Hey there, and welcome to your Savage Lovecast recap and review for the week of August 7. 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 about Trump’s mini-fascist rallies. Dan hopes the mainstream media learned their lesson and gives the rallies as little airtime as possible. Last week, Trump was in Tampa, and two things of note happened. He claimed that you need ID to buy groceries, so you should be required to produce ID to vote (bullshit on both counts). He also continued his practice of demonizing the media and encouraging his supporters to do so. Dan wonders why CNN and other outlets are even at these rallies at this point, just to serve as props for Trump to fire up the base. I don’t think the base would be any less fired up if Trump said “I see the Fake News didn’t bother to show up,” but I understand Dan’s frustration on this. Dan thinks the networks should just send a single camera and that’s it.
On to the calls! A 40-year-old bi woman has been married to her husband for 18 years. After they both had affairs early in their relationship, they had a real conversation about what they wanted and started an open relationship. They have 3 rules: (1) don’t ask, don’t tell, leave it be (but if you have to know, you can ask); (2) don’t embarrass the family; and (3) don’t get sick. Our caller has been dating a woman. Our caller tells this woman to not fall in love and that the marriage comes first, but “she challenges that.” (I don’t know if that means that the woman is making demands or if the caller is in too deep and developing feelings.) How does she walk this tightrope? Dan thinks the fact that our caller is dating another person violates the agreement, because don’t ask don’t tell is violated by a situational tell like a concurrent relationship. Dan interprets the caller to mean that the other woman is making demands on the caller. DADT demands discretion, and the other woman is threatening to blow it up. Our caller needs to go to her husband and, once again, renegotiate the terms of this relationship to become more of a poly thing, or break it off with this woman.
A 54-year-old gay man, out since 15, used to be prettier when he was younger. He’s just as fem as he ever was, but now he looks more masculine as he’s gotten older, and that turns potential dates off. How does he escape the daddy stigma? Dan thinks our caller should put himself out there as who he is. Say you are more fem in your profile to find the guys who like more fem guys (Dan is one of those guys). The whole trend of masc-for-masc is not new, and it is not exclusive. Be honest about yourself on your profile.
A woman wants to know when to leave an ex without any more communication and when do you confront them with their shitty behavior. Our caller’s boyfriend would hide her – not introducing her to friends, not allowing her to post photos of them together. After going long-distance, her boyfriend completely abandoned her. She’s going to be in his city soon – should she confront him and his new girlfriend? Our caller clearly wants closure. As Dan has said repeatedly, no one can give you closure, but it is something you give yourself. Dan thinks our caller should learn what she can from this relationship and move on. In particular, beware of people who want to hide you. That said, if you show up in his town at someplace you know he’s going to be and confront him, that’s fair. Don’t expect to get the answer you want, though.
A guy in his 20s is “unconventionally straight.” He’s always been attracted to strong female characters like Wonder Woman or Xena and wants a purely egalitarian relationship. The women he’s seen, even if they say they are egalitarian, seem to assume that he will be the stronger of the two or expect him to take charge in a way he doesn’t want to. Should he let his own expectation go? Also, our caller is a virgin because of his religious upbringing, which he no longer identifies with. Dan calls back. Dan points out that many men who say they like Wonder Woman and Xena want a femdom relationship. Is that what our caller wants? After some equivocation, our caller admits he wants to be dominated by a strong woman, but not degraded. Dan points out that virtually no dom/sub relationship has that dynamic 100% of the time. Dan encourages our aspiring kinkster to check out his local BDSM and leather scene. The issue for our caller will be that the culture has told strong women that their strength is a problem for straight guys. Our caller has taken some lessons about BDSM from porn, and Dan reminds us that porn doesn’t show the mundane aspects of d/s relationships. Finally, Dan says, remember that your kinks are not cancer – they’re gifts, so roll them out that way.
A man has a friend who he’s been hanging out with almost every weekend for the last 6 months. He’s heard rumors that when they’ve been hanging out, the friend has been doing cocaine. Should he intervene? Dan thinks you can make a distinction being doing cocaine and abusing cocaine. Doing coke alone can be one sign of abuse. Is his coke use seeping into other aspects of his life or relationships? That can give you an indication of whether to intervene or not. Also, check the source of the rumors. If Dan were in our caller’s position, he’d check in with the other friends and check the temperature.
A woman’s personal trainer talks a lot about his church. Should she ask him what he thinks about gay marriage? Despite what leaders want you to think, Dan says, more and more young evangelical Christians support gay marriage – 47% according to one poll. So don’t give in to the stereotype and assume that all Christians are bigots. If you want to make sure your trainer supports queer people, ask.
A 25-year-old bi man wonders if it’s unrealistic to expect to be hard every time as a bottom with a man. Dan says you can lay that out as a precondition to bottoming if that’s what you need. You can do what’s necessary to get hard and stay hard throughout. If the top balks at this extra work, kick him out of your ass.
A single straight mom is in a great relationship with a single straight dad. Her boyfriend’s child, who just moved out of the house, is identifying himself on Facebook as a trans man, but the boyfriend keeps referring to the child using feminine pronouns. When our caller asked the boyfriend about this, the boyfriend said the child came out as trans shortly before moving out, but didn’t really explain what that meant. Until the child gives more explicit instructions, the boyfriend is going to treat the child like he always has. How should our caller proceed? If you want to have a relationship with this child, Dan says, you need to engage with him using the pronouns he identifies with. Dad is being cruel and clueless here, and our caller should point this out to her boyfriend. Once more, for everyone – hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery is not required for all of us to respect trans folks’ gender identity.
A 38-year-old straight man has been married for nine years. He dropped the bomb that he wanted to start swinging, something he’s wanted to do forever. She thought the marriage needs more sex and some spicing up, but needed more time to think about swinging. Since then, she hasn’t outright shut down swinging talk, but she’s putting him in charge of making it happen. He wants to make sure he’s doing it right, making sure to take things slow. Dan says the first step is to get in that time machine and tell the wife that you wanted to start swinging before you got married. Now the wife is uncomfortable talking about sex, which spells disaster. Our caller can’t lead by example here. If they can’t have the conversation face to face, perhaps talk via email or in the car. Once you both can talk about it, then is the time to start slow, by going to a sex club but not touching anyone else, and proceeding from there.
A 30something gay man is weirded out by a low-budget BDSM porn he watched. Midway through, the sub dropped out, and the movie showed some rudimentary aftercare attempts. After a while, the scene picked back up, and they got back into it without on camera verbal consent from the sub. Our caller ended up watching this movie four or five more times – how does he deal with the guilt? Dan is joined by Amp, sex educator and co-host of a YouTube channel, Watts the Safeword. They define sub drop as the sensation of high to low emotional state felt by subs in or after a scene because of all the chemicals and endorphins running around. How should a partner react when a sub drop happens? Provide appropriate aftercare. They agree that it was good to show the aftercare, but unfortunate that they neglected to show the assent to get back into the scene. The best way to assuage your guilt is to consume ethical porn, such as kink.com. Also, get to know your BDSM performers on Twitter.
A 57-year-old gay man came out later in life and has had a few short-term relationships. He’s single, living in the American South, an attractive professional, and he’s wondering what to do. Dan thinks he should move to a place where he has more options. Dan acknowledges there are queers everywhere, including in the rural south, but moving to a big city, even a place like Atlanta or Nashville, is just better from a numbers perspective. Dan does say that the increased population may create a paralysis of choice and that he’s talked to queer folks who prefer the country life because the choices aren’t as abundant. I’m interested to hear what you folks think about this. Do you prefer dating where the choices are overwhelming? Or do you think there’s merit in having a more limited selection?
Caller feedback! A man could always make it clear that saying no is an option. A lot of men keep their children away from their new girlfriends and blame a psycho ex, which shouldn’t be statistically possible. When a woman was 16, she had whipped cream on her vagina and got a UTI so painful that she had to go to the emergency room.
Thanks for reading.