Back in the day SheepLauncher used to do weekly recaps of Dan Savage’s sex and relationship advice podcast, The Savage Lovecast. There was a generally pretty healthy commenting community on those threads, and I enjoyed them very much. But about a year ago SheepLauncher decided to retire from recapping, and at about the same time I got overwhelmed with work and fell way behind listening to the podcast.
But I’m caught up now and finding I really miss having space to comment on the podcast and column. I also have moved on to a less stressful job. So I’m going to try to take up the mantle of doing weekly recaps on a trial basis. If I decide to stick with it I’ll probably eventually settle on a regular day of the week to post, but for now it will be whenever my schedule allows.
But enough about me. On to this week’s Savage Lovecast.
Dan’s opening rant is about the news. A lot of it is bad, like everything to do with Trump. Some of it is good, like Elizabeth Warren leading the polls in Iowa. But Dan says the most life affirming news story he has read lately is the one about the Florida couple arrested for DUI who had sex in the back of the police car. For Dan this represents the truism that lust conquers all. For me it represents the truism that Florida’s gonna Florida.
On to the calls! A 25 year old guy married to a 31 year old woman is bored and wants out. He gets along with his wife (except for screaming matches a few times a year) but says he doesn’t think he’s cut out for marriage and wants his freedom. Should he go or stay for the sake of his two young kids? Dan says that while a lot of time he might advise someone to suck it up and figure out how to make accommodations to stay married in this situation, the screaming matches are a sign it’s time to end this thing. He’s going to blow up the marriage eventually; better to do it while there is still hope of it being fairly amicable.
A 24 year old asexual woman wonders if she should tell her male partner that she doesn’t really enjoy sex with him. She’s afraid it will hurt his feelings. Dan says disclose. Good people care about whether their partner is enjoying sex and this guy has a right to understand why that will never happen with her. From there they can figure out if they are up for staying together.
A 20 something guy was drunk and on Ecstasy when he hooked up with a girl in the UK. The next morning the girl pointed out something the caller hadn’t noticed when he was wasted: She only has two fingers on one hand. He never called her because he always thought it was just a one night stand, but is afraid she thinks he dropped her because of the disability. Should he reach out to her? Dan isn’t sure if it’s worse to think somebody didn’t call because of a disability or didn’t call because they just weren’t that into you. He eventually comes down on the side of just leave it alone but invites listeners with disabilities to call in and say what they think. He also throws in a PSA about not mixing alcohol and E.
A straight guy is interested in some sexual contact outside of his marriage. He’s upfront with his wife who has given him a limited hall pass. At first it was just for erotic massage but now he’s gotten permission to possibly go to sex parties that include oral. The wife’s two conditions are condom use and PrEP. The caller wonders if that’s overkill. Dan chats with the caller for a while and ends up saying that yeah the HIV risk for a straight guy receiving oral while wearing a condom is pretty damn low and PrEP is overkill. The caller says he might do it anyway just to make his wife happy. I was surprised neither of them addressed the cost. Google tells me that a Truvada prescription is $2000 a month, and it seems unlikely insurance would cover this case.
A woman is in a 30 year on again off again relationship with a male caller. He says he wants it to be a “mirror relationship”, which it turns out just means he thinks she should want to have sex with him whenever he wants to have sex with her. Dan says DTMFA. Yep.
A bi woman is an open poly relationship with another woman who is herself married. The caller is fine with this arrangement, but her girlfriend gets jealous when the caller dates other people. Another DTMFA. The other interesting part about this call is that Dan casually and correctly slips in the word demisexual to describe the caller because she mentions she only likes to date people she already has a friendship with.
A 28 year old bi woman has a fetish where she likes cleaning for men. What’s that called? Dan offers “Domestic Discipline”, “Head of Household”, and “1950s Housewife” as names that have been applied to this fetish.
A guy has been dating a girl for six months. He wants to buy her a vibrator. What’s the best kind? Dan says you can’t go wrong with the Hitachi Magic Wand, but that the guy should shop with the girlfriend, not for her. Get thee to the local or online woman-owned sex shop.
A woman is calling on behalf of her 27 year old female friend. The friend has been dating a guy for 10 years and is really ready to get married. The guy says he’s not ready. As an aside, the caller says she’s a big fan of Dan and he helped out her father in the 80s. Dan points out that he wasn’t even writing the column in the 80s, so he must have helped out the father by giving him a blowjob. As for the friend, Dan’s says it’s time to give up on the guy. He’s just not interested in getting married. The caller’s friend can propose to him if she wants, but she’s probably not going to like the answer.
A woman in her mid 30s from the UK had a broken engagement a while back. She is in therapy for PTSD due to the trauma of this as well as a few other things, including a miscarriage. Right now whenever she thinks about getting back into a relationship she feels repulsed. Dan says she should trust her gut. It’s okay to giver herself more time to recover.
Dan talks to Michael Seligman from the Mob Queens podcast. The podcast is about Anna Genovese, wife of New York mobster Vito Genovese, and how she ending up running a lot of the New York drag scene in the middle part of 20th century. I’m not much of a history buff so a lot of this conversation went in one ear and out the other for me. But the main thing that Dan and Seligman talked about is how this story illustrates that gay history didn’t just start in 1969 with Stonewall.
The last call was from a woman who hooked up with a guy who came on her chest and then licked it up. She thought it was hot but both her girl friends and her gay friend acted squicked out about it. Dan says for the women it’s probably just homophobia (not there is anything inherently gay about this act). He suggest that for the gay guy it may be that he is thinking about the unsexy post-ejaculation feelings he has during his own refractory period and projecting them onto the caller’s hook up. He also says that some guys grew up in such sex negative homes that swallowing semen became a strategy for hiding the evidence, and that that association might be unpleasant for some. I’m not sure I buy all that, but whatever.
Twitter feedback: Anal douching is good. Don’t have a three way to save your relationship.
Caller feedback: Maybe the wife whose mother-in-law came for an extended visit just needs some alone time. The caller whose Trump-loving dad has cancer should try to have a relationship with him because she may regret the missed opportunity soon. The 44 year old who was pressuring his 25 year old girlfriend for marriage and kids made his own choices; he should lay off hers.
That wraps up the podcast. It’s also tradition to link to the column in these write ups, so here’s that.