences) guesses she has good reason to distrust her instincts.

LW, I wonder if one nighters aren't for you? I suggest this, because I am the same. If you are looking for a relationship, hookups generally aren't going to get you what you want. (I say 'generally', because of course some people do meet their partner in life like that.) For what it's worth, I used to be able to have casual sex no problem, then a switch flicked when I hit that critical benchmark at 25, where all the synapses join up, and you start thinking more long-term. You might be a bit different, but I think if you get this upset about a casual encounter not working out, you should perhaps stick to getting to know someone first.

When the hookup sent a follow up text after their fling, he should have disclosed the marriage then (in a phone call you'd think but the younger generation might be fine having this talks in text). He says the pics were a fuck up and I don't see why they wouldn't be. If they were a clumsy attempt at disclosure that he then walked back, that's shitty. If they were just an accident as he said, fine, but then was he planning to have a more serious talk? "I enjoyed our hook up and might like to do it again but there's something you should know..." is a perfectly respectful way to disclose an open marriage after what both parties assumed to be a one night stand. Whether or not this guy was trying to do that or not, we don't know.

As for being bi, I don't think this needs to disclosed as a potential deal breaker to anyone even if they are dating, certainly not in a hookup. I'd think if I were bi (guessing here) I'd disclose it if I were dating to weed out people for whom this might be a potential deal breaker- not because I was trying to respect their biases. For a hookup, it's absolutely none of the other person's business who else you fuck. Again, if you have some objection to fucking certain people in an obvious NSA hookup (like someone you met a few hours ago on an app the night before you leave the country) then you have the responsibility to ask for it. This man had zero responsibility to disclose that he is bi- even if they had been on a date (which rightfully involves expectations and attempts to get to know someone and therefore absolutely requires disclosure of relationship status at the very beginning) he would not have a responsibility to disclose that he's bi any more than he'd need to disclose other facts of his life (allergies, marital status of his parents, career changes, income, medical history)- this is something that most of us bring up naturally as you get to know someone, not something you intentionally disclose so as to respect someone else's bigotry and/or bias. Though I'd think you'd do it anyway just to not waste time and to prevent a potential unpleasant experience, I don't see how it would be lying or deceit to not bring it up if it didn't come up naturally. Regardless- this LW was not bothered by him being bi and also this was a hookup not a date so all this is rather moot.

Harriet,
wtf? You are doing that thing again where you create an elaborate situation in your head and then build a world of assumptions around it. 'Fortunately she works from home' means that she didn't lose control of herself in front of coworkers, but beyond that, do you not see how stupid it is for you to make wild assumptions about the details LW's work and financial situation based on nothing other than your own opinions? Is there any time when you might reflect that your experience of life is not valid for everyone? Why in god's name would being an artist and working from home means you can't also be successful? If you have never heard of someone being a successful artist who works from home, then fine- that's your own limited experience of life. Please do not project that on others. I personally know a dozen people who successfully work from home in various arts- and your list of what it must mean to be an artist is likewise limited. One of the successful artists I know refurbishes kitchen tables and chairs and other household goods, sells them mostly to film sets but also to wealthy collectors, makes plenty of money doing so and it's fun to spot his pieces in shows. I know a painter whose work is sold before he even starts it, another who does sound engineering for commercials, another who photographs food for cookbooks on commission, two who are journalists, etc. Where in the world does she say that she can't monetize her work through various professional channels? Why would working from home be incompatible with things like sponsorship or sales or professional orgs etc? That's likely why she goes to LA in the first place. Seriously, I'm going to repeat your words here just so you can get a sense of how ludicrous they are. Get out into life and meet people with experiences different from your own.

"And what does 'fortunately I work from home' mean? Of course she works from home; she's an 'artist', either unemployed, underemployed or taking on precarious work to finance art that, as yet, does not sell, which she cannot monetise through professional relationships e,g, sponsorship, publicity, taking on ad work or graphic design, gallery representation, fine art sales etc. What is 'fortunate'? That she can call her friend?"

Also I responded to you in the other thread from last week. I was out of town, on a research trip sponsored by a professional org with which I do (non artistic) work mostly from home.

Bi @ 33: Sorry, you said sleazy, not creepy. To me they feel the same.

I just don't get that there's any bad here. It was a NSA hook-up, during which disclosures of the "I'm bi" and "I'm married, but my marriage is open" variety seem to me optional (although I agree with EmmaLiz that they shouldn't be lied about, if the question is asked). It went very well, as hook-ups sometimes do, at which point the guy indicated further interest, as well as revealing his two major possible deal-breakers (inadvertently or not). In other words, he did the reveal before any furthering of the relationship happened. It seems to me he did exactly right at each point, adjusting his information flow to meet changing circumstances, and she's having a strong emotional overreaction, which, I would guess, is based on something else unresolved in her own psyche, a la Harriet's suggestion @38.

Harriet, for my money the friend she called and cried to was the girlfriend in LA; it would be odd to use the word "friend" for this guy at this point in the letter. And the up-side to working at home is you can throw an emotional wobbly at any moment if you feel the need, without having to go hide in the bathroom or leave work. (And, sorry to nit-pick, but do we have any reason to think her art doesn't sell? Other than, ya know, probability? I have a good friend who is a successful working artist and she does work from home...that doesn't imply a lack of success.)

@41. Emma. I'm not writing from my experience. I've known art students who have worked at home, in preference to working in studios at their college. I am reading the whole of BIB's text, inclusive of the tone, and of scattered remarks for what they reveal of the thoughtfulness, self-consciousness, experience and apparent maturity of the writer, and drawing inferences (some of which may be speculative, but are not without textual support).

Could I offer you some advice? It's advice, mutatis mutandis, often given to people in a fractious relationship. Rather than saying 'you are doing that thing again...where you create an elaborate situation...', why not say 'to my mind, you have created an elaborate situation [without sufficient evidence]?'. Stick to the individual case, keeping your ideas about the pattern of my responses to yourself--where they are clearly at variance with how I would think I read; and where you might suspect that I would harbor some similarly disobliging general view about your way of reading and writing.... Aren't couples in counseling cautioned to stay away from discussions beginning 'you always...', 'as ever...'--instead being guided, calmly and incontrovertibly, to state their perceptions and their feelings? Rather than 'don't you see how stupid it is...?', they might be urged to say something like, 'I would think it a pure invention on your part that (s)he...'. Wouldn't this sort of even temper, and restriction to particular facts or issues in dispute, make conversation more pleasant for your interlocutor--and, in all probability, less taxing for yourself?

Would you say, on the basis of BIB's letter:

1) that she earns a year from her 'art' more than Damian Hirst?;
2) that she earns a year from her art a sum less than Damian Hirst but more than Mona Hatoum, a lecturer at Central St. Martins school of art or a fabric artist, craftsperson, macrame specialist or chair-coverer of your choice?;
or 3) that, supposing 35 hours' work a week at the British minimum wage, whether or not she works this hard at her art--whether or not she has the time to work this hard--she earns from her art less than the weekly minimum wage?

I would plump for 3)--and am open to being shown to be wrong. Would you take from BIB's saying that she felt an especially strong romantic connection with her date because he was 'a fellow artist' some kind of indication that she should pursue relationships with artists in the future? Or would you find the LW somewhat self-deceived and dewy-eyed in entertaining the idea that this could be the basis of a lasting connection, where their hookup was set to be a ONS? I would say the second. But would this again for you be without textual warrant?

@43. ciods. This is the passage we are wondering over:

"The shock [of the wedding photos] was like a punch to the gut. I was working at the time and could barely catch my breath. Thankfully I work from home so I was able to call my friend in LA and have a cry. He immediately tried calling me twice, I tried calling him back but no answer. I texted back "WTF" and explained to him that it wasn't the bisexuality which I found so shocking, but the fact that he's married."

The 'he' of '[h]e immediately tried calling me twice' seems to have as its antecedent 'my friend in LA'--whom BIB cries over the phone to. But, as you imply, that natural reading of the grammar would seem to be misleading with regard to the facts. If she were crying over her phone to the guy, why would he 'immediately' aim to phone her--as if in response to a message from her side? She would be already on the phone, crying. Is she crying through emojis? If, rather and--yes--more probably, she phones her female LA friend, why should the man 'immediately' call her twice? Has the friend got into touch with the man? If it's just a coincidence, why does BIB say 'he "immediately" tried calling me', rather than 'as it happened' or 'as things would have it', 'he tried calling me while I was on the phone to my bestie'...? It's possible, I guess, that the internal logic of the 'immediately' of the 'he immediately tried calling me twice' is that it is evident, in BIB's mind, that her date acts carelessly or selfishly in sending her the wedding pics. She sees he has something to atone for or explain away. She will know what passed between them when they were arranging their hookup online and on the date--so it could be that he hid, or was misleading about, his marital status in response to (something like) her inquiries, such that he would naturally feel bad about springing his marriage on her as he did.

Something else I considered, as a way of patching up the gaps in the story, was that there has been some gender-swapping to protect actual identities, and that BIB and best friend are gay men. The sequence of events as described would be clearer if we knew when 'Friday' was--but a fuller picture could again reveal identities, or the mention of the day represent something partial left in after editing. Equally, the LW could be so inside her story that she lacks the perspective to lay it out perspicuously to newcomers.

I surmised that she wasn't self-sustaining as an artist out of ... respect for art, in a way; although visual (and textile and other craft art) does not deal in rational argument, I don't believe that Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin would explain anything that happened to them so incontinently and in so disordered, repetitive and fantastical a fashion. Whether their emotions were involved or not. You say just the same thing as EmmaLiz about the 'fortunately' in her not being among workmates when she breaks down, so I'll accept this is the explanation of the word (rather than e.g. her being immediately at leisure to ask the guy what he meant by the wedding photos).

You must say 'au Harriet' or Venn will be on your back... ;)

How many hook ups have ended in LTR.
Why should a hook up disclose anything except STIs.. which should be at the top of your list ciods/ Nice to see you again.
Do people really think hookups will lead to LTR? To me that is just asking for trouble. And this young woman is obviously happy to play. Three hook ups, and it’s only the last guy she suddenly has an issue with. And if it was a connecting evening past the sex, then I can understand her hoping for more. And unlike you Fan, I don’t see her being ok to meet him again is a problem. I don’t think it will happen though, as it sounds like she scared him off.
Her expectations got in the way as well as his sending the photos that way. Who knows if he was about ready to disclose further. He sure wasn’t going to do it while she was boarding a plane. He was letting her know he is interested. Unless he was just being a polite American.

And what is her best friend advising her in all this? Presumably she knows about BIB's very unhappy introduction to sex, both as a child and teen? Perhaps she, the friend, has got together with BIB and trawled okcupid or other sites looking for dates for both of them, first as a fun activity, then because it's something that she knows BIB would feel more confident in doing, or take more pleasure in, in company with someone she trusts? This would make sense to me. BIB avows that she isn't sure whether her radar for what is reasonable, what permissible, what ethical, what an imposition in sex isn't wonky, maybe because of the abuse.

I'd guess (or hope) that the BF is saying something like 'you can't count on getting emotional satisfaction OR a substantive relationship' out of a fun ONS. BIB's expectations would seem to be unfounded, too high given the situation. Maybe the best friend, concerned that BIB lacks what one would normally think of as 'common sense' in dating, has encouraged her to write to this column?

We're not in counseling, Harriet, thank god, and I have no interest in learning to talk the way counselors say people should. As for my assumptions about her artistic career- I have none as a) it is totally irrelevant to the situation she is writing about, and b) we have zero information about her career whatsoever and therefore it is folly to make any assumptions at all especially considering that a) it is totally irrelevant to the situation she is writing about, and therefore c) ridiculous to create elaborate situations with about which b) we have zero information.

Him sending the photos that way, if he was interested, would have been a counterproductive move. It was a slip up I think, though as Freud said, slip of the tongue or picture sending, are never slips at all.
LW, try again one more time to contact this man, in a week or so. Shake off your hurt, feel the feels as Dan tells us. Watch them pass. Withdraw your fantasy about this man because it’s not gonna happen. He’s bi and he’s married. Doesn’t mean you and he can’t find each other again when next you are in the States. Reduce your expectations, if he’s open to meeting with you again, and enjoy.

It’s amazing Harriet hasn’t told us her bra size, they seem to know everything else. Emma Liz, ignore. I only jump on because you get so exasperated.

Yes, it was a double hit for her. He’s bi and married. Perhaps the resistance some women have to bi men is it doesn’t fit the fantasy. And given the power of patriarchy, a woman can’t compete with A Man.

Hi Lava! And yes, you're right @47, STIs should be disclosed. Other things I'm less clear on.

Just for data, I ended up in a 10-year relationship (which included a marriage) with a hookup. We got divorced eventually, but, um, the hookup beginnings weren't the reason. So it does happen, however rarely. (Dan and Terry also spring to mind...) That said, I agree with the crowd that it's probably not the best way to look for a LTR.

Harriet @46: I wish I believed people were intentional about (or at least aware of) their antecedents...

I think he immediately called her twice when he realized he'd texted the wrong person; she was on the phone with her (female, I assume) LA friend at that point; she then called him back after she was off the phone, and he didn't answer, so she sent the WTF text. But who knows, and I'm not sure it matters too much.

Cocky @44: If you don't want to get involved with irrational people -- and who would? -- it's in your own interest, not theirs, to disclose things that would scare off irrational people. It's not about the right to privacy, it's about drama avoidance.

Harriet @46: It's clear from the passage you quote that BIB was able to get through to the friend and have a cry, but that the guy was not able to get ahold of her -- probably because her line was engaged by her venting to her friend. It's also quite obvious, as EmmaLiz says, that BIB was thankful (she says "thankfully," not "fortunately," she works from home) because she was able to have this conversation straightaway although it was during her work day, which she couldn't have done in an office. I don't think there is any need to speculate on her income; she can obviously afford two international holidays in a few short months, so she must be doing okay.

Lava @47: I don't think any of my LTRs -haven't- started out as hookups.

@52 Biphobia works both ways (believe me, the worst is from gays) but LW hasn't been biphobic. If a bi guy were upset with me upon finding out I was married to a man if he hooked up with me and for some reason I didn't disclose that, he wouldn't therefore be homophobic.

I suppose she could report him for abuse to whatever app she used to meet him. Caveat emptor. Admittedly the guy subsequently proved to be a POS, but that is neither here nor there. If there had been no subsequent contact then she would have had only positive memories of a romantic NSA one night stand.

I'm probably wrong, but the apps she was using were to arrange hook ups (or at least that is what she was using them for). The expectation for both parties was for NSA sex. To expect honesty is rather naïve. She was looking for a good time and she had one. She's on vacation to be with her bff in LA for 3 weeks. How much of her limited time did she spend vetting potential dates.

Lava @52: Speaking as a bisexual, you've got it backwards. Given the power of heteronormativity, a same-sex partner can't compete with an opposite-sex one.
Good thing a lot of us don't see it as a competition.

@49. EmmaLiz. Er, yes, I don't think you and I, being as we are, would ever get to the stage where we might have need of counseling... ;) But surely you want to be a pleasant and engaging interlocutor? People should follow the basic proprieties of civility--especially, I think (changing the subject) in their intimate relations.

We have to imagine the LWs and the dramatis personae of their letters as rounded, integral people, I feel. A philosopher would say there's no warrant for believing that the artist-lover didn't spend a day as a used-car salesman or physician or atomic physicist, or that California continued to exist, while BIB was in the air between LAX and London Heathrow. The question is whether inferences are plausible or fanciful on the whole of our evidence.

@51. Lava. Funny remark, and I can believe you said 'they' almost automatically, which is a big jump up. You're saying that the LA guy blew his chance of further sex with the LW in sending his wedding pics--a reading I would very much agree with.

@53. Ciods. Your version is starting to make a lot more sense. We know that he was saying he'd like to see her again when she was in the departure lounge. Then 'subsequently' he texts the wedding pics. It was unclear to me whether this was 15 minutes after the earlier message i.e. after she'd boarded or 15 hours after. I was also unclear what would motivate him to try phoning her after sending the wedding pics--which you have explained; he sent them to the wrong person and stepped in to explain to his date, to whom he may have represented himself as unattached.

Fwiw, I do think the LW could take the mix-up, and her shock, as an occasion to ask what she wants from dating, and in life, in the broadest terms. This needn't be in self-berating mood. She's just had a fun holiday where she enjoyed the best sex of her life..... What about this sex was better? Physical things? Did he treat her with more respect? Listen to her more? Take her seriously as an artist? How can she replicate these conditions in her dating life in the UK?

@54. Bi. Yes--all is as you say. I genuinely found her letter difficult to follow and over-complicated it.

I wonder why I am the only person who has directly brought up her experience of abuse? Is it politesse (to draw a veil over it)? Polite aversion? Slightly guilty discomfort--a bit like the white liberal American attitude to race? (OK, it's not that; that's an offbeam comparison). But there has to be a sense in which advice should seize the nettle and grasp the main problem.... To me, then, her past would underlie her shaky judgment of this lover in particular, and--one would think--she's entering her 30s--her history of dating and having sex with men (and maybe women). At the very least, as BIB herself suggests, she has formed little instinctive sense of the basics of sexual ethics, possibly because she doesn't draw a line between permissible omissions of information and guilty (?) or morally compromised secrecy.

@Harriet, I try not to make personal attacks and to temper my argumentative nature with actual contributions to the conversation. This is not out of a desire to be pleasant but rather because I try to be mindful not take more than I give- my success/failure at this varies depending on topic, my mood, how sober I am. I learn a lot here and enjoy the exchange- it's fascinating to hear other perspectives including yours a lot of the time. But mostly I post here becuase it gives me what I think is a healthy outlet for certain prickly aspects of my personality that I keep under wraps with my real life relationships- it's folly to assume that my exchanges here have anything to do with my interactions with people in my offline life. It should be pretty clear by now that I'm not motivated in the least by civility nor pleasantries and have little use for either. You are definitely barking up the wrong tree with that bullshit, and moreover, you are every bit as prickly and stubborn as I am or else we wouldn't have these exchanges at all so you can drop the paternalism now, it's disingenuous.

On consideration, I've decided that we must go back in time and bestow the inaugural Reddy Award on Ms Cute for her famous line, "I want to be equal except when I don't." Then this letter can earn perhaps two-thirds of another one for LW and the remainder for Mr Savage.

@62. EmmaLiz. We would disagree in principle, then, if you think it's a good thing to post when one is riled and drunk. I've tried to defuse others' anger with reason all my life--something which has meant, sometimes, trying to acquire their respect by standing up for myself. Do I always get it right? No, I usually get it wrong. Am I susceptible to getting nettled? Sure, as you say--and just like you. Certainly, I'm conflict-aversive as a person. In terms of a civil-society discourse that changes anything, to switch to thinking about the cultural politics--that changes people's minds--I can't think reflexively righteous keyboard-warrioring is the way to go? It's one of the ills of our time, surely? Such a waste of thought and energy.

I'm not getting at you personally now and didn't mean to be paternalistic.

There were huge amounts of things I labored over and just didn't understand with this letter. Including the difference between a text and picture message.

Harriet @61: "I wonder why I am the only person who has directly brought up her experience of abuse?" Personally, I simply didn't see any connection. I think someone with zero history of abuse would have likely reacted the same way, so the prior sexual abuse was just as relevant to the situation as which meal she chose on the flight.

Yes Harriet, we disagree in principle about all sorts of things. I'm not concerned about your opinion of how I spend my time and/or energy. Attempts to explain/control other people's emotions with what you consider to be reason is paternalistic- it means you think you know what is better for someone and can explain that to them. I think where we are alike is that you are probably actually more motivated by the prickly desire to understand how others tick- you can't let things go- but where we differ is that you are dressing this up in trying to be fair, pleasant, civil, reasonable, etc. I just need to pick at what I don't understand until I somehow get at the center of it.

"You should have just known that was a standard disclosure-required item and just offered it up" is not reasonable, because everyone has their own tailored list, and everyone is equally adamant that of course the items on their list are essentially the standard ones. Except that they aren't, because in most cases they're not only personal, they're situation-dependent. Did the other two guys have a duty to disclose whether they were married? Clearly she didn't give a shit about that particular detail WITH THEM.

Nobody is in a position to know what your dealbreakers are. Or aren't. Do you really want to spend a half hour waving off all the stuff he thinks he really ought to mention just in case, except those are all things that you don't give a shit about? Or don't give a shit about with him, because as fun as he was to fuck, you didn't see a future with him.

You're responsible for knowing your own personal list of dealbreakers inside and out, and if something is going to upset the hell out of you after the fact, you need to be the one doing the inquiring in advance. You also should have the emotional honesty to admit that if you hadn't gotten your hopes up with this guy, then his being married wouldn't have been a problem for you, just like it wasn't a problem with the other two guys you casually fucked. (Again, it's not the casual fucking I object to, it's the casual switching of ethical reference points for the purpose of making him the bad guy, when he was playing by the same rules she was up to the moment she changed them.)

It should go without saying -- but it probably can't -- that "Items That Put the Recipient In Physical Danger" are in a different category regarding disclosure from "Items that Potentially Might Make Some Individual Recipient Cry Or Not."

@64. EmmaLiz. I said nothing whatsoever specifically about your 'time and energy'. Why don't we have a 'not-letting-things-go' competition? ;) We can have a back-and-forth picking up on the most minor nuances, not even intended, of what the other said, in decreasing circles of irrelevance, until one hoists the white flag...? Making a general remark about the other e.g. 'you are paternalistic' for you, 'you have too much time on your hands' for me, gets the poster an extra post. This is a joke, incidentally.

@65. Bi. I think it would have been perfectly possible for someone to have received, uncontextualized, a pic of her recent lover's January wedding a day after arriving back in Britain and have responded with no more than, 'oh, you're married? Does your husband know you're having casual sex with woman?'. Not, that is, to have let it fluster her at all.

From your post at 69 (congrats btw):
I said nothing whatsoever specifically about your 'time and energy'

From your post at 64:
Such a waste of thought and energy.

Thought, not time, my bad, but otherwise yes.

Skull and crossbones flags instead?

I'm still mostly perplexed by the idea of people even entertaining the thought of trying to date random people in cities in which they don't live (let alone those who do "date" people entirely long-distance), which is the only reason I can see this guy being married would be an issue.

The direct answer to BIB's specific question - "Do I have a right to be so upset?" - is that of course you have a RIGHT to feel whatever feelings you feel, but I don't think it's a reasonable or proportionate response, and I don't think the guy behaved badly in any way (even texting wedding photos isn't BAD to me, just perplexing if not a real accident, so I think it was probably an accident).

@16: It turns out that avast2006 and I are on exactly the same page on this, as we sometimes are. Your version of full disclosure can't possibly work as a norm. Once we're past things that are directly relevant to the activities in question (transmissible infections, trauma triggers, unusual physiology that may lead to injury for one or both people if not taken into account, possibly fertility), "important enough to disclose without prompting" is a completely subjective matter with no consistency at all (not between people nor even from one case to the next for a given person, as avast2006 notes). So, the only possible norm is that if there's something that's important to YOU for YOUR sense of informed consent, YOU NEED TO ASK ABOUT IT. They're unknown unknowns - unless you ask, I don't know that X is something that you don't know but would want to know. People can't read minds, and even if they could to know any particular individual's list of things ze needs to know for what ze considers informed consent, it would still be on the person who considers [thing] to be important to ask about [thing] becasue ze's the one who considers it important, and other people are not obligated to cater to one's particular preferences, just the basic elements of the social contract. I DO think that it's unethical to actively lie - if someone does ask, ze probably does consider it important, and one should tell the truth (it's always disturbed me when people say that lying on first dates is common - tell the truth to your potential sex partners).

My reading of the timeline and people involved is what ciods says @53.

@61: "I wonder why I am the only person who has directly brought up her experience of abuse? Is it politesse (to draw a veil over it)? Polite aversion? Slightly guilty discomfort--a bit like the white liberal American attitude to race?"

I've ignored it becasue it seems irrelevant to my role as a mostly-uninformed commentator. I hold the same point of view as Bi @65, for the opposite reason: this is an UNCOMMON reaction for people who suffered abuse or not, so the abuse doesn't look relevant (if you're fucking strangers, not knowing things about them, including major life and personality details, is part of that by definition, becasue people about whom you know the things you consider to be important details aren't strangers). LW's expectations and reactions were out of proportion to what happened, and I'm really not in a good position to figure out if abuse is relevant with zero details (a counselor is better situated in any case, but I will sometimes speculate if there is ANY information to inform that speculation). All we know of LW's history of abuse is, "I was sexually abused as a child and sexually assaulted as a teenager" - we don't know the form of the abuse or assault (if it was of a kind that is statistically likely to result in a particular pattern of behaviors or psychological conditions for the victim that might be relevant - I'm unfamiliar with any statistical link between past sexual trauma and overreacting to finding out that an NSA hookup partner happened to be married, bisexual, or both) nor any of the particulars about the impact on BIB.