That was a stern talking to!

Dan is unfortunately a bit over the top here; he may have a point but instead of helping the man .

He is Right masturbation is normal and we should be able to talk about it. If you can't talk about it it doesn't mean you are not marriage material; if that was the case more than 50% of the population in America would not be marriage material.

A few things.

It's likely the sex w/ his Fiancee does not provide the same fix as masturbation. That doesn't mean he needs to be with her like he masturbates he needs to learn to listen to his dick and his fiancee and figure out what pleases him the way he wants as well as pleasing her.

Fucking is not a term you normally use when you talk about your soon to be wife. If it is I don't want to know (anything).
Couples counseling would be a good thing as they need to work on their communication

Maybe he's young; he can grow out of it and maybe they can be a happy couple... or maybe she's looking for a new man on the side and figures he's not very sexual

Without open communication you really don't know jack

I see this letter is from over 11 1/2 years ago, so I won’t roast Dan for making a really poor joke about schizophrenia - I merely hope he’s moved past such “humor” some time in the past decade.

@4 Thank you for noticing that. I wonder if he ever wrote in and talked about the changes he made....like getting out of his engagement?

Just because someone is insecure with poor communication skills doesn’t mean I’m...er, HE...is a “bag of slop,” Dan!

All allosexual men masturbate.

Sorry to nitpick, Dan. Just wanted to fix that.

@3, re: "if that was the case more than 50% of the population in America would not be marriage material."

Sounds spot-on to me.

I loved the tone in all these original answers. I have never felt an appreciation for anything that came out of the G.W. Bush administration.

Back from vacation!

I once “found myself masturbating” and I wasn’t even looking that hard. Certainly easier than finding that fucking Waldo guy.

@3 I disagree about "fucking" in general, but maybe it tells us something about LW's perspective. But wives and fianceés deserve fucking, even if only occasionally interspersed with "making love" and other terms that suggest a gentler, tenderer, lovinger time. (Interspersal not necessary in my case.)

The other thing about jerking: there's no intimacy or interaction. That makes it a relief sometimes, but if he was using it as a refuge away from romantic intimacy and communication, that's relationship assassination. He really might as well have been a hermit, or partnered with an asexual person.

I hope this guy figured out how to talk about sex, but if not they're either divorced or unhappily slogging through a marriage of around 10 years by now.

Perhaps his purpose was to serve as a warning for others.

Hey Donny, I had wondered where you were. Hope you had fun.

Or in a classic mashup, "Help I keep finding myself masturbating because there's this thumb in my ass please send help."

Agree @4; poor taste mental health joke, Dan.
This guy, if he doesn’t fancy this woman, how come they were still together, and talking of marriage. If he preferred his hand to a nice cushiony vagina, what was his problem.
Did they never have sex. Porn and jacking off are ok in moderation, they should not replace intimacy. Men like this LW need to see they are solo travellers and not promise marriage to anyone.

So much information is missing from this letter. Are there cultural or religious issues at play? Did they have sex regularly when they were dating, but were living apart? Did they sleep in the same bed when they moved in together, but only later started sleeping in separate bedrooms? It is a lot less likely RHM and Ms. RHM are going to have sex if they are not sleeping in the same bed, and if they have never shared bed, it is hard to incorporate sex into your relationship.

Are some men just chronic masturbators who have developed such a deep groove of habitual masturbation that a psychological barrier hinders their transition to partnered sex? If so, wouldn't that lead them, and someone like RHM, away from efforts to meet women?

Obviously, this letter has a "How'd That Happen" vibe, so it is easy to blame RHM, but Ms. RHM had to take some affirmative steps to avoid this issue. She either set up house in different bedrooms, proactively moved into a different bedroom, or allowed RHM to move into his own bedroom.

This relationship definitely needs a major reset, that should come with apologies and honest communication.

Re: Fucking. Is the use of "fucking" wrong or off-putting in the context of a loving relationship? Most relationships should include loving and tender sex, but also raw, animalistic fucking too. The percentage will vary among couples and over time in a relationship. The best relationship are probably those in which the partners can integrate these differing dimensions of sex.

I really, really hope these two did not get married.

Calliope @8, it's my understanding that asexual men masturbate as well. They have no desire for partnered sex but their bodies do produce semen which needs to be released.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/sex-sexuality-and-romance/201702/do-asexuals-have-sexual-fantasies-and-do-they-masturbate

Dum @3, I interpreted Dan's words not as "if you can't talk about masturbation you're not marriage material," but "if you can't talk about your sex life (or lack thereof) with your partner you shouldn't marry them." I agree. How many fewer letters would Dan get if couples talked about their sexual mismatch issues before they got married?
And I would never marry anyone who couldn't give me a good fucking.
I'm not sure they need couples counselling. I think HE needs counselling to figure out why he is masturbating instead of having sex with a willing partner, literally driving her away. He's given us no information on why he is doing this; "you're an insecure bag of slop" is one theory. Is it performance anxiety? Does he fear rejection? Has he fallen prey to a madonna/whore dichotomy? Is he lazy or (sorry, Curious) addicted to porn?
They don't talk about it -- problem easily solved. They "can't" talk about it? Break up. And sort whatever your problem is before you get into another relationship. Or perhaps date an asexual woman.

Perhaps she also needs counselling to figure out why she moved into the spare room instead of out of the relationship.

Is there an actual term for what Dan means when he says "passive voice," or do we need a new neologism contest?

This letter is also silent on what Ms RHM thinks, obviously because RHM hasn't talked to her about it. Does she -want- to be having sex with RHM? Could this be another example of Curious's bugbear: Woman walks in on partner doing the perfectly normal human thing of masturbating, is so disgusted she goes to sleep in the other room? Has she switched beds because she's wank-negative, or because she is feeling rejected, as the letter implies? If she wants to be having sex with him, is she attempting to initiate and being turned down, or has she fallen into the toxic-heteronormativity trap of expecting him to always initiate? Clearly the failure to talk about it is 50% her fault, but other than that, what is she contributing to the dynamic? He's blaming himself for their not having sex, but is this accurate? If only we had some way of knowing.

Oooh burn. Burn, baby, burn. Burn, hubby, burn. Burn, never-to-be-hubby, burn. Not 'burn' in the sense of enjoy the minor friction burns of jerking off, but 'burn' in the sense of 'enjoy the sting of the advice columnist's uber-moralised retort'. There's a kind of satisfaction in that--I guess. Kinky, but thankfully not such that you can politely talk about.

The advice is rot. The question--right back at ya-- should be, 'does your fiancee want to have sex with you--of the sort in which you have an emissive orgasm?'. That's the only real thing to be said in reply. (I see Bi has raised this germane point just above me @20).

@3. dumnogenus. You are just being prissy about the term 'fucking'. He may use the term 'fucking' with her. He may say something more euphemistic or mild like 'making love' when speaking to her and something bluffer like e.g. 'fucking' when raising his psychosexual problems with his friends or other men. Both would be quite normal.

@12. hexalm. All we know about the frequency or attentiveness with which the LW has sex with his fiancee is that sometimes he jerks off when (he feels) the opportunity is there for partnered sex with her.

@14. Mtn. Beaver. Ha ha! ;)

@17. Bi. You are right in your wider point that it is Dan (and people like him) who have put 'sexual compatibility' on the menu of what intending-to-marry couples have to talk about before firming up a formalised commitment. That so much outweighs one questionable answer when Dan was possibly having an 'off' day.

Ms Muse - Wouldn't "modernize" be a better word than "fix"? Did allosexual even exist in 2008 beyond the most theoretical of circles? I'm certain it's not a word it would have been reasonable to expect Mr Savage to know at the time.

Mr Savage's postscript - That's an explanation but not an excuse - although it does open speculation about what the response would have been in 2016.

M?? Harriet - The thought occurred to me that being able only to F or only to ML could be likened to various political extremes, but I couldn't decide which equated to what.

Harriet @21, despite my questions, the letter is definitely phrased in terms of him preferring to masturbate when the option to have sex with his fiancée is available. If the situation was, "My fiancée is refusing sex but gets upset when I masturbate," I think we would have a different letter. Whether the fiancée is initiating and he is saying no, versus whether he has reason to believe she would say yes if he asked (as in, she usually says yes) appears to be the main question here. He could be fucking her, but he prefers his own hand, and this upsets her. Those are the facts we know. Why he prefers his hand is what we don't know, but "talk to your partner" and "explore this in therapy" seem to be the two obvious next moves.

Harriet @22 re Hexalm, Dan inferred that he had cut off sex with her in favour of masturbation, but re-reading the letter, that's not stated. Given your alternative reading -- that they are having sex regularly, but occasionally he prefers to masturbate, perhaps because he is low on energy or short on time -- is this a problem? I would say no. Again, it's a problem if she thinks it's a problem, and we don't know whether her issue is that he's masturbating (in which case she needs to get over herself) or that he's depriving her of sex (in which case he's selfish and needs to person up and address the issue).

I see I've also read a guilty feeling into the letter which may or may not be there. If he is feeling guilty, either it's because he is doing something wrong -- depriving the fiancée of sex he knows she wants to be having -- or because he has shame around masturbation, which may well be the case. "At first I assumed I was masturbating because I was prone to romantic "dry spells" and was used to taking care of things." One doesn't need a reason for masturbating. Did he feel guilty about this when he was single? Is he assuming partnered men don't "need" to "resort" to this "shameful" act anymore; is that the message he's internalised? So he masturbates, feels ashamed, feels he's not worthy of his fiancée's love, feels undeserving of sex, the cycle repeats?

Dan may have been off base, but "take responsibility for your decisions" and "communicate" stand as good advice either way. If RHM wants to change this pattern, when he "finds himself masturbating" he can stop and offer Fiancée the opportunity to join in. If she says no, he has nothing to feel guilty about.

Eh, I thought the schizophrenia joke was borderline but okay. Maybe I'm not sensitive enough. But I don't have schizophrenia, so who cares what I think about it?

I would hope if I get into a serious relationship my partner will be fucking me, whether we're "making love" or not. Fucking can imply animalistic sex, but it can also just mean the act of having sex. Either way, I'd like to get fucked by my hypothetical partner.

Correcting myself @25 re Harriet, I'm agreeing with Dan that the likeliest reading of "while I am physically attracted to her, I find myself masturbating rather than having sex with her" is that they are not having sex.

The last paragraph of Dan’s advice touches only on men’s masturbation habits which may, and I assume unintentionally, imply that women don’t.
Assuming the fianc’ee is one who does, she probably got mad not because she caught him masturbating, but because she realized why he doesn’t show much interest or under performing when they are together.

Maybe there’s a way to incorporate masturbation into their sex life, something that could ease all involved. Beyond show and tell and lending an extra hand it may also help LW’s with insecurities as he will be able to get hard for penetration in an acceptable manner.

dumnogenus @3, ciods @9: "if that was the case more than 50% of the population in America would not be marriage material."

Spot on, supported by the more than 50% American divorce rate. And it's not because they're all accidental wankers.

"But at this point, she's sleeping in the other room and I'm quietly jerking it, knowing that I could have her."

As I review this letter, I read this sentence as Ms. RHM moved out of their shared bed into the other room, and did so because she realized he preferred masturbation to partnered sex. There is also this rather pathetic point about him "quietly jerking it", when he knows he could have partnered sex, which seem to come from the fact that he knows this behavior is pathetic.

I also wonder about his fantasies, and whether they play into his avoidance of partnered sex. I think he needs to seek professional counseling to sort all this out.

@ 30

Accidental Wankers

Another band name.

@ 26
No, borderline is an entirely different disorder wink
I’ve worked with a lot of folks with schizophrenia for the past several years so any joke like “hyuck hyuck they got other people in their head” is both inaccurate and minimizes the severity of the difficulties schizophrenia brings with it. Just gets my dander up enough to make a comment or two.
Dan’s joke clearly wasn’t intended to be mean but it, in its mild way, perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes.

@33 Fair enough. I get it.

My interpretation of "the other room" is that the writer is in an office or computer room, while his partner is in a room adjacent. The "other room" being "other" to the room the writer is on, not "other" to a bedroom. The idea being to point out that all he has to do to have partnered sex is to walk through a doorway. Why does he prefer masturbating given that his fiancee is very close by and (presumably) up for it?

CMD @29, my guess was that Dan wrote "all men masturbate" instead of "all people masturbate" because some women don't masturbate but that's not the point. I agree it's likely that Ms RHM is masturbating in the other room. (Phascogale, I too caught "other room" instead of "spare room" and thought perhaps she is sleeping on the couch?)

Another possibility, albeit remote, is that her sleeping in the other room actually has nothing to do with her catching him masturbating -- wouldn't all of us react the same way if we walked in on a partner having what they thought was some private time? Perhaps he snores or hogs the bed and perhaps her disapproval is all in his head.

Phascogale @35, yes, that is the question.

Phascogale @35 re "other room" -- yes, is there any sentence in this letter that ISN'T ambiguous? She may indeed be sleeping in their shared bedroom and instead of joining her, he's wanking to porn in the living room or den. Perhaps that's what he meant, not that she busted him wanking and now she sleeps elsewhere.
"We don't talk about it—we can't." Maybe the "we can't" is accurate.

Or perhaps this guy just doesn't want to get married, so he's trying to get her to dump him by sexually neglecting her?

One little 101-word paragraph. That I kept myself from replying to, but...

@37 BiDanFan
"is there any sentence in this letter that ISN'T ambiguous?"

Agreed. I also got hung up on:

"she's sleeping in the other room and I'm quietly jerking it, knowing that I could have her"

Is he right that she'd want to be awoken? (Why did she have to have her be asleep in his example?)

@19 Not sure if I'm reading your right here, but "passive voice" is a grammatical term, i.e. active voice = "I masturbated"; passive voice is "I found myself masturbating."

I love Dan's columns and have learned a lot that has come in handy in my job as a psychotherapist. I have recommended his writing to many patients as well. The one thing that surprises me is that he doesn't think that addiction to various forms of sexual behaviour is possible. One thing I've noticed in people with addictions of all stripes is that they switch to the passive voice when they talk about their compulsions, because their identity partially disappears in the midst of escaping from uncomfortable feelings (which is the purpose of all addictive bahaviour). It's funny how, despite my not agreeing with Dan on terminology or definitions here, that he suggests exactly what I would suggest the LW do also - stop, talk, take ownership.

BDF @ 36
My comment re "omen also masturbate" was not necessarily an assumption that his fiancee is doing that in the adjacent room, only that she is likely to be familiar with the popularity of masturbation in general regardless of gender, and watching him masturbating in itself wasn't the real reason she was upset at him.

oh men, "women"

@40: Only, the thing is, "I found myself masturbating" isn't actually passive voice. It's a rephrasing which is sort of round-about, and so we feel, upon reading it, that the person isn't owning their actions--but at the grammatical level, it's not passive. Passive voice would be something like "Masturbation was engaged in."

(Well--to be honest, I'm not totally sure on this. Is that right, grammar peeps?)

So my guess at what @19 was asking is: Is there in fact a term for that rephrasing which makes a person sound passive, even though it's not passive voice in the technical sense?

ciods @43: I love grammar!

In the active voice, a sentence has a subject that acts upon its verb. In the passive voice, a subject is a recipient of a verb's action.

Active voice: I am masturbating. Passive voice: I am masturbated.

In this case, LW is the subject and masturbating is the verb. "I find myself masturbating" is indeed active voice. It sounds passive, but is actually just evasive.

ciods @43 Yes, you're right in that "I" is the subject and "found" is the verb. It's technically, grammatically active voice, but I'd say even if it's not literally passive voice, it's figuratively passive voice. Does that make sense? It feels like passive voice partly because "myself" is the object of the sentence. I don't know of a term for this. "Figuratively passive" is the best I've got.

fiber @44 I'd say "I" is the subject, "find" is the verb, "myself" is the object, and "masturbating" is a participle. My theory on why it feels like it's passive is that "myself" is the object.

*fubar

Autocorrect!

M Ods/Ms Muse - That makes sense. Maybe - active once removed? My first thought was "secondhand active," but that seemed like a w*** joke.

I like "active once removed" better than my idea. Coinage well done, vennominon.

@40-49 I guess a comparison that's specific to this letter would be: Active — "I found myself masturbating" vs. passive: "I was found masturbating by my fiancée."

I mentioned this because it's an important point that Dan makes regularly. And while we all know what he means, it's undermined somewhat by an incorrect reference to a grammar term. Related, in a way, to HTH ("How'd That Happen") but still its own thing.

Ciods's "owning their actions" may be the most direct and useful construction.

"So I'm guessing that you're the one with communication issues here, RHM, not your fiancée."

It has to be both of them, Dan - she hasn't called the question or called off the engagement yet, either.

Answering the implied question is necessarily a job for a therapist - we don't have NEARLY enough info to unpack exactly why LW prefers masturbation to partnered sex (anxiety, insecure attachment, fiancée being an asshole in response to sexual solicitation - her lack of action on this front could imply that she's fine with the lack of partnered sex), and therefore can't offer possible solutions. But definitely put marriage on hold until this is addressed in particular, and the communication problems are resolved in general (the former requires the latter), as Dan says.

I missed that it was a re-run, too; I think I failed to process the words due to the change in format of the postscript resulting from Dan's additional note.

@4: The Stranger staff agree to a sufficient degree that it's been edited out in the last day or two, like tobacco and beer and blackface in old Loony Tunes shorts. Don't ever let anybody tell you that internet activism never works!

@17: That's only because "asexual" has become an identity rather than a technical descriptor. In technical terminology, people who only masturbate are functionally autosexual, people who only experience sexual arousal (which is a physiological process - whether the person in question considers the behavior "sexual" or not, sexual arousal can be measured empirically) in response to their own minstrations are technically autosexual, people who never engage in sexual activity of any kind are functionally asexual, and people who never experience sexual arousal. Note that it's possible to be functionally asexual but not technically asexual (many non-rapey, doctrine-compliant Catholic priests) and vice versa (technically asexual people who opt to engage in partnered sex for reasons other than their intrinsic arousal, say to please a partner or for money). Semen doesn't need to be released - it's reabsorbed if not ejaculated, with no harm done (that said, buildup of carcinogens causing ongoing exposure in the prostate is more likely if one never or only rarely ejaculates, so less ejaculation is statistically associated with slightly elevated prostate cancer risk).

@19 et al.: I think this is regular old passive voice. I think people are getting confused because it uses a reflexive construction, but the passive voice is a semantic feature that shifts agency to passivity, which can be achieved with different syntactic constructions (NOT a syntactic feature in the form "[Subject] was [transitive verbed]" as is often inaccurately explained in grade school, along with the bad advice that it should be categorically avoided - for example, I use it in the preceding phrase because I'm unable to specifically identify the active subject, which includes teachers, but not all nor only teachers, and I wish to neither overgeneralize nor overspecify), so substituting a reflexive phrase with a transitive verb for an intransitive verb phrase works as well as moving subject to object position with a transitive verb. Because there is normatively no explicit object in an intransitive verb phrase like "I masturbated" or "I was masturbating", rather an implied reflexive object (where the actual reflexive phrase may also imply a different meaning e.g. "I hurt" versus "I hurt myself", even if pain is technically always something we do to ourselves, albeit often IN RESPONSE to an external stimulus), a shift to a different reflexive verb phrase may be the only way to achieve the passive voice with an intransitive verb phrase. "Passive voice" is correct here; we don't need a new term (active voice carries more authority, so it's useful with unsupported assertions you wish people to believe, as in the case of the non-paranthetical portion of this sentence; passive voice diffuses authority, so it's useful when one wishes to avoid ascribing culpability).

*people who never experience sexual arousal are technically asexual; I missed the end of that phrase

Curious @39, perhaps RHM meant that right now, as he's typing this letter to Dan, she's sleeping in the other room, and instead of joining her when she went to bed he stayed up and masturbated and now he's writing to Dan about it? Hope he washed his hands first. ;)

C-rad @40: "I found myself masturbating" is still active voice. "My dick was being jerked by my hand" would be an example of passive voice. I would call "I found myself masturbating" passive language, or perhaps, a cop-out. Not a grammatical term, but it's not a grammatical term that's needed here, it's a psychological one. Dan has previously described the phenomenon of not owning one's compulsions/behaviours, as you describe, as "How'd That Happen (HTH)?" "My girlfriend wants to have sex but my hand just started jerking my penis instead, How'd That Happen?"

CMD @41, a bad omen! Indeed, she might not be upset with him for masturbating; per the letter's complete ambiguity, she might not be upset with him at all.

Calliope @46, "myself" is a reflexive pronoun, not an object pronoun. Where's Ricardo when you need him?

John @51: Or does it have to be both of them? One of the many possible readings of this letter is that Fiancée isn't bothered about this at all. Perhaps her interest in sex has naturally waned as the relationship has progressed; perhaps he -sometimes- masturbates when he thinks he could seduce the fiancée instead, but other times they do have sex; perhaps her sleeping in a different room has nothing to do with the masturbating; perhaps her failure to bring up his masturbating represents a completely normal respect for his privacy. If she's unhappy with the situation, I agree, she is partly to blame for not addressing it, but we have no idea how she feels about it really.

John @51, you may be correct about asexuality but you are incorrect about the definition of passive voice. Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is acted upon. "I found myself masturbating" still has an active subject and verb, "I found."

@24. venn. I think people call coitus what they do for reasons that might not reflect how they do it, when they do it (and if they do it). For all sorts of reasons, in fact. I don't believe that people who 'make love' can't lose themselves in sex, nor that people who 'fuck' are incapable of a tender or playful erotic connection.

@25. Bi. People have wildly extrapolated from the facts in the letter. They have decided, for example--possibly beginning with Sublime @20-- that the fiancé(e)s sleep in separate bedrooms. All the lw said was that he often preferred to jerk off when his partner was theoretically available for sex, right there sleeping in the 'other room' (presumably their shared bedroom. He was jerking off, that is, eg in the living room or kitchen).

On one occasion she walked in on him when he was beating off (presumably other than in the bedroom), and they didn't talk about it. We don't know whether she was upset that he wasn't looking to have sex with her.

It is quite consistent with the letter that the lw is exercising sensitivity or discretion in choosing, sometimes, to gratify himself, rather than to initiate partnered sex. He could desire a greater frequency of orgasms (for him) than his fiancee could want, or to be able, to supply. He could want quickies, or relief sex, more often. Sex could be for him about getting a relatively low-intensity affirmation that his partner cares for him--not an experience that is necessarily exploratory, self-revealing or profound.

Another thing missing from Dan's inappropriately scolding answer was the acknowledgement that men routinely continue to jerk off in romantically happy relationships. This could have even provided reassurance to the lw. This fact is no more of note than eg people continuing to eat occasional junk food when their partner is a good restaurant-trained chef and enthusiastic cook.

@25. Bi. The lw doesn't actually ask a question. This may be because he sees no problem in the pattern of how he and his fiancee communicate about sex; or it may be because he can't bring himself to ask what's troubling him: a question (something like), 'is it normal that I go on wanking when I could be having sex with my future wife?'.

Generally I think it's good that people vocalise their needs and expectations, and are honestly open-minded about any possible mismatches of these with their partners'. Sometimes, though, a situation will remain balanced and on the road because partners share an implicit understanding. It tends to strike me as an overreaction when people prescribe 'therapy!' to situations where a couple has divergent but manageable views. (We don't even know here that their impulses re having sex are divergent).

@28. Bi. I think the lw has confused the issue of what's actually going on with his euphemism 'romantic dry spells'. He means 'sexual', rather than 'romantic'--periods in which he didn't have a girlfriend. In these periods, he got used to eg jerking off every day--at a higher frequency than the couple can always have partnered sex--leading to his orgasm--supposing they are busy eg preparing for their wedding. I see no reason to infer that the pair don't have sex together. The line you quote implies, to me, only 'sometimes' or 'at least on that embarrassing occasion when she walked in on me'.

If they stopped having sex during the run-up to their wedding, it's a whole other letter.

@35. phascogale. Yes--I thought the same.

@39. curious. He's saying, 'it would be just a little effort to get sex, or at least to ask for it--but it would impinge on her, because she's asleep'. In some circumstances, it could be a courtesy to let her sleep.

@43. ciods. Yes. In 'I found myself masturbating', 'myself' and 'masturbating' are the 'complex complements' of an active sentence, where the subject is 'I'. It's rather like a Latin sentence (in Latin, personal pronouns in the object position are object, rather than reflexive, pronouns).

@53. Bi. Well, let's take an easier case of complex complementation in a s-v-o sentence: 'I found the store closed'. The 'store' part and the 'closed' part are a complex / compound complement. ('I found the closed store' eg the shuttered store doesn't mean the same thing). I see this sentence as closely analogous to 'I found myself masturbating', even though the object here is personal or self-referring.

Both 'closed' and 'masturbating' are participles; but this classification pertains to an identification of words as parts of speech, not a parsing of the sentence according to its grammatically functional parts. (In a sentence like ' I found that I was asleep--at the wheel!' or 'I found that I was jerking off', we would have no difficulty making out the subject-verb-object clause structure).

Harriet @54, why is your "presumably" more valid than others' "presumablies" when it comes to what RHM meant by "other room"? There are a lot of theories and none of them is more likely than any of the others. He didn't say he "often" preferred to jerk off when she was in a different room, therefore it's equally presumable that he "always" prefers to jerk off, right? The letter is so unclear that no extrapolation is any wilder than any other. He refers to her being in the other room just after he mentions her catching him masturbating, so are the two related? Again, no way of knowing. I do wonder why, if your plausible possible interpretation that absolutely nothing is amiss here is accurate, did he write to Dan?

@56 Harriet
"He's saying..."

Maybe. Maybe not.

I didn't really respond to this letter because it's too short and odd to make much of without projecting.

But I do think it's sad that this engaged couple can't communicate about the things mentioned.

I'm /not/ feeling like knowing/figuring out what you meant @55 by "It tends to strike me as an overreaction when people prescribe 'therapy!'", but it does remind me that one major theme I see in your writing Harriet is that you seek to normalize behavior which others would (I think rightly) wonder whether it's as functional and healthy as it could be.

I'm not complaining, I'm observing: I think this tendency of yours comes from openness and compassion. And in some cases (for example if this couple happened to both have communication issues because of [let's say unsolvable] mental health issues we could project into the letter) this tendency of yours could be very constructive in warning against trying to solve something that can't be solved.

But mostly I think it isn't constructive.

I would agree with you(r implied premise I see) that there are many ways of being somewhat healthy. But I wonder if you see there being ways of not being so healthy?

@53: Congrats, Bi, for beating me to it. I was just about to say, "How'd That Happen?!?" concerning the LW and his fiancee. It also reminded me of an ancient SL letter written by a frustrated underwear model whose fiancee preferred masturbation over having sex with her. She went so far as to wonder if she needed a boob job or dye her hair blonde (' I am very attractive, model, and have my own business...why is he masturbating when he could have me? Men would kill for a woman like me!'). Agreed: I, too, seriously hope these two don't get married--or worse yet, have children.

@32 CalliopeMuse: lol You beat me to it! I can just see the cover band on the marquee for the headliners: The Accidental Wankers: Jack, Harry, and Dick.

Oh Jesus--and Griz hasn't had any alcohol yet, either. At least there are no typos. :)

Please forgive Griz---it's after midnight on Monday morning and I'm a little revved up. Our pit orchestra for a local stage production of Crazy For You (fabulous music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin) has just done the first two of three weeks of shows, and many musicians are joining the local community orchestra and I in the world premiere of my second symphony, on December 20th. Wow. My biggest orchestral work yet is real!

Harriet @56: "He's saying, 'it would be just a little effort to get sex, or at least to ask for it--but it would impinge on her, because she's asleep'."
I caught that too and agree with Curious @58. You don't know that he's saying that. He might just as plausibly be saying, "She'd have sex if I wanted, but I have trouble keeping an erection with a partner," or "but I'm tired of always being the one to initiate," or "but my last partner rejected me so often I have an irrational fear of rejection now," or "but I subconsciously don't want to get married so I'm withholding sex in hopes she dumps me," or "but she caught me masturbating and I'm too embarrassed to look her in the eye now," or any number of other interpretations. Your reading is merely a guess, and whether RHM needs therapy depends on what is really going on.

Griz @59: Yes. I think many of us -- Dan certainly -- saw this letter as the flip side of that situation, and responded accordingly.

Griz @60: LOL! Thanks for the laugh and best of luck at your symphony premiere!

Ms Grizelda - Eh, maybe these two SHOULD do the single world a favour and marry each other, especially as their chance of reproducing is relatively low.

Yes Grizelda, December 20th.. and I’ll be thinking of you and waiting to hear how it goes.
You’re the Woman!
/ This LW probably long ago lost this woman because not only has he got intimacy issues, as does she, he’s a rude man. As if a sleeping woman would be available to him. She’s in the other room dreaming of her next adventure and how to break it to her mother that the wedding is off. That he’s marrying his hand instead.

Jumping straight to NoFap was a weird take from Dan. There are a million possible reasons why sex can stall in a relationship (and that's what's happening here -- the issue isn't that he started jerking but that he stopped fucking).

Maybe he's stressed or depressed. Maybe the relationship is shaky in other ways that make intimacy difficult. Maybe he's a person who just has a low libido once infatuation fades. They need to talk about it for sure, but Dan's assumption that he's "insecure" is baseless and the emphasis on on renouncing wanking is beside the point.

@62 BiDanFan: I know, right? I'm still snickering over Accidental Wankers. lol CalliopeMuse (@32) should get a prize for that.
@63 vennominon: I'm not sure I fully agree.
@59 BiDanFan & @64 LavaGirl: I hope to get a good recording of the 12/20/2019 concert to share in the future.

Speaking of Accidental Wankers, who's up for the Lucky @69 Award?
Tick...tick...tick...

@57. Bi. I agree that the most plausible reading of '[b]ut while I am physically attracted to her, I find myself masturbating rather than having sex with her', taken in isolation, is that the couple has stopped having sex. And, if this is so, I could hardly help concurring with everyone else that this is a problem--one the lw ought to broach before tying the knot.

But, on balance, I don't think that's what's going on here. If the fiancee has moved out to a separate bedroom, wouldn't they have to have had a discussion about it? But they seem to have discussed nothing. The subject that the lw implies they haven't discussed is his continued wanking. We know that he's capable of writing to Dan. If he's stopped having sex in the run-up to his marriage, why doesn't he write (to the effect), 'help! I've stopped having sex with my partner in the run-up to my marriage; what do I do?'. I would think the unformed question in his mind is closer to the (slightly clueless) one, 'is it normal that I go on jerking off, when my gf is theoretically available for fucking?'. His euphemistic use of 'romantic' in 'romantic dry spells', when he just means times he hasn't had a gf, would suggest to me he's slightly clueless, or just bashful in talking about sex.

@62. Bi. I don't know my construction is correct, any more than anyone else knows their projection eg the lw might not be able to maintain an erection, is correct. The absence of a question in the ... question, however, suggests to me that the underlying question turns on the normality of continuing to jerk off.

@58. curious. Please give me an example of my seeking to normalise behavior that might be unhealthy--I'm not sure I know what you mean.

I think it's a reflex for many people to call for 'therapy' when they disapprove of others--their actions, givens, values--but find it difficult to engage with the substance of what they're doing, and say (sometimes to their faces) eg 'you're being fundamentally unreasonable' or 'you're not behaving correctly'.

Harriet @68: "If the fiancee has moved out to a separate bedroom, wouldn't they have to have had a discussion about it?" Not necessarily. She takes her pillow, gets in the other bed and shuts the door.
We don't know what the unformed question is in his mind. It could, indeed, be anything from "is it normal to jerk off when I'm in a relationship" to "I don't understand why I'm rejecting my fiancée and driving her away by withdrawing sex and masturbating instead." All we can say with reasonable confidence is that people who don't have a problem don't write to advice columnists. If the only reason he's not having sex with his girlfriend is because she's currently asleep, that is not cause for a letter.
And as someone who mentioned therapy, let me clarify that it is not because I "disapprove," good grief. Therapy is not a punishment. I suggested it because this man seems confused, does not understand his own behaviour, seems to be harboring internalised shame, and cannot communicate with his partner. Again, this is one possible reading which is supported by the ambiguous words of the letter. If it is inaccurate, if he really just wrote to Dan with no question at all because he is bored, he is free to reject the therapy suggestion.

Oops, there were line breaks in there but that post is now viewing as one big block paragraph. Sorry.

Further to the point about therapy -- When I suggest therapy it is because the person is behaving in an irrational manner. Not that their behaviour is "bad," but that it's illogical. When the issue is illogical behaviour -- for instance, masturbating when both he and his partner would prefer to be having sex -- logic will not solve the problem. "Go have sex with your fiancée." That won't help because he knows it's an option, but he can't manage to translate that knowledge to action. Why? I have no idea; the answer must come from some past trauma, some response to something in his past or presence that causes him to act counter to logic. I (or indeed Dan) could only take what is probably an inaccurate guess as to the cause, and even if said guess were accurate, that would only be step one in analysing and overcoming the issues. A therapist is qualified to have this ongoing conversation and guide someone through this process. This is why I suggest therapy, not as a punishment. "You're bad, go sit in a chair and get berated." No. It's "You need more help than an online advice columnist can give you, please go get it."

*past or present.
The other point is not that the behaviour is illogical, but it's actively harmful. If Dan's reading is right, he's not only having less sex than he wants to be having but sabotaging his relationship. No one does that unless they have issues that need looking at. And if he himself doesn't know what those issues are, a trained professional can ask the right questions to tease them out.

auntie grizelda @66 It was fubar @30 who used the phrase; I merely put it forward as a band name.

@68 Harriet
"Please give me an example"

You seriously aren't aware of this theme in your perspective? The theme of defending as normal what others see as not healthy and functional? To me it may be, as I said, the most prominent theme in your comment history.

Sorry, I don't have time to develop an example for you (let alone document this thesis); as I implied @58 I haven't followed your comments in this thread well enough to know what you meant in my quotation of you @58.

But generally I think you're unconstructively wrong that calls "for 'therapy'" flow from 'disapproval'. Everyone can be more healthy, and mentioning 'therapy' is a way of suggesting someone (in a letter asking for advice) particularly /needs/ to be more healthy and functional. Your theme is anti-growth; since life is about growth, I find your slant significantly unhelpful.

You seem to want to, instead of encouraging growth, send everyone the message that wherever they are is already where they want to go.

Curious @74: I can envision that someone who had a particularly unproductive -- even counterproductive -- time in therapy, such as with a sex-negative therapist, might find the suggestion offensive. Perhaps Harriet's parents didn't understand their sexuality and instead of trying to understand, they shipped them off to someone they hoped would "fix" them. I know this was Venn's experience. Harriet, if this is true for you, please recognise that this is your bias, and it does not accurately represent other commenters' motives in calling for therapy for LWs.

@75 BiDanFan
It breaks my heart to hear that that happened to our Venn. I'm sure it does happen every day; and I'm sure it happens most of all to people who don't fit all of society's bloody norms and prejudices. It breaks my heart to think that our Harriet ever got a hint of such a message, let alone to feel Harriet likely was the victim of even more than a hint.

To expand upon my @58 I think there are many ways to be COMPLETELY UTTERLY healthy, and everyone who suggests otherwise is hurting instead of helping.

I do apologize for identifying a "prominent theme" then not being prepared to submit documentation. But maybe it is always (I forget) in the context of therapy-recommendations, in which Harriet themself identifies a theme in Harriet's take on. And (as I figured Harriet themself would) I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this theme.

In all honesty, I wouldn't have chimed in with such a macro statement if my thesis did not concern me WRT the nomination of Harriet as an advice columnist. In other words I didn't want to be mean to Harriet, I wanted to help those who might be writing in.

@30 fubar: My sincerest apologies! How did I miss your original comment about accidental wankers?
@69 BiDanFan: WA-HOOOOO!!!! Major congrats on scoring this SL thread's Lucky @69 Award! Savor the envied decadence. :)
@73 CalliopeMuse: You and fubar @30 should get a prize for winning this comment thread. :)

My partner was like this for years, until he went on antidepressants and stopped masturbating too. He used to jerk off every day just before I got home from work, then avoid sex with me. These days he'll have sex with me but still never initiates and just wants to lie there while I do everything. We've talked about it a fair amount, which has helped to some extent but also has probably made him even more self conscious/pressured around me and less likely to ever be able to have convincingly enthusiastic sex with me. I understand just wanting to get off alone from time to time, but it's something else entirely when combined with actively avoiding sex with your partner. I'm not sure whether it's some kind of control thing or the product of a deep-seated fear of rejection, or a combination of the two. I get the feeling it's less of a sex thing than a product of an anxious-avoidant relationship dynamic, especially since I had a previous relationship kind of like this and he says he's acted this way in every relationship he's ever had. Anyways, it's horrible.

Curious @76: And I think that nobody is COMPLETELY UTTERLY healthy. We all have our baggage because we have all been raised by flawed human being(s). I don't disagree with my partner, who has benefited hugely from therapy themself, and who thinks everyone would see an improvement in their lives if they had some therapy. Not all of us can afford it, of course; most of us learn to examine our psyches and work through some of this stuff ourselves, with friends or partners. But all of us have our issues. And all of us have our biases. I haven't noticed a trend of Harriet downplaying issues most of us would find problematic, but now that you've brought it up I'll be on the lookout for it, since I did find their attitude towards therapy recommendations a bit alarming. We all have biases, some of which are conscious and some un-; I know that I often jump to "open the relationship" because non-monogamy has worked so well for me, and I don't necessarily always state the caveat that it's not right for everyone even though I'm well aware of this, so I'm glad other commenters have pointed this out. Even Dan has his biases -- witness his reaction to the term "partner" in today's letter. ;) So if there were a guest column written as proposed by Harriet, Lava, NoCute and myself, ideally any biases espoused by one of us would be identified or cancelled out by the others.

Visual @78, I hope Harriet is still reading because this is an example of what RHM's letter might be talking about. I'm sorry you're dealing with this. Any reason you haven't left him?

@69. Bi. I wasn't suggesting you were one of the people who ever called for 'therapy' as a backdoor way of signaling disapproval of someone's eg a lw's presumptions. This is a conversational gambit we hear all the time, though, I'd suggest. Liberals, for instance, indicate Donald Trump seek 'therapy' for his narcissism or neediness, rather than engaging with his supporters (because there's not the time. Possibly Trump has gotten beyond the stage, in his authoritarianism and race-baiting, where people just want to psychologise him). But 'therapy!', muttered between friends, functions as code for 'evidently so bad or wrong the thing isn't even worth discussing'.

I'm willing to be much more tentative in my construction of the facts. If you can say you don't know, I can say I don't know. I've said what I thought the question was in the lw's mind in writing in.

@74. curious. The discussion isn't whether therapy can be beneficial in a patient's mentally reorienting themselves to face their problems. It can. My own prior about the psychiatric and psychoanalytical establishments in America would be negative; and this would principally have to do with their appalling-to-mixed track records in pathologising first homosexuality and second trans. But this isn't what I was talking about--which was the seriousness and closeness of people's engagement with someone's issues in their (sometimes off-handedly) putting them forward as a case for 'therapy'. I was suggesting their engagement wasn't always that concerned or serious.

I hauled myself to therapy more than once, and had mixed (at best) experiences. My parents gritted my teeth about my sexuality (it was the sort of thing that made my mother cry at the sink), though, in retrospect, this came at the cost of trying to repress, not to think about at all, my latent gender nonconformity.

On the background question of whether you'd have confidence in the advice I'd give to any correspondent, in lieu of Dan (you wouldn't)--well, I would say that people form these views, find they have these reservations, all the time, in respect of the general judgment they have about the set of others' opinions and mind. I would have my own reservations about some of the commenters on Dan's correspondent's list when it came to trans people and men. (Let's not get into that again). I think the answer is to take any advice given as 1) advice, rather than a summary authoritative judgment, and 2) as one offering among a smorgasbord of views, all of which are likely to be perused by the person with a problem. They, the person writing in, will know more about their issue than they said, and will know to discount some diagnoses and pieces of advice on factual and circumstantial grounds the advice-givers can't possibly have been aware of. (This is maybe the main sense in which the advice helps--in bringing to the advice-seeker's consciousness what the real problem might be). Because there is this spread of views offered, one duff, imperceptive or insensitive opinion won't count for much in giving a lw the heads-up.

I do not think any guest-columnist agony aunt should be anonymous (but this is another point).

@79. Bi. Oh, therapy is absolute the best and most direct resort for many people eg people who need a strong affirmation of sympathy for their suffering or trauma; people who know there is an underlying problem, but who have deferred handling it; people without those in their lives who can deal unjudgmentally with some form of psychological peculiarity or nonnormativity; people who need to be confronted squarely with how a behavior is unacceptable or problematic. And so on. I never meant to imply anything else.

@79 BiDanFan
"I think that nobody is COMPLETELY UTTERLY healthy."

I agree. (I said as much a couple months ago.)

I don't think you and I thinking that contradicts (I'm guessing your sentence is intended to go beyond) my @76 "I think there are many ways to be COMPLETELY UTTERLY healthy".

p.s. @82
Oh, and it is precisely because nobody is completely healthy that I've here mirrored what you quoted your partner saying @79:
"everyone would see an improvement in their lives if they had some therapy"

@79 I think it's a relationship dynamic issue rather than something that's "wrong" with either one of us. Our parents' relationships seem to be similar as well (emotionally speaking—no idea who initiates sex in those relationships). Since I seem to have an anxious attachment style, dumping my current partner and finding someone new would probably result in the same sort of thing again, but with someone I otherwise like less. And I'd be left with resentment about my current partner that my new partner would have to deal with. Meanwhile he'd be on to a new identical anxious-avoidant relationship. Might as well try to work on it together rather than going through the same nightmare with more people. I am open to leaving, but want to be partnered with someone and am extremely picky.

I think everyone would see an improvement if they found * the right * therapist. The wrong therapist can be damaging for many many reasons, from failure to affirm one's sexuality/identity or pathologizing it to simply being rude or misinterpreting things one says. A good therapist, one who fits the person seeking treatment, can provide many benefits beyond simple treatment of mental illness, especially for those who don't otherwise have a safe space to talk. It's a travesty not everyone who could benefit from therapy -- not even everyone who desperately needs it -- can get it.

Harriet @80, thanks for clarifying. Yes, I can see that in the context of whatever batshit thing Trump has done now, "he needs therapy" is indeed code for "he's an asshole."
I agree with you and Calliope @85 that the wrong therapist can do more harm than good. But it's sort of like plastic surgery, isn't it? No one goes in asking for a bad result. :)

@86 BiDanFan
"Yes, I can see that in the context of whatever batshit thing Trump has done now, "he needs therapy" is indeed code for "he's an asshole.""

I think It makes a lot a sense for average people to dis Trump that way, because his pathology does arise from serious personality issues, such as fullblown narcissistic personality disorder. Which is traumatizing the whole world. (Even though Trump is untreatable, 'therapy' is simple, clear, and meaningful, however ineffective it would have to be.)

But multiply the number of people on Savage Love who have ever used the word 'therapy' that way times infinity and you get at most zero.