Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of June 12. Let’s get right into it.
You can listen to this week’s episode and read this week’s Savage Love column.
Dan’s opening rant this week is about the return of the ex-gays. Exodus International, as you may recall, shut its doors in 2013, admitting the practice of conversion therapy did not work, and yet. A new organization called Equipped to Love has a shiny website and Instagram account. Despite the new packaging, it’s still the same hateful bullshit it’s always been. One of the tropes they peddle is that of the self-loathing gay cockhound. And while Dan is the first to admit that it’s possible for gay men to have lots of slutty sex, gay men do not just have dehumanizing sex and relationships. It’s easy to laugh at these trolls, but they can drive gay kids to suicide.
On to the calls! A 35-year-old straight flight attendant told a work acquaintance about the great open relationship he has with his girlfriend. So as soon as they got on the ground, the acquaintance texted the girlfriend asking her about the biggest sex toy she’s ever used. She tells their best friend, and the friend brushed the whole thing off as a prank. How does our caller respond? Dan says the friend is blameless here – the friend guessed wrong. As far as the acquaintance goes, Dan lays out how he sees appropriate conversations along these lines going. He says that people in open relationships have the right to say that, just as people in monogamous relationships have the right to talk about the contours of their relationship, but that doesn’t extend to talking about the type of sex you have. Assuming that our caller went along these boundaries, the acquaintance took an unjustified and gross liberty. Time to talk to the guy, in writing if possible, and lay down the law.
A 22-year-old woman wants to know how to come out to her family – as a stripper. Dan thinks people should tell their families things on a need to know basis. Your family needs to know that you’re gay, because that’s who your relationships will be with, but they don’t need to know about your kinks or porn preferences. The other consideration here, of course, is that sex work is stigmatized. Dan would go for it in this case. He doesn’t give her any advice for how to do so, but I imagine his advice for other kinds of coming out – lay it out matter-of-factly, not as a tragedy; give them a little bit to throw their tantrums; be open for a little while to answering even their most ignorant questions – will apply here.
A bi guy just broke up with a guy he was seeing for two years, and wants to be a unicorn for male-female couples. Where to find them? There are apps for this kind of thing, Dan says, or you can put yourself out there on a mainstream dating app. One of Dan’s bi friends says he had good luck with cuckolding ads.
A 33-year-old woman is trying to find a boyfriend, but she’s up front about her membership in a kink community. The problem is that men misinterpret this openness for horniness or sluttiness. How can she be honest without giving the wrong impression? Dan wonders if she’s open to dating in the kink community, even though it is a good idea to spread your net wide, as it were. Dan thinks perhaps it’s best to withhold the kink information for a date or two.
A 31-year-old queer person has a presentation somewhere between a butch lesbian and a femme boy. Our caller is attracted primarily to women, but is only attracted to men when topping them. Our caller, who has a vagina, sees the stigma in the gay community about women who go after gay men, and doesn’t want to be stigmatized. Our caller has been hit on the gay bars before, but turns them down. Are there gay men or femme queers who would be into a person like this? Dan calls back and asks why our caller doesn’t respond to getting hit on. The answer is because usually it doesn’t go anywhere. Our caller then describes why the group sex sessions with the gay roommate aren’t really a possibility either. Dan encourages our caller to keep that avenue open. But our caller has to brave the queer spaces and deal with a little rejection to find the particular type of queer person – femme, reads gay, likes pussy – that works. They exist in the pile of gay men that are out there. Our caller has had that humiliating experience of having someone who just touched their vagina say how disgusting vaginas are. Dan says gay guys have been there too, and it sucks, but you have to power through.
An early-30s guy is now a year out from his “first divorce.” Nothing violent or traumatic happened, they just grew apart. In the time since, he’s only had a few Bumble and Tinder hookups. He can’t conceptualize ever really loving anyone again (a thought pattern that gets worse when he gets high). How does he get back to that place? First, I will quote Dan here, because this is about as strong as it’s going to get from him: “If weed is making you feel bad, or making bad feelings worse, maybe not with the weed right now?” Our caller is sad right now because of his divorce, which is understandable and common. Dan then talks about reframing, which is a therapeutic technique that has really worked for me. Your marriage did not show that you are unworthy of being loved – it showed you are capable of loving and being loved for as long as it happened. And that can happen again. The relationship, although it didn’t last forever, is a positive one if you learned things about yourself. If you don’t get consumed by bitterness or self-pity, you can use those lessons in your next successful long-term relationship. Dan thinks therapy would also be helpful for our caller, which I agree with as well.
A 37-year-old woman has a great group of friends where she grew up and still lives. She was gabbing with her friend when her friend said that the friend’s ex-boyfriend said that the caller likes to get peed on, which our caller does not. How does she respond to this? The only way to respond to a malicious rumor is with the truth. Don’t worry about it too much.
A 28-year-old queer woman has been dating a late-40s woman for ten months. The partner has stopped wanting sex, and so they don’t have it anymore. This has happened with every relationship our caller has ever been in. What’s going on? Dan is joined by Ellie Brigida and Leigh Holes Foster, the hosts of the Lez Hang Out podcast, to tackle this and other lesbian questions. Is lesbian bed death a real thing? Yeah, but it’s not limited to lesbians – straight couples have sexless relationships too. Dan has to be a pedant about something (which I, being a pedant, will correct his pronunciation on: it’s PED-ent, not puh-DANT). Could there be more sexless relationships in lesbian relationships because both partners are typically receptive? That might have something to do with it, and also the fact that women are more likely to accept their partner’s rejection. With our particular caller, she needs to go find partners with higher sex drives. Dan says you do that by laying out how important sex is close to up front in a relationship.
A lesbian is in a relationship with a bi woman, who just came out. Our caller has had a lot more sexual partners than her partner. Our caller wants her partner to go get that queer experience, and has told her partner this, but they’re monogamous. How do they have that conversation? Ellie or Leigh wonders why it’s so important for our caller for her partner to have pussy shoved down her throat. Dan thinks the partner is happy where she is right now. The insistence is probably because of the caller’s fear. She needs to chill out.
A 24-year-old woman broke up with her cheating ex-girlfriend two years ago. The ex left behind a dog, a car lease, and an apartment and basically ruined her life for a while. Anyway, while doing some light social media stalking, she saw her best friend liked the ex’s photo. And then, whoops, our caller liked it too. She immediately unliked it, but it was too late, and the ex messaged her back to ask if she was ready to talk. (I swear, when Dan has on lesbian guests, he or Nancy deliberately picks the most stereotypical questions.) Our caller said no and that she wishes she were dead. The ex’s new fiancee sends a long note saying the ex has really recovered well from addiction. Then she drops the bomb – the best friend is planning to hang out with the ex. Our caller feels betrayed. Leigh says there are two types of lesbian exes – the most toxic people ever and people who end up in your bridal party. But what are friends’ responsibilities here? If the relationship was particularly traumatic, then friends should have your back. But you can’t expect your friends to pick up your irrational hatred with you. You can choose to keep your best friend or not, but you can’t necessarily tell them who to be friends with. You can listen to Lez Hang Out wherever you get podcasts.
A guy’s uncle died, and the rumor was it was because of autoerotic asphyxiation. Is it okay if our caller refuses to believe it, or is that shaming? First, the necessary caveat: do NOT engage in solo breath play, ever. There have been times when autoerotic asphyxiation is attributed as suicide, which strikes Dan as strange – why would that be any more comforting? You can’t shame the dead, and being honest just might help the rest of us out.
A man is in a four-year monogamous relationship with another man, and he’s cheated. He hasn’t been caught yet, but he doesn’t know if he can continue with monogamy. Knowing what he now knows, how can he begin this conversation? He feels incredibly guilty. Dan asks which scenario would be more likely to see the relationship continue: you own up to it, or you get busted for it? Dan thinks he needs to get out in front of this. Tell him what you’ve done, and tell him you feel bad about it. And hey, maybe he’s cheated too and it becomes a mutual disclosure session. If the boyfriend can forgive and forge a nonmonogamous relationship with you, then that’s your relationship, and if he can’t, you’re better off, for his sake and yours, apart.
Caller feedback! A man’s father takes care of his alcoholic mother, and does so by having extramarital affairs. Lack of orgasming is related to fear of pregnancy. A sex therapist hears of people imagining they have dicks all the time.
Thanks for reading.