Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of April 17. Apologies for the late post today – I am just starting a new job and am expecting to have some late nights for a little while. But let’s get down to it.
You can listen to this week’s episode here. You can read this week’s Savage Love column here.
Dan’s opening rant is about whether President Trump is into piss. (This sentence is still so so bizarre.) Trump was obsessed with denying the allegations that he was in cahoots with pissing Russian sex workers, saying among other things that he is a germaphobe. Dan says that does not get Trump off the hook, since germaphobes are likelier to eroticize transgressions involving filth. Dan says the kinkster subconsciously wants to be exposed. The conclusion is obvious, says Dan: the pee tape is real.
On to the calls! A married woman is in a great open relationship. Now she’s hooking up with a friend, who has never made her come, not even when she showed him how. Why does she keep seeing him? Because when she gets done sleeping with the friend, she comes home to her husband who does make her come, and they have mindblowing sex. Should she confront the friend more about why he’s so lousy? Dan points out that this is working for both the caller and her husband. Is it bad that she is setting up future women for disappointment? Dan would say something to the friend.
A man and his girlfriend want to know what the deal is with cock rings. Dan is delighted to answer this, because most people just look up the answers on a wiki page. Cock rings work by pinching the veins taking blood away from the penis, which increases the strength of the erection (an erection, after all, is just blood entering the penis faster than it is leaving). Cock rings should be snug against the base of an erect dick. They can be used to help ease ED or merely as art.
A 25-year-old gay married man recently separated with his husband when the husband stopped having sex and said he needed his space. In therapy, it came out that the husband had fallen in love with someone else, a violation of their open relationship rules, and this was after he had cheated previously. Where does our caller go from here? Dan would be headed to a divorce attorney. The husband is telling you loud and clear through his actions that he wants out of the marriage. If the husband can’t commit to change and the marriage after having been told that you talked to a divorce lawyer, you gotta get out.
Another 25-year-old gay man is having doubts about his almost-one-year relationship. The relationship itself and the man himself are great, but this relationship came on the heels of a four-year relationship for our caller, and our caller doesn’t think he had enough time to be single or to find himself in between. This manifests itself in wondering doubts. How can our caller get past this? Dude, Dan says, you’re always going to have doubts. Acknowledge them, but then shift focus to the experiences you’re having and the person you’re with. If the relationship you’re in is fantastic, don’t stress yourself out about how it came to be. Dan’s “don’t worry about meeting someone on the rebound” advice is usually too overbroad, but here is the right time to bust it out.
A woman’s wealthy parents are pressuring her to buy a house in Seattle, where they live. She lives in another city with a boyfriend she loves. The parents treat the boyfriend horribly, insinuating that he might only want her for the money. He’s willing to move to Seattle with her, but should they? Dan says that our caller is an adult, and can do what she wants.
A caller’s friend lives with his ex-girlfriend. They dated for two years, and have been living together as friends for six (as well as coparenting two cats). How should the friend roll this out to potential dates? Or should he just move out? Dan usually considers it a good sign if someone is friends with their ex. That said, living with an ex projects too much intimacy for new partners, and it might represent bad judgment.
A cis bi woman is in an open relationship with her boyfriend of six months. Our caller is sleeping with a guy, and she is crazy about him. One of the rules of the open relationship is that they cut it off when it gets to the point of emotional attachment, but our caller doesn’t know where that line is. She’s texting and sexting the other guy all the time, and they see each other once a week. The boyfriend is great, but his sex drive isn’t as high, he doesn’t text as much, and his sexting game is terrible. Should she just leave for this other guy, keep things going as-is, or what? Dan calls back. He’s gobsmacked that she is already in an open relationship with well-defined rules with a person she’s only been seeing for six months. That should be the stage for dating and mating, not for a commitment like that. Dan asks if she was happy in the relationship, and our caller says she was until the other guy came around. The other guy is providing new relationship energy to a new relationship, so this is an instance of the other guy probably just being better for our caller. The caller doesn’t want to break up with a great guy, but Dan reminds her that it’s okay to break up with someone just because they’re not the right fit.
A man and his wife in their 40s have been together for 20 years and have two kids. For the last 18 months, they’ve been in a great poly arrangement with a single woman in her early 30s. Her kid plays with their kids, and the adults all play together too (the women are both bi). They’ve joked (but not really joked) about getting a big house together and blending the big family. How could the logistics of this work? Dan invites on Cunning Minx of the Poly Weekly podcast to help answer this question. Minx says poly people move in together for the same reason monogamous people do – they want to combine their lives in some tangible way. As for the kids, they will know more than you think they do. If people hide and are ashamed of their poly partners, they will know, but they will also be ashamed. Minx says that having more parents around is never a bad thing. Minx says if there might be some repercussions about coming out as poly, tell the kids anyway. The bottom line: as with any other relationship, taking the next step might work out great, and it might not. Keep talking through the whole thing.
Minx stays on to answer another question. A mostly-straight 35-year-old woman has been dating a man for three months. About a month in, our caller realized that they weren’t cut out for monogamy, and they agreed to tentatively open the relationship. He immediately ran out the door to take advantage. Then he started canceling plans with our caller and lying about always using protection with other people, both of which were violations of their agreement. She told him they were done, but he begged her to reconsider. Can they move forward? Minx and Dan agree: this is not how a good relationship functions, poly or no. Minx argues that imposing rules on others always leads to ruin, which Dan rightly pushes back on. If you break a safe sex agreement, that might not be the end of the world, but lying about it certainly is. Minx would stick around if it was a magic dick, but Dan would DTMFA.
A woman was in an emotionally abusive relationship for two and a half years. They broke up and got back together seven times, but the last time was really final – blocked him on everything. He keeps trying to contact her, and even talked to her at a party, but our caller has been holding firm. But she didn’t block his texts, and now they’re talking again. He wants her back, he’s been watching videos about how to get his ex back, and he’s playing the long game. How does she essentially break up with him again? This is the wrong place to be friendly with your ex, says Dan, when they want to get back in your pants. Text him one final time: “I’m going to block you on my phone. It’s time for both of us to move on. I am not going to date you again. I wish you well.” And then never respond to him again. If you run into him in meatspace, be civil, but firm.
A 23-year-old straight man, newly transplanted to the Pacific northwest, is in a relationship. Both he and his girlfriend use Tinder to meet new platonic friends. Our caller meets both men and women on the app to be friends. He saw a man on the app who went to the same college that he did, and he reached out. They met up and had a really good time. Due to a sitcom misunderstanding, an old ex-girlfriend reached out to our caller to ask if he was gay, and proceeded to throw a fit about it. Did she have a right to confront our caller just to work through her insecurity? Dan says she was wrong, but she might have had seven or eight boyfriends in a row who later came out as gay, this puts things in context.
Caller feedback! It’s weird to buy lube for your kids, but it kind of works. Kids don’t have social IQ to know when it is appropriate to curse. One four-year-old kid told the only day care provider in town to “fuck off” and also called a woman at the grocery store, whose card had been declined, a “broke-ass bitch.” There are lots of people who are into women of size.
Thanks for reading.
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