BLOGTOWN

I'm a bisexual mid-30s female who's been with the same guy for 14 years. Our relationship has been through a lot of ups and downs, with me intermittently getting crushes on other folks and wondering if I needed to go out and date other people (I was a late bloomer). I also intermittently struggled with anxiety and depression, and felt like I was leaning too much on him for support. I thought maybe I needed to develop the strength to be okay on my own. I was open with him about all this, and he was understandably not happy about it—he really wanted to be together. I brought up taking a break, but he was adamant that he didn't believe in breaks, and that just meant a break-up. Which was reasonable.

Anyway, I sought advice from a therapist, my family and friends: the therapist and my family all strongly thought that I should stay with him at least until my anxiety and depression got better and THEN decide whether or not to leave the relationship. (A couple friends thought otherwise, but I chose to trust the professional in this case.) I still felt really guilty about leaning on him if I wasn't sure if I wanted to be with him, so I left for a while and went back to my family. My family's abusive in some ways, though, with major anger issues, so I couldn't lean on them, and I was so deep in my anxiety that I had a hard time reaching out to friends for support. And my therapist kept saying to go back to him, because he was my main support system and I really needed support to get better. I was at the end of my rope, so I did.

So I was innocently browsing the personal ads on Craigslist and saw one from a dude who was looking to try "saline balls" for the first time. Having no idea what this was, I googled it. Even worse, I google-imaged it. I pride myself on being unshockable, but I was completely and utterly mortified at what I saw. With that said, my copious internet searching failed to yield the answers to the basic/most important questions regarding saline balls: (1) What is the procedure/process for salining one's balls? (2) What about it turns on the saliner/salinee? (3) How long does the effect last? (4) Can it be (god forbid) irreversible?

Completely Utterly Mortified

I'm a happily married man. I've been with my partner for eight years and we've had a "DADT" open relationship since the beginning. We're sexually compatible, each of us has our own kinks, we're both GGG, and I've never actually played the open relationship card. Recently I started chatting with a guy online who shares some of my kinky interests and I really like the idea of fooling around with someone whose brain is kink-wired like mine. My question is, if the intention is just to chat and maybe hook up at some point, should I disclose to this guy that I'm married? I feel a little weird about potentially deceiving him if he thinks I'm single—and I don't know why he'd assume otherwise at this point—but at the same time if we're keeping everything casual and I'm up front about what I'm looking for—just a casual hookup, nothing more—is it even necessary to bring it up? I think I'd enjoy seeing this guy (and if I flatter myself, I think he'd enjoy seeing me) and I don't want to turn him off at the outset or end something that could be really fun before it even starts. What are my obligations in this situation?

Dudes And Dick Tricks

Yeah, so I'm a 17-year-old lesbian and decided to be big and brave and come out to my parents. I did the whole "born this way," "please accept me," etc., that I'm sure everyone tries.

Things got pretty damn quiet, which was actually a good reaction in my books because my parents are kind of religious and the words "conversion therapy" were once-upon-a-time raised at the table as a good thing to have available to gay kids, so... I thought things went kind of well considering.

And then, guess what? My parents decided to have a nice sit down with me tonight and beside them is my Dad's laptop and on it is one of your videos on YouTube, which I though was pretty darn weird considering my parents usual tastes in entertainment. What played then was your video on women's sexuality with that lovely quote about your five lesbian friends—three of whom are now married to men. Bravo Dan, way to throw a sister under the bus. Because now my parents are taking your word as a fellow homosexual that there is no such thing as a woman being totally gay and that with a bit of therapy I can drag myself back to "straight."

Newsflash, Dan: I've never been into dudes. Like, ever. Always known it, from back when I prayed to God when playing spin the bottle it would land on my girl friends and not one of the guys. So some girls might like to swap and change, but others don't.

Not that I think you'll ever read this, but on the small off chance that you do, well, YOU SUCK. Like, so much. Think about what you say before you say it next time! I get that it obviously wasn't what you were trying to say. You saying that lesbians can change what gender they like is just made of fail.

Pissed Off Dyke

My response—and an epic email exchange with POD—after the jump.

I’m in my late 20s and I've been dating an amazing guy for six months. We have amazing adventures together and incredible sex. He has awakened a part of me that I thought I had lost a long time ago. He makes me feel safe and appreciated like I have never experienced before. I don’t have a great track record with men and I feel so lucky to have found a man who I feel so supported by and loved completely.

Here is my problem: We met through a mutual friend who, at the time of our meeting, I had not had sexual contact with. He was with someone else at the time and we had spent some time together as just platonic friends, which we are to this day. He is a great guy and I consider him a close friend. My boyfriend and I hooked up once or twice before things got serious. We both have trust issues and it took a month or so before we started to see each other seriously. After the first couple times I hooked up with the man who is now my boyfriend... I ended up partying with our mutual friend and we had sex. We talked about it later and agreed that it wasn’t a good decision on both our parts. We remain good friends and neither of us has told anyone about it.

I feel guilty for not telling my boyfriend about hooking up with our mutual friend. It was before either of us had realized that we wanted to take things further. I don’t think our friend will say anything to him—he loves my boyfriend like a brother and is really happy we found each other—but it eats at me. Whenever my boyfriend gets upset and withdrawn, I imagine it’s because he found out. I know it was before we got serious and that it shouldn’t be a huge deal, but it haunts me. Keeping this secret is making me feel like a bad person and a bad partner.

Do you have any advice on how to deal with this situation if it ever comes out or how to deal with the guilt? Logically, I know it isn’t a huge deal, we weren’t serious at the time, and if a friend of mine told me this story I would tell them not to worry and just deal with it if it comes to light. I just care so deeply for this person and I would never want to hurt him.

Woman With A Secret

I'm writing to you because I recently developed a problem in my relationship. The premise is that we don’t live in the same city but see at least once per month. We are but in our mid-twenties and have been together for almost two years. We love each other so much. Compatibility, stability and sharing has never been better than this.

We come to the sore points now. The sex with my boyfriend was initially very full of erotic "violence" that lasted for hours: ropes, bad words, explicit messages, and so on, In fact, at the beginning we both agreed that it would be nothing more than sex between us. But the more he fell in love the more the sex became the romantic and sweet "making love" variety. I like that kind of sex and I enjoy it and I can still come. But for me this "making love" sex should be alternated with the other kind of sex because that kind of sex incomparable for me. I've tried to hint about this to him and he seemed to understand but months months later he does not give me even a single slap.

Add to this a recent medical/aesthetic problem he is suffering from—which to me is not annoying but to him it very much is—and he does not feel sexy. So all the sexting between has now ended too. I stopped sending him my photos because I didn't see any reaction from him and he didn't ask me for more. He says that when he passes this problem he will again feel confident as before, but we do not even know when it will pass. And then the problem remains that I would sometimes like to have a good fuck without attached romance.

I feel like a selfish nymphomaniacal bitch and I can't understand how to solve this. If a man complained that his woman didn't want to do it every day, just the way he liked, or didn't send him sexy photos, he would probably be insulted and probably he’d deserved to be. Maybe I deserve to be insulted too. But if I knew that he sexually wanted a certain thing I would satisfy him without thinking!

Do I have to wait? Try to be provocative? Somehow put my soul at peace with the fact I will never again experience the exciting kind sex I most enjoy? Should I just accept the awful fact that I found an amazing clever and handsome guy who is too much in love with me to humiliate me while having sex?

Horny Guilty Girlfriend

I have been with my boyfriend for three years come September. This feels massively pathetic writing this, but we were insanely happy for the first six months of that relationship.

We have sort of a complicated beginning, as he pined after me for a long time before I gave him a chance. While I should have taken this in and of itself as a red flag (if I didn't want to be with him for the six months before we started dating, then why did I deem it appropriate to give him a chance?), I'm a weak and naive human being. And he gave me my first-ever orgasm from a man.

Sine then, obviously, things have become much, much more complicated. On paper, he sounds like an amazing individual. He loves to cook, great taste in music, hard worker, good lucking, athletic, blah blah blah. However, the individual I've come to know is nightmarish in a relationship. He is incredibly possessive (tells me any time a man is looking at me), nosy (constantly stealing my phone), aggressive when fighting (makes personal attacks, brings up my family), doesn't let "resolved" fights die (always brings them up) and has called me a "fucking bitch" and "cunt" five times within the past two weeks.

Wait... I don't know why I'm sending this. I just realized that any question that could follow this surveying what to do would be ludicrous. I've made up my mind, thanks for (maybe?) reading.

Never Mind

About a month ago, I got drunk and slept with my friend's girlfriend. (He's not my best friend, more of a second-tier friend.) We both swore never to tell anyone and left it at that. Only problem is, we've been hanging out a lot lately and sending private messages to each other multiple times a day, but nothing physical. It's progressed to the point that our mutual friends are starting to notice that there's something going on between the lady and me. And, frankly, if someone I was dating were doing what she is doing, I'd consider it cheating.

Things came to a head a few nights ago when we ended up skinny-dipping and then showering together. We are obviously infatuated. We had a long talk about what to do: We are really into each other, but there are issues. For starters, she would have to break up with her boyfriend, something she would do in theory, but there are housing issues (she lives with him) and friendship issues (her best friend is his best friend's lady). Furthermore, I'm scared not only of getting beat to hell by her man, but of getting shunned by all of my friends for stealing another man's girl.

Everything is interconnected in the most fucked-up ways possible. I'm wondering if there is any way out of this with the desired result for everyone: the lady and I together, friends understanding of the situation, and her boyfriend not totally destroyed. I still like her boyfriend as a friend and a guy, and I don't want to crush him with a pre-winter breakup (it gets real lonely here in the winter).

Fucked In Madison

After spending some years in the doldrums after having kids, my husband and I are now enjoying hot kinky sex and the occasional free pass to fuck other people. We couldn't be happier. I have a friend who was extremely keen for me to cage his cock with the same kind of locking male chastity device I got for my husband—a fixed-ring stainless-steel type. I have two questions: (1) It took some maneuvering to get my husband's balls through one by one, followed by his cock, but he managed. Is it okay for his balls to swell up tight, get cold, and go purple when he's wearing the cock cage and he is aroused? He says it doesn't hurt, and he is wearing it only while I peg him—a couple of hours tops. I worry that even though he can squeeze into the ring, he might be cutting off circulation and doing damage. (2) My friend couldn't get his balls and cock into the cage. His balls never dropped as a child, so he had an operation that pulled them down but fixed them in place. Consequently they sit "high and tight" and can't be pulled away from his body. Can you recommend a cage that might fit him? He is into total submission and orgasm denial, and he wants to experience long-term forced chastity and relinquish control of his dick to me. (Hot, right?!) If a cage can't work for him, are there other toys/methods I can use to give him that sense of surrendered cock and loss of control?

Bitch Ably Locking Lucky Sluts Up Properly

A very respected person in my community passed away a few weeks ago. It was a sad, sudden, and expected death. They were twenty years my senior and worked closely with many of my mentors. Like many of my peers, I respected this person but didn’t know them closely—at least, that’s what everyone thinks. The truth is, I had an intensely hot kinky affair with this person for the last few months of their life. We were seeing each other behind our partners’ backs. It was a mess. Things ended badly. I blame myself in part for their death, because during the last month of their life, I rejected their advances in order to do right by my partner. (I have since told my partner about the affair, and the two of us are working through it.)

Only a couple of my friends know about my involvement with this person. They are also sad, but not to the degree that I am. I feel like I’m dead too. Right now, I want more than anything to grieve with the people who were close to them. I want to hear stories about them and know more about their life. I want to ask their closest friend (who may have known that we were together) what the deceased said of me, if anything. But it seems like there are boundaries I shouldn’t cross here. Out of respect for the deceased—they'd asked me to keep our affair a secret—and also for the deceased’s ex-partner and family, who have no idea. And also for myself! Asking my peers about this person could damage my reputation and even my career.

The deceased’s public memorial service is in a few weeks. I want to attend, but I’m afraid l’ll get inappropriately emotional and people will get suspicious of me. But I don’t know how I’m supposed to cope with this loss by myself. If I don’t let out this grief soon, it’s going to eat me alive. What should I do, Dan? How should The Other Woman cope in a situation like this?

Suffering A Death Covertly, Unbeknownst2 Nearby Teachers

I'm a 36-year-old cis hetero-flexible woman that's pretty much been the definition of GGG. I don't have any specific fetishes, but I'm open (I'm down for switch BDSM, furry play, pegging, pain play, you get the picture) and love to have my partner enjoy themselves. My partner is a wonderful 36 year old bi man who is a super freak, and we're monogamous and have been together six years. Pretty much any kink you can name, we've tried it, and we've spent the better part of six years having the best sex of our lives and experimenting with anything and everything we could both think of. Beyond just the experimentation he has a long list of kinks he's really into and I love to oblige. The dude is a freak and his anything-goes attitude has always been a huge turn on.

The trouble is, the more time goes on, the more our pegging sex—which plays a significant role in our sex life (maybe 30-40%?)—is feeling... well, more and more gay and I'm not sure I'm enjoying it anymore. For a long while, I regarded his affinity for pegging, and his appreciation for sex with dudes, as the separate things they are. For example I knew he watched both pegging porn and gay porn and I was totally cool with both. He would discuss how much it turned him on to watch a woman in latex fucking a bound dude, (which I was happy to reenact!), or show me a hot gay sex scene he had just enjoyed.

I’ve been reading Savage Love for years and think you are serving up exactly what people need not what they want to hear. In that vein, I have some questions if you have some time.

I’m 19, a college sophomore, and a cisgender straight woman. When I was 15, a girlfriend and I were walking to get ice cream and we took a shortcut through a wooded park type area and found a homeless person living there. My girlfriend dared me to make out with him and to both of our surprise I did. It wasn’t really anything amazing just some sloppy kissing and me feeling nervous that my friend was watching me. After that makeout session I started to fantasize about what would've happened if things had gone further in a consensual way and this was a common theme to help achieve release on many of my lonely high school nights.

In high school and now in college I volunteer at a soup kitchen and often times I will substitute the people I meet and serve into my fantasy to help get me where I need to go. My questions are:

1. Is there a community or a name for people like me, i.e. women that fantasize about sex with homeless men.

2. This may seem weird but am I predator? I feel strange having an attraction for a group of people and then engaging in activities that puts me in close proximity to them without their knowledge of my kind of ulterior motive. Sometimes I just feel strange when I’m chatting to patrons of the soup kitchen.

Better Understanding My Sexuality

Longtime reader in Colorado. For the last few months, I've been casually seeing a man, about my same age, who is in an open marriage. We met via Craigslist Personals, back before that ended. Started off as a massage client before our mutual attraction and friendship turned into him coming over, having great sex, pillow talk for a bit before he leaves. Some evenings coming over for drinks and ending having sex. It’s unspoken that we are both seeing others and this is just casual sex with some growing feelings between us. I’d get very sweet texts from him, regularly, about him missing me and general caring, friendly texts. I have been fine with what our relationship consisted of. I would consider myself to be GGG, not jealous and very cool with casual relationships. My problem came up a couple mornings ago, when I was looking around on Fetlife. He and I have both been on there, off and on. By sheer coincidence, I ran across a four-month-old post from him stating: "45yo professor and 18yo girlfriend looking for play with couples. She is hot, amazing tits and just loves sex. Would love to go to Mon Chalet as well. Send info and a pic."

Many emotions came over me...

1. He is 45 and dating a just-recently-graduated high-school-age teenager!
2. Eighteen is one number away from him being considered a pedophile.
3. He is completely exploiting this young girl via this Fetlife ad.
4. He’s a college professor and this is probably one of his students.
5. He is taking advantage of this young, naïve girl who obviously has daddy issues if she’s interested in a man that much older.

I immediately sent him a text including a screen shot of the ad and told him that although obviously very open minded about a lot of things, him fucking a teenager is fucked up and I’m done with him. His response: “Sorry, I am not perfect.” This also brings up for me that I’m grossed out that I’ve been fucking a pedophile for months now. Am I wrong to believe this situation is not right or am I not as open minded as I think I am? Am I making much more of this than I should?

Creeped Out By Old Prof

I've been listening to your podcast for a couple of hours now. Coincidentally I happen to be in the midst of a problem myself and I'm not sure how to approach this. I'm a 28-year-old woman and I’ve been seeing this 26-year-old man for about three months now. Although I know this is extremely early and we have a long way to go in regards to sex and knowing what we like/are comfortable with, I've noticed that he isn’t enthusiastic about having sex with me. In my past experiences sex wasn't an issue in the early stages of a relationship. He has mentioned liking ass play before, which I am totally open to and would like to explore with him, and I've expressed this to him. Despite this he doesn’t seem open to it. This past weekend I spent a couple of days with him and we didn’t actually have sex at all. He was really emotionally effected by the fact that I was clearly effected by this fact and we had a conversation but he just couldn’t seem to come up with an explanation. I wrote it off as stress (he has been going through some stressful things lately) and I decided to wait this out and hope that it isn’t a permanent issue. Then today he left for work and I was left alone in his room and I know this isn’t good but I ended up finding his dildo that he uses on himself. I knew he had this and I’ve seen it before and I don’t have a problem with it. But I noticed it was very noticeably used a LOT. There was debris on it. That was kind of gross, of course, but I also couldn’t help but feel offended. So he is feeling sexual just not when it comes to having sex with me? I know masturbation is a unique and personal experience for people and I shouldn’t take it personally but I can’t wrap my head around him wanting to put this dick-shaped toy in his ass but not wanting to put his dick in me.

Do you have any insight about this?

Dude Likes Dildo Over Sex