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News & ArtsTuesday, January 3, 2012
Savage Love SL Letter of the Day: Monogamish Week
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 5:56 PM
This week's column is given over to stories from people in successful monogamish relationships. But I got so many letters when I asked the successfully monogamish to write in and share their stories that I'm going to run them all week in the SLLOTD. Here's today's letter from a successful monogamish couple:
This letter was prompted by your parenthetical explanation of why the poly couples one knows about are the ones who broke up over it, while the poly couples that stay happily together are the ones one doesn’t hear about. I am sure you’re right, and I thought your readers might like to hear a little advice from one of the latter group.
The quick background: we met professionally in a stereotypically charged power-imbalance situation; I waited until I was no longer her boss before making a pass; we’ve been together for five years, living together for four, and it’s working out very well so far. We’re also age-and-hotness-imbalanced: I have a pretty-good-for-48 body, hers is hot-even-for-28.
The sexy details: I already knew I was interested in having an open relationship, both because I’m aroused by the whole “hotwife” trope, and because I like having my own freedom and possess the ability to use it responsibly. So when it eventually came out that this gal had a long history of cheating on boyfriends and had a “taste for the forbidden,” I made it clear that I was up for a more serious relationship. She’s not exactly a nympho who needs a stranger every weekend—but over the five years, she’s been with about 20 guys, usually just one or two times each. I find it hot when she comes home and “confesses”; she has a chance to get vigorously worked over by guys closer to her own age; and our home sex life spikes after each adventure.
My advice for others, mostly echoing things that have been said in various ways in "Savage Love" over the years:
First and most important, you have to be able to talk stuff through in the cold light of day, when you are neither tipsy nor horny. Not talk it to death, but talk it through. It’s the only way to avoid misunderstandings and jealousies.
Second, set the rules you need to feel comfortable, and follow them even if you don’t feel like it. Ours are few and simple: no all-nighters with others unless we’re out of town separately; full disclosure upon request; veto power over repeat encounters if either of us feels uncomfortable about the other’s FB. Happily we’ve never had to exercise that last one, but it’s good to know it’s there. The first one (about overnights) we adopted after experience proved that these could cause resentments that “stolen hours” didn’t cause.
Third, if you and your partner enjoy this kind of arrangement, thank your stars, and be accepting of the fact that you might not have exactly the same vision of how things should go. Examples: I wish she were into some girl-girl action, and she’s been GGG enough to try it a few times, but I had to let that one go. I also had to accept that she likes to find her own situations—she feels stilted and unaroused when anything is planned or set up. Dan is right on this: what turns you on is going to remain what turns you on. Her turn-on is the naughty thrill of a forbidden encounter, and if it’s planned it doesn’t feel naughty. On her side, she would prefer if my outside activities were more like hers, i.e. spontaneous things with gals I had just met—but I wasn’t OK with that, since (being beyond the prime age for pickups over drinks) my flings tend to be nostalgic reunions with old flames. She’s accepted that, and even discovered that she could enjoy the same thing with a couple of her ex-boyfriends. It helps that I’ve had the chance to show her over time that “nostalgic reunion” doesn’t mean “thinking about getting back together”—which it doesn’t.
But the main point is that we talked about each of these things in moments of non-arousal and non-anger, briefly but clearly, and so neither of us has had occasion to feel misled. I can't emphasize that one enough—you have to overcome a certain resistance to do it, because the tendency is to prefer thinking about such things when you are horny. But it's really worth the effort.
I’m also trying to follow the Savage line about older guys, and I recommend it to others: make your peace with the probability that your younger girlfriend may need to move on one day. (Biological clock, change of heart, unexpected career developments, whatever…it happens.) I’ve urged her to save her own money, using the line that my ego would be wounded if I ever had occasion to think she was staying for even one minute out of financial dependency. By now she has enough in the bank that it’s not an issue. And for the moment, we’re both getting our various needs met and enjoying the hell out of each other’s company. (The whole thing would have been a non-starter if we didn't share multiple interests outside the bedroom.)
So. There’s a field report from a couple whose threeways and escapades nobody hears about unless they’re participating in one….
Happily And Successfully Monogamish
But I was amused by this line: "now she has enough in the bank that it’s not an issue." I want to guess that number, but am restraining myself.
In any case, his advice about accepting that your fantasies are your own and not perfectly aligned - that's spot on. I'd add that if you find that one of you isn't following the rules you both set up, that may mean that you need different rules/guidelines, rather than that the rule-breaker is a bad person.
She cheats every three months....
he gets off knowing young guys are 'vigorously working over' his gal....
he knows she will move on at some point....
By all means have a couple of kids, you lovebirds.
Danny's definition of "success" is a caricature of the freak depraved Gommoraish social trainwreck the Fundies decry.
Oh, and I think #7 probably needs a job and several hobbies. It's tragic that the only fun in life that #7 has is trolling columns by such wrongly-opinioned people.
11
Is that part of your fantasy?
Are you up for Santorum whipping up a little santorum in your ass?
Joy Behar can't wait to hear about it......
how ever do you do it?
oh, that's right-
by paying her bills and "letting" her screw around on you whenever she likes.
You should patent this surefire method and sell it.....
...but is this really monogamish? Sounds like a full-blown open relationship to me.
Dan's doing his best to separate the different threads --
a) make it possible to be honest, to tell your spouse you love him/her but still fantasize about extramarital sex.
b) make it possible to come clean, to tell your spouse that you screwed up, and that you hope it won't mean divorce because you love him/her.
c) make it less traumatic when you find out your spouse has had an affair, so you can evaluate whether you want to stay with your spouse without jumping immediately to the conclusion that he/she is evil and anyone with a shred of self-respect would leave.
25
I think 24b centres the perpetrator. That was the one bit of the equation that has been niggling at me for some time. Thank you for phrasing it in a way that made it all fall into place.
27
This is monogamsih...no they're not exclusive physically, but they aren't in love with other people, either. They have a partner and hook ups on the side, whereas poly people tend to have more than one partner...either a primary, a secondary and so on, or partners of equal importance.
Can I assume Erica P actually knows the couple, or did LW simply include photos?
Thank you. That's very kind of you.
@13 nitwit
My BMI is 16.0 so you may be correct about the distribution of fat in my body. I haven't seen what you look like but your writing is a boner killer. Thanks for illustrating my point.
Poly means having more than 2 people romantically connected. Open refers to sexual non-exclusivity. You can be poly/open or poly/closed.
Monogamish seems to mean "occasionally open, but primarily closed."
Thanks for calling my attention to aphrodite's comment on phimosis, by the way. It's certainly worth looking into.
sorry to hear about your boner problems.
if you were really smart
you wouldn't argue with anonymous trolls....
When someone is emotionally blackmailed into "consenting" to rape it is a particularly sadistic flavor of cruel.
If LW didn't accept his whore's cheating she would be out the door.
He is fooling himself into believing his has choices.
The problem with Danny's not-new-at-all model of sexual irresponsibility is that it has been repeated demonstrated to be devastating to societies that are infected with it.
Sex outside of marriage and promiscuous sex are not new.
Societies dropping sanctions against those behaviors and embracing them in the name of "honesty" are not new.
Mankind had been there and done that.
Many times.
The outcome is always bad.
Would anyone here suggest that LW and his whore have children?
What if she becomes pregnant by accident.
yes, it happens.
discuss.....
.
(sure. she could hire an abortionist to murder her child. and it would no doubt be better off dead than raised by her. but it is still murder and a society that murders it most innocent members to facilitate the whoredoms of its most depraved is soon to meet it's deserved fate....)
this isn't a relationshit at all-
it's just a vehicle to obtain sex.
of course,
to Our Little Danny,
all relationshits are just means to obtain sex
and "love" is really just "lust"
and a relationshit is worth having
only so long as it is still a means to obtain sex.
So, yeah, in Danny's deviant little world
this trainwreck is a boffo Success.....
@33 you're welcome!
@ 5, 11, 12: He's saying most 28 year old women are hot (fact), but she's hot even compared to them. Why do you think something's wrong with him? People have their preferences, and a lot of people find youth and bodies attractive, not just minds.
@20, 27: He said 20 times over 5 years. That's only four times more frequent than Dan's relationship (he's said he's had sex with other people about 10 times over 10 years), which he describes as monogamish. And it doesn't sound like he has sex with other people much more often than that either. I'd say once every three months is on the monogamish side of open, whereas something like once or twice a week is more like an open or poly relationship.
Good point about "open": thinking about that again, I think you're right. So monogamish is a type of open relationship, one where you don't have sex with other partners very often. I'm not sure where the line is. A few times a year definitely seems monogamish, and a few times a month not so much, but every month or two is somewhat in the middle...
He appears to have good relationship skills, but does that necessarily translate into the sort of desirability that works for pickups, especially if he would want to go after members of her peer group rather than his?
"So when it eventually came out that this gal had a long history of cheating on boyfriends and had a “taste for the forbidden,” I made it clear that I was up for a more serious relationship."
He went for the more serious relationship once he knew about her proclivities. He was seeking someone like her. Sounds like a pretty good situation to me.
If we want a term for "discreetly non-monogamous" as opposed to "visibly non-monogamous," we should just make up a new term, and not dilute the term "monogamish" which is handy in its own right.
55
Monogamish seems to cover more of the folks I know.
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