Here's a little friendship drama to start the New Year: A woman and her pal "Jill" are going on a skiing trip in Japan with a group of people. Two of the men approached Jill to tell her they each had crushes on the caller, and asked her to broker a connection. Jill wants nothing to do with this, and the caller is bewildered. Why is Jill so angry? And how should she proceed? A man has a 22 year-old nephew who he suspects is gay. The lad is immersed in conservative Christian culture, and if he is gay, has let no one know. Should the caller broach the subject and try to inspire him to find a version of Christianity that will accept him? Or keep his avuncular mouth shut? On the Magnum, Dan welcomes back Tawny Lara, aka The Sober Sexpert, and the author of Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze. She is on to talk about partying like a sorority sister without all the champagne or cocaine. And she encourages an embrace of Damp January- you know, drink a little less maybe? And, woman has been hooking up with a man for a few months, having great sex. But he never lets her sleep over at his place, and she's never met his friends. Then he dropped the bomb that he is about to become a baby daddy. Their relationship will surely change. But should she disregard the red flags here? Happy New Year one and all! [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. 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, youngin'.
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
This week's intro goes out to my bye guys. I have a special holiday message for you. Something I want you to carry into 2025. Buck the fuck up you guys for fuck's sake. All right, let me back up. Let me explain. I got online on Christmas Eve for just a minute, a single minute. I am not addicted. Getting online doesn't mean what it used to.
I don't want to date myself here, but I'm old enough to remember when getting online meant leaving the room, sitting in front of a giant computer that took up most of your desk, and then this blasted from your computer speakers. And that announced to everyone in the house, announced to everyone in the fucking neighborhood, that you were getting online and probably about to masturbate.
Nowadays, getting online just means taking a quick peek at your phone while you're maybe standing in the kitchen waiting for the cream in the mixer to turn into whipped cream so you can serve it with dessert. So I don't have a problem. I just quickly glanced at a social media platform to pass the time while I was making whipped cream.
A social media platform I no longer post on, but where I do still lurk. And there I encountered discourse. A bunch of bi guys got online on Christmas Eve to complain about the women, the straight women, who won't date them because they're bi. And I was distracted. I got sucked into the discourse and overwhipped the cream and had to throw it away and start over. So maybe indeed I do have a problem.
Anyway, first I want to say, Hashtag not all bi guys, not all bi guys everywhere got online on Christmas Eve to complain about the straight women who won't date them. This very special, very niche New Year's Eve intro is going out to not all bi guys everywhere.
It's going out to the bi guys who I saw complaining about the straight women who won't date them on a social media platform on Christmas Eve. Guys, most men don't want to date other men and gay men. We do fine.
Lewis Oakley, a bisexual writer and activist in the UK, wrote a piece about this phenomena for The Independent a couple of years ago that got passed around on Christmas Eve, headlined, Why Don't Women Want to Date Bisexual Men? Oakley's piece has the stats. He brings the data. He cites and bemoans, quote, studies finding only 19% of women would date a bisexual man. Only 19%? That's bad?
I crunched some numbers. These are very rough numbers. I am famously bad with numbers. Barbie was right. Math is hard. Someone's gonna need to check my work, but here we go. Most studies put the percentage of men who are gay at just under 2%, 1.7, 1.8%. We're gonna round that up to two.
And yes, we keep reading stories about more and more people, especially young people, identifying as LGBTQIA+++, but the increase isn't among gays and lesbians whose numbers have stayed pretty constant over the years. More bisexuals have come out as queer, which is great.
And more of, well, what mean and misinformed and gatekeepy gays and lesbians sometimes dismiss as spicy straights have come out as queer. Poly or kinky straight people, heteroromantic asexuals, non-binary people who are exclusively attracted to people who were assigned whatever the opposite was of their assigned sex at birth. Me? I am not a mean gay. I am not gatekeepy.
If the queer label works for you, if it speaks to you, welcome. We are under attack. Grab a flag. Mount the barricades. We can mount each other later. All right, more numbers. There are roughly 8 billion people on the planet.
Out of that number, 3 billion men and 3 billion women are over the age of 18, which means bi guys who want to partner with women, straight or otherwise, have 20% of 3 billion women to choose from. That's 600 million women. to choose from and be chosen by, which is just as important. Gay men? We make do with 2% of the 3 billion men there are out there to choose from. That's 60 million men.
And we do all right. We do fine. The gay bars are full. The circuit parties sell out. The gay cruises are packed. There are gay men out there getting gay married every gay day. My bye guys. If I could manage to find two men who will put up with my shit in the 2% I had to choose from, you can find one woman who'll put up with your shit in the 20% you have to choose from.
And if you're biromantic, if you're open to dating men, which not all of you are, and that is fine. Heteroromantic bi guys are valid bi guys. But if you are open to dating men, you're more than welcome to look for a partner in the 2% of men who are gay and the 0.9% of men who are bi. And hey, we gay guys, we do all right.
Even though the pool from which gay men draw our potential partners shrinks at twice the rate yours does. Every time a gay couple gets its wings, two men are removed from our much smaller pool. 60 million. That's the population of France. When a man partners with a woman, only one woman is removed from your much bigger potential pool of opposite sex partners.
450 million population of the entire EU. Toss in a couple of bonus extra Frances and you get 600 million. Your odds are literally 10 times better than the average gay man's. And do you hear us complaining? No, you do not. Because we are too busy choking on dick to complain. Our mamas raised us right. We are gentlemen. Gentlemen don't talk with their mouths full. Finally, bi guys.
Again, hashtag not all bi guys, the bi guys who were complaining online on Christmas Eve about the women who won't date them instead of asking out the women who will. A lot of you aren't out yet. Most of the people who've come out as bisexual in the last 15, 20 years and goosed those numbers of people who identify as queer are bi women. Great, please, more, more bi people come out.
But according to Lewis Oakley, only 12% of bisexual guys as of 2022 are out. Your chances of meeting one of the 20%, one of the 600 million out there who want to date you explodes once you come out of the closet. Just like my odds of meeting gay guys who wanted to date me exploded once I came out of the closet. Trust me.
There are women out there who want to suck your cock and want to suck cock with you. Get off the internet. Get out of the closet. Go find one. All right. Two other quick things before we start this week's show. First, a correction. The Valentine's Day mascot is Cupid, not St. Valentine, as I said at the top of last week's show. No cute name. Wrote in to correct me. Thank you.
No cute name for that correction. And... Speaking of mascots and holidays, of course, I was talking about Feast of the Ass and Buddy, the Feast of the Ass donkey. You have 14 shopping days left until January 14th. The Feast of the Ass. Get your Feast of the Ass hats and t-shirts at savage.love slash shop now.
And your traditional Feast of the Ass glazed Bundt cake at our unofficial, they have no affiliation with us, they don't even know we're doing this, your unofficial Feast of the Ass Bundt cake at sissycakes.com. And to the person who wrote in to ask, Wrote in a little butthurt, actually, to ask if Feast of the Ass was just for people who like to eat ass.
No, it's for everyone who likes and appreciates ass however you like and appreciate it. For medieval peasants, a feast day was a celebration. And on Feast of the Ass, medieval peasants celebrated not just the donkey that Mary and Jesus fled into Egypt on the back of, but all donkeys, including the donkeys in their lives who...
lightened their load, who helped them with the peasanting and the farming and the making of wheat or whatever the fuck they were doing for their feudal lords. So you on Feast of the Ass can celebrate the ass in your life however you enjoy or use or ride the asses in your life. Feast of the Ass is for everybody, not just for ass eaters.
All right, coming up on today's show, tons of your Qs, lots of my As, and joining me on the Magnum, Tawny Lara is back. Tawny Lara, the sober sexpert. We talk about partying sober on New Year's Eve, what dry January is and why you might want to give it a try, and what damp January is, which I had never heard of until Tawny told me about it this week.
That's on the Magnum that you can subscribe to at savage.love. And micro listeners, check out your feeds this Friday for another bit of bonus content. All right, let's get this end of the year, end of 2024 sex and relationship advice party started.
This episode of the Lovecast is brought to you by the good folks at Squarespace. They make it easy to build a beautiful website, blog, or online store. Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code savage to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Hey, Dan. I'm in a torturous relationship situation, and I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm a Magnum subscriber, a poly, 37-year-old, heteroflexible cis guy in the Bay Area. There's a woman I was dating for about three and a half years, and we had a really intense, anxiously attached relationship.
For about the last year of that, she was having a really hard time on holidays and relationship events like anniversaries, and she even came to Christmas with my family. She would bawl her eyes out. I thought it was because of the other hard things that were going on for her. But now I know it's because she was falling out of love with me and coming to terms with it.
She pulled away, giving me less attention, affection, and sex. And she said her lack of libido was because of her age. But she's only in her early 40s. But even so, I comforted and supported her and was a good partner. And toward the end, she told me to my face that she thought I was boring and annoying. And she tells me that almost all of our relationships have lasted two or three years.
And then she gets bored and annoyed and turns them into sometimes lovers. And about a couple months ago... I don't think she could handle breaking up with me, but she relationship-ed me, where she wanted to spend a lot less time talking, seeing each other, and fucking, but we'd stay in touch and do that sometimes.
She says she still has a hard time with it, and I'm thinking, if you don't want to feel bad, then why did you break up with me in the first place? She also reconnected with an old makeout buddy, and they started up a relationship. She's really into him. She said again to my face that he's my replacement.
She says even though the timing of our relationship ending and their starting up is a week apart, it's completely coincidental. So why the whole thing drives me insane is because she tells me she ideally wants to have occasional sex with me. And when we do hang out, she's super lovey and snuggly. We make out like we used to when we were together.
And then after we hang out, she doesn't really talk to me. She said she doesn't know whether to refer to me as her ex or former primary. And then she's fluid bonded with her new boyfriend. He's becoming poly, and she volunteered to not have sex with other people. She told me later that she can't believe she said that, since he told her he didn't want her to change. I'm thinking he owns her vagina.
Is that healthy? The dichotomy sucks. I can't stop thinking about her. I can't stop making up stories, and I'm super confused. I love her, and I want to maintain at least some kind of sexy and romantic relationship, but I don't want to have to feel discarded and jerked around to do it. I talk to her now, and there's no sense of flirtiness or attraction at all. So what do you think I should do?
In grade school, in second grade, when the bully would say, meet me in the playground after school because I'm going to beat the shit out of you, a really good strategy to avoid getting the shit beat out of you was not to show up in the playground after school so the bully could beat the shit out of you.
How many times, how many ways does this woman have to punch you in the feelings, punch you in the face before you stop showing up in her playground to get punched in the fucking face? One of the problems with normie monogamous people in the Bay Area and everywhere else is that they will trump up the slightest transgression as an excuse to end a relationship.
This whole thing about micro infidelities and micro cheating where they liked somebody else's dirty pic on Instagram and so the relationship is over. Monogamous people are sometimes really too quick to end things for bullshit reasons. Polly people? Polly people sometimes refuse to end things that need to end for so many perfectly obvious reasons and in a way appalling transgression.
There are names for some of this shit that your girlfriend is doing or this woman is doing to you that I'm sure is a Polly person in his late 30s in the Bay Area you are familiar with like breadcrumbing and love bombing and She's not a good person and she's okay. Maybe she's a good person, but she's not good for or good to you.
The minute she told you that you were boring and annoying and then added, she feels that way about anybody. She's been fucking for a couple of years. That was your sign to end the relationship. That was her telling you that, that it was over.
And yet for some reason, maybe because she identifies as Polly, maybe because like some Polly people, she thinks if any relationship she's in ever ends, it means she's not as good at magic Polly powers as other magic Polly people are. She won't end it herself. And she just keeps upping the ante of the mistreatment and the relation shifting and will continue to do so until you finally realize
Pick your dignity up off the ground and fucking end it yourself. Leave. Leave or stop showing the fuck up in the playground after school for this bully. And some bully people fucking are bullied to punch you in the fucking face. 37-year-old, heteroflexible dude in the Bay Area, you have options. And you have not failed at being a magic poly person yourself.
If a relationship you're in runs its course, it ends or it has to end. And this one has to fucking end. She's tried to end it in a million ways, but she's one of those people who will not end it herself. She just makes herself intolerable. until your hand is forced. If you won't force your hand, I'm going to get on a plane and come to San Francisco. I'm going to force your hand myself.
You need to break the fuck up with this woman. You know, you don't even have to break up with her. You don't have to have the conversation. You don't have to send her a text. Just stop showing up in the playground. It's not the same thing as ghosting. I promise you, she will not reach out to you when she stops hearing from you. She hasn't wanted to hear from you for a long time. Stop showing up.
Hey, Dan. So I'm calling with some weird friend drama. I'm hoping you can help sort out. I have a very close friend. Let's call her Jill. And Jill and I are accompanying a large group on a pretty big trip for two weeks in Japan to go skiing in about two months. And a lot of these people on this trip kind of know each other, but some of them don't know each other. And I'm making new friends.
We've been hanging out you know, in preparation of the trip, having hikes and little get togethers so that we can all become more acquainted before we're in another country. And I guess the other day, my friend Jill hung out with two of the guys from the group who both separately expressed to her some interest in me.
And we're kind of asking her, you know, questions about me and my availability and whether or not they have a shot with me. And I guess my friend Jill was uncomfortable about this and let me know later She didn't feel like it was really cool and she wants to stay out of it. And she doesn't like having a friend zone guys for me.
And I apologized and said like, okay, I don't feel like I was like inappropriately flirty with these guys. I was just being nice, but I will shut it down. And so the next day I texted one of the guys, I felt important to kind of bring it up sooner because he's looking at booking a little side quest with us. And I just wanted to
Let him know ahead of that that it's going to be totally platonic if he chooses to come with me and my friend Jill. I said in my text to him just that. I said, I want you to come with us. Just so you know, it's totally platonic. I'm sorry if this is forward, but Jill encouraged me to be direct with you. And he was totally cool about it. He was like, yeah, heard. I appreciate the honesty.
And so when I told her, hey, I spoke to such and such and we're all good. He can join us. She got really upset with me. that I quote unquote brought her into it. And now she's kind of freaking out at me and keeps saying like, keep my name out of it. Keep my name out of it. I don't want to be involved. And it's kind of making me feel really tense. Like we're going up on this
really big trip to another country for two weeks. And she's my closest friend on the trip. She's my connection to this group. And now she's kind of freaking out about a situation that to me seems completely blown out of proportion. I mean, all she had to do was like a pretty normal activity of like being inquired about whether or not your friend is available and into them.
It's unfortunate that it was two different guys asking her, but I don't know what I should do. She was really crazy to me over text and just very, just feels very dramatic. And I want to, I mean, I apologized already, but it just doesn't feel like the right thing to do. I mean, she's being really hypocritical. The situation is just like escalated to a
My brother will never forgive me if I butcher a sports metaphor, so let me make sure I'm gonna get this right. I'm gonna run this ball the last five yards for you. I think Jill is upset by what happened because two male friends of hers that she may have some interest in were alone with her and they both inquired as to whether you were available and might be interested in them.
I think her overreaction here is hurt and jealousy. What do you do with that? You can't call her and say, you're just jealous. That'll make it worse. If you call her and say that, and you go on this trip, girl, you're going to die on that mountain. Jill's going to push you off a chairlift. What you have to do is
in a situation like this is just kind of absorb it and do the wicked thing, hold space for it, allow for your friend to have had an overreaction that unpacking why they overreacted would create even more hurt for them. So you apologize You say, I'm sorry. You did say you didn't want to be dragged into it. And I mentioned your name.
I didn't know how to avoid mentioning your name because how was I supposed to know? But I clearly should have handled this differently or waited until one or the other or both of them came at me or began to flirt with me on the trip. And I'm sorry. And let's put this behind us and I will file this away. And if we're ever in a situation like this again, I will know not to handle it like this.
And I'm sorry. And then you think, but you don't say the intensity of your reaction is tied to understandable hurt. not hard for you to project yourself into Jill's shoes here. If two guys you were interested in both came to you and said, how about Jill? Do you think Jill would want to go out with me? You'd be hurt too. And that might be hurt.
You'd have a hard time expressing directly to Jill for fear of seeming insecure or petty or having to own that. Maybe you're the, at least in this instance, the less attractive friend. Friend groups, friendships can involve some feelings of competitiveness, pettiness, jealousy. And I think that's what's happened here. So you need to ask yourself, do you want to be right?
Do you want to win this argument? Do you want to force Jill to admit that she overreacted because she's jealous? Or do you want to preserve and sustain this friendship? And I think it's the latter, right? There are, in all relationships, issues you will never resolve. Prices of admission, even in a friendship, that you will have to pay.
Minds that you will know where they are planted and you will have to step around. And this is one of those times.
Hi, Dan. I have a nephew who's 22. I believe he's gay. He's never said anything. Not aware of any relationships he's had with any people. And I'd like him to be able to live a full, happy life as a gay man, if that's his case. However, he's very religious, and that religion is likely telling him that it's wrong to be gay, and his community would probably be upset if he were gay.
I'm wondering if I should butt in and let him know that his community is wrong and that he should let out wants and be happy and still be religious, just maybe not extreme. Or should I keep my mouth shut?
the problem with letting somebody live their own life, keeping your mouth shut is there are lots of examples out there of people who ended their own lives because they didn't think anybody cared about them or they believed the bullshit that had been pounded into their heads by the faith community or the faith tradition in which they were raised. And that can have dire potential consequences.
There are lots of instances where people kind of knew somebody was closeted and miserable and didn't say anything because they didn't want to make that person feel self-conscious and that person was working so hard to hide this thing and would be embarrassed if they realized that they weren't that successful at hiding it and then wish they'd said something.
erred on the side of saying something after this person killed themselves and just felt tremendous guilt in the wake of that suicide. That is perhaps a low probability event, but it is a high consequence event. Only you can judge based on what you know of your nephew and how close you are to your nephew, whether there would be some benefit or
In saying something either directly or alluding to it or just opening up a line of communication that creates an opportunity for him to tell you something, anything, what's your relationship like? You don't sound like a religious person. Maybe you don't have a very tight relationship with your nephew. You just see... Your gaydar pings when your nephew's in the room and you assume he's miserable.
And maybe he is, but maybe he's at peace with never coming the fuck out of the closet. I couldn't be at peace with that. Obviously I wasn't and I did come out of the closet, but some people never do. And it could make it worse, actually. You could not bring about the worst case scenario that, of course, I didn't. I went right to because I'm Irish Catholic.
But you could bring about kind of an emotional crisis or cause him a lot of emotional pain if you go to him directly and say, look, you're gay. If he's worked since age 10 to hide this and every time somebody he gets clocked by causes him tremendous pain, you could make –
where he is right now so much worse, but you could also make where he is so much better if he felt like he could open up to somebody finally. So you should try to induce that sense in him that he could open up to you about this by not directly addressing it. By telling him he can open up to you about anything.
By calling him up and asking him if he's seen Wicked and you want to see Wicked and you want to go to Wicked with somebody. That's kind of gay coded. It's a hint. It's a gesture. But it's also like the most popular movie in America and straight people are seeing it too. So it's not necessarily him outing himself by expressing any interest in going to see Wicked with his – Crazy uncle.
And then who knows if you had a tighter relationship with him, if you became his confidant, who knows what he might confide in you. And maybe that's what he needs, but you can scare somebody who's in the closet, deeper into the closet by looking right at them and saying, I know. And now you know that I know, and you probably know that other people know, and
Sometimes when you say to somebody, you're gay, right? They double, triple, quadruple down on the denial. They deny it. They say, no, they're not. And they retreat further into the closet. It can make it harder for them, but it's such, it's such a tight rope.
You want to err on the side of not driving somebody deeper into the closet, but you also want to err on the side of not making somebody feel so isolated, miserable, unseen, and alone that But they make a worse choice than closeted. But my advice to you, ask your nephew he wants to go fucking see Wicked and grab dinner sometime and just hang out. And then see where the conversation goes.
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Happy New Year! Hey, Dan. I see on Grindr and things like that... that people are saying chaser. And it used to be, you know, back in our day, that chaser was people who were trying to catch HIV so they would never have had it anymore or for some other reason. And then there's chubby chasers. So when somebody just says chaser, are we to assume that they're a chubby chaser?
People sometimes use chaser to mean anybody who's in pursuit of anything, that there are people out there who are... deep throat chasers, people out there who are daddy chasers. But when it's used all by itself in the context of Grindr, it doesn't mean bug chaser.
There were people out there who were fetishizing getting infected by HIV 10, 15 years ago, pre-prep, before prep, and people out there who were fetishizing infecting other people with HIV. It was a very dark and desperate and sad and despairing moment for a lot of
gay men in the early 90s when the deaths were ramping up and up and up and some attention was fading from HIV and we'd been marinating in safe sex messages for more than a decade and there was a kind of perverse reaction to the condom norm and the pressure of constantly feeling like there was this thing out there lurking waiting to kill you, HIV, and some people...
fetishized running at that thing because it felt dangerous and risky and transgressive but along comes prep and that bug chaser sense of chaser just went the fuck away hiv was no longer a death sentence and the power of the transgression and seeking out hiv or giving somebody else hiv and fuck those people who knowingly gave other people hiv at that moment fuck them just kind of evaporated
So when you see chaser now out there, it means often chubby chaser, but usually when somebody uses means chubby chaser, they're into big guys, big women. It's qualified. The chubby is there before the chaser chaser on grinder can often mean usually means somebody who is seeking out trans women.
We used to call them, when I did drag, when we went to the bars, there weren't a lot of trans women around then. There were tons of trans women around. They weren't at the queer bars. Trans women 30 years ago weren't integrated into the gay, lesbian, bi, trans community in the way they are now. And I'm delighted they are now.
But really, the guys who were into dick but attached to something that looked like a woman would show up at drag night. And we called them panty chasers. And it was, it was weird and off putting. Cause like we didn't mean it as a compliment and it didn't feel complimentary when they were chasing us around. It felt vaguely threatening and often very, very.
dysfunctional because when you were a drag queen 30 years ago and a panty chaser would come at you, they would say you were a girl to your face and you would look at them and say, I'm not a girl. I'm a boy. And then they would say, no, you're not. You're a girl. And it was just like, oh my God, I can't deal with this. We didn't go home with the panty chasers.
We went home with the guys who asked us to take our panties and everything else off once we got home before we had sex. But chasers now, when people talk about chasers and They're sending up a flag that they're into or open to or also interested in trans women, sometimes trans men. I don't think it's necessarily a very complimentary way of putting that out there.
There are, of course, people who find being chaste, C-H-A-S-E-D, not C-H-A-S-T-E, in this way affirming. And sexual slang, sexual lingo, it can have a rough edge. It may not be what you would say in a seminar room or a sex ed class at Berkeley or Vassar, but
That cut through the chase, get to the point kind of communication on Grindr can result in people finding what they're looking for and people finding the people who are looking for what they're selling or what they're offering. Not all people are selling. So Chaser, when you see it all by itself on Grindr, probably somebody who's into trans men, trans women, non-binary folks, genderqueer people.
Anyway, thanks for the call. Interesting question. Nice little trip down memory lane.
Hi there, Dan, Nancy, and tech-savvy at-risk youth. I am a 30-something female calling from the East Coast. I am calling about a situation where I've been dating this guy for the last few months. Things are going really well. We have super hot sex.
He's a super sweet guy to me, but definitely keeping me at arm's length, like no sleepovers, and I haven't met any of his friends or family or anything like that. So I was suspicious that... You know, some of his actions weren't lining up with some of his other actions. And then finally he told me that he's about to be a father. He got his ex pregnant and there's a baby coming.
So that came as a surprise to me. I definitely had the sense that there was something he wasn't saying, but I wouldn't have guessed that. So he took off to go be with the mother for the end of pregnancy slash beginning of baby being born. So I'm not sure how to proceed here. I mean, once he told me, we definitely, there was a sense of closeness.
And, you know, I asked him if he thinks he's going to get back together with her and he said, He assured me that that's not what he wants, although I think we're both open to the possibility that once the baby's born, the situation could change and the logistics of what it means to be a father to a baby to somebody that you're not with is going to be complicated.
So yeah, I mean, he addressed the fact that he should have told me sooner, but he didn't really want to harsh the vibe of our dates and that he was probably waiting to to see if it made sense if this was going to stick around. So he's gone. I won't see him for another six weeks or so. And I just, you know, should I let this go and get over it?
It's not necessarily a deal breaker to me to date somebody who has a child, but... I'm wondering if the fact that he didn't tell me off the bat or sooner is like, is that a red flag? I mean, am I being too accepting of this situation and I should just walk away? Or if I really like this guy, should I? hang tight and we'll let this play out.
We didn't really leave things in any certain terms, but he's still reaching out via text, even though it'll be weeks before I see him. So I don't know, I'm just interested to hear your thoughts.
My first thought, how does the existence of an ex, an ex-girlfriend, even a pregnant ex-girlfriend, preclude sleepovers? I mean, he's presumably not living with his pregnant ex-girlfriend. You say that she's getting close to her due date and he's gone now, he's away now, which leads me to believe his ex doesn't live in the same city where you guys live. And so why no sleepovers?
I don't want to stick a red flag in that, an additional red flag to the red flag that you're sticking into his failing to disclose the pregnant ex to you sooner, but... Maybe a yellow flag? And actually, I think his failure to disclose the pregnant ex-girlfriend, that could be a yellow flag.
A lot of people are quick to round everything up to red flag, but I can kind of sort of understand why he might have hesitated to disclose the pregnant ex to you. It's only been a few months. You were keeping things secret. casual and when you want to keep something casual, usually it's because there are reasons you're moving away or you have some other commitment.
There's something that you're not yet ready to share with a person and you want to see if there's someone that you could be serious about before you start trauma dumping on them, before you start telling them. What else is going on in your life that could complicate this relationship? It's entirely possible that he went into this thinking it could be just a fling.
It could last six weeks, eight weeks. It could run its course of its own natural accord as most early new, just hooking up, keeping it casual relationships do. And he wouldn't have to disclose this to you. So you can regard his failure to disclose as a bad sign. Because he withheld this.
Now, I think three months is a perfectly reasonable time frame to disclose something that might impact whether somebody else wanted to continue to make a large emotional investment in you and the relationship. I think 12 weeks in is a pretty good time. So I would let this play out.
It's possible, based on what you've told me about what he's told you, that he may decide to stick around with his ex, wherever the fuck his ex happens to be, and the new baby, to help out and maybe to do a little co-parenting. And who knows? Maybe they'll get back together for... The convenience of at least being together for the first year or so.
And then this won't be a decision that you have to make. This will be taken out of your hands. And then what did you have? What did you have? You had a great three-month relationship with a lot of really hot sex with a guy who turned out to have a bit more complicated of a backstory than you realized. But who did tell you? He did disclose it.
Again, three months in, which seems a perfectly reasonable time to disclose it. Yeah. But what do you do? I think you play it by ear. If he comes back and you want to continue to date him, great. You say that you would have been open to dating somebody who was a single parent, somebody who had a child with another person, another woman.
And now you can prove that that's true by continuing to date this guy. But if you've never dated somebody who is a new parent and co-parenting with somebody else, the complications may be too great for you. And the his divided focus. You know, the three months you were together, you were his sole focus.
Once that baby comes and it is the infant relay race, particularly if he's going to be an involved parent, you won't be the sole focus. And if you want a partnership,
course him parenting with this woman is going to create a financial burden for him in the form of child support if they don't live together and that may you know if you're paying child support may act as an incentive if he's on the fence about that relationship to get back together with him just for the simplicity sake of being in the same place at the same time to take care of this kid and them being able to share the burden and the expense of it equally
Yeah, I don't think this is ultimately a decision you're going to have to take. This is a decision that is going to be taken for you. And I'm going to come down on the side of him waiting three months to tell you about this. Was a yellow flag, a proceed with caution, but still potentially possibly proceed.
Hi, Dan, cis, bi-curious, mid-30s woman in a major East Coast city here. I'm coming to you with a question about unprompted fin-doming. I'm married and we're in an open relationship. In the last month, I reactivated my Tinder and I've had a couple of matches reach out asking if they could send a tribute to me within their first couple of messages. And I'm not soliciting this at all in my profile.
In fact, it doesn't even reveal on there that I do lean Dom. Both of the users who reached out with this ask were photo verified. So I'm less worried about catfishing and more concerned with like my financial safety. This just seems too good to be true. If I set up a cash app and send my handle to them, am I just setting myself up to be scammed? Or am I overthinking this?
And should I just let the pigs pay me?
I think you should let the pigs pay you. Before you start letting the pigs pay you, you need to do a quick how comfortable with any small degree of risk are you? I don't think the risk is financial. I don't think somebody's going to be able to reverse engineer or engage in a low forensic accounting and find their way to your bank account and steal all your money.
I think the risk here is some entanglement, somebody insinuating themselves into your life, not your real life, but kind of into your online life.
And you winding up feeling like you owe them something or they attempt to leverage the money you've given into convincing you you owe them something else, something more, something you're not comfortable sharing with them like pics or paying a lot of attention to them or swapping a lot of text messages with them about each and every cash payment that they send you.
Be clear with any guy who you're going to let be your pay pig what the exchange there is. Because it is an exchange. There's goods and services. What are they seeking out? What kind of service do they want from you? There are some people out there who are fin subs who just enjoy the rush of sending money to someone who pays no attention to them at all.
Most fin subs want some attention to be paid to them, some form of attention. Maybe they want to get a couple of photos. Maybe they want to get, some abusive or degrading text messages from you, or maybe they just want the occasional thank you and the occasional exchange of mild pleasantries with this tinge of financial submission.
There's lots of different ways Fin subs get off and function online, and that's where you need to think about what you're comfortable with and how susceptible you might be to guilt trips and I think is really what you need to focus on as you assess your comfort with the risks here.
Because I think that's the real risk, that you will wind up feeling pressured or feeling obligated to do for these men, in exchange for these contributions, things that when you first agreed to accept them, you weren't down with or hadn't even thought of. 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 Lee Silva, I felt so angry listening to the woman talking about lube on your last show. I have needed lube every time. I've had sex since my first child was born. when I was 23. I just don't create enough lubrication myself for clitoral stimulation, which is what I need to orgasm.
There is nothing wrong with lube. I am definitely not nervous or scared of having sex. We do a ton of foreplay. My husband and I have absolutely amazing sex. Stop stigmatizing lube, caller. There's nothing wrong with it. Says in Contempo about the same call, lube, lube, lube, caller. should keep in mind that sometimes mental arousal doesn't correspond with physical arousal, especially with women.
I can be wet and not mentally aroused. I can be horny as balls and still not wet. Lube is necessary for normal, healthy vagina-havers who want sex but their bodies haven't caught up to the fact. It's called arousal non-concordance.
Says Beatrice, for the caller who's struggling with premature ejaculation during hookups but not with his long-term partner, as well as the SSRIs taken daily, as Dan mentioned, there are also short-acting SSRIs you can take on demand. So it's worth talking to your doctor about.
And finally, one of our superstar comments, Venomenon, gonna call you Ven for short, mentioned that his father was dying in a comment in which he took me to task for a heteronormative response to a question about threesomes. I just wanted to say, point taken, Ven, on the heteronormativity thing, but more importantly... You and your family are in my thoughts.
My husband lost his dad around the holidays, and losing a parent, losing any loved one during the holidays makes something that's already impossibly hard, the death of a loved one, even harder. I hope your dad has a peaceful death. I hope his memory brightens your holidays in the future, as the memory of Terry's father at the holidays now always brightens ours.
All right, for more listener feedback, check out Struggle Session every Thursday at savage.love. We're taking a break from Struggle Session over the holidays. Struggle Session returns January 9th. 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. Last word on this show in 2024.
This is for the guy in episode 946 who has been seeing the closeted cop. I'm going to make a couple of assumptions based on your call. I'm assuming that he never went out in public with you. Dinners, movies, events. I'm assuming that your friends never met him. I'm assuming that it was a hot fantasy for you to be seeing a cop who you thought was straight and married.
And I'm assuming that he liked to provide that fantasy for you because it gave him protection from any expectation of a relationship. If you knew he was gay, you would have expected more. You mentioned twice that you don't want to show up at his door and blow up his life. So you've obviously considered it. But to what end? You feel you're owed an explanation.
But ask yourself what possible explanation he could give you that would make you feel better and give you closure. You were not boyfriends. It sounds like it was a fun fling for both of you that has run its course.
Hi, Dan. I had a comment regarding episode 947 with the woman whose boyfriend had found out her past and was now weaponizing it against her. And all I could think was DTMFA. Fuck that clown.
This is for the caller on the Christmas Eve episode who looked through her sister's phone, didn't find any dating apps, and had a full Mrs. Bennett Pride and Prejudice meltdown. Baby, your heart is in the right place, but re-fucking-flax. I'm a 33-year-old single straight woman living in Los Angeles. And let me tell you something.
It is extremely common for people in my age cohort to upload and re-download the app. Like we are on it for a week, we rage quit. We're on it for a month, we rage quit. Why are you rage quitting? It's a fucking cesspool. Especially if you want to date straight men. The boys have lost any and all conversation skills. They've lost any and all follow-through.
So I don't know if it's something that will improve, but right now it is a full-blown mess. So just because your sister doesn't have a dating app on her phone right now doesn't mean that she's asexual or that she never had one.
She probably had it, met some dude who was 40 years old and being like, oh, I don't know if I'm ready for a relationship, who said hey to her once, then sent her a dick pic, and then she rage quit and ready to start again maybe this year. Please don't worry about her.
And if you're going to worry about anyone, worry about all the straight men acting a fool on a daily basis out here in these streets. It's just going to be fine. And the last thing a single person wants is a married person fretting over them. So everybody take a massive chill.
And we're going to leave it there. We've got three ways 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 it to us at q at savage.love. Or you can call our landline like it's 1999 and leave us a message at 206-302-2064.
beast of the ass merch on sale now at savage.love slash shop and while i make a pretty mean bundt cake i'm all baked out after christmas so i ordered myself a delicious bundt cake from sissycakes.com gift magnum subscriptions are still half off until midnight tonight december 31st not too late to give somebody the gift of the love cast and while you're online buying things swing by hump
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Follow Tani Lara, the Sober Sexpert, on Instagram and threads at TaniMLara. Learn more about her book, her classes, and order her sobriety deck or read her essays at TaniLara.com. The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hertunian. And me and Nancy and the tech savvy at Risk Youth, we will all be back at you for our installment of the Lovecast. Have a happy new year, everybody.