Savage Lovecast Episode 986

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. I'm stuck. Dating is frustrating. It's hard to find what you're looking for. And if what you're looking for, if what you're trying to leverage into your life, using your dick as a lever.

Is a husband, I'm obviously talking about gay dating here, meeting guy after guy after guy who already has a husband but wants to work your lover anyway, I can understand how frustrating. that might be. And I certainly understand that frustrated guys need to vent, which is what one frustrated guy did on Instagram last week, where he went to, in his own words, have a complete meltdown. I want to play it for you now. As meltdowns go, it is very short and to the point, but...

Content warning, it's very shouty, unpleasantly shouty. Listeners with auditory sensitivities or who don't like being shouted at might want to turn the volume way down for just a few seconds or skip ahead. I'm going to play it now, this shouty clip, in three, two, one. I don't want to be in an open relationship! Why is every gay person I know fucking...

All right, for those of you who skipped ahead to avoid the shouting, here's the full quote read out in a calm and collected tone of voice. I don't want to be in an open relationship. Why is every gay person I know fucking somebody? other than their husband. One of my follows, Harry J. Cook, also one of my followers, which makes us mutual oomphs.

reposted this guy's meltdown and added this caption. Yet they, and by they, Harry means married gay men in open relationships, and yet they will scream about marriage equality. Make it make sense. Challenge accepted, Harry. I will make it make sense. And it's actually important that we make sense about this and talk sense about gay marriages right now as the right is gearing up to end marriage equality. So.

Here we go. Making sense. You didn't have to be monogamous to be married if you were straight. Straight married couples had open relationships and straight married couples were swingers and straight married couples practiced a whole lot of polyamory. back when gay people couldn't get married. Gay people shouldn't have to be monogamous to be married either, now that gay people can get married. The fight was for equal rights, not double standards. And I think it's unhelpful.

For gay men to unthinkingly parrot one of the lines of attack conservatives and religious opponents of marriage equality used against us the first time we kicked their asses. Namely that gay men don't deserve the right to marry because gay relationships... are less likely to be monogamous. Also, gay relationships less likely to end in divorce, as we now know, but they don't want to talk about that. Instead, they argued when we were still fighting for the right to marry.

that marriage was defined by three things, religion, children, and monogamy. But somehow... Those three things were only definitional when gay people wanted to get married. Straight people could get married without being religious, without becoming parents, or without being monogamous. Again, the fight was for equal rights, not double standards. The equal right for gay couples to be secular, childless.

and in non-monogamous marriages if we so chose, or to have big church weddings and lots of babies and practice monogamy if that's what we wanted. Okay, so.

Being me, being a person who gives relationship advice for a living and seeing somebody in crisis, the shouty guy, unhappy about being single, I offered. Harry and his shouty friend a little friendly relationship advice while I was lurking in the comment threads on Instagram. Maybe instead of complaining about non-monogamous married gay couples, all the single gay men out there who want monogamy could use some of that complainy energy, that shouty energy to locate each other.

And date each other and marry each other? I got some angry DMs about this. How dare I tell gay men who want monogamy to restrict themselves to dating only other gay men who also want monogamy? Harry, my oomph, pushed back. Telling monogamous gay men to just date each other is kinda lazy. Okay, maybe it's kinda lazy in that it's kinda obvious?

But I'm not sure what other advice I could give gay men who want monogamy besides maybe you guys should date each other. We tell people who want kids to date other people who also want kids. We tell people who don't want kids not to date people who do. And somehow that's not controversial advice. The reaction I got telling gay men who want monogamy to date other gay men who want monogamy reminded me of the reaction I once got from...

Some bisexual guys I gave some advice to back in the day. Bi guys were writing in to complain about how awful straight people were and how awful gay people were and how crazy it was that gay people were just as biphobic as straight people. And in addition to telling straight people and gay people to be less biphobic and less awful to bisexuals, I also suggested to these bi guys that they might want to maybe think about dating each other. Look.

I get it. No one likes to be told their options aren't infinite. No one wants to hear that you can't have everything or everyone you want especially men and I say that as a man. No one wants to be reminded that dating, which is already hard, which is already frustrating, might be a little harder for you because you want something most other people in your erotic target demo don't.

Everyone is allowed to complain. Everyone is allowed to vent. Ask anyone who lives with me. I complain all the time about everything. But at this moment, I think it's important that our complaints... gay people's complaints about other gay people. Suggesting that gay people are doing marriage wrong, gay people saying gay people are doing marriage wrong, that's just going to empower people who will be arguing over the next few years.

That gay people shouldn't be allowed to do marriage at all. All right, moving on. Hump news. The new fall lineup of hump films. More than 20 amazing new films will be playing. Berlin, Seattle, Cleveland, Bend, Oregon, Burlington, Vermont, Columbus, Ohio, Madison, Wisconsin, and Missoula this week. You can watch the trailer and oh my God, the trailer.

itself is so good and order tickets to a screening at a theater near you right now at humpfilmfest.com magnum subs save the date our next savage love live october 8th If you're not yet a sub and you'd like to come to the next Savage Love Live, get an invite to the next Savage Love Live, become a Magnum sub now at savage.love slash subscribe. And coming up on today's show, a confident woman who enjoys casual sex keeps hearing that she's a boy on the inside from her friends.

A gay man is worried he's a sex addict because he's having too much sex. And a woman's volatile brother cut her off and has refused to speak to her for over a year. She is about to see him at a family funeral. What should she do? Should she pop over and say hello? And joining me on the Magnum, New York Times bestselling author, Elise Lunan.

author of On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins, and The Price Women Pay To Be Good, joins me to talk about the role Envy plays. That's one of the seven deadlies. In the scrutiny of women, lust and slut shaming, and how to work on our relationships, sigh with the right wingers.

in our lives. There's a little of my conversation with Elise on the micro, but for all of Elise, all of my conversation with Elise, you will have to subscribe to the Magnum right now at savage.love slash subscribe. All right, let's get to that. First call. This episode of the Lovecast is brought to you by the good folks at Squarespace. They make it easy to build a beautiful website, blog, or online store.

Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code savage to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by my favorite mattress, Helix Sleep. Right now, Helix is offering 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows for our listeners. Go to helixsleep.com slash savage now.

This episode is brought to you by Field, an app where curious people come to connect. Download Field on the App Store or Google Play and find out why so many of my listeners are already using it. Hi, Dan. 32-year-old.

male living in the northeast, gay. I'm in a trouble with my husband of 12 years and our boyfriend. The main thing that's been really difficult is I am... Now a sex addict, or I'm addicted to sex, I can't stop thinking about it. And sometimes I leave work to go fuck these boys. I can't focus on anything else. I'm completely obsessed. And it's starting to affect my life in a negative way, such that I'm not doing my work. I'm falling behind. I'm worried about myself.

How can I get out of this? I don't really want to stop having sex, but I think I need to. Sex addiction, not a thing. Google it. However, it is possible, especially for an attractive gay man to have a lot more sex, more opportunities for sex.

than a guy can possibly cram into a regular workday, especially a guy who has two partners waiting for him at home. So the question here is not... should you stop having sex it's How do you learn to self-regulate so that you pursue a reasonable number of the sexual opportunities available to you in such a way that it doesn't prevent you from fulfilling your obligations at work or your...

obligations to your spouse and your boyfriend how do you do that well you're seizing a lot of sexual opportunities sounds like maybe you're ducking out of work sounds like maybe you're on Grindr or Sniffies or some of the other apps and you can't resist temptation in the moment because you're just so fucking horny. You can control for that.

By masturbating more, you could control for that by, you know, seeing what's available to you on sniffies and going and having a wank in the bathroom, hopefully the solo bathroom at work. And then. returning to your responsibilities, not shirking them for dick that's available a half a block away in the city where you live in the Northeast. And then after work. Mission accomplished at work. You can go out there and emission accomplished with some available. Man, it's just about learning how to.

regulate the flow, control the flow. And one really good way for guys to do that, where there's just so much opportunity to get out there and have your sack drained for you is to drain your own sack strategically. So you're not boiling with horniness all the time. Well, I don't believe that sex addiction is a thing. There are people out there who have problems with compulsive behaviors and...

Sexual activity can become one of those behaviors that people with compulsion issues can engage in compulsively. Something you might want to talk about, not just with a sex and relationship advice podcast monkey, but with an actual. who can get to the root here, which is not a chemical addiction to sex. You're not as to sex as an alcoholic is to booze, but can get to the root of why.

You have this compulsion while you're displaying this compulsive behavior that is attaching itself to sexual activity, which is easy for young, hot gay men to do because there is so much opportunity.

I often say that straight guys have the benefit and curse of an external check on their ability to spin out of control sexually because, and it's women. women are less likely to want to have anonymous sex with straight guys they don't know for lots of reasons including violence and fear reasonable fear of sexual violence gay men

Young, attractive gay men with smartphones and access to the internet, you have to find that check inside yourself. You have to create an internal check on your ability to spin out of control sexually. But the sex is a problem if you're having so much of it that you're not doing your job or you're neglecting your husband and your boyfriend. So, doctor, doctor, I'm having way too much sex. It's fucking up my life. Doctor says, well, have a little less sex.

And don't fuck your life up. And if you can't do that on your own by draining your own sack at reasonable intervals, get thee to a therapist who can help you self-regulate. Get thee to a therapist. Go.

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formulating a response to a comment that I keep finding myself on the receiving end of. I'm a heterosexual woman. I present like a basic bitch. That's really the best way to put it. Not over the top feminine, but when I leave the house, my long hair is tied back in a ponytail. My ass is in a tennis skirt. I pretty much always look like I'm on the way to Starbucks.

That's what I look like. I act like the bold, blunt, confident leader that my mom taught me to be that was reinforced by the huge, diverse, progressive Northeastern city that I was raised in. When I left that city more than a decade ago, I quickly realized that all of those traits I listed at the top are assigned to men, are masculine. Didn't know that one growing up.

But I will say I have one more trait, which is that I'm hypersexual. And even my little utopia city that I grew up in very much told me that one's for boys. So I've gotten jokes my whole life, maybe one or two jokes a year that are to the effect of, ha ha ha, you're a boy on the inside. They're generally actually funny and I laugh them off and I never thought anything of it.

About a year or two ago, there's been a huge tone shift. I'm suddenly getting these as comments, not jokes, and I'm getting them all the damn time. I need your help formulating a response when... people make comments to the effect of you're a boy on the inside. One recent example is I mentioned several casual sexual encounters to a brand new female friend who said, oh my God, you're like a boy on the inside. Now I can ask you all the questions that I have for boys.

No, you can't. Not a boy. So it's things like this. They're not meant with malice, but they are starting to mess with my head. I... I'm guessing it's because of the re-emergence of tradwife culture, the popularity of traditional gender norms, masculine and feminine energy, which is often being talked about right before someone decides to call me a boy. What should I say?

What's a respectful, kind way to tell someone to stop? So you're a strong leader and you sometimes enjoy casual sex. And then you have friends, women.

friends of yours getting your face saying that these character traits the person that you are that that somehow means you're a boy on the inside not really A woman, as if women can't be strong leaders and confident and enjoy casual sex, as if women haven't been chewing up dicks and spitting out people for hundreds of thousands of years, they're just...

wrong and i think you can push back against it strongly and i think you could confront your friends when they say i'm going to ask you all the questions i would ask a boy because you're so like a boy and you could tell them to listen to themselves to listen to what it is that they're saying Cause they're buying into an idea of what a woman, not what a woman can be, but what a woman has to be or should be that a woman has to fit into this tiny little box of.

Not that interested in sex or only interested in a particular kind of sex in the context of a relationship. And a woman needs to be deferential and a woman needs to let men lead and a woman shouldn't be assertive. Fuck that. I feel your pain. I feel your rage. Like I spent 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 being told I wasn't a boy being accused.

by homophobes being a girl in the same way you're kind of being accused right now by women who've internalized misogynistic messages in our culture you're being accused of not being a woman or having a boy deep down inside you and you don't you're just a strong confident woman who enjoys sex which is a kind of woman that exists and has always

It is the kind of woman that the culture sometimes wants to convince women don't exist or shouldn't exist or can't exist or disqualified somehow from womanhood or femininity if they exist in that way. And it's just... Bullshit. Just like when the culture told me when I was... The culture. My friends, family, classmates, teachers told me when I was 12 years old that I was not a boy because...

I liked to bake. I liked to sing. I liked to dance. I liked to read. I didn't like sports. I didn't like roughhousing. And that made me not a boy. It didn't make me a kind of boy, a different kind of boy. It didn't prove that there weren't boys out there faking liking sports and rough and tumble bullshit. not pursuing interests or hobbies that they enjoyed for fear that they might be accused. Like I stood accused of not being an actual, but it's exhausting the policing of.

I don't even, I don't call it authentic gender expression or just gender expression at all. And now that comes not just from conservatives and. you know, conservative parents or right-wing fucking asshole teachers that I had to deal with when I was in my Catholic schools who want boys to be boys now come sometimes from the left where people are.

thinking it's somehow progressive to scrutinize their friends or lovers for traits that are... classed feminine or classed masculine when their lover is not masculine or not feminine and then say, oh, I see inside you that you are not really a woman or not really a man or you have these traits that. put you into some other category. I think we should just be really assertive about men can be all sorts of different kinds of men and women can be all sorts of different kinds of women.

And your brand of womanhood is not a boy in disguise. You're not a boy with Teds. You are a strong, assertive, powerful woman. with healthy sexual appetite who appreciates a good railing every once in a while and you aren't ashamed and you aren't disqualified from being a girl or being a woman or enjoying what things that you might enjoy that are traditionally associated with women or femininity. Just like I enjoy some things that are traditionally associated with men and masculinity. But yeah.

I feel you. I feel your pain. I went through this. It sucked. It sucked. And I pushed back hard. I told people that I was so a boy and they could go fuck themselves. And I recommend that you... Say something similar to your friends who keep telling you that you are not really who you know yourself to be. And maybe make some different friends. There are other women out there like you who aren't going to question.

Whether you're actually a girl or a boy or not, maybe you fell in with a group of, I don't want to say basic bitches. I want to say you, maybe you fell in with a group of women who they're feminine.

personalities or presentation sort of aligns with the cultural stereotype. Some people, their authentic gender expression is kind of the gender expression that is expected of males or females, and they feel no... cognitive dissonance about it and they're not performing femininity they just are feminine women or they are masculine men and it's not an act it's just authentic to them and so maybe all your friends are authentically feminine in that way

And you seem like someone from another planet to them. And maybe if you made some more friends who were like you and introduced them to those friends, maybe they would understand you better. And then at least you'd have some women to hang out with who weren't telling you all the time because you went and got some last night and then threw the guy out that you must not be a woman. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep.

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Let them know the love cast sent you by going to helixsleep.com slash savage. With Helix, better sleep starts now. Hi, Dan. This is a heteroflex cis woman in her 30s.

And I have a question that has bothered me for quite a few years now. I have no difficulty reaching orgasms. masturbate a lot. And if I am with a partner that pays some attention to my pleasure, I also have no difficulties getting there. But there's something that bothers me, which is I... really need to fantasize in order to orgasm. I cannot orgasm, let's say, in connection with my present partner.

And this has bothered me so much because I see that many men, when they are with me, they are able to reach an organ. Not all of them, that's true, but some of them are able to just be so present. and be aroused by what we are doing among ourselves. And some of them will come looking at my face, which I think is so sexy. And I can never, ever, let's say, afford to be connected enough. or present enough to be turned on by what we are doing. I always have to fantasize. I always have to go to this.

let's say, prefabricated scenes of my fantasy in order to reach this point of orgasmic inevitability, as you say sometimes. So is there a solution to this? I mean, I am OK as I am, but I just I really wish to experiment this at some moment and with more ease, let's say. So what are your thoughts on this? Is equally difficult to men and women? Have you heard of it? What do you think of it? Thank you so much.

Joining me to help answer this question, because why the fuck not? Elise Lunen, New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay. To Be Good, an exploration of the seven deadly sins, ancient ideas of morality that still control and distort women's lives today. Elise co-hosted the Goop podcast and Goop Lab on Netflix. Hey, Elise, welcome to the Savage Lovecast. Thanks for having me.

There are people who will laugh at the prospect of me answering any... anyone's sex questions for what it's worth. It's kind of right up your alley. You did just write this book. One of the chapters is about lust and how the idea of lust as a sin impacts women. But before we get to your book really quickly, I wanted to mention my book because we... We have a subtitle in common. Oh my God. Skipping towards Gamora, the seven deadly sins and the pursuit of happiness in America 25 years ago.

And it was a defense of sin and the idea of pleasure. I was pushing back against the conservative scolds at the time, the Bill Bennett. As you should. And the Robert Borks, who thought it was the end of the world, that people were getting blowjobs and enjoying them. And now you come out with this book 25 years later. What was tempting for you about the frame of the seven deadly sins? Why did you frame your book using that device?

Because I, despite being raised in a progressive house in Montana, outside of organized religion, my father's Jewish, my mom's a recovering Catholic, my older brother's gay. I have all the sort of right values, and yet I still found myself as a woman trying to perform my goodness to the world. And I really wanted to understand where that came from.

And as I started to list out the qualities of goodness that I found myself adhering to, putting other people's needs before my own wants, being sexy but not sexual, keeping my body. tightly constrained and controlled and the right size, sort of a quote-unquote good body, not talking about money or thinking that money is... is base and unspiritual and people have too much of it. And all of that is true. There's too much inequity, but.

As I started listing these ideas out, I realized I'm writing out the seven deadly sins, which I only knew from the movie Seven for what it's worth. And so when I went to the Bible to understand where they came from, I realized they're not in the Bible. Bible. I'm sure you know this. The first chapter in my book is about how they're not in the Bible. I can't wait. I'm adding your book to my Amazon cart as soon as we're finished. I can't wait to read it. Yeah.

It was this idea, the central thesis is that women are programmed to perform our goodness, quote unquote goodness in the world. I'm not talking about sort of like a self. this idea that we're all good. I'm talking about this externally adjudicated priests, parents, professors deciding who's good and who's not, and that men are conditioned for power. I mean, I think gay men are sitting in an interesting nexus point there, right? Yeah, a lot of gay men out there do feel like...

We have to be good. There's a famous book from the 70s called The Best Little Boy in the World. We had to be the best little boy in the world. In part not to attract attention to ourselves. We were good because then we weren't too heavily scrutinized. We were worried about being...

scrutinized because then they would figure out how bad we actually were. Stuff that was going on between our ears. But do you think, and I agree with you, I just want to invite you to expound on this a little bit. more, you think these expectations around good behavior, not being sinful, for example, that a woman should be sexually desirable, but a woman shouldn't have sexual desire, sexual desirability.

And availability is what a woman should live up to. But sexual agency, sexual interests of her own, that's not okay. That's lust. That's a sin. Yes. Yes. And women are set up as, yes, you need to be desirable, but not desiring. And more so that we are the babysitters for the rapacious desire of men and boys, and that we are co-responsible. for anything that happens to us because we have inspired them to be sort of out of control in their own lust for us, right? And it's this really insidious...

programming that most of us aren't even conscious of. We just enact it in the world. And this is, again, but I very much relate to this caller because I am similarly wired. And I think it is. For me, when I hear her, it is, I'm scared of the attention of men because I recognize, and this is based on some of my own, which I write about in the book, some early sexual trauma, but that to inspire someone's.

interest and attention is often dangerous. This gets into such a tricky area, though, because male sexuality, male desire, the male gaze... being desirous of male attention is really a double edged sword. And when you do a deep dive into what turns people on, what turns men on, what turns women on, a lot of women are turned on.

by the idea that they're so sexually desirable that a man loses control of himself. Ravishment fantasies. Ravage is very close to repair, like the etymology of rape. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, Justin Lee Miller wrote a... a terrific book about people's fantasies, people's desires. These two things are in tension. You know, women are, their lives are really warped and sometimes very negatively impacted by out of control men, but there's some part of female desire.

that is desirous of that out of control man, but in a controlled setting. And it's, how do you allow for, yeah, it is really complicated, but we can't just say like women are on the receiving end of all this male sexual attention. that's always negative because there are women who, most women, most women are straight. Most women want to be on the receiving end of that kind of male sexual attention. And most people's fantasies kind of go to dark and scary places.

You know, a lot of people's fantasies are eroticized fears and women have absolutely 100% legitimate reasons to fear men and male sexuality, male sexual violence. And yet, how do you then allow for... The enjoyment of that in a controlled way with somebody that you trust where you're toying with this fear to arouse yourself. It may be what this caller is fantasizing about in that moment when she's with her sexual partners. Yeah.

Well, I was going to quote you back to you, which was, you know, where you said essentially a kink is an eroticized fear. And I was like, yes, 100%. I think that's where so many rape or rape adjacent fantasies. come from for women, it's the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. It's very confusing, obviously. It is confusing. And gay men and straight women, we have...

Something in common here at a deep level, because most gay male erotic archetypes are homophobes. Gay men fantasize about cops and firemen and Marines and sailors and truck drivers and. cowboys, not famously pro-gay people waving pride flags on the side of the street during the pride parade, right? They're fear, figures of fear and terror. And yet. there is this desire and the same i think plays out in the erotic imaginations of women we share this this is fascinating and is as the fear

in the aftermath of making that firefighter cowboy transgress and then having them retaliate? Is that like the crux of the fear? Well, I think it's narcissism. Like, this Marine is not gay, but I'm so hot. yes that they're making an exception for me they're overcome with lust for me and i think that's often like women's sexual fantasies

Here we are making generalizations about 4 billion people and 4 billion other people. Let's do it. There will be hundreds of millions of exceptions. Exceptions are probably listening to this show at a greater rate than non-exceptions. But I think there's a kind of narcissism at the heart of that. We want to be desired. We want to be seen as objects. And we want to inspire in some people that loss of control that we know.

is dangerous for us. There's no more dangerous place for a gay man to be than alone in a room with a straight identified man in his refractory period. With a straight identified man who just came. That is a dangerous place for a gay man to be, for a trans woman to be. And it can be a very dangerous place for a woman to be in a room with a man who just had an orgasm. And yet gay men, straight women.

trans women who are attracted to men, we want to be in that room. Yeah. Isn't that wild? You'd think we'd learn our lesson eventually. No. Yeah, no, it's totally wild. I totally get it. So when you hear this caller, do you feel like... what she's creating or what that turn on. I don't know what she's exactly fantasizing about, but that she needs the presence of his physical and very present desire. And she needs to take her to sort of dissociate and take herself.

I think she feels like she's doing lust wrong and she's doing sex wrong because in the moment to get herself to climax, she needs to run the tape in her head. She needs to fantasize. And sometimes it's to fantasize about the thing that you're not doing or you would never want to do. Fantasy you would never want to realize, but it is where your erotic imagination needs to go to push you over the falls. And for other people, it's just...

You know, most of our orgasms over the course of our lives, we have while we're fantasizing, while we're thinking about sex, not while we're having sex, because we masturbate more than we fuck, right? Right. And so it can just be a groove people shift into. I'm approaching climax and here comes, you know, the eight track tape kicks in of my fantasies and they start to play in my head.

But I would say to this caller, like she says, the men she's having sex with, they're looking right at her. You don't know what's going on between their ears. They may be able to look right at you and be thinking about something else at the same time. And so whatever works, I just don't think the caller should.

Tell herself that because she's one of the many people who needs a little extra boost of the fantasy playing out in her head during sex, that she's doing it wrong or failing at sex or failing her sex partners or failing herself. Yeah. No, I don't think I could do that.

staring someone deeply i'm not i'm not a tantra practitioner for one but i feel like that's like a different to me that feels like a different pursuit so i would think goop people would be especially susceptible to tantra to tantra Oh, we'll have to do a poll. Seven hours, Dan. I'm not. I piss off the tantrum. Yeah, I'm like, I got things to do. I don't want to have a 12-hour orgasm. Efficiency. Yeah. There are dishes. There's yard work.

There's other things. Yeah, 100%. My conversation with Elise Lunen continues on the Magnum version of the show. You can subscribe for one month right now and listen to as many shows as you like and see if you're ready to commit to me as one of my subs. And then if you're ready, and I hope you are, you can upgrade to a full year subscription. and join the squad. You get access to Zoom Hangouts, Savage Love Lives with me and the gang once a month.

the entire Savage Love column, the Sex and Politics podcast, early bird tickets to Hump, and best of all, you'll be supporting the show and keeping the tech-savvy at-risk youth fed and clothed. Become a supporter of the show and one of my subs right now at savage.love slash subscribe. What do you want? Not family, not friends, not society at large. What do you want?

What do you want and how do you want it? Without the noise of external opinions, you have the space to find out. On the dating app field, curiosity leads the way towards intimacy with others and yourself. Desires, interests, the space to change again and again. There's room for all of it there. If you have a fantasy, say it. If you have a desire, include it in your bio.

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And that helps you find exactly what you're looking for. They don't gatekeep connection. In an age where dating apps create hurdles to finding your people, Field is built differently. They don't try to guide your desires either. You get to be you. And you, you can change. On field, who you were yesterday may not be who you are tomorrow. 62% of field members.

evolve their sexuality, interests, and desires within their first year on the app. In a place where there's no pressure to be anything, who will you be? Expand your curiosity. There are 20 plus sexuality and gender identities listed on field. In this space, you can explore who you are without judgment. See what you have in common. Know what you're looking for. Feel just rolled out their shared desires feature that immediately shows you what you have in common with someone else.

Download Field, that's F-E-E-L-D, on the App Store or Google Play and find out why so many of my listeners are already using it. Hey, good morning, Dan. I'm calling from...

The Northeast, I'm a 24-year-old bisexual man, and I would like some advice on navigating romantic feelings through our friendship. So for context, I had a friend who I... ended the friendship with regarding their return to an abusive relationship they were going through and I helped them through about three cycles of it and I just couldn't take it anymore.

Likewise, too, I did recently go to their house, just, you know, spoke to their parents, let them know that what went down and that I just want our friendship back. I did have feelings for this friend. And... You know, what occurred when we were on a vacation together. But also, too, that I know I told them I had to put them on hold. But I always cited it as, you're not my type.

you're not this or that when it really just stemmed down to they weren't emotionally mature at that point in time. And likewise, neither was I if I couldn't necessarily tell them straight out because I didn't want to. hurt their feelings how can i navigate my friendship and even maintain it for future friends or if this one blossoms again my romantic feelings for them and On the one hand...

Being a gay man. I have so many friends that are some of my best friends, but our relationship started with sex or with dating, brief relationships. And. Devolved isn't the right word. Evolved, just transitioned to friendship. We realized that we were better friends than lovers or better friends than boyfriends, and we were able to make that transition.

That pivot. So I know that that's possible. I know it's possible to be friends with someone that you communicated, once upon a time, your romantic attraction or feelings for. Maybe you communicated those feelings. With your dicks at and in each other. So that's possible. However, I also, on the other hand, want to say when someone is your friend and they confess.

romantic or sexual feelings for you and the friendship has been ongoing and the friendship didn't start with a sexual encounter and then you realized you were better friends and you kept hanging out and seeing each other as friends. But when it was a friendship at the start and it's gone on for a while and then one person confesses their romantic feelings for the other, that can be perceived by the person.

They may look back at the friendship through this prism. They may re-examine it in the rearview mirror and see ulterior motives and or dickful thinking and or manipulations that may or may not be... There, they may misapprehend actions that you took, behaviors that you took when they thought you were just friends and you only had friendly feelings for them before you confessed that you had romantic and sexual.

feelings for them that you hadn't been completely upfront about during the life of the friendship. In the particular case that you cite, this person that you've tried to help out of this toxic, no good, very bad relationship again and again and again.

Even if the relationship is awful, even if the relationship is abusive and they should get the fuck out of it, they may, once you confess your romantic sexual attraction to them, that you have feelings for them, that you always had feelings for them. they may view, even if you were scrupulous in the moment to separate your feelings for them from what you knew in your heart was best for them, which was to get away from this awful, toxic partner.

They may view your actions as suspect that you were trying to get them out of that relationship because you wanted to have a relationship with them. You had an ulterior motive. And so you risk the friendship because.

The other person's perception of it and whether it was an actual genuine friendship could be irrevocably damaged, harmed, changed. So. What do you do? You have these feelings for this person who's back in a relationship with this toxic person that you ran and told his parents about? Or their parents about? Seems weird to run and tell mom and dad, but...

If it's a crisis, if this person is in danger, sometimes you got to call in the cavalry. Sometimes you got to call in the parents and the family and stage an intervention. So I don't want to second guess your judgment there. It may have been absolutely the right thing to do to run to mom and dad. What do you do now? Well, you've ended the friendship. You've cut this person off because you just don't want to go through this again and again and again. You don't want to feel like.

They use you as a sounding board to process their feelings for this really toxic person and basically slowly talk themselves into getting back together with this toxic person. You don't want to feel like you're enabling that toxic relationship. And after a while, after a few cycles.

If someone turning to you because their relationship is awful and the person they're with is awful and you helping them get the fuck out of that and then them returning to that, after a few cycles of that, yeah, you're allowed to say, I'm done. I think it's sometimes the best thing that you can say to someone, I'm done. Give me a call when you wake up and you end this relationship and then we can have a friendship or maybe dot, dot, dot, something more.

My advice, though, in the short term, you already ended this friendship. Go find somebody else. Go fuck somebody else. Go find somebody else to obsess about, to be romantically attracted to, and to invest your time and emotional and sexual energies in.

All right, time for listener feedback. So much great discussion in the comment thread on last week's show about the caller whose autistic kid identifies as trans and asexual and as a fluffy dragon. Long detailed comments. that I hope everyone reads. From Jen, Rats Can't Knit, Eden, Jonathan, Inspired Desires, Delta 35. and more. I can't do any of the comments justice here by reading a selection. So I'm going to encourage everyone to dive into the thread and read the whole.

thing. There were some questions in the thread about how I knew the age of the child involved. The caller also wrote in to me and included the kid's age. I should have made that clear in my response. All right, moving on to other topics raised in last week's show. syrup about the caller who found out her wife had a FWB thing going with her best friend for 10 years.

I try not to be a toxic monogamist, but Dan, almost anyone who's monogamous would be upset to find out that their partner had a long-term romantic relationship with someone who is still very much in their life and hid it from you. The wife actively hit it and then tried to lie about it! Exclamation point. Says Andrew in response, the only reason to ask Dan Savage for advice is because you want Dan Savage's advice.

The original shtick of the column so long ago was that the gay guy's approach to sexuality could be good for others, straight, lesbian, etc. It seems so far that gay men in the thread agree with Dan. It wouldn't be a problem for me if my current partner had a history.

with one of his best friends. And I think everyone else would be better off if they were more chill about it. Remember, Andrew continues, readers have other advice columnists to go to if they want advice like, you have so much to be upset about. Your wife has wronged you. Ditch that.

friend and keep your wife on a short leash until she proves more trustworthy. And finally, about the same call, says by Dan Van, it is a tricky situation. You have to ask why she didn't tell her wife that she and her best friend have been lovers in the past.

And the obvious answer was that the caller would be jealous and would not be as supportive of this friendship, which is very much the case. So it makes sense that the wife would take the risk that nobody would spill the beans so she could get on with having a happy life with her wife and her bestie.

got along swimmingly. All right. We appreciate all of your comments. I read all of your comments. And if you want to leave one for me or join the convo with my listeners, go to savage.love and dive in. And now... Savage Love listeners who left voicemails on our answering machine about last week's show, they, you, get the last word on this week's show.

Hi Dan, I'm calling in response to the caller who has been in a nine-month marriage with her wife and who found out that her wife had been in a sort of like 10-year hookup ship with a friend in the past and I feel like... Maybe you skimmed over the part where the caller says that her wife texted her from the bathroom and also that the caller had had a couple of drinks. What that implies to me is that...

Her wife is maybe a bit fearful of the caller's response and doesn't feel super ready to disclose certain things because of a fear of a big reaction. Hey, this is a comment for the caller last week who was asking about anal sex and lubrication, and she was in the threesome and was concerned. about the other woman who was not lubricated to her knowledge. And I just want to say as a woman who loves anal sex,

I don't need lubrication. I've never heard of this rectal fluid or cream you're talking about, but I've always wondered, like, why don't I need it? Because when I'm turned on, my ass is ready to go, pretty much. 95% of the time. So I'm here to reassure you. There are those of us with super juicy assholes. Hi, Dan. In episode 985.

You mentioned that Fire Island is the Vatican City of anal sex. I was always under the impression that the Vatican City was the Vatican City of anal sex. And we are going to leave it there. Got a sex question? A relationship problem? At savage.love slash askdan. You can record and upload your question or your comment directly onto our website. Or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email us your question by sending it to Q at savage.love.

savage.love or call us at 206-302-2064 and leave us a message on our answering machine. itmfa t-shirts are backed by popular demand now in women's sizes fuck first and ggg mugs also available really nice really comfortable really cozy savage love hoodies all available now at savage.love.com.

Follow me at Blue Sky at Dan Savage. Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage. Follow Elise Lunan on Instagram at Elise Lunan. Her podcast, Pulling the Thread, is available wherever you get your podcasts. And her New York Times bestselling book, On Our Best Behavior, is available now wherever you get your New York Times bestsellers.

Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian. And me and Nancy, tech savvy at rescue, I'll be back at you next week on the installment of the Savage Lovecast. Thank you for telling.