Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of July 3. Let’s get right to it.
You can listen to this week’s Savage Lovecast and read this week’s Savage Love column.
Dan’s opening rant is about the retirement of Justice Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court, which means that President Trump gets to nominate a second Supreme Court justice, as many as President Obama got to in eight years. Hillary Clinton tried to warn us about this, and it was one of the many reasons I voted for her, as the Supreme Court and federal judiciary in general is so important. Dan makes a tortured analogy comparing lefties who care about the Supreme Court to anti-vaxxers. In any event, the Supreme Court is not going to curb the worst excesses of Republican governance. Which was true before Kennedy retired, but will now be entrenched for years. This was all part of their plan, and for whatever reason, the right has cared much more about the courts than the left for years. Their persistence paid off, and will make the rest of us much worse off. Dan encourages progressives to think “But the Court!” and show up and vote no matter who has the “D” next to their name on the ballot. Get registered and get out to vote in November to take back the House and Senate.
On to the calls! A 27-year-old straight woman, recently single, has been hanging out and hooking up with a guy who’s really bad in bed. He kisses like a robot and doesn’t respond to her cues. He’s also autistic. She’s happy to teach him how to be better, but where does she start? Dan put out the call last week in the column to hear from couples whose sex started out lousy and got better, and he’s been hearing from them. There is some hope for our caller. She has nothing to lose here but a bad sex partner. She needs to open her mouth, tell him what she likes, and tell him how to do things differently. People on the spectrum do not interpret social cues well or at all. If he reacts negatively to being told, then she walks away.
A 27-year-old man has been seeing a 42-year-old man for about a year and wants to know how to enjoy bottoming more. Before the relationship, our caller topped more than he bottomed, but in this relationship, he is an exclusive bottom. At first, the boyfriend would go too quickly. Now, they build up more, but the boyfriend goes really rough when our caller gets relaxed. Is there a way or position that our caller can use to not feel like his internal organs are being fucked? Also, he’s never had g-spot stimulation from sex. Dan says the problem isn’t that the boyfriend is a top, but that he’s an inconsiderate selfish top. Dan says our caller needs to run. If he wants to stick around, take butt sex off the menu entirely for a while. As an aside, not all prostates respond the same way.
A 26-year-old straight man has been seeing a woman who has Trump stickers on her fridge. Should he cut and run? Politico had a story last week about how young Trump administration officials in D.C. are not having much success on the dating apps. Nobody should want to touch a Trump supporter with their genitalia, says Dan. Maybe she’s being ironic? You could always ask her. And if she is a Trump supporter, leave and tell her why.
A woman got into a Facebook tiff with her fiance’s best friend (and best man) regarding family separation at the border. She went on about morals and fascism, he accused her of calling him a Nazi, and so on. The best friend wants our caller to apologize. She doesn’t feel like she said anything wrong. Dan says it’s hard to avoid the Nazi comparison when it comes to family separation. Dan wouldn’t want anyone in his wedding party who supported Trump, much less supported this particularly heinous policy. Stand your ground and don’t apologize for a political discussion.
A man’s girlfriend wants a porn star pounding, and he’s unable to deliver it. Can he train himself into this? There’s only so much you can do to make yourself last longer, says Dan. Our caller can learn where that point of orgasmic inevitability is, but that won’t transform him into a machine that can fuck for 45 minutes without coming. Our caller has to make accommodations. Dan suggests a strap-on dildo, especially one that straps on to the thigh.
A 28-year-old queer woman has gone on a few dates with a woman who had top surgery to remove her breasts because she didn’t feel comfortable with them. But our caller loves breasts. How should she proceed here? If boobs are a dealbreaker, opines Dan, then this isn’t going to work out. It’s okay to have preferences.
A 45-year-old man’s youngest daughter has recently come out as non-binary, using “they/them” and having a new name. They have a new girlfriend they met online that the family has met over the past couple of summers. Now the girlfriend has come out as fluctuating non-binary (sometimes he, sometimes she). The problem is that the youngest and the girlfriend sleep in the same room when everyone stays together, and maybe the girlfriend will be a he when the girlfriend stays over. With the new information, should dad feel squeamish? There are two reasons, Dan says, why parents don’t allow teenage lovers to sleep in the same room. One is to prevent pregnancy. The other is to prevent sexual activity of any kind. Depending on which one our caller wants to prevent, he should know the right answer here.
A mid-30s straight woman has been with her husband for ten years. He likes for her to tell him stories while they’re fucking about how flirty she used to be. She’s running out of stories. But she’s recently met a 23-year-old guy, and they are flirting like crazy. The other guy knows she’s married, and nothing untoward has happened yet. She is using this energy to go home and fuck the husband. But she hasn’t told her husband about this. Should she tell the husband about her fantasies about this other guy? Opening up the relationship probably won’t work, but what if it does? Dan says there is only one person who knows the answers to these questions. The advantage of this arrangement is that she has a way in already.
A 40-year-old straight woman with two kids and a husband has recently opened up their relationship. Does Dan have tips for open relationship fuckbuddy best practices? Should there be some romantic overtures, limits on texting, and so on? Can she insist that her fuckbuddy do more to pursue her? Why does she even want this particular fuckbuddy anyway – he’s a loser! Dan calls back. As far as the rules go, that has to be hashed out with the husband. Dan’s rules for himself include treating people kindly, including getting to know people as people. Our caller says the husband wants the third to be treated more like a sex toy. Our caller disagrees, and so does Dan, because of the threat of sexual violence. Push back against the husband’s limitations for your own safety. As for the guy she’s currently seeing, Dan thinks that she’s leaning hard into the transgressive aspect of it all. If he’s not pursuing her, he may not be the right piece on the side.
A 26-year-old guy moved in with his boyfriend of 3 years about 3 months ago. The boyfriend’s insecurities around our caller cheating on him and accusing him of cheating, already bad, have only worsened since they moved in together. Any advice? Dan says, sarcastically, that if our caller is going to be accused of cheating, he may as well cheat already. More seriously, sit the boyfriend down and tell him you’re leaving if he doesn’t get a grip on himself. Dan goes on for a while in this vein, including making the pronouncement that most of the people who constantly accuse their partner of cheating are most likely the cheating cheaters.
Dr. Justin Lehmiller of the Kinsey Institute is on to talk about his new book, Tell Me What You Want. It’s about what we’re thinking about when we are intimate. There are surprising facts, such as the fact that men are more likely to fantasize about emotional intimacy. Dr. Lehmiller thinks we are trying to meet psychological needs through our fantasies. Another interesting tidbit is that straight-identified men are more likely to fantasize about same-sex encounters as they get older. Women are also inhibited from realizing their fantasies of, for example, rape play. Dr. Lehmiller was also surprised by how willing people were to tell him about their fantasies. What does science have to do with anything? Science can help define what is “normal,” which Dr. Lehmiller argues should cover a wide array of fantasies and which Dan argues should be an eradicated word.
Back to the calls! A 33-year-old straight man is in a 1.5-year relationship with a woman he intends to marry. When they have sex, once every week or two, it’s fantastic. But she never initiates, and she gets mad when he doesn’t. What does Dan say? Dan says she can reframe her initiation as an act of submission. Our caller can do the lion’s share of initiation, but if she wants it and he’s not initiating, she can beg.
A 28-year-old woman has been with her boyfriend for six months, and she knew early on that she wanted to be with him for a long long time. Everything’s perfect most of the time, except for his cripping lack of self-confidence. He doesn’t think he deserves to be happy. When little things go wrong, he can fly off the handle for a few days. He won’t go to therapy because he thinks he can fix himself. He said last night that he’s waiting for things to build until he snaps on himself or someone else. Her love can’t fix him, but can she say or do something to help? Dan diagnoses controlling behavior. This is pure manipulation. This will only get worse. Run. And if you have to stay, him seeing a therapist needs to be an absolute prerequisite.
Caller feedback! Second or third date should be the latest you tell someone you have a kid. A good way to talk about a resume gap is “I was the victim of a crime and went through arbitration, which I won.” Another caller who took a year off from a terrible job is now at her dream job, and she talked about the traveling she did during the time off. Highlight the positive differences between the old and new jobs during the interview.
Thanks for reading.