Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of April 3. Let’s get right into it.
You can listen to this week’s episode here and read this week’s Savage Love column here.
Dan’s opening rant this week is about Joe Kennedy III, who gave the Democratic response to the State of the Union address. Kennedy recently gave an interview with Ezra Klein. Dan is off the Kennedy train when Kennedy refused to endorse legalizing marijuana. Kennedy’s specific objection was that decriminalizing pot made prosecutors’ jobs harder because smelling pot gave the police license to search cars legally. Dan rightly points out that legalizing marijuana takes away a reason that cops use to harass and search people of color at a disproportionate rate. Dan argues that this was the main reason that he voted to legalize pot in Washington, though I’ll leave it up to you whether you believe it or not.
On to the calls! A man has a coworker who is sending him porn, at work during work hours. He’d go to HR, but the coworker just had a baby. What should our caller do? Dan advises going to the coworker directly and telling him, in no uncertain terms, to knock that shit off or you’ll get shitcanned for sure.
A woman went on a great second date with a guy. They went climbing, baked and cooked together, had sex, and overall spent twelve hours together. The next day, they had a text conversation, then nothing – he stopped responding to her. Our caller has never misread a situation this badly, and is afraid he’s dead. Dan calls back. In the time between the original call and Dan’s conversation, the guy finally responded, but tried to play it off as if a bunch of time hadn’t passed. The caller and the guy have been on several more dates since and his text etiquette has improved! A happy ending.
A woman wants to know how to pack her vibrator to be polite to the TSA folks searching her bags. They’ve seen them all, Dan says. Don’t bury it, especially if it’s an unusual one.
A straight married woman went out dancing with her straight friends who were in town, and it wasn’t until they got to the club that our coked-out protagonists (“we did some drugs that made us want to go dancing”) realized it was LGBT night at the club. Our caller was approached by a girl and told her she was married and bi. She then made out with this girl, which the husband was okay with, and got the lesbian’s number. But now the woman doesn’t really see where things could go from here and wants to know how to handle it. Dan says our caller has done nothing wrong here – straight people are allowed to be at clubs on LGBT night, the other woman opted in to kissing our caller, and our caller didn’t misrepresent herself or otherwise make herself unwelcome. The only way to find out where it goes from here is to contact her again.
A bi woman is in a six-year monogamous relationship with a man, and she wants to fuck other people. The problem is she can’t stand the thought of him fucking other people himself. How can she process this? The easy solution is to be in a cuckold-ish relationship, but assuming that won’t fly, the way to do it is to stare down your jealousy. Jealousy is rooted in fear – if the fear is that he won’t love you or be attracted to you when he can sleep with other people, you get over it by seeing that the fear is not realized here, that he still does love you and want you.
A woman has been with her husband for four years, married for one. Several years ago, the husband had an injury that required surgery and a metal plate that caused him great pain. A week ago, he had surgery to remove the plate and is feeling better. During the painful period, our caller picked up the slack on caretaking and home duties, which burned her out. How can she get over these burned-out feelings? In the moment, Dan says, you tell yourself that it won’t always be like this and don’t let resentment win. But our caller also knows that she needs more practical assistance. Hire a house cleaner or call in friends to help.
A bi woman just went on an amazing date with an amazing guy, but she found out on Facebook that he has a serious long-term girlfriend, which of course he did not bring up. Should she tell the girlfriend? Dan argues, unconvincingly to me, that a real cheater would go to greater lengths to hide the existence of his girlfriend from potential dates. Dan thinks our caller should confront the guy with the goods first, which I think is the right answer. Best practices dictates that if he is in an open relationship, he should have been completely honest about that up front.
After a horrible marriage, a woman met a man online and fell in love quickly. He says our caller should be with an athlete or a doctor instead of a schlub like him (she’s a professional, he’s a truck driver). She said that was hurtful and made her feel stupid. She’s been reconsidering whether she wants to be with him long-term. How should she feel about this? This could be a white lie that people tell to try to get out of a relationship, but Dan doesn’t think that’s the case here. Instead, this is probably a manifestation of insecurity by this man. The guy could be insecure because he’s not providing like she is, or he could be concerned that our caller is looking down her nose at him. This requires a conversation, one that many more opposite-sex couples will have to have. It’s on us men to not be so threatened by being second in the relationship in earning power, but until then, this particular man needs some reassurance.
A 25-year-old gay man in New York has been with his partner for six years, and they’re talking about opening up the relationship. The problem is that the partner had secretly been seeing a guy a couple times a week last summer. The hooking up part of it didn’t hurt the caller as much as the lies surrounding it did. They were able to patch things up and the relationship is now stronger than before, but the partner has suggested having a threesome with the other guy. Is this too much to ask? Yes, this is too much to ask, says Dan, and the partner’s inability to see this does not augur well for his chances to pull off ethical nonmonogamy well. Especially in New York goddamn City, there are other guys down for a threesome with two 25-year-old guys.
It’s time for What You Got? Kristen Mark, a professor at the University of Kentucky, is on to talk about her study about maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships. Self-expansion, doing things you might not normally do, is great, as is showing your partner sexual compatibility and willingness to take risks. That means Dan’s standard advice to couples in a sexual rut, to agree to fuck three times this week but not in the house, is great advice. Another important thing is acknowledging expectations – understanding that your libidos might not match up perfectly all the time and managing to go along with ebbs and flows, by not resenting the lower partner or by assisting the higher partner. Finally, maintaining a measure of autonomy is essential in keeping desire up. Dan recommends flirting with others to keep that autonomy.
At a married man’s last job, his married supervisor was like his work spouse. Before he left that job, and while he was going through a rough time in his marriage, he told one of his coworkers that he had a crush on her. After he left, she cut off contact for a long time because she found out about his little crush. Now things are awkward. What’s Dan’s advice? Dan wonders why he wants to maintain contact with the old boss anyway – any form of contact would potentially undo the gains in his marriage he’s made.
A woman broke up with her boyfriend of a year. Even though the relationship was emotionally healthy, she lost all sexual desire for him, and she told him this. She broke things off compassionately, she thought, they exchanged letters, and that was that. Until a week ago, when he sent her a long angry text. When she responded, acknowledging his feelings, he replied with an even longer angry email. Should she respond to his last communication? What should she do? Some people get angry when they get dumped, but that doesn’t mean that she has to be a party to it. Let him be mad, say sorry, then stop responding.
A woman keeps finding herself in the same circumstance: when she’s making out with someone, they start choking her, or grabbing her belly, or biting her hard. Shouldn’t they ask to do those things? Those actions are hot, but still. How should she deal with this? Dan suggests saying that you’re uncomfortable with how not asking for consent for these things portends in how you ask consent for other things. Dan once again extols the virtue of the question “what are you into?”
Caller feedback! Please don’t dump the conspiracy theorist – fight back and make her dump you over it. The other couple might not be into the babygirl because she’s a babygirl. A lot of ladies love a curved dick.
Thanks for reading.
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