A man was flirting with a woman online, but his girlfriend found out. She threw him out, and messaged all their friends and family about the incident. Police were involved. Should they get back together? Dan calls him up to get all the salacious details, and you get to listen. A man has a wonderful fiancé, and they have a child together. He loves her very, very much. The problem? He is one kinky motherfucker, and she is NOT interested in dominating him. On the Magnum, Dan chats with comedian Caleb Hearon. They talk about the perils of performing masculinity, but also how some gay men really are masculine. Calebs says "I don't want to do any of this exclusive, essentialist weirdo shit- I just want to have fun and enjoy myself." Hallelujah. Also, they arbitrate a petty fight from a caller over who should pay for a couch. Oh, and you have to become a Magnum sub and listen to this interview in order to understand the headline. Some three-way condom etiquette is in order. She and her husband are going to invite another man to join them. Naturally, they will insist that the lucky lad wear a condom. But should her husband wear one too just for parity? [email protected] 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Talkspace- online therapy that makes it easy to get extra mental health support. For $80 off your first month, go to Talkspace.com/Savage, and use the offer code Space80.
You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love.
If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony, well, there's nothing you can't ask on the Savage Lovecast.
I try to learn something new every day, and here's the new thing I learned today. In Australia, there are these tiny little gerbil-sized marsupials called broad-footed pouch mice, and their sex lives are nasty, brutal, and short, at least for the boys. We've all heard of bugs where the females eat the males after sex. It's called sexual cannibalism.
Bees don't do it, birds don't do it, but praying mantises famously do it and some spiders do it. But I wasn't aware that there were any mammals that did it until I read Hannah Osborne's piece in Live Science over the weekend about Australian broad-footed pouch mice that literally die of horniness. At least the boys do.
There are 15 different species of antechinus, and I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that, native to Australia, which has all the freakiest animals. And the breeding seasons of all 15 species of this mouse have two things in common, this marsupial mouse. The breeding season lasts three weeks and the males don't survive it.
When breeding season rolls around, the bodies of the male broad-footed mice are flooded with testosterone and cortisone, the horniness hormone and the panic hormone. They are young, dumb, and full of cum and nervous racks, apparently. The males run around mating with as many females as they can for three weeks without sleep, and then... They drop dead from organ failure brought on by the stress.
Apparently, testosterone prevents their bodies from processing the cortisone that's stressing them the fuck out. And then the females of the species, now full of cum themselves, eat the bodies of the dead males. Every once in a while, one of the males manages to survive his one and only breeding season, but he is infertile now because his balls weren't just drained...
during breeding season mating season they were disintegrated by stress hormones when i read about an animal like this some crazy mating strategy some animal with a absolutely bat sex life i always wonder how far back you gotta go before you find the common ancestor we share with them
And then I think, hey, that common ancestor thing might come as a comfort to someone out there with a vor fetish or a cannibalism kink. There could be buried somewhere in your DNA a gene for that, a marsupial gene for that. You too could be born this way. Two other quick news items I wanted to cover today. Florida banned sex ed.
CBS News reports Florida school districts are rolling back comprehensive approaches to sex education in favor of abstinence-only focused lessons under pressure from state officials who have labeled instruction on contraception, anatomy, and consent as inappropriate for students.
So they're no longer going to cover in Florida in sex ed sexual activity, human development, consent, pleasure, or sexual abuse. Banning sex ed is one of the planks in Project 2025's platform. That is also Donald Trump's platform, which in addition to wanting to ban sex ed, calls for banning porn, throwing adult content creators into prison, making contraception and abortion both illegal.
We know what banning contraception and abortion looks like because Romania's communist dictator, Ceausescu, did that in Romania in the 1970s and the 1980s, and it was a disaster. Infanticide, abandoned infants, packed orphanages where kids were neglected and abused, sometimes to death. But abstinence-only education, sex ed classes that don't cover contraception or consent or pleasure.
We did that here in the 1990s and 2000s. We spent billions of dollars doing that. We know what it looks like. More sexually transmitted infections, more teen pregnancies, and more, a lot more, anal. They ever open a museum of unintended consequences or an unintended consequences hall of fame? The way social conservatives popularized butt stuff 20 years ago deserves its own wing.
You see, kids in the 90s and 2000s were told that sex was vaginal intercourse and that they shouldn't have sex, which was dirty and disgusting. They shouldn't have sex with... anybody before marriage because that dirty and disgusting thing should be saved for someone that you loved. And of course, sex was vaginal intercourse.
And so kids, deploying kid logic as kids often do, kids started doing anal instead because anal wasn't vaginal. And if it wasn't vaginal, it wasn't sex. And so they were abstaining. They were good. So long as they stuck to anal. This is really bad news for young people in Florida. But it's good news for me, I guess.
Since Florida, and if Trump wins, the whole country, if Project 2025 is put into effect, is going to ensure a constant supply of poorly sex-educated young people who are going to need someone to tell them that, yeah, anal is sex and that sex should be pleasurable for all involved and that consent is important.
or where they can order contraception on the black market after 2028, or whenever the Comstock Act is put back into force. Google it. Google the Comstock Act. Putting that back into force? Also a goal of the people behind Project 2025, including... Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.
And finally, speaking of sexually active teenagers and anal, looks like Nick and Charlie are finally, finally going to consummate their relationship in season three of Heartstopper. Heartstopper, of course, is the Netflix hit series about two boys in love based on the graphic novel by Alice Oseman, who was never a teenage boy in love.
We are three seasons in and these two teenage boys, one gay, one bi, They haven't fucked yet. Proof, if we needed it, that the book the show is based on wasn't written by someone who was ever a teenage boy or a gay boy and may not know a gay boy and couldn't be bothered to Google gay boy before sitting down to write a book about one. Well, I think Heartstopper is great.
Really, really, I do, I do. Gay kids need their schmaltzy teen romances too. And I really don't want to piss off the show's fans and stans who can be really aggressive. But I got to say, for my perch here, in my professional opinion, sexual compatibility is important. One of the things we talk about a lot on the show. It's a good idea to establish it early. And three seasons in...
That's not early enough, in my opinion. And I feel like I have a right to that opinion and to share that opinion because I was a gay teenager once. And as a gay adult, I give sex advice for a living, which means I spend a lot of time helping couples who failed to establish sexual compatibility early. Not easy to do. And it's not always possible.
So look, it is wonderful that Charlie and Nick are in love and I'm glad they're finally gonna do it. And I'm sure the sex is gonna be magical and everything is gonna work out beautifully because they're fictional characters created by someone who was assigned female at birth and identifies now as asexual and aromantic.
But if Charlie and Nick actually existed, if they were real boys and they had waited three seasons to have sex for the first time, Well, at this point, their balls probably would have disintegrated from the stress hormones.
But if they existed and waited all that time and their balls didn't disintegrate and they didn't die, the first time they had sex, they would probably find out they were both bottoms or both tops or one is into bondage and the other can't tie knots or one is into diapers and the other just can't. All I'm saying is I want everybody to enjoy Charlie and Nick's idealized romance.
And I want everybody to enjoy, I want all the ladies out there to enjoy their first time having sex. But in your own romantic lives, don't wait three seasons to establish sexual compatibility. Oh, and on a serious note, my heart goes out to everyone affected by Hurricane Helene, especially people in North Carolina and Tennessee, which appear to be the hardest hit states.
I made a donation to the Hurricane Relief Fund at GoFundMe and to MANA Food Bank, a local group in Asheville, North Carolina. Links for both are on the show page.
All right, coming up on today's show on the micro free-for-all Savage Lovecast, tons of your cues, lots of my A's, and joining me for the Magnum Savage Lovecast that you can subscribe to right now at savage.love, comedian Caleb Herron joins me to talk comedy, growing up gay in Missouri, and what young gay boys like Charlie and Nick are calling their assholes these days.
All that coming up on today's show. Now, let's get to that first call.
Hi, Dan. I am a mom who lives in the Midwest, and I have an elementary-aged child who, for the past three to four years, has expressed themselves to be non-cis-het. Recently, they came out as non-binary and have said that their pronouns are they-them and I am obviously respecting that and that's all fine.
And every time they express themselves to be non-cis head conforming to me, I always reassure them that they are very loved and accepted. So my question is beyond that, making sure they know that they are loved and accepted for themselves, what can I do to support them? What would have been something you would have wanted your parents to do when you were younger?
What are some things that other people in the LGBTQIA community that listen to your podcast would What would they have wanted their parents or their caregivers to have done when they were young and still figuring out who and what they were?
Telling your kid that you love them and you support them for themselves, for whoever they are, and you always will love and support them, whoever they are, is enough. Beyond that... It's not even extra credit beyond that. You really don't need to do more than that right now. I remember when I was a gay teenager in Chicago, I went to a gay teen support group for five minutes.
It had a kind of predatory vibe. I didn't go back. But I met a few gay teens that I hung out with, and a few of them had parents that they were out to, which was a miracle at that time, decades ago. And there was, you know, one or two whose parents were really aggressively invested in their kids gayness, but also in their identity as parents who were loving and supporting their gay kid.
And it felt a little leg humpy to be around them. And then there were the parents who weren't being tolerant, who weren't resigned to their kid being gay, but they were fine with it and chill about it and had said, I love you. I accept you. They welcomed, you know, boyfriends and other gay teenagers into their houses, but they were just really matter of fact about love support.
Now go clean your room, love support. You got to do your homework, love support. No, you can't be out till three o'clock in the morning, sneaking into gay bars. They still parented their kids and they, Those parents who loved support and then dropped it and parented, they were better. They were better. We felt better around them. We felt more comfortable with them.
than we did with the parents who were always searching for ways to telegraph to their kids who were gay, that they were fine with it. Fine with it. Love it. Great. Wanted to go like to the gay bars with their kids, help their kids get fake IDs, not just come to the pride parade in March, but like make their kids gayness all about them. And that's what I think you shouldn't do right now.
I don't think you should make your kids non-binary-ness all about you. It's about them. And if your kid sees you get super invested in their being non CIS hat, well, you know, there's a lot of kids.
You say your kid's really young in elementary school, a lot of kids out there who, and I might get into over saying this, but I'm just going to say it retreat into to buy themselves a little bit more time with, so they're not feeling pressured to date or,
do anything sexual they're not yet ready for may retreat into identifying as asexual or somewhere on the asexuality spectrum or retreat into identifying as non-binary to avoid the pressure to be masculine if they're assigned male at birth or adhere to feminine behaviors or
matters of dress or style if they were assigned female at birth and just want to declare themselves Switzerland right now, while all of their peers are kind of leaning really heavily into masculinity or femininity or heterosexuality or sexuality. And so if your kid is doing that, you don't want your kid to hesitate in two or three or four more years to walk it back.
Because mom and dad now are so invested in being the parents of a queer kid or a non-binary kid or an asexual kid or a gay kid or a bi kid or a whatever kid that now that they know themselves a little better, they're worried about going to mom and dad and saying, you know, this thing that you've made the center of your identity and what our family is all about.
Yeah, I'm not really that thing anymore, which is why I think you need to be chill and matter of fact about it. You can be anybody you want to be. You can be non-binary. You can be gay. You can be straight, bi, trans, allosexual, asexual, whatever. We will love and support you. And now you know this about them. This is how they identify right now. Accept it.
You don't have to paint your house with rainbow colors. You don't have to make it about you. Just keep listening to and, as they say, holding space for them. and be chill. Be that parent that when we were gay and young and needed places to hide, be that parent who was just chill and matter of fact and still the parent. Don't be that parent who wanted to tag along with us to the bars.
And thank you for being that parent. Thank you. I don't want to make you feel bad for having asked this question. This is, I think, the right question for a parent in your position to ask themselves. But you already landed on the answer. What can I do? You're doing it. Expressing your love for your kid, expressing your support for your kid. Beyond that, nothing is required of you right now.
Hi, Dan. I'm a 36-year-old divorcee. My husband and I have 10 years divorce because we just wanted different things. And I don't think he felt supported by me very much. We were poly more because I wanted him than he so. And also I'm involved in a family business. I hold public office. I volunteer a lot in my community and I'm involved in a lot of creative projects.
So I don't have a lot of time for relationships. After we divorced, I started dating around. And to various degrees of success, I consider going mono with other relationships that I already had going. I also met new people. And one of them has become particularly taxing. And I know that I should leave. And it's been a nightmare trying to cut loose.
I quickly realized that we weren't right for each other. He comes from an incredibly traumatic past. But at the same time, he has a lot of emotional needs that I just can't meet. I've seen people behind his back. Things got a lot more serious than I anticipated right away. And every time that I tell him that I can't give him everything that he needs, it's not in my nature to be monogamous.
The breakups are really intense on traumatic levels. It ends up in screening matches where things are being thrown about. He threatens to do stuff that could put him in harm's way. And he also has made public posts defaming me, disclosing that I cheated and that I lied and everything. That I'm ungrateful and that I sleep around. And my parents have seen that.
And he threatens to go to my parents again and tell them that, you know, I'm a horrible person. And he's not a liar if I leave him. I don't know what to do on the outside. I seem like a strong woman that manages a business of several employees and holds public office and does all of these things in her community. But right now I feel like I'm alone.
I'm terrified of leaving this person because they might wreak havoc into my life. And I somewhat feel responsible because, yes, I did cheat. I wasn't honest a lot of the time. I don't know what to do. This is alienating other people that are closing my life and I need help.
you need to make an exit plan here. You need to prioritize your own safety. You need to pull in the friends and family that you trust, that you can talk to, that you can be honest with about what's been going on in this relationship and ask for their help and ask them to run interference as you do the hard thing and end this relationship, the hard and dangerous thing.
that is going to be ending this relationship. Sort of person who threatens to harm themselves, who takes themselves hostage when you try to leave them to control you is the sort of person who might harm you when they realize threatening to harm themselves didn't prevent you from doing what you needed to do and fucking leaving them. So,
You may need a place to stay where he doesn't know where the fuck you are for a while. You may need to get a restraining order against this person. And what's more important to you right now at this point in your life, in this mess, preserving your public face, saving your public office, We're getting the fuck away from this guy.
Are you willing to save face and protect your job and your role in the community? Are you willing to stay with this guy for the next 40 years? No, no. He's got to go at some point and he's not going to go peacefully. It is. He has told you it is going to be a shit show. So the sooner the shit show starts, the sooner the shit shows over.
The more steps you take to protect yourself because you get to decide when the shit show starts, the more steps you take to protect yourself when you know the shit show is gonna go down, which can include getting out of town, having a place to stay, having other people around you who are willing to come stay, whatever you need to do to protect yourself, the likely you are to get through this.
in one piece, even if it costs you something, even if it sullies your public image and your reputation. You say he's already gotten onto social media and accused you of cheating on him. And yeah, maybe you technically did, but you wanted to end this relationship and he refused to allow you to end this relationship and you
Like a lot of people got into your head that you're not allowed to end a relationship unless the other person agrees to ending the relationship, which is not true. But of course he was playing the threat card and the trauma card. Like I had a lot of trauma. Okay, great. You had a lot of trauma early in your life. I'm sad for you. I'm glad that you managed to climb out of that.
But your trauma, someone's trauma is not a trap that other people fall into and then can never escape from because you have trauma. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You say that he made a life for himself, got away from all that, but he's still carrying it with him and weaponizing it. Not in the thrall of the trauma anymore. He is using it as a stick to beat you with and control you with.
That's how you should see it right now. Yeah. And you got to get the fuck away from this guy and it might cost you. It's going to be grief. It's going to be ugly. The control you have right now again is when the shit show starts. So what do you need to do to feel safe to get through this?
Do those things, enlist the people in your life who love you, who will support you, that you can tell everything about what's been going on here. People have your back and then tell this guy, not only is it over, but you don't want him in your life anymore and you can't talk to him anymore and you're blocking his number.
and you don't want to see him put it in writing so that if he comes to you, shows up at your workplace, shows up at your house or your apartment or public appearances or events or whatever, that then you can instantly go to a judge and get a fucking restraining order. Not that restraining orders make people bulletproof. Sadly, you're still in danger even if you have that piece of paper.
But sometimes Knowing that there's a restraining order and potential legal consequences can sober a person who still can act in their own self-interest the fuck up about what it is that they're doing and risking if they don't knock it the fuck off and go the fuck away, which is what you need and want him to do. Better sleep, clearer communication, reduced stress.
These are all benefits you can get from good quality therapy. But it can be challenging to find the right therapist and then find the time to meet with that therapist. Talkspace, the leading virtual therapy provider, makes getting the help you need easy, accessible, and affordable. Talkspace Therapy and Psychiatry are covered by many insurance plans and employers.
Most insured members have a zero, that's zero, copay. You can easily sign up online and get paired with the licensed provider that's the right fit for your needs, typically within 48 hours. You can also switch providers at no extra cost. Talkspace provides personalized treatments for individuals, couples, and the LGBTQIA plus community. veterans, and teens.
And Talkspace makes getting help convenient because you take your appointments from the comfort and privacy of your own home, which makes finding the time easy. As a listener of this podcast, you'll get $80 off your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com slash Savage and enter promo code Space80.
To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com slash Savage and enter promo code Space80 today. to get $80 off your first month and show your support to the Lovecast. That's Talkspace.com slash Savage promo code Space80.
Dan, I have a real mess for you. I was flirting online with other women when my partner found out. This was definitely in violation of our agreement, and she threw me out. Before she did that, she went nuclear and messaged all of my friends and all of our children saying, And her own children, particularly her youngest daughter, who's 14, saw her crying and hysterical.
Now, she would like to get back together. And this daughter is saying, if you get back together with him, I will live only with my father. So she is standing in the way of us getting back together, if we even should. Also, police were involved in the division of our belongings, and I'm still considering getting back together with her.
Please give us advice about how to work around her kid so she's still seized for half the time, and if we should get back together at all.
I have two quick follow-up questions. The police were involved when you retrieved your things? Yes.
The police were involved. I asked for an escort. I was going to the house when she was not there. There was no gunplay. I probably could have done it without them. But to be on the safe side and not be accused of a crime later, I did ask for a police escort, which turned out to be surprisingly easy.
And define flirting with other women.
So I would message other women. I got in some bad habits when I was single and do this dozens or hundreds of times a night when I was single and lonely. And I did not break the habit when I ended up coupled. And I would send a quick note saying, well, aren't you lovely on Facebook or something like that in several Facebook groups I was in. And in one case, I did have cyber sex with an ex.
So that was more than flirting, and that was out of bounds. And I certainly knew I was breaking an agreement when I did it.
And she stumbled over evidence of all of this, including the cyber sex? Correct. And by stumbled over, went snooping? Correct. All right. Seems to me the problem here isn't the 14-year-old. The problem is the emotional dysregulation of the adults in this 14-year-old's life and poor impulse control. I'm in an open relationship.
My husband and I sit side by side flirting with people online all the time and sending harmless messages. notes and showing them to each other. So this for me would be like not something I would police. But if your agreement with your girlfriend was you don't flirt with other women and you violated that agreement, okay, well there's poor impulse control on your part, but
I lay the majority of the blame on your ex-girlfriend's part here. She involved her child, and now her child feels like she gets to involve herself.
Well, I do not feel like I have the position to agree with you, Dan, but I agree with you. Also, I've never gotten one of those notes, so please send one.
I will get right on that. I have your email. When we were setting this up, I will send you a note. I will flirt with you. I think the place to start here is an apology – to everyone, not just this 14-year-old, but all the other kids, all the other friends, all the other family, that she dragged into this conflict with you.
I think people have a right to confide in friends, to ask for advice, to share what they're going through with trusted intimates. I don't think it's fair when people say, you can't talk about our business with anybody else when we're in conflict. But this kind of nuking for online flirting and for, you know, they talk about micro infidelities.
I guess this is kind of approaching macro infidelity, but you know, you didn't put her at risk physically. You didn't put your dick in somebody else and then have unprotected sex with her. You fucked around on the internet a little bit. There was an emotional violation in this connection with your ex, but it should have been something that you two could have handled privately.
And she could have talked to an adult or two in her life about what to do. But she didn't. She went nuclear and involved all these other people and tried to destroy your relationships with all these other people to punish you. And now you're thinking about getting back together with her.
And it seems to me the bigger problem than how this teenager feels is the risk you take of getting back into this relationship. And what happens... Is she going to snoop on you for the rest of your life? Are you going to live in a police state? Are you allowed to have any privacy? Are you entitled to a zone of erotic autonomy in this relationship or not?
I think those are important things to hammer out with an adult when you're in an adult relationship, but I don't get the impression based on your ex-girlfriend's behavior or your summary of her behavior that you're in a relationship with an adult in good working order capable of emotional self-regulation.
Well, she has trauma and she was triggered. And I think she reverts to the age of the trauma.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I have trauma. I'm triggered. Blah, blah, blah. I'm triggered. No one can say boo to me that I stabbed you in the neck because I have trauma. No. One of the things you have to do as an adult to prove you're in good enough working order to be in a relationship is handle your shit, including past trauma.
And past trauma is not an excuse to inflict current trauma or future trauma on your kids. To say nothing of your partner. It's not a get out of emotional self-regulation free card.
I understand. I had the feeling I was dealing with two 14-year-olds for part of that time.
Okay, so it seems to me the solution here is if you want to get back together with her, and if I were you, I wouldn't get back together with somebody where I had to get the police involved to feel like I could safely retrieve my things without the threat of gunplay.
But there's a middle ground between getting back together and moving back in together, which is getting back together but having separate households. I assume you live somewhere now. You're not on the street.
I have not signed a lease on a new apartment, but I have somewhere to stay. Stay there.
Okay. Stay there.
Or get a new lease.
If you want to reconnect with her on the condition that she get help with her trauma and that she doesn't pay that trauma forward or inflict trauma on her teenage child and others every time she's triggered, great. Get back together with her.
But I think the way you and she both demonstrate to this kid that her feeling of safety is important to you is by literally saying to this kid, we're going to get back together. But you know what? I'm not going to move back in. for at least a year. And you know, well, how you feel at 14 can be very different than how you feel at 16 or 15 and a half or whatever a year from now is for this kid.
And maybe that signal to this kid that you both recognize that what you did and then what her mom put her through was unpleasant and upsetting. And so you're going to slow your roll back into this relationship in deference to her feelings. That seems to me like the adult thing to do on both your parts, you and your girlfriend, your ex-girlfriend.
And I think she should, like, I'm advocating for Romaine's ex-girlfriend. Like, any time I had a breakup where I had to call the cops, that was not somebody I circled back to and thought, oh, maybe. Okay.
I might have gotten away without calling the police, but the police were definitely a red flag.
Yeah, but were the police your kind of retaliatory escalator? Oh, look, you sent all this information to all of our friends and family. I'm going to call the cops in.
It was more for being safe going to the apartment without her there, not being accused of stealing something later, having witnesses and having legal sanction. But there were threats that I did lodge with the court just in case. Threats you lodged with the court? She did tell me not to come to the house on a certain day because a friend would be there and that friend would have a gun.
Now she says, yeah, I know. I agree with you.
Is the pussy amazing? Like, what is it? What is it? Why are you going back?
I, I, well, I'm going to say I'd like to repair this and repair my end of it and then see if indeed as she's claiming, it's all my fault. I caused it. Every, every retaliation she made is because of what I did. So let's take away what I did. Let's repair that. And let's see if, if she and I can have smooth sailing as we have in the past.
Okay, she had a right to be upset. I agree. What she did with the upset was not okay. And there are consequences now for the both of you, but really for this kid, right?
Well, that's what I feel worst about. And to win her back and try to win the kid back seems a Herculean task.
Slow your roll. That's how you win this kid back. My stepmother eventually won me over by giving me space and time, which I needed. My dad left my mom for my stepmom. I was ice fucking cold and she did not come at me. She let me be ice fucking cold. It was painful for her. I was a teenager. I was 15. She gave us space. She gave us time.
And one of the reasons we came around on her was that she wasn't forcing herself on us. And she wasn't making demands that we didn't feel she was entitled to make that would have put us into conflict with our mom at that time. Like we were showing allegiance to our mom, even like this kid is thinking she's showing allegiance to our mom. And we just needed time and space.
And if you move back in, that's not giving this kid time or space. Right. And then you need to game out like what you know of yourself is like you like to dink around a little bit on the internet and send flirty messages to hot women. Who doesn't? Is there space for that in your relationship? Or is that something you're going to have to...
Or can you go cold turkey on never, ever do ever, ever, ever again? And will she take your word for that? Or is she going to be going through your phone and you're going to be dating the East German secret police and not an adult who can allow you some zone of erotic autonomy? Like I think all adults kind of need that zone of erotic autonomy.
And I think it's good that sometimes we flirt with other people and we get that affirmation of our desirability. And then if we're plowing that sexual energy and erotic energy into our relationship, our partner benefits from that. Even if they don't want to hear about it, don't want to know about it, or wouldn't approve of it.
We used to get that like at work, like we'd flirt with a coworker we thought was hot or we'd go out for drinks after work and maybe we'd have a conversation with a stranger that wouldn't go anywhere. But like if our partner saw us flirting, it would be a problem. And the internet, the phone, that's the problem. Like your partner has access. They can see where people flirt now, which is online.
And so are you allowed that or not? Are you not? And if you're not allowed that, can you give it up forever? And if you can't, you're just like lighting a fuse that runs to a bomb that's going to explode two years from now or six months from now.
Well, forever is a long time, but I have given it up for years at a time in the past. But I understand your question.
Okay, well then, I wouldn't get back together with this person, but I would support your choice.
Well, maybe the East German police is single again.
And again, I'm going to assume the pussy is amazing. Can confirm. All right, so yeah, I guess if the dick was truly amazing, I might make allowances I wouldn't otherwise for average.
So I will endorse this with some hesitation on the condition that for at least the next year, you maintain separate households and give this 14-year-old some space and time to recover from the trauma her mother needlessly inflicted on her because she was having a fight with her boyfriend about things adults in relationships have conflict about all the time and do not...
blow up, involve kids, involve other relatives, have to call the police and threaten someone with gun violence. Like people process this exact conflict all the time without this kind of drama. And that's what's got to happen. If you're going to get together, it's like figure out how to defuse this conflict without this kind of drama, or it's just the Yeah. I'm running my mouth now.
Don't move in together for a year. Enjoy the amazing pussy. If you guys are good in a year, maybe you can move in together and her daughter will feel better about it.
I don't think there's going to be pussy in that year, Dan, but thank you. That will be plan A and plan B will be the first thing you said. Great. Good luck. Thank you. Thanks, Dan.
hey folks if you're a savage love cast listener we know you like true stories and we think you'll love the radically honest true stories on the podcast risk risk is where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share like the one about the guy who cooked and served his own leg to his friends as tacos or the one about the woman who found out the person she was anonymously sharing her kinky fantasies with online was her dad
Risk is one of the first podcasts I ever followed, and it's still one of my favorite weekly listens. Host and creator Kevin Allison created an amazing show and community really at Risk. If you've never heard it and you're looking for something bingeable for a trip or a long flight, download Risk now and you will be instantly hooked. If you think you've heard it all, just wait till you hear Risk.
Listen and follow Risk on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey Dan, I have a threesome condom etiquette question for you. I'm a cis woman. My boyfriend's a cis guy. We're both somewhere around heteroflexible. We've had foursomes with other couples before, but we've only ever soft swapped. And so condom wearing hasn't been something that we've negotiated before in group play, but we're really interested in having our first threesome with another guy.
And we're hoping to make that happen. And we're just wondering if there is any general etiquette around condom wearing. So my boyfriend doesn't wear a condom when it's just the two of us, but we'd certainly be needing the other guy to wear a condom for any penetration and it would just be of me. There wouldn't be any penetration between the two guys.
And we're just wondering, is there just a general rule that if one guy needs to wear a condom, the other guy should too? I mean, of course, this is something that we can talk about with the guy, but we just didn't even want to bring it up if it showed poor manners, poor form, bad etiquette. If you could let us know, that would be great.
I love how you say condom. It's so much more refined and glamorous than how we say it. Condom. That's how we say it in Chicago. Condom sounds like something I want to put on my dick. Look, your boyfriend, the two of you are fluid bonded. Anybody that you might want to have a three-way with, anybody who is safe, responsible, intuitive,
has a high emotional IQ, the kind of person who makes a good three-way partner is going to understand that of course your boyfriend doesn't have to wear a condom, but he does, or condom, but he does because you two aren't fluid bonded. I've had three ways. I've never had a guy object to him having to wear a condom.
fucking my husband when I didn't have to wear a condom fucking my husband because my husband and I didn't use condoms only with each other, but we did with other guys back in the pre-prep days.
Never had a guy be like, hey, this violates Emily Post's rules of etiquette concerning threesomes, where if one person has to wear a condom for perfectly legitimate reasons, everybody else has to wear a condom, whether it makes sense for that person to wear a condom or not, whether that person wears a condom at any other time or not.
If you feel like you might be tense about it or concerned, you should say to them in advance, we don't use condoms, but you'll have to use a condom. We're fluid bonded. We're a couple. We don't use condoms, but of course you are very special guest star to protect me and my boyfriend, but also to protect you. You'll be wearing a condom and no guy.
who's excited about having an MMF three-way is going to, well, no guy you would want to have that three-way with is going to object and is going to insist because your boyfriend doesn't have to wear a condom. He shouldn't have to wear a condom. You wouldn't want to fuck that guy in a hundred million years.
And no guy is going to say, no guy you want to fuck is going to say, well, because I have to wear a condom, well, then everybody has to wear a condom. Unless he's a condom, condom fetishist and you want to indulge him in his condom fetishism. It's a different thing, different matter entirely. Yeah, this isn't going to be a problem. Be direct about it.
If it makes you feel better to toss it out there on the table. And it's a good sorting hat. Anybody who has a problem with it, nobody you want to fuck. Time for listener feedback. First up, I'm going to read some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love. From Incontempo, a very thought-provoking discussion, Dan, with Esther Perel.
As I enter the seventh year of my relationship, I'm starting to think about these things more. How to keep that flame alive. I do think it's good to keep in mind your partner could choose, not necessarily someone else, but choose not to be with you. Every day, in essence, is a renewal of a contract we made voluntarily. One day you could choose differently or they could choose differently.
Give reasons beyond routine to make that choice to stay. Says Compass, we first read Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity in early 2008. What she had to share was a huge influence on our thinking as a married couple. There was no seven-year itch for me, but I did need to get a handle on my autonomy. My husband blossomed as he was not afraid of the things I was examining.
And two years later, it would lead him to introducing me to a friend and thus our first monogamish MFM experience. No need to cheat apart. A fantasy we both had. Now we could cheat together. As I once said to Stephen Colbert, is it cheating if I'm cheating at one end of a guy and my husband is cheating at the other end of that same guy at the same time? Scholars are still working on that one.
And finally, we're going to read an email instead of a comment, an email from M. But I am a woman who has been sexually assaulted and manipulated far too many times to be anyone's sub. I know it's a cute play on words, Dan, but words have power and there may be others out there who have unwillingly been someone's sub who feel as I do.
Sorry that you have been a victim of sexual assault and abuse and manipulation. M, of course, sub is short for subscriber, but yeah, it's a play on words. I am consciously invoking the way sub is frequently used here on the Lovecast in reference to the submissive partner in a consensual dom-sub relationship. But when I use sub, the emphasis is on consensual.
I'm not invoking situations where one person was abused or manipulated or assaulted, but where one person chose to take on the submissive role as a form of play because it was what they wanted, not because it was something someone else wanted to force on them. An assault victim is a victim, not a sub. A sexual predator is a criminal, not a dom.
That said, Em, I am sorry that the word is a stumbling block for you. I'm happy to send you a gift subscription, not to make you my subscriber against your will, but to allow you to listen to the Magnum Lovecast and enjoy the extended Savage Love column without technically ever having become a subscriber of mine.
All right, for more listener feedback and to try your hand at giving some sex advice yourself, check out Struggle Session every Thursday where I respond to listener and readers' written comments. And I post a letter that was sent to me at Savage Love but isn't going to make it into the column and let you guys give the advice. Goes up every Thursday at Savage.Love.
And now, everyone's favorite part of the show, the part of the show where I shut my big gay mouth and let my listeners have the last word.
Hey, Dan, I'm calling about the episode with a guy who thinks he's not really bi or queer just because he's not out there fucking guys all the time and has predominantly been with women. As a bi queer woman here who's predominantly been with men and actually finds it hard to find single gay women these days, it's okay. You get to call yourself whatever you want and no one's going to guilt you.
Except maybe other queer people, which has been my experience. Biphobia is real. But don't let that deter you. You get to decide if you're attracted to how many genders you want. Trans people, queer people, straight people. And don't let anybody tell you differently. Who you are is great. And you should stick with it.
This is a response for the caller who asked if it was okay to have sex with a guy who didn't get consent before doing all those assholery things she described during sex and showed no remorse until of course he realized he might not get to have sex with her again. Sure, I agree with all the things Dan said, but please just remember that it's all if you think you can contain his assholery.
Go for the amazing sex if you're comfortable despite him showing you exactly what kind of person he
pants off again who in the middle of having this amazing sex might remember that he doesn't care enough about you as a person to keep his word and keep his condom on someone who might take the condom off without your consent and might decide that to him amazing sex is when he ignores what he promised you and decides to come inside you again just make sure that the sex is so amazing that it's all worth it even if all that happens
This is a response to the Bye Curious caller in episode 934. I was in a really similar situation this summer. I'm a bit older than you, but, you know, I'd been thinking about being with a guy for a long time.
Finally tried it out and finally, like, you know, I'd been going on Grindr for a little while and looking up, you know, different guys and, you know, finally just said, okay, let's try it out and connected with a couple of different people and had some fun. I was super honest with people. I was like, hey, I'm open to this, not open to that just yet until we get to know each other. We had fun.
People were really great. There were definitely a couple of people who got super aggressive with me online, and I just cut that off. You know, just like, okay, I don't think this one's for me. Have a nice day. But I think there's tons of men out there who will be very happy to have fun with you, and none of them are going to, like, you know.
I was with one of them twice, but, you know, that was the only recur. And I think they're just all happy to have fun and be with a bi-curious guy, an inexperienced guy, exactly as you said, Dan. So good luck, caller.
And we're going to leave it there. We've got three ways for you to get us your questions and comments for future shows. You can record your question or your comment on our website at savage.love.com. Or you can make a voice memo and email us your question to q at savage.love. Or you can call our landline and leave us a message at 206-302-2064. Save the date.
Our next Savage Love Live for our Magnum subs is Thursday, October 17th, noon Pacific. Savage Love Live, of course, is a special Zoom hangout we do exclusively for our Magnum subscribers. Not one of my subscribers yet. Become one now at savage.love.com. This weekend, you can catch Hump Part 2 in theaters as Hump was meant to be seen in San Francisco, Seattle, Eugene, and Burlington, Vermont.
Can't make it to a theater for a screening? Invite some friends over for a Hump viewing party and stream it at home and have a Hump party. Tickets to screenings and streaming passes can be purchased at humpfilmfest.com. And while you're on the website, find out how you can get your film into Hump by clicking Submit a Film. Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage.
Follow me at Blue Sky at Dan Savage. Follow Caleb Heron on Instagram and threads at Caleb Says Things. His podcast, So True, is available on all podcasting platforms. And if you are in New York, Caleb will be performing at the Bell House this Thursday in Brooklyn, October 3rd at 7 p.m. The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and the tech savvy at Risk Youth and Nancy.
We will all be back at you next week with our installment of the Savage Lovecast. Condom.