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Savage Love

I am a straight man. I met my present girl 10 years ago. I fell head over heels for her. I still love her. But, little by little, she has become boring to me. Our sex life has cooled. Days run together with mundane activities like watching TV, going to the store and hanging out with our kids.

My boredom is compounded by a craving for sex with other women. It doesn't matter who -- the girl at the coffee shop, every chick at the gym -- I'm up to my eyeballs in covet.

I want to be a father to my kids and take care of my wife financially. But I want out. I am a few years from 40. What is the best course of action?

Too Young To Flail

 

You say you want out, but are you sure? In her book I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage, Susan Squire asks: "Why does society consider it more moral for you to break up a marriage, go through a divorce, disrupt your children's lives maybe forever, just to be able to fuck someone with whom the fucking is going to get just as boring as it was with the first person before long?" (Emphasis added.)

Writing about Rep. Christopher "Craigslist Congressman" Lee last week on Balloon Juice, contributor "Mastermix" said: "If we want to do something about the high divorce rate, we might want to get real [about] the role of a discreet, mutually-agreed-upon affair as a safety valve."

In other words, put your family through the hell of divorce, and here's what happens next: You dog around for a few years, and before long you shack up with a new woman. A few years after that, you're trapped in another monogamous relationship that bores you -- and a few years after that, you're writing to ask if you should put your second wife and your new kids through the pain of a divorce ... all so you can make an embarrassing pass at a barista.

Instead of putting your current family -- and your hypothetical second family and that poor barista -- through that, why not risk leveling with the wife you've got now? Your marriage is already on the ropes, so you don't have a lot to lose. Ask for a "safety valve": permission to have a discreet, mutually-agreed-upon affair, should the opportunity/barista present itself/herself. It may not be pleasant for your wife to hear, but "I'm leaving you to go fuck a barista to be named later" won't be music to her ears, either.

She may surprise you. It's entirely possible that you bore her just as much as she bores you. If she's itching for a few adventures of her own, then take whatever money you were planning to spend on lawyers, and spend it on flying grandparents in to look after the kids while you two head out for a weekend away.

But if all she wants is to stay at home with the kids, tell her that to preserve your sanity, and your marriage, you're going to have some adventures on your own.

If she leaves you over it, then you got what you wanted: out.

 

I'm a 31-year-old lesbian. My girlfriend is in her 30s, but save for a few one-night stands, she has never been with a woman before. I've never had better sex than the sex I'm having with her. When I try to talk to her about this, she gets anxious and makes self-deprecatory comments. I want to be with her for the long haul -- I just need to figure out how to communicate with her about how great our sex is. Got any advice?

Communication Breakdown

 

Yeah, I've got some advice: Shut the fuck up.

I had this awesome new boyfriend once, and the sex was so great that I felt compelled to communicate with him about how great it was. "This is so great," I would tell him. "Let's try to figure out where all this greatness is coming from!" But he didn't enjoy talking about sex -- particularly while we were having sex -- and he got so annoyed with my attempts to figure out where all this greatness was coming from that he eventually asked/advised/ordered me to shut the fuck up.

Keep fucking the girlfriend's fucking brains out, but shut the fuck up. Odds are that she'll learn to relax and open up about sex, like my boyfriend did. But in the meantime, try to resist the urge to lesbian this thing into the ground by communicating it to death.

 

I've had a growing attraction to one of my good male friends. I am an open bisexual male, and my friend is "straight." We've had relations -- me blowing him, him jerking me -- but he's adamant that he is not attracted to males at all. He nevertheless sleeps with me when he spends the night.

The plot thickens: A couple days ago, my "straight" crush ordered an 8-inch dildo, molded from a real dick! He got it to use on himself! He says because there's not going to be another male present when he uses it, the act will be "straight." I define being sexual as enjoying not only the sexual interactions possible between preferred genders, but also the emotional satisfaction, or romance. Does he have a point?

Absolutely Hate Acronyms

 

Wasn't there "another male present" when you were giving him blowjobs, AHA, and he was jerking you?

Maybe if your "straight" friend wasn't accepting blowjobs from another man and swore on a stack of Playboys that he would be fantasizing about a woman pegging him when he jams that dildo up his ass, then maybe he could be believed when he claims to be a straight dude. But a guy who fails to mention a burning desire for pussy -- particularly in conversation with a dude who blows him -- and instead falls back on a lame "no homo" rationalization ("Hey, it's not like the dildo brought me flowers or anything gay like that!") is a lot of things, but straight ain't one of 'em.

If your straight friend manages to fuck some sense into himself on that dildo, you might want to take a turn on it yourself.

 

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

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