BLOGTOWN

I'm a married man in an open marriage. My wife has two friends she sees on the regular, but I'm struggling to find an extramarital date of my own. I met a woman at a bar recently, and we really hit it off. We plan to meet soon, but the topic of relationships hasn't been breached yet. Although she very well could have a boyfriend, I didn't exactly explain that I have a wife, as the upcoming plans were not necessarily romantic in nature. Looking back at our conversation, however, and observations from a third party who was accompanying me at the bar, make it clear that she was pretty into me.

My broadly stated question, applicable to myself and many others I'm sure, is this: When should a married man in an open relationship be open with others about his...openness? For my wife, it's a topic that doesn't seem to deter others from pursuing her. Guys will say, "Oh, you're married? That's cool, so your place or mine?" But, wanting to be honest with other women, it's a subject that has scared away 100 percent of the women I tell/want to be involved with.

Am I doing this wrong? Some websites say I shouldn't tell the woman until the third date or when things start to get physical. Is a little bit of misdirection OK, or should I trust my gut when it tells me this kind of behavior might backfire on me?

Struggling In Denver, Not A Fun Time

P.S. Let's ITMFA!

Gay man in his 30s here. I felt like I just did something wrong and, even worse, unnecessary.

My husband and I have been together for eight years, and married for just over a year and a half. I love our relationship. It's certainly calmed down in terms of passion since we first met, but our bond is strong. Enter our new boyfriend. We met him recently and really hit it off. He was a real infusion of energy and passion. It's going great, and it looks like when our lease is up in October we may be moving in together with him. We've met his mom, she's a darling, and seemed to like me and my husband.

And now my problem. Before meeting him our plan was to leave our liberal East Coast city for the mountains of the South to live near my parents; they even had an empty place we were going to rent from them for a while. But our new beau changed our plans: we're now planning to stay in the area with him, even if we don't move in together. My husband and my boyfriend both though that even though our relationship was in its early stages, we needed to tell my parents about it, since they were expecting us to move down.

I just finished doing that with my husband. My dad was silent the entire time, watching football. I could tell it was a shock to my Mom, but she asked some questions. It's done and I can't undo it, Dan, but should we have told a white lie instead? I didn't even think to say something like, "We made a new friend and we are thinking of being his roommates!", until the call was was over and I was fighting back tears in the bedrooms.

I just feel like this has damaged my steadily improving relationship with my parents. I love my husband, and I love my boyfriend, and I want my parents comfortable with this. What do I do now? What should I have done differently?

The Gay Grenadier

I'm a mid-40s bi woman, married to a man for 20+ years. We live in an apartment building in a large East Coast city and I became friends with an upstairs neighbor who is roughly the same age. He is estranged (but not divorced) from his wife, who lives in a foreign country, and has a daughter who is about a year older than our son.

We became friends when the kids were about 4.5 and 5.5 (they're now 7.5 and 8.5), and were at one time such close friends that the kids considered each other cousins and I took his daughter with me to visit and stay with my family, who treated her as my second child. My friend and I spent a fair amount of time together on weekends because my husband was traveling a lot for work and the kids loved having the company. Over time, though, I started spending less time with my friend because he became increasingly unreliable, especially about picking his daughter up when he promised or getting my son home on time and my attempts to address the problem with him hadn't made a difference to his behavior.

About six weeks ago, the kids were begging to see each other and I relented and let my son go upstairs. I went up to visit a couple of hours later and my friend started a conversation about why we hadn't seen each other. I should have suspected something was off when he referred to a friend of his suggesting that my friend was my "second husband," but I shrugged it off. I tried to explain my problem with his unreliability but quickly realized that the beer in front of him was not his first and that he was way too drunk to take in what I was saying.

I gave up and let the conversation wander while I played with the kids. My friend started praising me for all the help I'd given him over the years, including while he was in graduate school, and, although I was a little uncomfortable, I tried to be gracious. He then said, "I'd like to take you to dinner sometime." I assumed he meant my husband and me and so I mentioned a babysitter, but he replied that I was "much nicer than he was" and that he meant that my husband should watch the kids while he and I went out.

I was too shocked to really respond and returned to playing with the kids. He then reiterated the request several times, until his daughter asked what was going on. He told her that "auntie understands what I'm talking about" and then proceeded to tell me "you know I'm trying to hit on you." I made up an excuse to leave and took both kids down to my apartment. I told my husband what had happened and, when he brought my friend's daughter back to his apartment an hour later, my friend was passed out drunk in his chair.

I'm 25 and a woman in an open relationship with a man that I love and have been dating for nearly three years. I finally started recognizing my own feelings of asexuality a month or so ago, and have been trying to reconcile myself with that fact since then. Sometimes, I do feel very "thorsty" and want to have sex, and sometimes I do find other people sexually attractive, but these moments are very rare, and usually having sex sets me back on the asexual path for another few weeks/months. (Of note: I mostly feel horny during times in my life where I'm very romantically attracted to someone or during times of higher adrenaline.) I enjoy dressing attractively and I enjoy feeling like other people find me attractive, but I never really want to have sex with someone other than my partner—and most of the time, I don't want to have sex with him. I enjoy dating and making out, and I enjoy receiving oral sex from women (and my partner), and some of my strongest orgasms have come from the mouth and hands of women, but I don't enjoy masturbation and I don't enjoy reciprocating and the sight of genitals kind of turns me off. It makes me feel like I'm being selfish because I don't want to have to feel obligated to "return the favor" with female partners, but I also don't want to seem ungrateful.

Do you have any advice about reconciling these feeling of wanting to be attractive to others, wanting to receive sex sometimes, but not really ever wanting to reciprocate, and identifying as asexual?

The Sexy Asexual

I am so glad you published the letter, "How Can I Give My Straight Boyfriend the Gay Blowjob He Secretly Yearns For," because I've been wanting to ask a similar question, though in our relationship it's not secret.

My partner has shared this fantasy before, among many other fantasies. We even became swingers for a time, and enjoyed some great experiences though he had some ED issues—and there's an ugly double standard in the swinging lifestyle that allows women to be bi-comfortable but not men, so he hasn't had much opportunity to enjoy his bi-curious BJ fantasy.

His libido far outpaces mine, and he wants me to help find him a suitable playmate for his fantasy BJ, and to present him with this gift, which makes me feel uncomfortable, and he feels too ashamed to search on his own. My participation is mandatory in his view. That I am not drawn to do this makes him feel unloved, that I am uninterested in his fulfilling his desires. I do want his happiness, but I feel put on the spot, forced. How can I get around this?

Dick Detective

My hubby and I have been married for more than twenty years, quite happily. Some ups and downs, which is normal, but we’re solid. About four years ago we decided to open up, not because of any sense of lack or boredom, but because we felt so solid and secure. About a year later I started seeing this amazing man, we just clicked. He brought out sides of me that I didn’t even know existed and we unexpectedly fell in love with each other. About six months into our relationship, his job took him overseas. We kept in touch every day several times a day and he flew me out to visit him a couple times a year over the last two years, as well as him visiting back home. So we’ve basically seen each other every three to five months for the last two and half years but no more than five or six days total each time.

About a year into his life overseas—after thousands of text messages, videos, pictures, and emails—he told me that he didn't want to move back home any time soon because work opportunities were better overseas. Plus, around that same time he started seeing someone, whom he insisted on constantly telling me about in the name of "sharing his life" with me. I thought, okay, that’s sad but I understand, let’s just call it quits. He wouldn’t hear it. He wanted to keep us alive because he said ‘you never know what may happen in future.' Fast forward two years and he’s still overseas with no end date in sight and still texting me intimately and regularly.

We’ve expressed a lot of love for each other (my husband is aware of this and fine with it) and we’ve been incredibly intimate with each other, and he has said a number of times that he doesn’t feel for this other woman what he feels for me; that he’s made "us" a condition of any relationship he has or will have in the future. (In other words, if they can’t handle me being in his life, then he won’t date 'em.) But over the past year or so I’ve been feeling a lot of pain and stress about the whole thing. Mostly because I don’t know when it will end. Add to that him telling me about his times with his girlfriend and it’s turned me into someone I don’t want to be: jealous, envious, sad, stressed out, lonely, tearful, confused—and I’m normally not a jealous person. I don’t mind sharing and I don’t expect exclusivity. But this situation has really tested me. I’ve tried to scale it back if not end it because it’s too painful not having a light at the end of the tunnel. When I have raised my concerns, he get’s angry or tearful and doesn’t want to end it.

I (30's, F) live with my mother where I help to pay bills, make repairs, and do chores in addition to my own expenses. Last year we had to put my father in a nursing home. He will never get better. While she is torn with grief over this—which I and others have repeatedly told her was impossible to avoid given my father's deteriorating condition and state of mind—she also seems to be in a relationship with a man she works with. (She's asked me to fix her phone, which makes me privy to graphic text messages she receives from this man.)

There is no way this would have been ok with my father—not that he is capable of having a conversation about it now. It has made our relationship very awkward. She will recount conversations with people whom she suddenly cannot remember the identities of. She goes on overnight trips to vague places with people she won't identify. She will disappear and become unreachable for hours at a time and then become uncharacteristically angry when I ask where she has been. She lies—frequently, badly. She drinks heavily and is otherwise checked out, preferring to communicate with my siblings through me. She'll offer to help me with something and then disappear or become too drunk to do so.

I have read you for long enough, Dan, that I know you'll want me to stay out of her personal life, but I am worried sick for her and don't know what to do. We cannot have an honest conversation about her drinking, the trips, or her social life. Pushing for details makes me feel like a bitch and a nag. But if she were to vanish on one of her trips, I wouldn't know where to begin looking for her. If I move out and restrict (what my siblings have done) or cut off contact, she will be isolated and likely lose our home. The most a therapist has been able to give me is a shrug and "that really sucks." I know my father would want me to take care of her, but I don't know how, and I'm doing a terrible job so far. I feel like I've lost both of my parents at the same time. Am I completely out of bounds? How do I talk to my mother about what she's doing? How do I proceed from here?

My Mother's Mother

I have a sex etiquette question for you. I like watersports, and I’m always looking for situations to practice. Several years ago, I heard a rumor about a guy in a rural area who holds piss parties during the summer in his backyard.

When I found a mailing list for those interested in piss play, it wasn’t long before he posted about one of these parties. People on the list serve talk a big game, but no one else has stepped up to host something, including me. (I would, but four neighbors look into my back yard.) The host has very simple rules on who can attend: you have to identify as a guy and wear masculine attire. He doesn’t request pictures, thereby barring you from coming if you don’t meet some standard of attractiveness. I drove up, drinking water along the way, because it’s important to pregame these things.

I get there, and there were about four guys and the host. I had a good time. The host has plenty of drinks out, towels, chairs, canopies, and candles to ward off the mosquitos. I’ve been back a couple times. Everyone is friendly enough and there’s the right amount of perversion.

So what’s the problem? The host. He’s loud and annoying. He insists on putting classical music on. (I don’t have a problem with the music, but it doesn’t set the mood very well.) He tells the same lame jokes every time he’s pissing on someone. He will complain that people say they're coming and don’t show. If you are having a moment with someone, he will invariably interrupt and say, “What’s going on here!?” while he horns in on the action.

Without being rude, I’ve tried to make it clear that we were not looking for company, but he doesn’t take the hint.

It’s his party, and props to him for hosting it. It takes effort and planning and I’ve let him know I appreciate that. I’m not aware of anything similar in the area. But, it takes the fun out of it when the host doesn’t know when to back off. I’ve gotten to the point where it’s not worth the effort to go. I’m not sure if others feel the same. Do you have any suggestions? Is it my problem and leave it at that? Just get over it? Or should I say something privately?

Person Exasperates Enthusiast