You're listening to the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage's sex and relationship show for grown-ups. If you're under 18, get out of here, young'un. if you're stuck in a relationship quandary or if you're looking for sexual harmony well there's nothing you can't ask Hey, you really look like you could use a 90 minute break from, well, you can't see me right now, but I am gesturing frantically at absolutely everything.
Mild Ass, a new-ish film starring Aubrey Plaza, who I love, and Maisie Stella, who I fell in love with. Just watched it on a long flight. It is so good, I'm sorry I missed it in theaters. It made me laugh. It made me cry. Sorry about the cliche, but sometimes cliches can't be avoided. And my old ass gave me what may be the greatest gift of all in dark times like these, an inappropriate crush on a Muppet-faced boy.
Percy Hines White, who plays the love interest. Even better, Mild Ass is smart about sex and family and mortality in ways most stoner slash sex and drug teen comedies aren't. Highly recommended, four stars, not just for teens, not just for stoners. Another smart thing I encountered this week, something smart I read, was Mariel Silkoff's piece in the New York Times Magazine about the surprising amount of sex she and her friends are having.
in their early 50s, headlined, Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex. Far from being invisible in their 50s, Solkoff and her friends, some of whom are seriously dating men in their 30s, Solkoff and her friends feel seen. And the sex they're having now, she writes, is better, more exciting, more fulfilling, just plain more of it than the sex they had in their 20s and 30s. Her sample size is small, she admits, and not representative, but...
evidence for new trends is always anecdotal at first. It's a great piece. You should go read it. And we will put a gift link up in the show notes for people who are not subscribers to the New York Times so that you can still read it. There is something, one thing, I wanted to highlight and drill down on in the piece here at the top of the show. Solkoff notes something we've noted often on the show, the steep drop-off in, quote, sexual activity among Gen Z and millennials, the sex recession.
It's not just a sex recession anymore. Younger people are far less likely to form relationships. This is multi-causal, as Silcoff writes. Blame for the decline has generally been placed on the way we live in the 21st century. The atomization of our social lives, the antidepressants that can kill the libido, the phones and social media that provide endless fascination, even on boring evenings when other things might be happening.
The always available porn that offers both problematic expectations of how in-person sex happens and a far less demanding alternative to it. For young parents, the intensity of modern child rearing shrivels sex lives for young people. A growing obsession with personal and psychological safety, a desire to be immune from discomfort, can flatten eroticism in some of the places it might flourish.
Silkoff is not here to complain about the kids today or to gloat. In fact, later in the piece, she credits kids today for the sex lives she and her friends in her 50s are now enjoying. Sexual frequency may have waned among the young. But the young have also helped to create a kinder and more open-minded world of sex full of body positivity and gender questioning, consent culture, and the acceptance of all kinds.
of desire. This new world, Silkoff goes on, is a particularly nice and even forgiving landing place for women like her. And she is full of gratitude and dick, but also gratitude. I wanted to highlight one aspect of the piece, the idea common among the young that we should feel safe at all times, this obsession, as Silcoff says, with... personal and psychological safety a need to be immune from discomfort It's hard to square this need for safety and to be free from discomfort at all times
With what sex means, what sex does to us and with us, how it works, how it excites us, how it makes us feel. Because not only is risk ever present, risk is really a key ingredient. Power couldn't be the ultimate aphrodisiac if risk wasn't first runner up. I know that when I ask people about their hottest sexual experiences, which is something I get to ask people about in my line of work, I rarely hear stories.
about sex in the context of a loving relationship where everybody feels safe. I hear stories about desire clouding judgment. I hear stories about dickful and twatful thinking. I hear stories about people doing something. that felt risky, even crazy at the time. Sometimes people go on to have their most loving, safe, intimate sexual experiences with the same person they had crazy, risky sex with the first time they met.
But rarely do both happen at the same time, risky and loving. I'm torn about what to say next. To the kids having so little sex out there, I want to tell them to get off their phones. and outside their comfort zones and take some risks. Two generations of Agnes Gooch's need to get out there and live a little.
A risk might lead to one great sexual experience or you might meet the love of your life or the love of your best weekend ever under very sleazy circumstances. It's far more common than most people realize because we all get fed that. friends and family version of how two people met and don't hear the real stories. But the reason I'm torn about telling people get out there and take risks is there's always a chance.
of a bad outcome. That's what risk means. That's what risk is. But man, do we ever have double standards where risk is concerned? If you want to risk your life jumping out of an airplane for the thrills, that's fine. If you want to risk your life jumping out of an airplane for the boners, that's crazy. Look, risk is obviously the inherently risky.
Sometimes a person takes a huge risk and loses everything. Sometimes a person takes a reasonable controlled risk and loses everything. But to never take a risk is to lose everything, just slowly. Over time. But to lose everything just the same. Reading Silcoff's piece, I gotta say I recognized my old gay ass in it. I'm Gen X, if I'm allowed to round down a little. In my generation, we were inclined to take risks. And we still are. And now we get to take those risks, we Gen Xers and boomers do.
In a world that sensitive millennials and tender queer Zoomers made a little safer, as Silkoff points out, it would be a real shame if we, older people, people who know who Agnes Gooch is, if we were the only ones who benefited from one of the very few ways in which the world feels like it's gotten a little better over the last few years. All thanks.
to you kids i polished and powdered and puffed to myself if life is a banquet i stuffed myself I had my misgivings But went on a field trip To find out what living's about My thanks for your training joining. All right, that was Agnes Gooch. Thank you, Agnes. Hump 2025 Part 1, the best little pornographic film festival in the world, is heading out now on its world tour. There's nothing like seeing Hump in a theater with a crowd of people.
How hump was meant to be seen and nowhere else, but hump, are you going to see a come sock movie musical? For a full list of cities Hump's coming to for dates and showtimes and to watch the Hump 2025 Part 1 trailer, go to humpfilmfest.com. Coming up on today's show, on the micro, tons of your Q's, lots of my A's, and on the magnum. Culture writer and... critic Magdalene Taylor returns. Last time Magdalene was on, we talked about a piece she wrote for the New York Times import tuning people to
take risks and fuck more. We check in with Magdalene about how that's going, but she's here today to talk about a conspiracy theory that may not be entirely theoretical. Are tech oligarchs out to turn straight men? into unfuckable hate nerds. Magdalene is on the Magnum, which you can subscribe to at savage.love, but tons of great stuff coming up for you on the Micro 2. All right, let's get to that first call.
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Hi, Dan. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and my question really has to do with sexual orientation. Mostly, I tend to identify as bisexual, but... I honestly am pansexual, but I think there's a lot of stigma with that term. Mostly because it sounds too intelligent. I mean, mostly it sounds like there's not enough acceptance for the term pansexual. So I usually use bisexual.
But yeah, I use that word a lot more on multiple apps that don't allow for multiple sexual orientations. So I'm just really curious. To learn more about how everybody feels about the bi-pan spectrum. I went and looked up the definitions of bi and pan in the glossary of the human rights campaign.
Here's the definition of bisexual the human rights campaign puts out there and encourages people in the media to use. A person emotionally, romantically, or sexually attracted to more than one gender, though not necessarily simultaneously. in the same way or to the same degree. Clearly they're riffing on bisexual activist Robin Oak's definition of bisexual there. Here's how human rights campaigns glossary defines pansexual in contrast to bisexual.
describes someone who has the potential for emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to people of any gender, though not necessarily simultaneously in the same way or to the same degree. That's less of a spectrum and more of a Venn diagram that's just one fucking circle. People use by and pan as human rights campaigns glossary acknowledges interchangeably. They kind of mean the exact same.
fucking thing when pansexual took off it was kind of a reaction to the sense that there was something binary about bisexual that people who were bi were attracted to men and women but not people who landed somewhere in between male and female on the glorious gender spectrum. A lot of bisexuals push back against that. To be bi meant you were attracted to people of your same gender or other genders.
bisexual people kind of reclaimed this space for themselves where there wasn't anything, although bi is right there in the term, first syllable, there wasn't anything binary about being bisexual. that said a lot of people did embrace the term pansexual and there's something about the term pan like spanning that vibes for them and so what you have now you have people who Sexual orientation, sexual expression is basically identical but different terms.
work for them as individuals, even though everybody understands exactly what they mean by that. And they mean pretty much exactly the same thing as we're seeing now in lesbian land. where half of lesbians identify as lesbians and the other half of lesbians, particularly younger lesbians, identify now as sapphic. Crazy. Kind of reminds me when I was 15.
to 18 that I met guys who identified as homosexuals, who were very annoyed at other homosexuals who identified as gay, that they thought there was something gay about identifying as gay. The emergence of new terms that people are comfortable with for different reasons or people feel like they're creating something new or reinventing the wheel or just finding a term that vibes for them.
better than the term that was handed to them that already existed when they first came to understand who they were sexually. This has gone on forever and will continue to go on forever. In the late 19th century, early 20th century, a lot of gay men and lesbians understood themselves as a third sex. Gay men and lesbians self-identified at the time as inverts, many of them.
something inverted about their sexuality that it turned within itself, they're attracted to the same sex. People thought that was negative. People thought that was somehow embracing a concept of homosexual desire as damaged. Or mental illness and moved past that. So this has been going on for fucking ever. So what do you do? What do you do? You're only allowed to choose buyer pan and your dating ads. Doesn't seem like.
two tremendously heavy across to bear you're just gonna have to pick one pick the one that works for you pan is so common commonly used that i really don't think anybody sits there and says, oh, they identified as Pan. They're full of themselves. There's something pretentious about identifying as Pan. I don't think so. I don't think so. You can identify as bi or pan and people who are also bi or pan, people who are in that Venn diagram that is just a fucking circle with you.
or are attracted to people who are bi, or willing to date people, open to dating people who are bi or pan, will respond to your ad. No one's going to think, oh, he's using a different five-syllable word than the other five-syllable word or four-syllable word. And so he's so full of himself, I won't be able to get mine dick in there. No one's going to think that. So use the word that works for you. Bi, pan, sapphic, lesbian, invert, homosexual, gay, queer. Use it.
Don't worry about it. The only thing that's pretentious is wringing your hands about it and pretending something's a problem when it's not. Hi, Dan. Hey, Dan. Hey there, Dan. Hey, we're a polyamorous. Trouble? Yes, living in a major city. Living in a major city in the Midwest. And you wanted positive polyamorous problems. And so what we have is a small polyamorous problem.
where I sleep in the middle and the two ladies sleep on the outside. And the big question is, how do I not sweat to death? Because, frankly, I get really hot. And then when I cool off, one of them scoots their little body next to mine and I get really hot again. And then they move over and they're all nice and warm. And then the other one does it.
I swear to God, this is all night long, which is fine for one night, but for a week, it can be a long week. It means I sleep during the day. Anyhow, any ideas? Love to hear them. Thank you for your call. I'm not in a thruple now, but I was once with Terry. We used to have the same boyfriend. Now we each have our own boyfriends. But when we had a boyfriend, we would often sleep, the three of us together.
in the same bed and it was a pro I was the middle I was where you are now then and it was a problem for me because Terry is a furnace who heats up at night and this Other guy that we were in a throuple with for years was also a furnace. So if I was stuck between them, I would roast all night long. Here's how we.
did it. When we weren't in hotels, when we weren't traveling, when we had the option, I would get the fuck up out of bed at some point and go to another room or I would kick one of them out and send them to another room. I don't know how people who are in throuples do it. I don't know how throuples in New York living in one bedroom apartments do it. Our throuple, when we had a throuple, it only worked because we had a guest room. The most frequent guest in that guest room.
was me, which was fine. I would peace the fuck out as soon as it turned into furnace land, which with three six foot plus tall guys and one king size bed, you know. tiny bedroom it would eventually would even just from the
Body heat and the exhalations filled with carbon monoxide. Yeah, I got the fuck out of there. So that's my advice for you. You say you live in the Midwest. You're not in New York City where space is at a premium. I mean, the housing crisis is everywhere now, but you should have a guest room. And at some point, go to sleep together, do the cuddle puddle, the three-way cuddle puddle. Oh, I miss those days. And then once they're snoring or once they've heated the fuck up, peace the fuck out.
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Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code savage to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash savage and use the offer code savage. Hi, Dan. A straight transgender woman from Northeast Pennsylvania with a question. I was listening to last week's episode about the guy who was wanting to date.
gay FTMs who still present feminine. And it reminded me of the situation that I'm currently in right now. So I'm a transgender woman. I mostly date men, but I'm at a point right now in my transition. where I don't pass. It's not that I'm not working towards it. I'm doing voice feminization lessons. I'm in the process of seeking out gender confirmation surgery. Just basically, I'm going to be transitioning. Oh, I've also been on hormones for seven months. The end goal for my transition is to...
transition medically and surgically as well. So that presents me with a bit of a conundrum at the moment. I want to date, but at the same exact time I don't pass. I would love to date. straight men because that would be affirming to my identity, both straight and trans men who are straight and cis guys who are straight. I've opened up a little bit more to the idea of dating bi and pan guys, but I've also been in certain situations at the gay bar where gay men have hit on me.
So my question to you is, should I open myself up to that? I mean, I don't pass at the moment. And I've also come to the realization that there are certain things about me that... will always give me off as a transgender woman. I'm a little taller, but I'm not letting that stop me. But... Yeah, like I said before, once or twice I've been in the gay bars and I've been hit on by gay guys. And I don't present masculine at all. I wear dresses, skirts.
And I don't let anything stop me. So I would love to hear your advice on this, Dan. I know a lot of gay men who wear dresses and skirts who don't let anything. stop them, who sometimes wear makeup, who do makeup tutorials on Instagram, who go out to the clubs wearing a skirt and maybe pearls and a little bit of eyeshadow and they are gay men.
who are playing with gender, who are comfortable with their sexuality and their gender, but want to just sizzle or also enjoy wearing skirts. So the context that you're entering when you are. a non-passing trans woman, and you are going out to a gay bar in a skirt, the assumption in that context that other gay men might make, some gay men might clock you as trans or transitioning.
or under the trans umbrella even if you aren't taking any steps to medically transition which you are but they can't know that just from the sight of you that first impression but some of those men are going to be responding to you as the
gay man that in that context they assume you are. One of those gay men who is out there, out in the clubs, who likes to wear skirts. I'm old enough to remember when we had a moral panic in the gay community about mask for mask, about gay bros about this stultifying, oppressive trend where so many young gay men were only interested in, you know.
Baggy pants wearing, backward baseball hat, slouching mask bros. And for some of those slouching mask bros in the backward baseball hats, that was their authentic gender expression. That was actually who they were. Some other gay men, though, were affecting that because they thought that that's what they needed to do to be marketable, to be desirable. And people looked at that and we had a big moral panic about how this was excluding femme guys.
That change, the pendulum swung. I don't think that all those master mass gay bros disappeared. There's still some out there and they're allowed to be who they are and want who they want. But I think what happened was a lot of people who were thinking, well, this is the only way I can get what I want is to pretend to be what I'm not, stopped.
wore skirts if they wanted to wear skirts and hit on guys who were in skirts if they were attracted to those guys who happened to be in skirts. So right now when you go to the gay bar as a non-passing trans woman at the very beginning of her transition, I can understand why that would be frustrating.
For you to be approached, possibly frustrating, approached by guys who think you're a gay man, your problem right now, you say you want a date. And my question is, well, how badly do you want a date? Because right now the guys who would want to date you or hook up with you, I don't necessarily think a guy approaching you in a gay bar on a night out is necessarily asking for a date. Probably just wants to hook the fuck up.
Do you want to hook up? Do you want to date? Right now, the people who are going to want to date you, probably lots of gay men and bi men will want to date you and they will be drawn to you. Because you have a male body and you read to them as male, but femme, but male. And if that hurts you, if their attraction, which will not affirm your gender identity.
what you're trying to present as, if that will eat away at you psychologically, if that'll make you feel worse about yourself, yeah, you probably shouldn't date or fuck those guys. But as you transition, your choice is probably those guys or no guys. Because the straight men that you would like to desire you, because you'll find that affirming, and you are a straight woman and you want to be with a straight man, are probably not drawn to you at this stage of your transition.
And so those guys will come to you, come into your life, come into everything else in time. So the question for you is, what do you do in the meantime? I know. this has happened because i've talked to gay friends where this has happened where they met somebody who was assigned male at birth and was considering transition or very early in their transition
And they had a good FWB hookup relationship for a little while. And then the further along the person transitioning got in their transition, the less attracted the gay man in that FWB arrangement.
became to that person and that was fine in a way the waning of his attraction my friend one person i'm talking about here the waning of his attraction although sad was affirming to his trans fwb as their fwb wound down as her transition progressed you could have that kind of relationship with a gay man that you date potentially where you say this is going to be a wonderful affirming STR, and even the end of it, when that time comes, will be sad, but affirming. So.
If I were you, I would want to date the people who wanted to date me now where I was at this moment, then go without. But that's a choice you'll have to make for yourself. What's worse, I guess, is the question. Being alone for now? At this stage of your transition, not having sex partners, not having dates, or being with people where you feel not affirmed by their attraction, where their attraction to you is because of your male body.
And will that make you feel worse about yourself? Will that induce dysphoria in a way that you can't process or handle and will be emotionally destructive? And if that's the case, better to go without right now than to go with the guys. who want to get with you at the moment. And those guys are primarily going to be gay guys. Also bi and pan guys. But if you read now as...
male, because you're very early in transition, the bi and pan guys who are likely to be attracted to you are going to be attracted to you now, not the you coming. Right? And so you can... bide your time and have some wonderful short-term connections with gay bi and pan guys who are into you as you are at this moment and not police how they perceive you or understand you or what attracts
them to you and then look forward to having the shit affirmed out of you by the straight guy who's going to be into you once you've completed your transition. Oh man, I just flew a long way to visit my boyfriend and boy are my arms tired. It is a big change, always a big adjustment, but what doesn't change when I go see my boyfriend is the mattress I'm sleeping on. That mattress.
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With Helix, better sleep starts now. Hi, Dan. 30-something cis woman in a hetero relationship calling. I love my boyfriend. He's an exceptional partner, and we're in it for the long run. Recently, we got into a mild disagreement over something and I was hoping to hear your thoughts. So I learned that before dating me, he'd briefly gone out with a 22 year old woman when he was 31. I don't want to judge him, but learning this made me pretty uncomfortable.
He thought my reaction was hypocritical because I've also been with someone much younger than me. For more context, he met the 22-year-old on an app. As for my fling, it was with an AMAB queer person who I'd been friends with for a while. This person had pursued me for about a year before I gave it a shot, and the reason I had initially resisted anything happening with them was because I felt weird about the age gap.
This is to say I never would have seeked this kind of age gap out or had my age range set that low on a dating app. I do understand why he sees hypocrisy here, but I genuinely think that age gap dynamics are different depending on the genders of the people involved. And although I strongly believe this to be true, I'm having trouble articulating this in a way that feels succinct.
clear. So yeah, would appreciate hearing your thoughts on different dynamics within age gap relationships. Do you think there tends to be different power dynamics if it's a gay couple versus older guy, younger girl? versus older woman, younger guy. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you, Dan. I came up with the campsite rule a long time ago. You know, when they say about camping, you should always leave the campsite in better shape than you found it.
And I was getting questions when I first started writing Savage Love about older partners with younger partners, about age gap relationships. And I felt that that was fine so long as everybody was a consenting adult. I do feel, though, that the older person often can have... More power. Somebody always has more power in every relationship. Youth and beauty is its own form of power that can be leveraged in a relationship. But an older person often has more power.
sometimes more economic power, sometimes more life experiences, knows more and is therefore potentially in a position to exploit the younger person's naivete and inexperience or to... bullshit them or lie to them without that younger person having been bullshitted to and lied to enough to be able to see through the common lies and bullshit. And so.
Yeah, I said that I think an older person with a younger person is fine so long as the older person is honoring the campsite rule, which is to leave the younger person in better shape than you found them. No sexually transmitted infections, no unplanned pregnancies, no big promises.
that are unlikely to come true you know most age gap relationships are short-term relationships and a short-term relationship can be great and it can work out for everybody most relationships new relationships don't end up working out and then we have a little bit of confirmation bias that comes into play when there's a significant age gap and we're like well obviously it didn't work out because the age gap and then we ignore those relationships with significant age gaps that
do work out, like the one I've been in for 12 years with my boyfriend who is 20 years younger than me, who I met on an, well, app first, sort of. Look, I think you're being unfair to your boyfriend. 22 is a full grown ass adult woman, a nine year age gap. Ain't that age gap in age gap. He met her, the younger person he dated.
On an app, you met the younger person you dated, the AMAB queer person, because you had been friends. That's how people used to be really common for people to wind up dating or in relationships, whether short or long term. with people they met at work, through friends, parties in the neighborhood. Now most people meet their romantic and sexual partners online. So what you're doing is you're dinging your boyfriend here.
for meeting somebody that he dated the way the overwhelming majority of people now meet people they date which is on apps and hookup apps I think that's unfair. I think you're being unfair to him. And I'm sorry, a lot of younger people are attracted to older people. We shouldn't strip. Grown ass adult. women and younger men of their agency. There are younger guys out there who are pursuing. I hear from my friends, my female friends in their forties and fifties who are just.
Not cougars. They're not out of there on the hunt, but they put an ad up on a dating app and they start getting messages from 23 and 24 and 25 year old guys, sometimes younger, who are after them and hot for them. Similarly. It's not always the case that the 30-year-old who's on Hinge or OkCupid or Field or whatever is the one bombarding 22-year-olds with messages. Often it's...
You'll get a message from that 22 year old. And then what then? Like if there's attraction and if there's a spark and if the older person honors the campsite rule. And they have a good connection and nobody's exploited or abused and everybody lives and laughs and loves and learns and grows. It was a good thing. That's how you should assess.
this relationship and whether it was exploitative did he exploit her i wouldn't assume i think it's unfair to him this person that you say that you love to assume that he did or that's what he was intending to do when he got together with this 22 year old you know 16 is the age of consent in more than half the united states he wasn't getting with a 16 year old even if that was legally something he could have done depending on where he lived
If he did that when he was 31, I would think that was really fucking shitty. All this said, I will say. that I do think the older person in a significant age gap relationship, which again, I don't think nine years quite cuts it, but I have a bias. The older person should come in for a greater degree of scrutiny.
around their motives and around how they're treating the younger person. And that older person should welcome that greater degree of scrutiny. So I don't have a problem with you drilling down with your boyfriend about what exactly was going on when he was dating this much younger woman. And was she... a very mature 22 year old or was she an immature 22 year old? I think that matters. And yeah, the gender thing is an issue.
Because women are socialized to defer to men, to tell men what they want to hear. That can lead women, particularly inexperienced and younger women, into consenting to things, to please a male partner. aren't actually things that they're particularly comfortable doing or want to do or if they felt a little bit more empowered or they had a little bit more life experience they wouldn't do. How do you get that life experience? How do you learn to...
advocate for yourself in the moment. Sometimes that means having those initial shitty early relationships that you didn't feel great about. So something else you might want to drill down, last thing I'm going to say, you might want to drill down with your boyfriend about whether he was a good witch or a bad witch in this relationship where he was the older partner how did she feel about it when it ran its course when it was over how did it end if it ended in drama and tears and
accusations well then maybe he did even if it was not intentional but if it was a good relationship they're still on friendly terms if she wishes him well and he wishes her well They didn't do anything wrong. And it wasn't a problem. And yeah, it is hypocritical of you if you dated a much younger man, however you met him, to give him grief for having dated a much younger woman.
even though he met her in a different way, in the way that most people now meet everybody that they date. How do you judge and shame him for that? This episode is sponsored by Foria, makers of Awaken Arousal Oil, Intimacy Melts, and Sex Oil. Sex Oil, it's fun to say, it's even more fun.
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slash Savage for 20% off your first order. I recommend trying their new massage oil combined with their Awaken Arousal Oil. You can and will thank me later. Hey Dan, I am a 32-year-old gay man, and I spent most of last year in a situationship with a guy who was a little bit older, in his late 40s. We met on Grindr in March. It was an anonymous hookup.
He came over. We had really great sex, connected really well. But then he left and that was kind of that. A few weeks later, he reached out and said that he'd really love to see me again. So we hooked up a second time, which turned into a third time, which ultimately turned into a nine-month fling. We never went on any dates, although I did float the idea, but we had sex regularly. We had pretty intimate conversations.
We texted during the week, and we got pretty close, in a way. Now, he had told me early on that he could never host because he had a roommate, and I'm sure you can already guess where this is going. I had looked him up online and I found no trace of a spouse, so I chose to believe him. That being said...
There were periods of time where he would become really flaky or evasive or secretive, and so I had always had some latent suspicion. Fast forward to December. Long story short, I had asked him about his holiday plans. And the answer he gave me was so odd. It triggered that gut feeling that he was deliberately hiding something from me.
So me and my millennial girlfriends decided that we were going to sit down at the computer and get to the bottom of this. Sure enough, eventually we found his roommate and his husband and learned that they were indeed the same person. It's a huge cliche, but in retrospect, it was pretty obvious all along that he was cheating on someone and I was a mistress. Still, I was extremely hurt to learn that someone who I cared about, who seemingly cared about me...
and who I basically trusted had been fully lying to me for nine months. I decided to end things. I waited a week and then texted him, hey, I've been thinking this isn't working for me anymore for X, Y, and Z reasons. Also, I'm tired of ignoring this elephant in the room where we pretend you aren't married. He responded pretty quickly. It was a weird exchange, but civil. Said he totally understood. Hoped that he hadn't done anything to hurt me, lol. Hilariously, still did not...
acknowledge the secret husband even in the very end? So here's my question. Now that I've had a couple months to process the initial wave of emotions, I have started to really miss him. Don't get me wrong, I think this guy is a huge piece of shit, but we had really good sex, I genuinely liked him, and I'm starting to feel like maybe, now that I know, I might actually be okay with sleeping with someone who's married.
Dan, do you think it would be absolutely insane of me to text him? I just keep thinking about him. I feel weird about the way things ended. And if I'm being honest, I think if we fucked again, it might be really hot. You say he was fully lying to you for nine months. That presumes that you had some right that first time you hooked up with a stranger from Grindr to full disclosure about his other...
emotional entanglements. You do not have that right. A grinder hookup. The understanding is this is a one-off. This is anonymous. You don't know me except what I've told you about me. I don't know you except what you've. Shared with me. There's no deposition. There's no background check. It's just two dudes getting together to fuck. Did you have a right to know at that moment he was married?
I don't know. I don't think so. I think you get on Grindr with the assumption that some of these guys you're going to meet on Grindr have boyfriends, have partners, have husbands, have more than one boyfriend. You don't have to sign a pledge on Grindr that says you're single and available. And so that first time he hooked up with you, he didn't tell you he was married, didn't need to tell you he was married. But at some point, you kept hooking up.
Sex was good. You hooked up again. You hooked up again. It got chatty. So it wasn't just.
sex it turned into the kind of situationship that you describe where in a way you had a right to say like hey maybe we we get along great maybe we should go on a date and then you shot that down And then along the first time, along came the holidays and you inquired what he might be doing over the holidays, obviously insinuating or suggesting that you might want to be included in his holiday plans because you guys liked each other.
And this is a great way a lot of good gay relationships start. Two people start hooking up. The sex is good. They keep hooking up. They chat a little bit. And then eventually they back into, or they shift from, they transition from situationship. to relationship. You were open to that. He wasn't. Now you know why he's married to somebody else. You assume he's cheating. You say it's obvious he's cheating on his husband. Not obvious to me.
He and his husband could have a DADT arrangement where they're both allowed to hook up with other people, but they don't want to hear about it. They don't want to be told, which means they both agreed to a little bit of allowable deceit.
some dissembling in the service of the DADT agreement. Some people who have open relationships where there's no dissembling, like, hey, I have a grinder hookup. They can say that to each other, but they have a rule that the house is sacred, that they don't bring people home. That home, the bed, the house, that's just for us. That's our sacred space as a couple. Out there in the world, in the wild, you can do what and who you want so long as you observe this rule.
about the sacredness of our bedroom and our house. And as long as you don't march Twinkie hookups past the neighbors, so long as you don't, I don't want to meet anybody you're ever fucking around with. So it could not be cheating is what I'm saying. your question should you fuck this guy again now that you know he's married well you say you would have been fine fucking him knowing he was married the entire time you were fucking him well you can prove that to him
By sending him that text and saying, hey, look, you didn't need to hide the husband from me. I was down. I feel like there was a certain point where, you know, early on I didn't have any right to know. I didn't need to know. But there was some point where.
you probably needed to read me in on this situation that you had a husband. And I was getting a little emotionally invested, as you could probably tell, because we were texting a bit. And I was, you know, not falling for you, but open to something. happening here that you knew couldn't happen but i didn't know couldn't happen i wasn't fully informed not that you were obtaining my consent under false pretenses i don't feel violated
But I feel like I got a little out over my skis emotionally about you in a way that if I had known, I wouldn't have. Now that I know, we can go back to the first three months. We can go back to regular hookup. Friend with benefits, booty call, and knowing you're married, knowing nothing else can come of it. I think that's actually kind of hot. Why not say that to him if you want that D again? Say that to him.
See what he says. Send him the text. You might not hear back from him. But obviously he was into you. He kept coming around for nine months. And guys. Gay married men out there, older gay married men out there, there is no shortage of younger gay men who want to jump on your deck. There is no reason to lie. It has been...
my experience and Terry's experience that you don't have to hide the husband to get the boys. So don't be a dick while you're out there looking for ass to park your dick in. Just don't be a dick. It's completely unnecessary. caller, the hurt that you experienced. You were played a little bit. I'm not saying you don't have every right to feel that hurt. You do. And what I'm saying to like older gay men out there, there's no reason to inflict this kind of hurt on someone. Even if the hurt is...
small. There's no reason because there's plenty of single gay men and other partnered gay men in their twenties and thirties who want to get on your daddy deck. No reason to be a lying sack of shit about it. All right, time for listener feedback. First up, some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love. Says Timothy Travis, what the fuck?
Dan, I listened to your comments slash advice to the caller whose 74-year-old father was dating a 19-year-old woman, and I couldn't help but cringe every time you said how gross and squeaky it was. that the 74-year-old was dating the 19-year-old. As a cis, mostly gay man, who often dates cross-generationally, It felt like a personal attack. The older I get, the more younger men seem to find me attractive. I don't approach younger guys at the bar. They approach me.
I feel honored that they do. And I always keep your campsite rule in mind. All right, Timothy, for the record, my boyfriend is 22 years younger than I am. My husband's boyfriend is 23 years younger. then he is so. I certainly don't disapprove of intergenerational relationships or hookups, which is how...
All of these relationships got started, including mine with Terry. But I've always said that relationships with large age gaps should come in for a higher degree of scrutiny and that scrutiny should be welcomed, usually by the older partner because of the potential for... exploitation, and I would say a 55-year age gap invites the highest degree of scrutiny.
Usually the worry is the younger person's naivete and an experience being exploited by an older person. But in this instance where a 74 year old is dating a 19 year old who moved in with him, I think that. Worry gets flipped on its head. Lots of comments on last week's show about my conversation with Sunshine. I will address some of those comments in struggle session on Thursday. And the caller who didn't want to peg her boyfriend, lots of comments.
For her too, it is a lively thread. Lots of great comments to choose from this week. But I'm going to end this part of the show with... A comment about the English caller who is worried his American partner was too loud during sex for a genteel British sex club, says JJ72 to the caller worried about the sounds his partner will be making at the sex club.
Don't picture the other people being annoyed or rolling their eyes. Instead, picture them gawking in lust or green with envy. We're completely indifferent. Those three reactions are likelier to be true. I mean, it is a sex club. Where else are you supposed to fuck your brains out if not in a sex club?
Go make her magnum come loudly. LOL. All right. For more listener comments, check out the comments threads at savage.love. And for longer responses from me to listener comments, check out struggle session goes up most Thursdays under column. savage.love. And now more comments in everyone's favorite part of the show, the part of the show where I shut my big gay mouth and let my listeners have the last word.
hi i'm calling about the gay guy that wanted to open his relationship but he had too many long difficult conversations with his boyfriend I mean, dude, that's totally normal. You want to open a relationship, not buy a new sofa. It's super hard. You have to be able to work with those really tough, long conversations where we go back and forth with our feelings.
and just need to talk it out. Eventually, it'll be easier. But if you're not patient enough and just start breaking the rules and doing whatever, you'll definitely not be able to get into a... ethical space so i mean when when i opened my relationship it took me about two years to get to a really sweet spot patience don't fuck it up hi dan
Calling in with a response to the guy who is British and has an American girlfriend who is very loud during sex and is worried about taking her to a club. As somebody who is also loud, she probably knows. You are probably not the first person who has experienced this with her, especially if she's notably loud. So I am actually going to...
Say that what Dan, I think, didn't say and say that you should or could probably approach her gently with your concern about being in a club with her. And, you know, something along the lines of. I just don't know that I would be totally comfortable if... you were to be as loud there as you are with me. I love the noises that you make, but just in that context, it's a little different. And then also, you know, I've been to England a few times.
You all really are very quiet. I know nothing about you all sexually. I've never slept with a Brit. But in a strictly social context, you guys are just much quieter than we are.
You could even just say that. Like, it's just a big cultural difference between the two countries. And so it's another reason that this is a pretty valid concern of yours. Try to explain gently that this is something that you're thinking about. You know, there's a time and a place for... being loud and so she should and I would hope can hear that and be able to take that feedback and you know modulate a little bit when she's in that space with you.
Hey Dan, this is in response to last week's caller who didn't want to meet her dad's new 19-year-old girlfriend. I agree with everything you said, but what I was surprised that you didn't say... because you've spoken to this on the show before, is that maybe dad knows that he's being used for money, a crash pad, you know, other resources like that, and that she may know that he's... using her for sex or you know arm candy or companionship or whatever and that
Two consenting adults are allowed to use each other in those ways, you know, providing everything is sort of above board. A relationship like that isn't inherently abusive. And we're going to leave it there. Got a question for me? Go to savage.love slash askdan, and you can record your question directly onto our website. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question or your comment by sending it to q at savage.love. Or you can call us at 206-306-3255.
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