Warning. The language of this column is direct and explicit
I need some advice. The person I’ve been with for 27 years has sex with my best friend. It has been going on for a year and a half. As far as I knew, we were a monogamous couple, even though boredom had set in for some years. And my best friend is everything to me. I trust him a lot, he also advises me on the relationship. A few days ago we were talking about my partner’s lack of interest in sex. He, looking me straight in the eye, told me that with his partner it was the same. Without my knowing anything about their affair. The strange thing is that my friend is not even his “type”. My friend, on the other hand, has become a real slut in recent years, unbeknownst to his partner. I feel very betrayed by both of them. I’m torn. And loneliness also scares me. I am 56 years old. The four of us did a lot of things together, parties, dinners, brunches, everything. Now I don’t see how we can continue. What do you suggest me?
– Going Under Thanks To Extreme Deceit
I do not know what to tell you. If what your partner and best friend have done – repeatedly – feels unbearable and unforgivable, GUTTED, don’t put up with or forgive. Burn everything. End a nearly 30-year relationship and cut ties with your best friend. Then you decide whether not to talk about it or whether to explain to the people you know why you broke off with them. And if you talk about it publicly, GUTTED, which you have every right to do, it will instantly come to your best friend’s mate’s ear – unless you tell them yourself, and it’s likely to end between them too. Which means that with no bowls – and new leases signed – you and your best friend’s ex will be single, and your ex partner and ex best friend will be free to tell everyone they’re together.
But you can’t be with your mate just to prevent this from happening. You can’t be with someone out of spite. Which doesn’t mean you can’t stay with him. You can… if you want… and if he wants… but the relationship will change a lot.
You don’t tell me much about you two, GUTTED, except how long you’ve been together, that boredom set in a few years ago, and that discovering the betrayal upset you. But if there’s any good left between you, and you have other reasons to stay with your boyfriend – aside from, or in addition to, not wanting to be alone – GUTTED, then go to couples therapy.
It won’t be the same again, GUTTED, but you know it’s there? It is deeply irrational to expect things to remain the same over the decades. And having to pretend that this is the case involves, in stable relationships, a useless, but difficult to avoid, effort. Even if everyone knows that everything is different, one is afraid to admit it because it often involves a re-discussion of the rules of the relationship (like a monogamy decided decades earlier). And the more you are together, the higher the risk seems. So you end up not talking about the change, even if in a couple they both know it has happened, and someone decides to do what is necessary to preserve the marriage (or relationship) and mental health. The ideal is that these comings and goings – situations, concessions, respective spaces – are discussed first and accepted by both. But very often, GUTTED, difficult speeches are avoided, escapades begin, and difficult speeches, once those are discovered, become inevitable.
Discovering a betrayal can be traumatic. I say “can”, GUTTED, because that’s not always the case; there are also those who after thirty years do not care if the other fucks around, as long as they return home. It’s not that sex and fidelity (not to be confused with monogamy) don’t matter. They matter. They obviously counted to you. It’s that other things – for example, long sharing, a deep if not passionate relationship, or both – can become more important over time, and decades of blameless monogamy aren’t the only way to prove a person is faithful.
Once in couples therapy – if he wants to go – I would invite you to address issues such as the importance sex has for you as a person now, and what sex and exclusivity have for you as a couple now. . It may be that passion and exclusivity defined your relationship in the beginning, helping to strengthen it. But in the meantime other things – precious, such as the sense of familiarity, intimacy, protection – may have outweighed them. Even if the person you’re with, sex with you or exclusively with you no longer cares, GUTTED, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to be with you anymore. Maybe he still loves you, and cementing your relationship – perhaps even more than sex – is now something else.
Or not. Maybe he wants to leave, and cheating on you was a way to blow the table. But even if he wanted to stay with you, GUTTED, I repeat, the relationship would inevitably change. It would become a friendship, perhaps, perhaps with a newfound sexual understanding. If you want to be together there are ways. It’s a steep and bumpy road, GUTTED, but countless other couples have already traveled it. To do this, both of you will have to make an enormous effort, he will have to sincerely repent, and you will have to forgive heroically. As for the best friend, GUTTED, he is to be sent to fuck off for eternity.
PS You use the word “whore” as if it were a bad thing. It is not. Cheating and cheating is bad. Your best friend did a bad thing; your mate too. But being whores – in a protected, ethical and consensual way – is a beautiful thing, GUTTED. And among my readers and listeners, many people, once vaccinated, can’t wait to get back to playing the whores – with prudence, ethical sense and consensus. If you did a little bit too – whether you come back single soon or not – maybe it would do you good. Because yes, even fresh single gays over 50 can be sluts (put daddy in the Instagram bio, GUTTED, and get ready for the rain of messages).
I would ask you to settle a difference. I go out with a girl according to whom in “frizzaculo” – the word you invented – there goes the hyphen, “fizz-ass”. I am convinced that it is a single word. A noun that describes a disorder, precisely the frizzaculo. You who invented it, Dan, what do you say? Thanks in advance
PS Your answer depends on a lot of nasty stuff.
– Words With Friends With Benefits
Years ago we were flooded with advertisements for “heat effect” lubricants for heterosexual couples. They were selling them as a revolutionary thing, a KY lubricant commercial called for “raising the temperature” of one’s sex life. Here, no. First, I see bottles of “heat effect” lube in the sex shops and bedside tables of my very first boyfriends since I came out in the 1980s. And the effect, well, let’s say that often those bottles were thrown away still full. Because while heat-effect lubricants sizzle your ass, it’s not like they’re the ones fucking you. A bad fuck stays bad even with the heat effect lube. And filling the hole with heat-effect lubricant does not “improve the experience”, as the commercial said, it only makes it more difficult to overcome; falling asleep after sex is impossible, however it is gone, if one really has the frizzaculo.
PS The word is mine, I invented it and I tell you that the hyphen is not there. Enjoy the filth!
I have been reading you for a long time, I am writing to you for the first time and I love your column. The question of the VIBEQ reader touched a key for me, because I (straight, cis, very soft tastes, in the shape of a male) when my partners used vibrators I had the same fear. But I got over it! And who has earned it is me 100 percent! I’ve been a shy, nasty, nerdy, clumsy teen with a lot of sexual complexes, especially the irrational fear of not being able to satisfy a woman like a vibrator. It remained a major block even when I started having sex. But one day when I was in college, my girlfriend asked me to use her vibrator on her while we made out. This roughly the text of my inner monologue: “Oh no, I’m doing it wrong and that’s why he wants the vibrator … Um, it’s almost like having a second dick … Hey, my second dick is basically a robot …”. Then the bass from the Terminator soundtrack started. I threw myself into it without looking back. It was so liberating. Another advantage of overcoming the fear of vibrators is that we can have intercourse even if I am stressed and do not feel up to it, such as in the middle of a pandemic. And all this I owe to an ex who had the courage to ask me. If VIBEQ throws himself into it, maybe he too finds it worth it!
– Good Vibes
Thanks for the testimony, GV!
(Translation by Matteo Colombo)
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