Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move by Dan Savage http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2013/01/07/sl-letter-of-the-day-a-married-bi-man-makes-his-move Comments On: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move by Dan Savage en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Sat, 25 May 2013 11:30:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by Whoop Di Doo]]> Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:07:46 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
Aren't men ?
Posted by sissoucat]]> Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:40:13 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by secretagent]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:36:19 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by avast2006]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:46:58 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
And yet another aspect is that one person is usually not working full-time if there are young children in the marriage, which makes divorce more difficult financially than it is otherwise.

I'm with those who find that DUMB has his foot halfway out of the marriage already. Guys who want to fix things say: "I miss sex with my wife and wish there were some way to get her libido back" rather than "I'm relieved at the year of freedom ahead of me."
Posted by EricaP]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:22:03 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
It is fair to separate your emotional attachments and your physical attachments.

Whether LW's attestments is bullshit or not is up for debate, but this has happened. Just as some straight dudes are more emotionally attached to other dudes than their wife (without being willing to admit it).
Posted by TheMisanthrope]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 09:30:25 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
1. Things will not return to how they were in the past. Sorry. But you need to accept this.

2. Stop lying to yourself and us. You don't just want things to return to how they were in the past. What you want - with a wild, dangerous obsessive desire - is to have sex with dudes.

3. Stop with the pathetic "she'll be devastated" handwringing. Yes, people get hurt when relationships end. It's okay to hurt your wife by divorcing her if you have good grounds, and you do, as long as you are respectful and kind. It is not okay to hurt her (or damage whatever internal moral compass you have) by cheating on her, whether or not she finds out/gets a std, etc.

4. You should divorce her. If you think the relationship is worth saving, ask her if she would like a complete one year legal separation during your time away, which includes sexual separation and freedom. Then you can test your attraction and theory with integrity.

5. If you think there any real chance to shift your marriage into the paradigm you want and think you need, you can level with her and ask her if she can accept your nonmonogamy. But I think you know that is a nonstarter. I also think you know that she will try to maintain the status quo or that her only attempt to resolve it will be a promise of and effort to have more sex which will fade back into the current state of affairs over not too long a time with an extra layer of bitterness and recrimination built in.

6. And yeah, your "I am only into men physically" bullshit is simply a self-imposed residual anti-gay cultural construct by which, as accepting as you think you are, you degay your attraction and enjoy same-sex experiences while guaranteeing limiting yourself to a more universally socially acceptible opposite-sex long term relationship. Dude, get over it.
Posted by Alanmt]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:17:14 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by DarthKelly]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 08:08:15 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
It might be helpful to be able to go back to the early conversations about this and go into the particulars of her being "fine" with his revelation. What did he think; what did she think; what's changed for her since (given that we're told what's changed for him)?

As for post #43, I suppose it doesn't hurt to pose the question, but there are some circumstances that highlight the difference between a considerate partner developing a genuine need and a selfish fill-in-the-blank trying to take advantage, and circumstances that blur the difference. Some needs are going to be more obviously genuine (even when it's more a case of Both than a choice between A and B) and more limiting in the number of paths by which a couple can get around the problem.

I'm starting to think that, whatever she may have said or felt to the contrary, what would balance this out neatly would be the wife's sudden decision that she NEEDS to have at least one child.
Posted by vennominon]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 07:41:59 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
To put it another way the choices stack up as:
(1) We work together to see if there's a way I can live up to the promise of monogamy that I made without knowing if it will work despite our best efforts.
(2) We throw out the old promise and make a new one of monogamish without knowing if either of us will still want to stay together as we start trying it out.
(3) We break up.

All suck for her. But #1 at least aims at living up to the commitment/promise he originally made. Otherwise it's a 'take it or leave it' conversation with no compromise from him in her favor. If he could rule out the feasibility of #1 there wouldn't be a point. But he hasn't.


Posted by TheBigRagu]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 03:22:18 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by Funky Monkey]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 01:21:49 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
And I agree #36. I never understood Dan's attitude that if you have kids you can't get divorced ever, not matter how miserable or unhealthy the relationship is.
Posted by msanonymous]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:32:52 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Yes - if a couple simply can't make it work, they should divorce, regardless of whether they have kids.

However, if there are 3, 4, 5, or more people with a huge stake in the relationship, as opposed to only 2, the couple has more of an obligation to try harder and make sacrifices to ride out the bad times as long as there's any hope of things getting good again.
Posted by seandr]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:29:14 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> she's made it clear that she generally only has sex with me to confirm that I'm still attracted to her

Your wife doesn't have a low libido, she's insecure. Maybe that stems from something in her, maybe it's a reaction to something she's registering from you. If you can figure that out and address it, she'll be more sexually generous. If she feels really connected to you, she'll blow your mind.

However, asking someone who feels insecure to open the relationship up is only going to make the problem worse, and you're definitely not going to fix it living across the country.

Given the circumstances, I think you're going to cheat on her regardless of what anyone says, so my advice is to do it as if your life depended on not getting caught. Get another cell phone, use a cheating only email address, don't tell your dates your real name, pay cash, clean out your pockets, always have an alibi, wear a fake fucking mustache, and never ever tell her, even if you break up.

If you still want your wife after scratching your itch, maybe even more than before, you'll know what to do, and you'll have the strength and resolve that you currently lack. If you don't, you'll also know what to do.
Posted by seandr]]> Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:53 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
I still don't know how you handle that.

Posted by JJinAus]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:23:34 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by Whoop Di Doo]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:17:09 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
Granted, my parents' problems went beyond just not loving or having sex with one another, but I think my life was improved by them divorcing. Having my mom living apart from my jackass dad and married to someone else (my wonderful stepdad) made it a lot easier for me to distance myself from him as much as possible early in life.
Posted by Whoop Di Doo]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 23:15:04 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
. I'm relieved at the year of freedom ahead of me.

says it all. I don't think DUMB actually wants to be married to his wife.
Posted by Registered European]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:54:19 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
Mr. Savage seems to jump to "open relationship" rather quickly. DUMB's wife is willing to have sex with him even when she's not feeling it, so it's likely that she'd be willing to help him meet his needs more than she currently is.

Still, the fact that his desire for male sexual partners is a big deal for him right now is something that she needs to know.
Posted by DRF]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:14:22 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by sanguisuga]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:04:34 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
I've never taken then up on the offer because (1) I always ask if their wife/girlfriend knows what they're doing on the road and the answer's usually "no," and (2) I'm HIV positive and do not want to introduce any chance of that into a scenario where one partner is not just assuming monogamy and being deceived, but also could be unwittingly exposed to HIV. I just will not go there.

So DUMB, I know you just want low key stuff right now, but these things might well start growing on you. It behooves you to educate yourself about HIV right now. About the various risk factors and how they can be mitigated reliably. And you need to think about what kind of risks you'd be prepared to accept.

And all of this needs to be part of your discussion with your wife. Because if, Dog forbid, you catch something, you may very well end up bringing it home to her without either of you knowing it. So you need some solid boundaries set.

I'll say this: in general, bi guys often seem much less well educated about STD transmission and HIV in particular. Don't be one of those guys.
Posted by Corydon]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:49:36 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by long-time reader]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:45:34 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by Brooklyn Reader]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:33:41 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]> Posted by EricaP]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:11:38 -0800 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: SL Letter of the Day: A Married Bi Man Makes His Move]]>
@25, while "I want you so bad" sex definitely beats "you're a warm body in my bed" sex, I also think that relationships don't last twenty years if the people involved refuse to enjoy the latter on occasion.

I like waking up to my husband's hard-on and climbing on, but I don't delude myself that his passion for me caused the erection. The sex is fun anyway. But bread-and-butter sex would stop being satisfying pretty quickly, if that was all I got.


Posted by EricaP]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2013 20:08:37 -0800 The Stranger