But I don’t want to get divorced! – Dan Savage

Warning. The language of this column is direct and explicit.

Bye! I am a heterosexual! After thirty years of marriage, my wife told me she was a lesbian. We have children and we love each other, which is why we have decided not to divorce. We saw some psychologists and they all forced us to divorce, even if we don’t want to. We are convinced that the open couple could satisfy both of us. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to have threesomes! We’ve read a few books on the open relationship, and we think it can work. In addition, we know that like us there are other couples, and therefore it is possible! Divorce is not planned. My questions are:

1. Is it normal for psychologists to force two to divorce even if they don’t want to?

2. Can open couples be great couples?

–Shrinks Hereabouts Revel In Not Knowing Shit

Bye! I’m gay! Here are my answers:

1. Calm. Only your wife can force you to divorce, SHRINKS, and you are still married. Which means that no one forced you to do anything. And while I wouldn’t define what you tell us as normal, SHRINKS, for many therapists and couples counselors, preserving and protecting monogamy – the fact that couples observe it, and its status as an untouchable norm – is their primary duty.

I don’t know where you live, SHRINKS, but in a big city like mine, a married couple who sees more than one therapist will find at least one willing to help them transition to non-monogamy. However, there is a very simple way for those like you who do not want to waste time with those who are against the open and / or sexually backward couple, and that is to ask the professional in question how he / she thinks about the open couple before making an appointment.

Broadening the shot: it is disconcerting to note that for many couple counselors a marriage that is not monogamous – or that must become one in order to preserve the happiness of both – should not be saved. The prejudice against non-monogamous relationships is so insidious that even those in the profession who help couples who intend to stay together understand how to do it urges them to divorce, so as not to consider monogamy.

And now we come to threesomes.

Your wife told you she’s a lesbian, SHRINKS, not bisexual, so you don’t have a lot of good threesome waiting for you. Even if he’s bisexual, SHRINKS, it doesn’t mean you’ve won the pussy lottery and you’re going to have a lot of threesome sex from now on. Or what will you ever do with it. Maybe you and your wife have talked about it, and she wants to have sex with you even though she’s a lesbian – maybe she feels it and / or is able to turn a blind eye to your dick, and can’t wait to have a threesome with. you and a future girlfriend – but if she didn’t tell you, SHRINKS, you’d better lower your expectations by a lot. What if she didn’t tell you, and you in the meantime you were excited to repeat to the therapists that you were looking forward to a lot of threesome sex now that your wife was a lesbian, SHRINKS, it is possible that the therapists urged you to divorce because your wife, sitting next to you, was signaling panic with her eyes.

1. Open couples can be gorgeous! It sucks too! If you are happy and your wife is happy and her future girlfriends and / or third parties are happy, that’s fine. But if you and / or your wife are unhappy once the couple is open, SHRINKS, you will have to close it again or take the advice of the therapists and cut it out.

I am a 36 year old from England who currently resides in the Middle East. I’m dating a peer of my age, also from Western Europe. It is a relationship at the beginning and we are just starting to get to know each other, but we are very close. But he only managed to cum inside me once. He is a fit and healthy man, exercising, with no health problems__. But then why once in two does he lose his erection, and when he does not lose it does he have to “go it alone”? He says he doesn’t know why it happens to him, but that maybe it’s because when he’s inside me He “thinks too much” to be able to cum, and that is often what causes him to lose his erection. I told you that we live in the Middle East because here for us, not being married, turning to a professional is impossible. I try to reassure him, I extend the foreplay, we talk openly about what we like in sex, but it doesn’t help. Do I have to give it time? Are there any sex toys that can help? Should I recommend that he see a psychologist when he gets home for the holidays? His frustration increases with each failed attempt, and I feel helpless.

–Having A Realistic Discussion On Needs

What I tell you may sound strange to you, HARDON, but you and your boyfriend need to watch some gay porn (if it’s not too risky to do so where you live at the moment). Even in gay porn many active “end up alone”. For a while – sometimes quite a bit – the top fucks the bottom, after which he slips off and comes jerking off. There are active people who sometimes parade it, beat it up a bit and then put it back on. Your boyfriend currently thinks he’s letting you down by doing something that almost everyone in gay porn seems to like – banging it between penetrations, and sometimes “ending alone” – and he thinks it because you put it in his head, HARDON , or he was already thinking about it and you confirmed it to him. How can you help him? Stopping treating his cock functioning as a pathology. Tell him it’s okay: that sex works even if every now and then, while you’re doing it, he wants to masturbate; that it works even if he prefers to “end up alone”, like all gay porn actors and many women; and that is fine even if for some reason – including softening – she prefers to avoid vaginal intercourse and rather lick it. Lighten the pressure on his cock, and you will see that the cock responds.

After ten years of abstinence, I began an exclusively sexual relationship with a much younger man. It’s adorable. And we agree: without obligation. This is the first time I’ve had sex for this long with a near stranger. It’s been two months. It is also the first time that I have spoken about my sexual desires clearly. This is good. No possessive addictions, more freedom and so on. But having more time, and a tendency to fantasize, it began to annoy me that I always had to rely on it. on his commitments__. Understandable: he works and has shared custody with the ex, and is younger than me. Rationally, I know and accept it, but I have to reconcile with the limits. I like sex a lot. And that’s what I want.

–Somehow This Resentment Is Not Good

I think you have to ask yourself why you want to sabotage a good thing. There are limits that you have placed on this relationship (no commitment, the sex you like) for reasons that I imagine are emotional, STRING, and there are some that he has set (when he has children no, when he works no) for reasons purely logistical. If that decade of abstinence and aversion to possessive addictions was a reaction to negative experiences with other partners – pushy or violent men – then perhaps you are reacting to the limits your partner needs as if they are trying to control you, perhaps because so the others did. In reality it is obviously not he who controls you, but factors over which he in turn has no control. When it bothers you, STRING, look in the mirror and repeat: “This reaction, although understandable to my past and potentially useful, in this case is a bit irrational, as well as unfair to it, and I will not let it take me away good sex with someone I like ”. As often as needed.

(Translation by Matteo Colombo)