Dan, thought you'd point out that people can also have open relationships, where two otherwise-compatible people stay together despite a lack of attraction, and both people are free to get sex elsewhere.

What an asshole. I could maybe sympathize with the LW until I read the PS--he's not attracted to her, but he doesn't want to give up the "perks" that come with staying with her.

Maybe the decent thing to do is to cheat, but make sure he gets caught--forget to close a browser window on a Craig's List search or something--so that she dumps him.

OMG this could have been written by my ex. End it SWNH, PLEASE! I'm a pretty attractive, athletic chick with awesome boobs who used to have no problem with my sexuality and going after what I wanted, and 6 months with my ex just wreaked havoc on my sexual self-esteem. I finally left that relationship after figuring out just how toxic his lack of sexual interest in me really was to my sanity, and this is even after I figured out that it wasn't a lack of sexual interest in me, it was a lack of sexual interest in general that was prompting his constant rejections. It's like a sneaky, non-confrontational version of slut shaming to have your bf constantly tell you no. I became ashamed of my sex drive, felt weird flirting with him, and stopped initiating any kind of physical contact. I still have issues initiating sex with my current bf, and I'm only now starting reconnect fully with my sexuality.

If you take nothing else from Dan's response, just read these words over and over again:

"The lies you're telling, on the other hand, are more like acid. They slowly eat away at someone's sexual self-esteem and ability to enjoy sex until there's nothing left."

Not to mention the fact that if she is in fact older than 28, if she wants kids the longer you stay with her the more you're taking away from her ability to find a partner who IS attracted to her while she's still in her baby-making prime.

If you really love her, stop being a douche and end it already.

Dan's response is basically a DTMFA written to the MF in question. Usually the MFs don't have the decency to ask for advice, so we can tell them where to go.

Having been on the receiving end of a somewhat similar set of circumstances, I cannot say emphatically enough, "END THIS RELATIONSHIP!" Do so kindly, give up what you must, but end it cleanly and decisively.

Being stuck in a relationship for a couple of years with an ex who did this to me ground my ego into fucking dust. It took me at least a year to even be able to consider going on a date with someone else after it was over.

SWNH is just torturing his girlfriend because he's a selfish, unmotivated piece of shit.

What a douchebag. Dan was far too kind.

You're not doing her a favor by gritting your teeth and dead-fucking her, SWNH. That you think you are is narcissism very close to the kind that enables cheating.

@5 & 8. Amen sisters, been there done that. It is fucking awful. I really hope she dumps his ass since I suspect this selfish pos isn't going to have the nuts to do it.

@3 & 4, I didn't mean that the LW should sign up for an open marriage with this person he doesn't want to bone. I just meant that Dan wrote:

Of course there are lots of people out there in happy relationships with partners they don't find physically attractive...But these relationships only work...in cases where one of these two things is true:
1. Someone is capable of enjoying sex with a not-physically-ideal/not-sexually-attractive partner...
2. Someone isn't interested in sex at all—not with the partner, not with anyone else—and that someone's partner also isn't interested in sex.

When there's also a third category, called people who don't like sex with each other, but do like each other, and let each other have sex with other people.

I assume that "douche" and "douchebag" have become such common insults because they seem like antiquated terms detached from their original meaning, but the insult derives from the idea that vaginas are so filthy that even the thing used to clean them is horribly tainted. Personally, I don't like it and I'd rather people stop.

Regarding this letter, it would be nice to have an idea why he finds this woman unattractive. Most times, these things have no solution but to end it; once in a very great while, there's an actual solution (change in hygiene, change in sexual practice, boob job?). When someone is too shy to break up over sexual incompatibility, it's also possible that person is too shy to be honest about what they want sexually.

@12, I supposed the open marriage/relationship could work but I don't know that it would really fix the acidick problem.

Personally, if my partner came to me and asked to be in an open relationship and said, "Oh, I love having sex. I just don't like having sex with YOU," that would be a deal breaker for me. That and the, "Oh, all the sex we've had so far? I've been faking it," would be a big not okay we're done here. Having sex with other people would help the deteriorating self esteem thing, but I imagine even so, being married to someone who had a sex drive but not for me, even if I had a sex drive for him, and had lied about having a sex drive for me for an extended period of time, would not be an enjoyable arrangement, no matter how well we got along.

Perhaps if SWNH had asked for an open relationship at the beginning and been clear about not having a desire for sex with her, this might be better. But the lies through sex for so long kinda ruin the chances of that working I think.

@13: Hygiene is one thing, but I have a feeling that asking for breast augmentation would be the same thing as breaking up with her, except with a extra thousand degrees of insensitivity.

"Problem is, I don't find her sexually attractive. Never have. We have known each other for several years. I met her while she was dating someone else and all that good stuff. A couple of years later, we started to date. It was more like a friend suggested I try and see what comes out of it"

Way to blame your current situation on absolutely anyone else in the world. Break up with her already.

Jeezy creezy, EricaP. You come off as a dickhead-enabler sometimes. Why do you want to trap these poor women in long-term relationships with men who don't want to be there? She deserves better than this deceitful sack of crap.

@13 My understanding on the term is that it's a terrible insult for exactly the history you describe there--douchebags are bad now not because they go into vaginas but because they were used to harm and shame vaginas. Calling someone a douchebag *is* a terrible insult, but it's because you're essentially calling them an old-fashioned ladyshame device, filled with poison and broken promises, which I think describes the personality of most straight male douchebags pretty damn well.

@13: Sorry, douchebag is completely appropriate to me.

It's an item that's completely useless and harmful and belongs nowhere close to any healthy vagina.

Also: "Regarding this letter, it would be nice to have an idea why he finds this woman unattractive. Most times, these things have no solution but to end it; once in a very great while, there's an actual solution (change in hygiene, change in sexual practice, boob job?)."

Why does it matter? He's never once found her attractive. Ever. In the several years he's known her. This is never, ever going to change. And encouraging him to seek out carving out his woman's body for his gratification (which, again, is never going to work)? Egads.

Why the kneejerk defense? I don't understand. It doesn't matter ~why~ he doesn't find her attractive and never has. It only matters that he did and does. That is why this needs to end. Whether he has his issues is irrelevant as he's never going to fix them while latching onto this codependent farce of a relationship.

@13 @ 17, here's a - ahem - smart take on the term(s):
http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/04…

@14 again, I'm NOT recommending open marriage to this particular person.

I'm just saying that if Dan is going to list the only ways relationships work without mutual attraction, an open relationship is one of those ways.

If people are finding it hard to imagine how that would work, here's an example: let's say the husband transitions MtF. Many marriages end at that point, but they don't all. The wife is hetero and not attracted to this new woman in her life. But they still love each other and live well together. They can open their marriage and each get some sexual needs met with other people.

@16, see 21.

@18 The brevity of your description pleases me greatly.

If you were my supposed boyfriend, this is almost the worst thing you could do to me. Oh, and LW: you're a definite, for-sure, Urban-dictionary-definition-of-the-word, Class-A, douchebag.

I suppose the Trust Me sentence was just emphasis because this LW needs it set out for him very plainly and perhaps just this side of physical reinforcement, but I've known quite a few people who genuinely had no clue that they were in such a relationship before the IWNATY Bomb dropped. I wonder if he's told any friends (I don't know why I seem to be a Father Confessor type, but I've been on the receiving end of the equivalent of this letter more than once), and if any of them know her. If so, the bomb is probably about to drop, to judge from my own experience.

@13 Asking her to get a boob job ? That's considered an "actual solution" in your world ?

--satire

"Oh please, darling, you're so ugly, the natural, soft, wondrous breast you were born with would look so much better if they were two half bolted on cantaloupes, please undergo the physical pain and risk your life on the operating table just to please my eyes, I might even want to fuck you !"

Why shouldn't women pressure men to have dick jobs then ? Dicks are far from handsome as per se, and they never are the right size, ask their possessors. Dick jobs everybody, you might get laid !

--/satire

"Douche" is a pretty funny word for me, since it means "shower" in French. Whenever I read it, although I know its meaning, it evokes a guy so entitled he never showers. Something not to put near a vulva.

Talk to her about it. If you really love her and she really loves you, you can turn this failed relationship into a wonderful friendship. Having been on your side of the equation, I know that this can work (it may start out rocky, but my best friend in the world started out as a boyfriend to whom I was more emotionally attracted than sexually attracted). We had to take a break from each other for about 6 months while we developed outside friendships more fully but, when we came back, we were even able to root each other on in other relationships.

On the other hand, the longer you keep lying, the harder it will be to morph this into something healthy.

And this doesn't make LW a douchebag, it makes him confused.

Ask 25 random people on the street why “douche” or “douchebag” is an insult. I predict that at least 23 of them won’t come up with anything so enlightened and vagina-positive as the meaning that some people are twisting around to find so that they can justify continuing to use it when it is a deeply misogynistic word. Rationalize to yourselves and the readership here on a sex-positive blog (not all of whom unilaterally agree on the no-longer-misogynistic meaning attached to douche as a pejorative) if you want, but don’t fool yourself. Most people still consider “douche” and “douchebag” to be insults because they are the things a woman uses to clean her gross, smelly vagina. So anything that goes into that disgusting lady part to deal with its yuckiest aspect is by definition the grossest, most vile thing that could be. No doubt the words will slowly acquire the tortured connotation those who want to use it ascribe to it, but that will take a long time, and in the meantime, I find it fascinating what semantic lengths people will go to to continue using words which they know others find so offensive when there are plenty of alternate ways of expressing contempt.

@21: "If people are finding it hard to imagine how that would work"

I don't find it hard to imagine how that would work. I find it impossible that this particular scenario would. IT IS NOT A CURE-ALL.

@30: The difference here is that you're talking "more". He's not. At all. Not one iota. That's why all this advice about success is based on false premises. You can't go from 0 to something. You'd have to actually have respect, trust, and actual love, not just "she's totally a cool friend when i'm not lying to her all the time".

@31: "Most people still consider “douche” and “douchebag” to be insults because they are the things a woman uses to clean her gross, smelly vagina."

Of all the unenlightened insults, I think it's sufficiently divorced from context and internalized self-loathing that it doesn't perpetuate any "gross vagina" myth. I'll still take suggestions for alternate usage, however I'd prefer it be as pithy and representative of harmful persons.

Also, lets say he really loves her, he could always build an attraction to her. Attraction can be created and a created attraction is exactly the same as one you "just feel". I hate it when people say this crap, like "I'm just not attracted to black people" Bullshit, you never tried, your racism is just blinding you.

@5 - You LET six months with your ex wreak havoc on your self esteem. Not saying that to be a jerk, just to point out that in any relationship people need to be responsible for making good choices for themselves. I don't know the details of the situation of course so maybe I am being a jerk here, apologies if that's the case.

@32, are you saying that opening a marriage when one person has stopped being attracted to the other is not guaranteed to work (see, "not a cure-all")? In that case, I agree.

Or are you saying that it is impossible for it to work out? Or that it's impossible for it to help with the case of a transitioning spouse? What's your point?

@27, many things in life are fucking horrible. Disfiguring burns. MS. Losing your spouse to gender transition. I wouldn't recommend an open-marriage-without-mutual-attraction to young people, but with people who have been married for decades and still like & respect each other, such arrangements are not that unusual.

@32: Actually, I don't think most people who use it put a lot of thought into it. It's pulled from a list of known insults, and hurled. Most people are not particularly introspective, and I think it's asking too much of the general population to think that deeply when you're reaching for a ready-to-hand insult.

Perhaps many people today don't even know what a "douche" is, nor why it was originally an invective; they just know it as a synonym for "really awful and grossly insensitive person." (I find it's over-the-top insensitivity and obtuseness of the offender that seem to merit the insult more than any other factor when I think about whom it gets applied to.) But for people who know what the word means and why it was originally used as an insult, I find it a problematic choice. Since most of the worst insults humans have ever come up with involve body parts and either sexual or excretory functions, I suppose a case could be made that it's no better, worse, or really different than others, like "asshole." (I prefer "asshole:" everyone has one, they truly are often yucky and dirty without the intervention of a shower or a washcloth, and really do require cleaning to keep them from smelling like poop.)

The thing that bothers me the most is that when someone in a community (say, for the purposes of this discussion, the SLOG commenter community) expresses a legitimate objection to an invective and asks that people find an alternate one, the other members of her community, rather than apologize and/or try to accommodate her reasonable request (Erica Tarrant wasn't pulling her objection from thin air. She's hardly the only person in the world who is upset by the word's usage; there's historical precedent for her opinion), go into defensive mode and start explaining why actually, the word isn't offensive to vaginas or vagina-havers; oh no, it is an affirmation of the natural perfection of the vagina and a blow to those who would try to quell its good qualities.

All that intelligence used to defend a statement probably originally made without thought and which could easily be replaced with something that wouldn't offend someone it wasn't intended to offend. But no. Because rather than admit that perhaps someone else has a legitimate point, people would rather come up with convoluted explanations and totally new definitions to justify what they have already done and allow them to keep doing it, now self-righteously.
Just like American politics today.

@35: I'm saying that opening a relationship based on deceit and whom one had never started being attracted to the other is guaranteed to not work.

I could make a terrible analogy about your poly-hammer always looking for nails, but I should just suggest that you choose better champions for a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship. Sometimes people just need to fucking end for everyone's sake so the suffering can end. If there was some iota of good once I might not be so dismissive of your idea, but they have no previous good* to base this on, and he's not the sort of guy to handle poly relationships responsibly and respectfully.

*Whatever he's doing ain't love. Bimonthly fuck-charades and the occasional parental/canine approval don't count.

@36: "still like & respect each other"

There's where your attempt to offer advice falls flat on its face.

Also

"I wouldn't recommend an open-marriage-without-mutual-attraction to young people"

You just did.

@37: "The thing that bothers me the most is that when someone in a community (say, for the purposes of this discussion, the SLOG commenter community) expresses a legitimate objection to an invective and asks that people find an alternate one, the other members of her community, rather than apologize and/or try to accommodate her reasonable request"

We aren't allowed to disagree about the current context? "douchebag" ~is~ offensive and harmful. Much more offensive than the word's usage, IMO. Vaginas are great. Douchebags never.

I can't wait until the next letter where someone complains that their partner is putting on weight, and therefore no longer attractive to them. Just to watch all the "you're a douchebag for stringing along someone you don't find attractive" posters turn into "you're a douchebag for not finding them attractive in the first place" posters.

I also can't wait for some dumbass to compare two entirely not-analogous situations and try to claim hypocrisy.

This lady's in her early thirties? Save her some time.

@38 I don't think this guy did anything wrong by starting a relationship with someone and waiting to see if that someone grew on him. I've known couples for whom that worked.

Anyway, ignoring the low-grade trolling, I don't think anyone's somehow emotionally invested in "douchebag" so it'd probably be a little more constructive to try to publicize alternatives that can capture and replace the essential "jerkness" the word's accrued over the years. It's convenient, it's short, it's well-known and understood and to many, far enough away from the bodyshaming that it doesn't seem like such a curse.

What do you use instead?

The LW is a fucking pussy (sorry feminists I could not find another appropriate word). He needs to man up and find someone else. Staying in a relationship with someone you are not attracted to is selfish and cruel. I have been on the receiving end of this before and it causes as much damage as the cheating (which he will do at some point anyway).

Narcissistic asshole need to deal with the problem. All breakups result in various losses in shared relationships, deal with it.

@42: ?! I'm not saying that's never happened. I'm saying this definitely didn't and won't happen in this case and that it's a bad idea to compare this to healthier, less deceptive and codepenedent bases for a relationship.

@WaddyJones: How about "coward?"

undead ayn rand: I tend to use "asshole," but "stupid jerk" or "selfish jerk" or "stupid, selfish, cowardly, jerky, asshole" would seem in this case to be the best descriptor I could come up with. Granted, it's not short or pithy, nor especially clever.

EricaP: For fuck's sake, how about staying focused on the actual letters as written instead of getting on your open-marriage soapbox every time you read about a couple that are sexually incompatible? These two aren't married; the best thing he can say about his poor girlfriend is that his fucking *dog* loves her, and if he breaks up with her he'll likely lose some mutual friends--that's his big reason for staying. He has never been attracted to her. What is there for her to staying with this man? Sheesh!

@29: HA!

@undead & nocute:

In his resposne, Dan provided 2 examples of relationships that could thrive without mutual attraction. Neither of those 2 examples applied to the LW. Obviously. Dan said those were the ONLY two cases where that was possible.

LIKE DAN'S EXAMPLES, my example was NOT APPLICABLE TO THE LW. I was reminding Dan that there is a 3rd type of relationship that can thrive without mutual attraction. Since he said there wasn't a 3rd type. But he knows there is a 3rd type.

Dan wasn't telling the LW to love his partner so much that he overcomes the lack of attraction (Type 1). Dan wasn't telling the LW to become asexual (Type 2). And I wasn't telling the LW to propose an open marriage (Type 3). I was just talking to Dan.

Learn to read.

@49, "so many older people" -- the ones with disfiguring burns, MS, or who are transitioning genders are often not so eager to get back onto the dating scene, but would like to stay with their spouse of many decades.

My boyfriend lost sexual interest in me after about a year. I knew it every time we had sex, and it tore me to pieces. And yet we dated for two more years after that. He didn't want to break up because he still loved me and loved our life together, apart from the sex; I didn't want to break up because I was determined to try and fix the problem.

In the end we broke up and it was painful, but it was the best possible thing we could have done. I'm now happily dating the love of my life; my ex is happily polyamorous.

SWNH, it's time to end things with your girlfriend so you can both find the person(s) who satisfy you emotionally AND sexually.

@34 If you're not trying to be a jerk then why did you feel it necessary to say anything at all "without knowing the details"? I did take responsibility and make a good decision for myself by ending it. But this isn't a sort of immediate red flag that jumps out at you on a second date. It's easy to justify away when so many things about the relationship are amazing, and the psychological toll it took wasn't even obvious to me until I started my new relationship and my bf gave me a new perspective.

Especially with this guy lying through his teeth, I wouldn't be surprised if this woman has sort of forgotten what a healthy relationship between two people who are ridiculously attracted to each other actually is like.

Don't make the mistake so many people make, LW, and think that you're doing your girlfriend a favor. Speaking from first-hand experience of being with a person who wasn't sexually interested, it may take her ego years to recover from your lack of interest. Thanks, but no thanks. Also, if you do it gracefully and compassionately, your mutual friends won't feel like they have to choose between you.

STOP HAVING SEX AND TELL HER

Ask her what she wants. Platonic life partnership or breaking up?

Man, hasn't the douche issue been resolved yet? I remember when Dan took a survey, and the results were overwhelmingly "Oh, get over yourself".

@48: "When there's also a third category, called people who don't like sex with each other, but do like each other, and let each other have sex with other people.

...

I was reminding Dan that there is a 3rd type of relationship that can thrive without mutual attraction. Since he said there wasn't a 3rd type. But he knows there is a 3rd type."

Dan was keeping it simple, seeing as the guy claimed he "likes" her, it's simpler to leave that shit out when the guy obviously "likes" her solely a "cool roomie" sense.

@57: I think that if a member of your community cares about something a lot and it costs so little people should do it. A member of the Stranger staff voiced an objection--if that's not a valid member of the SLOG community I don't know who is. How much would it kill people not to use the word "douche?" It's not like there aren't a ton of alternative ways to convey contempt.

I appreciate the earlier response, btdubs.

Vennominon's comment (28) about the bomb dropping makes me wonder. I haven't paid close attention over the years to numbers, but how many of these sorts of letters to Dan are actual attempts at confession: wherein the writer knows the partner reads Savage Love? This one seems to be that sort of letter.

@48 is the relationship you're describing called 'friendship'? You can keep awesome people that you're not attracted to in your life by being friends with them. You don't have to bring sex or romance in at all. That way you can have them and date the people you want to date.

@62, it's not called 'friendship' when you are married, have kids, and want to continue living together. It's called "it's no one else's business who we fuck" (aka 'open marriage').

@EricaP (63): Whatever works for a couple, works for that couple, obviously. But I thought that in general an open marriage meant that the members of it were allowed to have sex with other people in addition to, not in place of, having sex with each other.

I agree with 64. You seem to be describing a relationship where the two people involved aren't interested in each other and yet date and marry anyway, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Why do you want to trap these poor women in long-term relationships with men who don't want to be there? She deserves better than this deceitful sack of crap.

Not picking on you, because I agree with your fundamental point, but I just want to say: lots of women do this to men too - men who are 'good husband material" but not someone they're really attracted to. I've been there with a GF who just wasn't all that into me, but wouldn't just dump me. Really bad annoying fake sex that became a command performance (for both of us) less the truth (lack of attraction or just dead relationship) have to be discussed. EricaP's point would have more weight if they were married and/or had children (or a mortgage, etc.) that was a commitment beyond sex.

LW: Definitely, if you give a shit about her - enough not to be a CPOS - just end it. Be nice about it and you might be surprised you get to keep the friends. But if you want to continue to feel so great about your righteous self then you better do the right thing by her and end it.

@65: "I agree with 64. You seem to be describing a relationship where the two people involved aren't interested in each other and yet date and marry anyway, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

But it's an option! Or some such.

@66: Oh, I know! I don't think this is a particularly gendered issue. My partner has a friend in this situation, and hopefully we can coax him out of the entanglement so at least he can make it out okay in the end. No kids, maybe a mortgage, but really nothing keeping them together. A stillborn relationship/marriage should be ended, no matter how much sunk cost.

@64 An open marriage means that the people in it aren't ethically bound to monogamy. In some open marriages, there's still plenty of marital sex; in some there isn't. Think about the old tradition of mistresses. If a man took a mistress, that just meant he wanted a mistress; it didn't tell you anything about whether he still loved his wife, was still attracted to his wife, or still had sex with his wife. That's no one's business except the spouses themselves. Some people are happy not to have their partner bothering them for sex any more, and yet neither spouse wants divorce. Is that really news to you?

@65, what I'm describing is people who used to be attracted to each other (when they got married), but that faded away after decades, and yet they still love & respect each other and live well together. You've never heard of attraction waning over decades?

@68 Sure I have. But that's not the situation here. We're not talking about a couple that lost it's spark, or two people who decided to get married even though they weren't attracted to each other.

We're talking about guy dating a women he's not into and not breaking up because it might mildly inconvenience him.

And I think Dan was just trying to focus on the problem at hand, not work out how many variations of a relationship where one partner isn't attracted to the other could work.

EricaP: No, that's not news to me. I began my comment with a disclaimer about what works for any particular couple, etc. I was talking about the general idea of open marriage.
However, I want to thank msanonymous and undead ayn rand for continuing to bring this discussion back to the particulars of this couple. They haven't been married for years, they're not middle-aged, don't have kids together, nor a mortgage, nor is anyone a *burn victim* (!).
They've been dating. He isn't into her.

@69, I've said five (5) times that I was not advising the LW to open his marriage (@12, 21, 22, 36, & 48).

@69 Edit: open his relationship.
@70, see @69.

Look, guys, there is no dispute over the LW's situation. No one has said the LW should do anything except end this relationship. People keep saying we should get back to discussing the LW, but there's no issue to discuss.

@73 I'm willing to drop the subject if you are.

@48: I think Dan omitted the 3rd type because the LW made it abundantly clear that he's desperate enough to try anything to drag this gawdawful thing on as long as possible, and Dan didn't want to give him any ideas. Dan's said plenty about open/ poly stuff before, but his response to this LW was not the time. He needed to Keep it Simple (for) Stupid.

@75 that makes sense.

@75: Exaaaaaaaaaaaaactly.