Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of July 17. Let’s get right to it.
You can listen to this week’s episode and read this week’s Savage Love column.
Dan’s opening rant is not about Trump’s treasonous performance in Helsinki, but instead something positive. Dan thanks London for their giant protests against Trump, the largest against a foreign leader in that country’s history. Dan reads some of his favorite signs.
On to the calls! A 27-year-old lesbian has parents who are supportive of her, but mom is way more supportive than dad, who’s sometimes an asshole about feminism and queerness. Also dad doesn’t help in the kitchen or with household chores. Should she talk to her dad about feminism? Dan normally tells kids to stay the fuck out of their parents’ relationship (do you really want to hear that they are in a D/s relationship?) On the other hand, you can engage with dad on feminism or whatever when he’s being an asshole about it. Talk to mom if you want to bring the relationship up.
A woman is seeing a guy casually. The last time he came over, she gave him head and he left. She brought it up, and he says he only eats pussy if she’s just out of the shower. Is this bullshit? Dan says she could have cut things off after the last visit and that he’s unreasonable.
A 24-year-old bicurious woman has been a special guest star in some MFF threesomes, but now wants to see about dating women. She wants to experience female energy without having a man around. But part of her motivation is that she gets turned on by the thought of telling a male partner about it later. Is this fair to the women she’s thinking about dating? Can she seek women for no strings attached sex in this way? Dan diagnoses our caller as bisexual, but heteroromantic. Our caller should just be honest about what she wants.
A 20-year-old married woman says that marrying young is a big mistake. She and her wife are going through a divorce. How does she tell new potential dating partners? Dan says he wishes he could have been at the wedding to slap the rings right out of their hands. Young queers are increasingly getting drawn into the trap of being pressured to express their love through marriage, something very rare before Obergefell. Tell any potential date the truth: when I was young and stupid, I did a young and stupid thing. If the other person judges you harshly, get away.
A woman’s co-worker is someone she watched at a day care 13 years ago when he was four. He doesn’t remember her, but she remembers him. Would it be weird if she reminded him of their connection? Author’s note here: I’ve drank at a bar with one of my old dare providers, so I don’t think this is that weird. But the provider I drank with probably did not change my diaper (I met her when I was 7 or so?). Anyway, Dan wonders why our caller is asking him this question – the Tech-Savvy At-Risk Youth thinks she wants to fuck this kid. Dan doesn’t think so. But because this woman is a coworker, it would be really awkward to bring up their prior connection. The kid is probably trying to impress at his first job, and he doesn’t need a coworker infantilizing him. On this point, I agree with Dan.
A married couple in their late 40s have opened up their relationship. She’s found some other guys, including a 6-month affair with a coworker, and that’s helped the sex life, but he doesn’t know how to go about meeting women in his small town (he’s scared of websites). Dan wonders if the wife’s going out with the coworker has already let the cat out of the bag. Dan talks once again about the inequality many straight couples have in opening up the relationship – it’s easier for the woman to find outside sex than the man. In this situation, Dan believes, the wife should be willing to give an assist. She should attend swingers’ events with him just to get him in the door, and she should vouch for him when he does connect with someone. Dan acknowledges that women shouldn’t have to do this extra labor to help their husbands get laid, but asserts that they may want to – the benefits of having a happy nonresentful husband that’s still invested in the open relationship outweigh the costs.
A 26-year-old gay man has just managed to take his entire fist on his own. After this stretching, though, he’s not getting the same sensation he used to get from dicks alone. How does he continue this fisting journey without losing the ability to enjoy normal anal? Dan says our caller should bear down. Grip, close up, do your kegels, instead of relaxing. In time, you’ll figure out when to relax and when to bear down. Overall, the anus is extremely elastic, so this is all psychological.
A 52-year-old gay man was bottoming when all of a sudden he felt a thermometer in his ass. The top said he wanted to make sure the butt was the right temperature. Is this a thing? Dan’s hunch is that he has a medical fetish. People with kinks usually try to hide it with explanations that are more off-putting than the kink itself. But busting out a thermometer without your consent is not cool.
A 21-year-old woman wants to be a human sexuality professor and sex therapist. When she brings this up on dates, men will sexualize it and her. What does she do? Debby Herbenick, sex researcher, is on to help answer this. She has definitely seen this in her own life. Dr. Herbenick says to have a little compassion for the guys reacting to new information, as part of being a sex researcher is understanding what people think about sex. After all, she’s given herself permission to think about and talk about sex in a way that these men probably haven’t. She can acknowledge their feelings, and then tell her how that makes her feel. If the man self-corrects, he might be a keeper.
A gay man thinks Dan is shaming people who believe in God. Dan says he doesn’t have a problem with gay Christians or gay Jews or gay anyones. He was raised Catholic, as you know, and his sexuality led him to break away from the Church. Dan thinks all religion is bullshit, and he’s adamant about his beliefs. But religious people are adamant too, Dan says, and they control governments and can kill lots of people. Dan thinks that agnostic and atheist people just don’t cause as much misery with their evangelism. So suck it up, buttercup.
A late-20s woman has been with her mid-30s boyfriend for 2 years. She’s moving to DC for medical school, but he doesn’t want to move, even though his industry means he probably could start all over without much trouble. This is fine with our caller, at least for the first year of med school. She talked about opening up the relationship, but he has been demurring. He doesn’t want to talk about long-term relationships. In fact, he’s kind of pretending she’s not even leaving. What should she do? Break up, says Dan. All this guy is going to do is create a distraction she doesn’t need in medical school. If he can’t even discuss what’s going on, he’s not going to help going forward.
A caller’s friend’s Bumble date popped up on a sex offender registry. He was charged with distributing obscene materials depicting a minor. How should the friend proceed? As the caller points out, this could cover anything from running a child porn ring to having a photo of his girlfriend when they were both teenagers. It would be nice, Dan says, if the only people who wound up on sex offender registries were Bad People. The only person who can answer why he’s on there is him (backed by publically available court documents). Ask, then verify.
A woman has been dating her wonderful partner for 6 months. After a night of drinking, they were watching TV when something about Larry Nasser came on. He’s normally mild-mannered, but he blew up at Nasser. Our caller asked if he had been sexually abused. He said he had, but he didn’t want to talk about it. She told him she loves him and that she was always there to listen. It’s been a couple weeks, and he’s still not talking about it. What should our caller do from here? Dan says she should broach it one more time, framing it as a concern about his triggers, then leave the ball in his court.
A man has been talking a while with a trans woman. She invited him to a workshop, but she stopped contacting him. He really wants to go to this workshop for his own sake, but he doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable. What does Dan think? Dan thinks he should go to the workshop, and that he should stop concern-trolling himself. With the caveat that we don’t know what the caller said in the last few texts before the woman cut off communication, Dan says ghosting is not a restraining order.
A guy who’s always considered himself gay has a coworker who thinks he can’t be attracted to a trans man that she casually outed. Our caller thinks a dick doesn’t necessarily make a man. Should he identify as pan instead? Dan wonders what the fuck is wrong with this coworker – outing someone as trans, saying any man attracted to trans men can’t be gay, that’s fucked up. Anyway, if you’re a guy, and attracted to guys, you’re gay. It’s a more encompassing gayness than some gayness, but it’s still gay.
Caller feedback! Stealth trans folks sometimes are excited to find allies and welcome the questions that those allies have, even if it feels like Trans 101. Some people who aren’t looking have just forgotten to delete their Tinder.
Caller follow-up! A couple weeks ago, a woman called whose husband loved hearing stories of her with other guys. She was wondering about whether to talk about the crush she had on a younger coworker because she was running out of stories. Dan said go for it. She did, and the husband tied her up, spanked her, and told her to tell him who she was fantasizing about. She did, and he fucked the shit out of her. Afterward, they had a really good conversation about opening up the marriage for real. A happy ending!
Thanks for reading.
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