A gay man was dating a closeted cop for 4 years. Then he found out that the cop WASN'T closeted, and WASN'T single (he has a live-in boyfriend,) but IS a big fat liar. Now the caller wants closure. A straight man just got dumped by his girlfriend after 1 1/2 years. His crime? He followed some thirst trap accounts on Instagram. She felt "betrayed and repulsed." Now sad and bewildered, he'll get a rousing pep talk from Dan Savage. On the Magnum, a poly woman has been told by her girlfriend that she isn't allowed to kiss her children for fear of giving them herpes. Dan brings on STI expert Dr Ina Park to dish out some herpes facts and to try to lower the fear level. They also talk about the success of the HPV vaccine and what it might mean to have someone who is hostile to vaccines in charge of Health & Human Services. Ok folks. Put your neologism thinking caps on. We need a new term to replace "Eskimo brothers." So what's it gonna be? [email protected] 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. They make it easy to build a website or blog. Give it a whirl at Squarespace.com/Savage and if you want to buy it, use the code Savage for a 10% off your first purchase. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Right now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders + 2 FREE Dream Pillows! Go to HelixSleep.com/Savage. With Helix, better sleep starts now. This episode is brought to you by Feeld, a dating app where the open-minded can meet the like-minded. Download Feeld on the App Store or Google Play. Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist, podcaster, author, and creator of the It Gets Better Project. From polyamory, to BDSM, gay rights to sexual health and with a dose of progressive politics, Dan Savage has been cultural force for sex positivity since the 1800s.
You're listening to the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage's sex and relationship show for grown-ups. If you're under 18, get out of here, young'un.
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
So I watched the documentary everyone is talking about, not the one about the Menendez brothers or the one about the cold war, both on Netflix, both excellent, but the one about Lily Phillips, the only fans porn star who had sex with a hundred men in a single day. The short documentary about that day by British YouTuber, Josh Peters is straightforwardly titled. I slept with 100 men in one day.
It's also surprisingly thoughtful and engaging and, And as I watched, I kept thinking about Messalina. Messalina was the third wife of Claudius. Claudius was the fourth emperor of Rome after Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula. And Messalina, according to the sources, was a huge slut. And why shouldn't she be? Claudius was almost 50 when she was forced to marry him, and she was only 18.
She deserved better dick. And the men of ancient Rome were notoriously slutty themselves. But ancient Rome was a brutally patriarchal society where adultery, when committed by women, was a crime punishable by death. And when adultery was committed by men, it was a Tuesday afternoon at the brothel. Full disclosure, my Roman Empire is the Roman Empire.
Anyway, Messalina, according to the sources, which are famously unreliable where the lives of the women of Rome's imperial family are concerned. I mean, they can't all have been murderous sluts or slutty murderesses. What are the odds? But according to the sources, Messalina challenged Rome's most famous prostitute, Cilia, to a fuck-off, a contest. Who could fuck more men in a single night?
The teenage emperors of Rome were the most famous whore in the world at the time. Famous fleeting. I had to look up her name. Anyway, Messalina won this contest by fucking 25 men in a single night. A number so shocking that her husband had her executed. Ironically, it was Claudius's next wife, his fourth and his last, Julia Agrippina, that assassinated him.
Which just goes to show, sometimes the cheating slut you know is the zebra bat. Anyway, I watched the documentary about Lily Phillips that everyone is talking about and thought about how a shocking number in ancient Rome, 25 men in a single night, wouldn't rate a YouTube viral video documentary today.
Immediately after the stunt, which is how Lily, who describes herself as a slut, describes this day, a fan-servicing stunt in which she literally serviced her fans, only men who subscribed to her only fans were eligible to... line up and have five minutes each with her. After it was over, Phillips broke down on camera and cried.
It's kind of like being a in a sense of, like, it's just a different... feeling. I don't know how to explain it.
Like... It's not like just having sex with someone.
Yeah, yeah. Just one in, one out. Like, it feels... intense.
like more intense than you thought it might.
Phillips has to leave the room. Everyone is focusing on and talking about this moment and what it means. And if I'm going to be honest, this moment threw me back into a moment from my own life, which only involved two other guys, not 100 men waiting in a line. It was something I wanted to do, something like Lily that I wanted to experience for my own reasons.
But in the aftermath, I was a little overwhelmed. I teared up. I left the room. And no, you're not getting any of the hoary details out of me. But just because I teared up and had to leave the room for a minute to compose myself doesn't mean I regretted it or that I haven't done it again.
That something you chose to do, something you wanted to do, stirred up big feelings, doesn't mean you shouldn't have done that thing or you shouldn't have been allowed to do that thing or that it should be a crime for you to do that thing. which is the argument some are making.
Some are pointing to this documentary as proof that porn should be illegal, mostly people who were making that argument before they watched this documentary. Interestingly, the two most open-minded people that Peter spoke to making this film, the least judgmental, are two little old ladies outside the lingerie store where Lily goes to buy something special to wear on the big day.
I'm filming a video with a girl who's going to be sleeping with 100 guys in one day and she is picking out her outfit for that day. Oh, how interesting.
Does she find them on the internet?
Yes. So you can apply if you're a subscriber of her OnlyFans. So up to 100 people and then the whole 100 of them get to have one at a time on the 19th of October in London.
Oh, and it's on television?
It's going to be on her OnlyFans.
Oh, I see. She's got to have an early night tonight.
Yes, she does. A lot of electrolytes, a lot of sustenance, a lot of fiber.
Okay, lovely.
Okay. Have a great night. Lovely to meet you. Bye-bye. Bye. She seemed kind of okay with that, which I wasn't expecting.
But an OnlyFans star, another OnlyFans star, a different OnlyFans star that Peter speaks to about Lily Phillips' plan, Alex, the Queen of Southampton, she, like a lot of people, expressed some concern from Phillips' mental health.
I think it's really sad. I just worry about her mental health. I'm hoping it's a hoax and it's not going to actually happen. I don't know. From what I've seen of her, I think she's like young and beautiful. I just, I don't think she has to sleep with a hundred guys in one day for attention. I don't know. It's like medically, is she going to be in a lot of pain?
Mentally, you're going to be known as the girl that sh** a hundred guys in one day. And I think that's really sad.
Still others are arguing that sex work is work like any other kind of work, labor like any other kind of labor. And lots of people do jobs they hate or jobs they have conflicted feelings about. And Lily Phillips isn't the first person who broke down after a hard day at work. Jesse Sage, a sex worker and writer, said this in an essay Sage wrote for Rolling Stone.
Sex workers often talk about the fact that one of the hardest things about the job is that we have to constantly perform happiness and fulfillment lest we be judged harshly for our choices. In my area of the industry, full-service in-person work, we only have two tropes, the down-and-out worker or the happy hooker.
Sex workers have no space to express ambivalence or complex feelings about their work. Sex work is work. I'm pro-sex work, pro-sex worker. But sex work isn't work like other forms of work. Whatever happens at the poultry plant, while arguably more dangerous, especially for the chickens, whatever happens there at the poultry plant is happening outside you, not inside you.
And no one has to pretend to love it. I'm still thinking about this, what this stunt—again, as Philip calls it, this stunt— What it means. We're all talking about what it says about Phillips or sex work or porn or OnlyFans or men. Not all men, but the men. The kind of men who lined up to have sex with Phillips.
Her supposed fans, which included men who came in Phillips' eyes again and again after she asked them not to. Men that Phillips excuses with a shrug. Her assumption is that it must have been an accident each and every time it happened. And that for me was... More heartbreaking, more worrisome about Phillips and her state of mind and our culture than seeing her choke up was.
Like the anti-porn people... had their priors confirmed by this documentary see porn is the problem i also had one of my priors one of my long-standing priors confirmed by this documentary which is you can have too much dick i have watched friends messy friends messalinas you could call them destroy themselves with sex for free
It's hard enough to know when enough is enough, when you're not getting rich off more and more. And I think that's the worry I have. That's my takeaway worry after watching this documentary. I hope Phillips wanted this. But I worry the incentive structure that the internet has created, culturally, fiscally, economically...
makes it harder and harder for us to know, just from watching, whether this is what someone like Phillips actually wants. I worry she may not even know that herself. All right, coming up on the Lovecast, tons of your Qs, lots of my As, and on the Magnum, STI expert Dr. Ina Park returns to have our regularly scheduled chat about herpes.
We also talk about HPV, brain worms, and the incoming secretary potentially of the Department of Health and Human Services. My conversation with Dr. Ina Park is on the Magnum version of the show that you can subscribe to at savage.love. But we got plenty of great stuff on the show this week for micro listeners.
Also, for Magnum subscribers, we have a new Sex and Politics coming out this Thursday with writer, columnist, and podcaster Phoebe Maltz-Bovee, who joins me for an extended conversation about the dilemma of female heterosexuality. And in other news, we have new merch in our merch shop at savage.love. All will be revealed. All will be discussed in detail on next week's show.
In the meantime, if you're the holiday gift giving sort, you can give the gift of a Magnum subscription for next year right now for half off until December 31st. Or you can give your loved one a Savage Lovecast t-shirt or a fuck first mug. It's all at savage.love slash shop. All right, let's get to that first call.
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Hi, Dan and everybody. I am a bisexual woman in my 50s in Colorado. I'm non-monogamous and I'm having a bit of a come spring and sowing my wild oats after 30 plus years of marriage. And it's been a lot of fun. I have a nesting partner and our house is somewhat remotely located, which can be a bit much for most casual connections.
And then besides that, as a woman, I'm not that excited to bring randos and near strangers to my house. right off the bat. So it seems like a hotel is the answer, but I don't want a drug motel and I want a place where I can get my brains fucked out with lots of hollering and no one calls the cops because they think I'm getting murdered. I'm pretty screamy.
So I've heard about dayuse.com, which is like regular hotels and you can rent them during the day or Reserve them during the day and not overnight. But even those are often more than $100, even just for the day. And besides that, there aren't very many in my area. So my question is, how do I find a cheap and safe hotel that isn't going to bust my budget?
I learned so much from my callers. I had never heard of dayuse.com. I just looked at it. It allows you to rent in the middle of the day for a few hours a hotel room. They used to call that hot sheet hotels or hot sheet motels, places you could rent for a few hours. hours.
And the understanding was you were meeting up in that hotel room in the middle of the day for a few hours or in that sleazy motel in the middle of the day for a few hours to cheat on your spouse. That's what hot sheet motels were all about, but you're not cheating. You just want to get fucked in the middle of the day, but you don't want to spend a hundred dollars.
Well, the guys you're fucking, the other people you're fucking, the women you're fucking are when you're not at home nesting with your nesting partner out in the boonies, do they have apartments? Do they have houses? Do they have places you could go? You could go there.
If you can't go there, if it has to be a hotel, like I'm looking at expensive hotels in New York City and they're only $109 for a few hours in the middle of the day. That seems like a reasonable expense if you go halfsies on it, 50-ish plus bucks a piece to get your brains fucked out in the middle of the day.
When I first started listening to your call, I thought the problem was going to be you're loud during sex and you want to holler and you don't want people calling the police. You don't want to disturb people in the hotel. And the answer to that is fuck first, check in, fuck, go to dinner.
Don't fuck at midnight and be super loud and disturb everybody else in the hotel who's trying to get some sleep. Fuck at seven o'clock in your hotel room when everybody else who's Staying at the hotel, is out doing whatever it is that they came to town to do.
And even if they're not, even if there's some people down the hall who are just chilling in their hotel room, at least you're not keeping them up.
they could complain that you're being loud, but you get to be as loud as the hell you want when you're making love and people fucking hotel rooms and everybody who's staying in a hotel knows that there's the risk if they're not getting fucked themselves and being the loud ones that they might overhear some people fucking across the hall or down the hall or next door.
It's rude, though, if you know yourself to be super loud, to do that fucking in your hotel room at 1 o'clock in the morning when other people are trying to get some sleep. So fuck at 7 o'clock. Or if your hotel has a 24-hour health club fitness room and it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you want to be loud and the fitness room is in the basement, go fuck in the fitness room.
Hashtag ask me how I know. Anyway, yeah. Fuck your other partners at their places or go have these on those hotel rooms. And thanks for the tip. Dayuse.com. I am going to bookmark that.
Hi, Dan. I am a 36-year-old queer femme type living in New York City. During the dark days of the pandemic in 2020, I met this cop on Grindr. From the beginning, he was very cagey with his information, didn't even tell me he was a cop. There was a lot of stuff that came to light, but he wasn't fully honest, which you don't need to be.
But then over time, our relationship developed into lovers, and I wouldn't say like soft boyfriends to the extent that maybe we're only seeing each other once or twice a month. But we're pretty much texting every day and checking in on each other. In the meantime, I'm staying single. And his story is that he lives way out in Suffolk. He comes to the city for work. And that he is closeted.
And he wants to come out someday, but not today. And me as a single person, I'm like, I don't care. Live your life. I'm still living mine. And we love each other, but... We're not committed in any way, shape or form. Okay. So then time passes.
It's now been four years that we've been like this, like a little bit on and off as we get to tips throughout the years, but like we're there for each other. And this is a very long-term relationship. Now, we got into a fight a couple weeks ago just before the election. As you might have guessed, a cop living in Suffolk County is... I don't think he calls himself Republican, but that's what he is.
And the moon was already tense. He didn't show up for me on a bunch of occasions in different ways, so... we kind of weren't talking and it kind of felt like, okay, maybe this is kind of the end for us. This isn't a good moment for us. And in that moment of radio silence, I went and did the tiniest bit of internet sleuthing and discovered that he's not closeted.
Actually, he lives with a live-in boyfriend or partner, another gay dude. And then after discovering that, it's like so much made sense and all these pieces fell into place. And I'm like, of course, it's been so obvious this whole time. So then I confronted him about it.
without revealing my full hand, trying to give him a lot of opportunities to kind of explain himself, and he denied, denied, denied. And now I keep pressing him, and he's just not giving me any info. So I feel a bunch of different ways, which is we were kind of reaching the end of the road anyway, but now I feel so unfulfilled and...
Like obviously really like tricked and shocked, but also like a little bit angry, a little bit sad. And not for nothing, but I kind of feel like he owes me an explanation. But I don't want to press him and have him go totally cold and not give me any information. And I also don't want to like show up in his doorstep and destroy his life.
And I feel like you're going to tell me just get over it and move on. And why did you let it go on for this long? But kind of here we are. And I don't think that this erases everything that's happened over the past four years. Definitely doesn't erase the feelings that we've had for each other. And I think that I'm owed an explanation. And I want to get it without blowing up a bomb in his life.
You say you want an explanation. You say you're owed an explanation. What more do you need to know? He was lying to you the entire time you were seeing each other. Lied to you about being closeted, lied to you about having a partner, kept you really at arm's length emotionally, but also sexually. You were...
used, manipulated, you were the piece on the side and you didn't get to agree to be the piece on the side, what more could he possibly tell you? What context could he put that in that would give you closure, that would make you feel any better about how this went down and how long it went on?
Maybe he could tell you that he, with his partner, they've been together a long time and breaking up isn't really possible emotionally and sexually. They're not connected anymore in the relationship. Like maybe there's something that is semi-exonerating but not fully exonerating. That's a charitable guess, right?
Or he could just be a lying piece of shit who wanted a piece of ass in the city in addition to the boyfriend at home in the suburbs. And you were that not very inquisitive piece of ass who didn't make a lot of demands. And so it was able to go on and on and on as long as it did. In the future, so this doesn't happen to you again, you can let something be casual.
You can let something grow and unfold naturally. You're still allowed to be curious. You're allowed to do your screw diligence. You're allowed to Google the people that you date or do a deep dive on their social media or Instagram, if only to protect yourself from exactly this kind of shitbaggery. But Yeah. He owed you the truth all along. He owed you basic human decency.
He owed it to you not to lie to you and manipulate you. And he didn't come through with any of that. And I don't think it's rational, reasonable for you to expect that now he's going to, he owes you and is going to come through with an explanation or with closure. You could, if you wanted to, obviously you could nuke his relationship. You could write to his boyfriend.
My hunch is that if you did write to his boyfriend, you wouldn't be the first piece in the city on the side that he'd ever heard from that his partner was fucking. And so I don't think it would be worth it. You've, Wasted, not wasted. You were dating other people. You were living your life. He sort of entered your life and you guys had an easy thing and it went on. Just let it go. Let him go.
You now know what you know and needed to know and weren't told about him. And you don't sound bitter, which is good. don't be bitter, don't get bitter, but do draw the lesson from this that you should, which is, you know, three months, six months, even nine months in, you can let it be casual and take somebody at their word. But four years in, at some point you have a right to know who they are.
And as one out queer person to another, uh, You could have spared yourself a lot of grief and drama if when he told you he was closeted, which came a long time, that was a lie, but he told you that he was closeted. If you had said, yeah, no, don't date closet kids. You're 36 years old. You're a full-grown queer ass, gay adult, queer adult living in the city. Don't waste your time on closeted guys.
When you're 20... giving somebody some space and time to come out because they're still young and they're figuring it out and they're, you know, triaging their relationships with their family in school and trying to like find the right moment to come out. Okay. There's an allowance you can make when somebody is young, but when somebody is a fully grown ass, gay adult with a badge and a gun. Yeah.
And they're closeted. Waste of time. You should have dumped him then. I don't know why he was closeted. He was closeted about being not closeted. He's lying to you about that and closeted about having a boyfriend, having a partner all that time. You thought you were his partner. So don't be bitter. Keep that heart open.
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Hi, Dan. I am straight, cisgender lady. Been in a marriage for 14 years. I kind of already know what Dan will tell me. Which is you and your words, but... So scary for... great men in this area to hear words, I think, for them. Okay, so this is a deal, sexless marriage. I don't think I even realized how sexless it was, but six and a half years now, no sex.
And so I asked my spouse for permission to open up the marriage. Last September, he said yes, but with the stipulation that It's a test and it's out of town and I get tested after. So that's fine and everything. By the way, we have a beautiful six-year-old child. And that's a big reason why I'm in this situation of considering like the don't ask, don't tell, I guess, sort of.
So I had had a crush on someone for a while. And so I consummated that. And then we are kind of doing, I guess you would say a situationship for the past four or five months. And then there was like one time and then right after I got permission and then a four or five month break, but lots of texting.
So the issue is for me, I have a very high sex drive and my spouse has a low one and we've done couples therapy before. So I don't know. Should I just keep sneaking around? I'm in a very, very small town, Dan. So I don't want to get caught. And I'm also wracked with guilt because I am in anxiety ridden.
So I just listened to your call, but your call came in a few weeks ago.
Are there any updates? Yeah, so we had the first talk and then he brought it up a week later. And then also my side guy just like flaked out on me totally. So that's depressing. So we're sort of friends, but I think he's breadcrumbing me basically. I don't know what went wrong there.
And so the side guy that was kind of forcing the issue because you live in a small town.
Yeah.
Is no longer necessarily forcing the issue. Does your husband know that you were fucking somebody and breaking the rules? No, he doesn't.
Although I will technically say I did ask to be if I can have a fling with someone last year. And he said, yes, it's no problem. Just make sure it's out of town. Because we live in a small town. And yeah, if you want to have a fling for a few days with someone, that's, I don't have a problem with that. And then we didn't set the parameters.
So like, he didn't ask for communication or check in with me about that. And I am an overshare, as you can tell, because I can tell you're trying to say something and I'm cutting you off.
Well, that's usually my gig is to cut people off who are trying to say something. I'm usually the one who doesn't let anybody get a word in edgewise. So your husband gave you permission to get sex outside your sexless marriage. Is your marriage completely sexless and companionate or is there sex sometimes?
Because one of his rules was that you can have a tryst, has to be out of town, and you have to get tested after. You guys aren't fucking. Why does that matter to him besides hopefully a loving concern for your health?
Yeah, I think it's the latter. Just, you know, a concern for my health. Loving or not loving, I'm not sure which. But yeah, it's completely sexless. So we have cuddled in the past six years, but like no making out, no nothing.
Okay, so I'm really torn because there's two conflicting kind of interests here. Your interest in being able to fuck somebody, which is... These are roadblocks. If it has to be a tryst, it has to be out of town. How often do you get out of town? How easy would it be for you to arrange a tryst if you were suddenly out of town with a stranger?
And how actually dangerous would it be for you to arrange a tryst with somebody that you didn't get to know and vet through the getting to know process, which is really important for women and women's safety when planning on being alone together in a room with a man. Yeah.
And so the tryst and out of town makes it really complicated, you know, a higher degree of difficulty for you to actually fuck somebody else. Yeah. And yet your husband's concern about not wanting it to be in town because living in a small town, that's valid because one of the things often people in sexless, uh,
relationships in relationships that are socially monogamous, what they want is not to be publicly humiliated. They don't want everybody in town to know that you're having an affair or fucking other people and to look at them with scorn or pity because they think they're fools because everybody knows but them, which can happen in a small town.
So it seems to me that you and your husband need to have another conversation where you articulate these competing interests. Your interest in actually getting to have sex with somebody, which is complicated to the point of it may never happen if it has to be an out-of-town tryst.
And his interest in not being publicly humiliated in your small town by rumors going around and people looking at him like he's a fool or an idiot. Yeah. And so, how do you figure out something that can work for both of you, that makes it possible for you to have sex, not just in theory, but in practice, without risking humiliating him?
Yeah.
Shall we brainstorm up an idea or two?
Well, I'm going to throw a wrench in your plan. So, two weeks ago, like, after SciGuy just...
basically tried to ghost me but i wouldn't let him so we're sort of friends i was just like my life sucks it's horrible i missed all the dopamine i think but also like he was doing all the emotional and the physical for my marriage so i actually had to talk with my husband about splitting up and we have a seven-year-old so i don't know but now i'm back to like i don't know yeah my god your call came in so long ago that your kid had a birthday
Because your kid was six when you called. I'm sorry we didn't get to your call.
No, that's fine. I'm just an annoying straight girl with straight girlfriends.
Hey, annoying straight girls are my bread and butter. I love annoying straight girls. I've been helping out annoying straight girls since 1991. It's literally on my shingle outside my office. So you guys are going to get a divorce?
I don't know if we are. He doesn't want to. But I have to think about it and decide. So that's Yeah, and I know you have a kid, so I'm interested in your thoughts. I mean, we're pretty good co-parents. We're on a super tight budget. That's not nothing.
You guys love each other. If you have a good and loving and mutually supportive companionate relationship, and you co-parent well together, and you don't want to add the stress of...
you know, moving a kid back and forth from one home to another, or if you do the nesting style where one of you moves out and the other moves back in and you guys are the ones moving between domiciles, that's not nothing. And maybe that has such value to your husband that he'd be willing to shoulder the risk of
of you having sex with somebody else and him finding out about it or even you know we live in modern times it's a new world even in small towns even if it you know got out if you guys then sort of came out publicly as companionate that we have a companionate marriage nobody is really it's only something in a small town you got to say once um
look, we love each other, we're great parents, we're married, we're husband and wife, we're staying together, but it's a companionate relationship and we're both free to have sex outside the relationship or relationships outside the marriage and no one's being harmed or wrong. And as scary a thing that is to say in a small town, because it will be the topic for a week, once it's said, it's done.
And once... there's nothing more to gossip about your relationship out there. So maybe your husband, if you guys stay married and I'm kind of rooting for you guys to stay married, good parents, good companions. That's people devalue that. And I'm the sex maniac who puts too much importance on sex.
And I tell people to do what they need to do to stay married and stay sane sometime, which can include cheating because sexual fulfillment is important and that sexual compatibility is important. We should prioritize it. But I'm also the guy who sometimes says, hey, a sexless relationship that's loving and low conflict, I wouldn't throw that away for a blowjob myself personally.
I wouldn't throw that away for a tryst myself personally. If I can have both... The outside sex, the blowjobs, or just even the possibility of outside sex, because there's a reasonable set of rules that make it possible, not impossible, to get sex outside the marriage. I would stay in the marriage.
But easier for me to say as a gay man, because men are pigs and it's easier for us to find each other, right? Than it is for straight women to safely find... male side pieces.
I guess. And plus, and like my kink is completely awoken with this guy. So I'm just like, I don't even want to. do someone unless I can see them first. And it has to be really fucked up and kinky and also safe.
You know, kinky women are a prize. There are so many more kinky men than kinky women. And you're yet another example of the straight married woman who comes into her kinks in her thirties. I see it all the time. I think there's some fundamental thing that teaches us about differences between male and female sexuality and also male and female socialization. And so thank you for that.
I love it when callers confirm my priors. Uh, and I gotta go. We're going to wish you luck. Give us a call back. Let us know what you decide to do. If you're going to get a divorce, uh, or stay together and come out as companionate. Um, which maybe your husband could wrap his mind around because then he wouldn't be thought a fool. He would be thought available and maybe he'd get some too.
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Hi, Dan. I'm a mid-40s cis, mostly het male. My girlfriend has just unexpectedly broken up with me after about a year and a half. Everything had been going great. We had even been talking about moving in together. And then she told me that she had found something very disturbing about me and that I was leading a double life. I had no idea what she was talking about.
Anyway, it turns out she had decided to audit my social media activity and was shocked by some of the accounts I follow on Instagram. I have a private and a public account, both of which she follows. It seems like she went through both of them at length and found that on my private account, I followed 13 thirst trap type accounts.
So women in bikinis or underwear posing or bouncing or jiggling or whatever and and she felt betrayed and repulsed by this. I don't entirely know why I follow these accounts. I don't jerk off to them, and I've told her that, although she didn't believe it. I don't think it would be terribly wrong if I did, but I don't. I don't even spend a huge amount of time looking at them.
They make up about 2% of the accounts I follow in total. I don't interact with them apart from a handful of likes over the past couple of years and a brief exchange with someone who wanted me to subscribe to their OnlyFans, which I didn't. I don't fantasize about them. I won't say it's entirely non-sexual. The majority of them are approximately my type, sort of attractive women on the curvy side.
But there's one who's seven foot tall and a couple of little people, which I think has weirded her out. I don't have a fetish for either type, but I think maybe there's something about seeing these non-standard women owning their unconventional attractiveness that I find appealing or uplifting in some way. I genuinely hadn't really given it a lot of thought before this.
I know it's not normal, but is it so perverse that it's worth ending a great relationship for? There are other issues as well, of course, and some of them came up in the big argument that followed, but she has called this a deal-breaker and has since blocked me.
She told me she had an issue with a previous boyfriend where, from what I understand, he would jerk off to escort sites, sometimes while she was asleep beside him, and this seems to have coloured her opinion of the issue. Anyway, I'd be grateful for any advice or insight you can offer.
That was a stroke of good luck for you that she exited your life. And if she's out there listening, lady, good luck to you. Good luck finding a guy, a straight guy, who doesn't appreciate... hot women.
And you do well to find a straight guy who appreciates not just women who are exactly his favorite type, but can see the beauty in women who aren't necessarily his type, but have a kind of energy and bravado that is appealing and that he's into women, not just for their looks, but also for their personality.
That's a good trait in a straight guy because eventually everybody looks fall apart and then you're left with personalities that And if he likes your energy, even if the rest of you eventually dissolves, he'll still be into you because you're at anyway, she's crazy and you're well rid of her. You are entitled as a human being to a zone of erotic autonomy.
You are entitled as a human being, as was her ex to jack off every once in a while about whatever it is that you want to jack off about. And she doesn't get to police her, your erotic imagination. She doesn't get to police your fantasies.
And it's a kind of insecure, controlling, manipulative, shitty behavior to act like you should be able to dictate to somebody what they can and cannot find arousing or to tell somebody that they're only allowed. to touch their own genitals when you're supervising them, which I guess is what she wants out of a dude. There are a couple of dudes like that out there.
There are some guys into long-term chastity play. She should go find one whose dick she can literally put a cage on. But I'm guessing she doesn't want that. I'm guessing she's not kinky, that she's not honestly seeking an FLR, a female-led relationship. She just wants to default into some sort of F L R. Look, there are women out there who would be better partners for you.
And I believe you when you say you weren't jacking off. I follow a lot of like random hot guys on Instagram and I don't, look at them and masturbate. They just pop up into my feed every once in a while and I'm like, dude's hot. That's nice to see. Hot people are nice to look at every once in a while.
And it sends a little blast of oxytocin through my brain that makes my day a little brighter, but doesn't make me appreciate the people in my life I'm actually having sex with any less. Was that the thing that people used to say when I was a child?
I overheard adults, straight, monogamous, married, adult, friends of my parents, and even my parents say this, this thing they used to say, I'm married, not dead, which meant, yeah, I'm committed to this one person, but I can appreciate the beauty and attractiveness of others. I can take that in. And for better or worse,
In this age of social media, the way we take most of the world in, sadly, is looking at our phones. And so you're occasionally... checking somebody out and then deciding to follow them because it would be a treat for you, for that person to cross your path every once in a while. That's all it is when you follow a hot person on Instagram.
They pop up into your feed, they cross your path, just like the girl from Ipanema walking down the goddamn beach, right? And you should be allowed that. And an adult, a mature adult, doesn't dig through all of their partner's likes and follows on Instagram for evidence of what? For evidence of what they should assume to be true.
Their partner sometimes likes to check out other people and does online. Unfortunately, it leaves a digital trail of evidence that an insecure bag of slop like your ex-girlfriend, count your blessings that she is your ex-girlfriend, can then... have big feelings about and blow up otherwise good and wonderful relationships with a lot of potential. You sound like a catch.
You sound like a guy that a smart, well-adjusted, functional adult woman could partner with long-term. She is never going to find a guy who doesn't break her stupid rules about what the men in her life are allowed to do or think or look at and when they're allowed to masturbate and what they're allowed to masturbate about. When she told you that story, assuming she told it to you before this whole
Ajita's broke out should have broken up with her then because that was somebody telling you who they are and you should believe them like my aunt was like the first time she was telling you that she doesn't want a man she wants a toaster with a dildo duct tape to it you're well rid of her and you didn't have the presence of mind because you couldn't see into the future you didn't realize what it was she was telling you to dump her then and she has now done you the favor of dumping herself count your blessings and follow whoever the fuck you want
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Hi, Dan. I have been in a conversation about finding the modern equivalent for the term Eskimo brothers. You know, something obviously, you know, not based on race or just a little bit more politically correct. Well, trying to figure out the next best thing with the AI and I'm not getting good responses. So I don't know. Let's see what we can come up with.
I'm going to quickly define that problematic term for people who may not be familiar with it. An Eskimo brother, slang term used to describe two men who have had sex with the same partner at different times. When gay men refer to other gay men as a band of brothers, I think that's what they're referring to potentially. I brainstormed this for two seconds and came up with next of skin, but
open to suggestions if anybody else out there has one. But my substitute for Eskimo brothers, problematic, next of skin. All right, time for listener feedback. First up, some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love. Says by DanFan, Dan, you missed two red flags in the bad boys call.
That just after a couple of months, the caller is already calling him the one and planning a future together with him. And two, complaining about the sex being boring. Honey, this is not the guy for you. There are men out there who are both good people and great lovers. Stop seeing this guy and start seeing your therapist a bit more and find out why you're getting so ahead of yourself here.
Says Zoftig about the same call. I know we're supposed to take the side of the callers, but I felt much more sympathy for the current quote-unquote nice boyfriend of the caller who likes bad boys than I did for her. Dan's suggestions, while great if they'd been together for a long time...
and full of broadly good advice for anyone who wants to keep things adventurous in an LTR, defaulted to staying together as the greater good, where I kind of got the impression that this perfectly nice guy might be better off finding someone who'd appreciate him instead of doing all this work to change him.
And finally, says Muriel, also about the same call, a word of encouragement to all the good boys out there. I used to date a man who, in his younger years, was often used by girls who were just going with him while waiting for a bad boy to come around. This was painful for him, but this man was by far the sexiest man I've ever known.
He is still good, respectful, thoughtful, sensitive, helpful, romantic, but has an intense, playful sexuality that thrilled and transformed me. So hang in there, good guys. Continue to be who you are. There are women out there looking for exactly what you have to offer.
And again, on the bad boys call, I want to highlight, but I can't read because it's too long, but I will direct everyone's attention to No Cute Names comment about the same caller on this week's show. Again, too long to share here, but it is a really good critique of my advice.
And No Cute Name identifies a blind spot of mine, maybe a blind spot that everybody who is out there giving sex and relationship advice has and one we have to guard against. No cute name, read your comment, took it to heart, recommending others, go and give it a read. All right, for more listener feedback, check out Struggle Session every Thursday at savage.love.
And now everyone's favorite part of the show, mine included, the part where I shut my big gay mouth and my listeners get the last word.
Hi, this is for the caller who is thinking about marrying the guy that doesn't fit her usual, quote, type, and she's kind of worried about sexual attraction in the long run. I am here from the future to tell you that it's absolutely possible to get what you want with your wonderful, quote, not your type partner.
I was in exactly the same place, always dated this specific kind of type of mine, which was really based on, like, childhood things and trauma and all of that. And I married the man who doesn't fit any of that at all. In fact, he was too nice at first and we broke up for a short while. And now we've been together for 18 years. We have opened our marriage.
We explore all sorts of dirty things together. And it's just the incredible experience to have that wonderful, safe person at home to support you in all of those things. Good luck.
Hi, this is a response to the caller in episode 945 who's trying to get away from the narcissist. I have been there actually in my early 20s. I was in a similar relationship. It sucked. Everything Dan said was spot on. And I also want to add, because you said the word addiction, I would recommend treating it as one, which means no contact. I wrote a letter to my narcissist and explained that
Being in contact with him was going to mean that we eventually repeated the cycle and I wanted more for myself. And so the letter was helpful because he couldn't respond to it, blocked him on everything, blocked his number, blocked the socials. Because if he has access to you, he will pull you back in to this familiar pattern. It hijacks your brain chemistry.
There's almost nothing you can do about it if you stay in contact. The other thing I would do and did do is... Just really involve your friends and family in supporting you in this. I think it would probably go a long way to tell them, this is what I've done to try to just get this person out of my life. I need your help keeping me busy. Come with me to the bars or wherever you go to meet people.
Just really involve them in keeping you busy so that your mind is not going to just stay stuck in this pattern. I promise better things are ahead. You just need to close the door and lock it.
This message is for the caller in episode 945, the one whose wife doesn't want to have sex with him anymore after the birth and breastfeeding of two children. The question quickly becomes, how can we get this guy laid? But I feel like what he really wants is his wife back, not just as a companion, a partner, but as his lover. To me, it sounds like she's simply exhausted.
I mean, she still masturbates, so she ain't broke. My question would be, what is he doing to alleviate that exhaustion? Is he doing fully half of all the household chores? What about the childcare place? Do they call him first or the mom if the kids get sick? Does he go to the grocery store? Does he make meal plans? Does he make dinner without even waiting to be asked?
And my question would be, what is he doing to make himself more fuckable? Women have been given tons of advice about how to keep themselves attractive to their husbands. What about this guy? Does he keep himself well-groomed and smelling nice? Is he friendly and easy to talk to, nonjudgmental? Does he play her favorite music and make her favorite meals?
Is he cleaning the house in his shortest shorts and no shirt on? I feel like the most harmonious resolution to this guy's problem is to be patient with his wife, to tell her that he appreciates her willingness to open the marriage, but for now, he just wants to focus on her and their marriage. Then start planning date nights where sex isn't even on the table.
You're just out enjoying each other's company. I remember when my kids were young, I was always surprised by how quickly my sex drive would return when I would spend time away from them. Get her out of the house. Make her feel seen and appreciated and give her the time and space to heal and then come to you. Maybe she'll be your lover again.
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 and upload your question directly onto our website at savage.love slash askdan. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question or your comment to q at savage.love. Or you can call our landline and leave us a message at 206-302-2064.
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