Savage Love

By Dan Savage

Savage Love

By Dan Savage
My boyfriend and I are in our mid-20s, love each other and have been living together for two years. We have good sex once a week. I have a low libido and always have. But my sweet boyfriend needs more than once a week. Every once in a while, he brings up the fact that he’d like to have more sex. This conversation always goes the same way: he tells me, I start crying, he feels terrible for making me cry, we both wind up feeling like shit.
 
I’m pretty sure that the solution is for me to jump my sexy boyfriend more often. But I don’t know how. I know I have an inner vixen buried somewhere inside me. I would appreciate any suggestions you have.
 
Wanna Want More
 
If you’ve been to the doc and ruled out a hormonal imbalance, WWM, and made sure that whatever birth-control method you’re using isn’t decimating your libido, your best bet is to accept that this is just the way you work for now – you may surprise yourself when you hit your sexual peak in a few years  –  and find some middle ground.
 
Let’s say your boyfriend wants it four times a week and you can only “get into it” once a week. I’m not going to tell you that it’s as simple as splitting the difference  –  have sex twice a week! everybody loses! – because that advice, which is pretty standard for couples in your situation, is fucking useless. Inevitably, sex falls back to the frequency preferred by the person with the lower libido – just the boyfriend loses! – but having been promised more sex, the higher-libido partner’s sense of resentment spikes, there are more tearful talks, and the relationship invariably ends.
 
Here’s what you should do instead: You commit to great sex at least once a week. He deals. But you also commit to making sure your boyfriend is well and thoroughly milked – with your cheerful assistance – at least three additional times a week. You commit to being his full-blown sex partner once a week and his life-size, ambulatory masturbatory aide at least three times a week.
 
How would that work? Well, let’s say you’re not up for sex on Wednesday because you had sex last Sunday. But he’s horny. So you plop your twat down on his face and let him eat you out while he beats off. It’ll take 10 minutes. Then let’s say he’s horny again on Friday, but you’re just not feeling it. So you treat him to a hand job while you rub your tits in his face. Another 10 minutes. And let’s say he wakes up horny on Saturday morning. So you sit on the edge of the bed, have him kneel between your open legs, and pull his face into your crotch while you tell him how thoroughly you’re going to fuck the shit out of him tomorrow, on Sunday, when you’re finally horny again.
 
As a special bonus, WWM, you may find that once the pressure is off – once you’re not expected to have or want sex but just expected to help out your horny boyfriend – your libido occasionally kicks in and you’re inspired to jump him. Or not. Either way, the pressure is off, you’re having great sex at least once a week, and he sees you making a sincere effort to keep his balls drained and him happy.
 
Everybody wins.
 
I am a single young professional gal who likes to party until the break of dawn. This weekend, I went out with a group. One of the guys, who I liked as a friend but was not attracted to, was at first cordial. But he became aggressive on the dance floor. He kept grabbing me by the hips and pulling me closer. He seemed to think my proper response was to turn around and start humping his leg. Is there some unspoken understanding that I am unaware of that grinding on a guy’s leg on the dance floor does not mean that a girl is interested in him? Is this just the way people dance now? If so, am I a prude for not wanting to rub my genitals on a guy I have no interest in? If not, then I need help with what to say if this happens again!
 
Grind It Someplace Else
 
One of two things was going on, GISE: For fear of seeming unfriendly, you sent signals that Dancer Boy innocently mistook for mild interest, and he attempted to get things started, as the kids used to say, on the dance floor. Or Dancer Boy knew you weren’t interested but sensed that you, like many young women, were socialized to be polite and deferential to men and knowingly manipulated you into a situation that made you feel uncomfortable.
 
The next time someone touches you on the dance floor in a way that makes you uncomfortable, GISE, here’s what you do: no smiles, no dancing away, no polite attempts to deflect his attention. Stop dancing, make eye contact, shake your head slowly back and forth and clearly mouth the word “NO.” Then go back to dancing in whatever manner and in whatever space and with whatever partner you choose. And if the same guy attempts to pull you onto his ass after you’ve given him the stop-stand-stare “NO,” GISE, do all women everywhere a favour and kick him in the nuts.
 
I am a 27-year-old hetero female. My new boyfriend is 24 and kinky. Before I met him, I had never been bound or spanked or had any kind of sex that was not “vanilla.” I have enjoyed everything we have done and I trust him. Now he wants anal sex. He has what I think is an average dick – based on the three others I’ve seen – but I’m afraid that it will be painful. Am I a big baby?
 
Another Needing Anal Lessons
 
I order you to start having anal sex with your boyfriend immediately, ANAL. Tons of anal – but without letting your boyfriend’s cock come anywhere near your ass, ’kay?
 
In other words: yes to anal, no to dick. Think tongues, lubed-up fingers, very small toys and smooth, clean vibrators used non-insertively (which is fancy sex-advice talk for “lay the vibrator on your asshole, don’t shove it the fuck in”), not dick. If you find that you enjoy other kinds of anal sex – and you will – your boyfriend’s dick may start to look like a shiny new toy or an enticing upgrade option and not the intimidating asshammer that it appears to be now.
 
But for this to work, your boyfriend has to swear on a stack of Jack Morin’s Anal And Pleasure & Healths that he will pleasure your ass and get you off without attempting to rush you or pressure you into dick-in-ass buttfucking until you decide you’re ready.
 
Per your column last week: When a man puts his balls in someone’s ass, it’s referred to as “putting the dog in the bathtub,” because it’s so hard to accomplish.    
 
Kevin
 
It might amuse me, Kevin, if so many readers weren’t absolutely furious about the advice I gave the woman freaked out about her partner’s request to stuff his balls in her. You can read their outraged letters–and my feeble attempts to respond–at thestranger.com/savage/insertballshere.
 
I think you were hard on the lady whose first response was “What?!?” when her date suggested testicular sex. As things go, “What?!?” is a pretty tame response that might also have meant: What are you talking about! I am surprised and confused!
I’m saying it’s pretty difficult, in a clutch situation, to have the first thing you say not be “What?!?”
If it was the guy writing, you would have berated him for giving up so easily. As well you should have! Imagine if everyone on earth gave up so easily! We would all be having heterosexual missionary sex without birth control.
Emily
 
I think you might have been too hard on the girl who said “What?!?” when the guy asked her if he could insert his testicles into her. My reaction would have been “What?!?” too, not because I think it’s a shameful act or that it’s shameful to be kinky or because I think it’s a terrible thing, but because I’d be genuinely shocked that somebody had found a kink that I’d never even heard of.
Hearing you speak so casually about it, as if everyone’s doing it, makes me think I’m more vanilla than I thought. But I hang around a lot of kinky people and have not heard of this. I guess I’d just like to say (a) this ball-insertion thing isn’t exactly sweeping the nation the way your reply to her might have suggested, and (b) “What?!?” doesn’t always translate as “You should be ashamed”/“I’m not interested.” Often it just indicates surprise, after which there might be a discussion. But guys, in my experience, seem to have a harder time talking about their feelings.
Women shouldn’t be expected to control a natural surprise reaction to an unusual kink in the middle of sex. Communicate, men! If he’d communicated with her—if he’d explained what he was interested in doing—and then she’d said, “You’re a sick, kinky freak,” then I’d say it’s her loss. Right now I’d say no one’s to blame but missed communication.
Longtime Reader
 
Big fan and so on. That said: Why the hell did you go off on that poor woman so severely? Yes, you’re right—it would be good to be 100 percent accepting and tolerant and totally up for everything all of the time. But in what universe is that completely possible? It’s ideal, but it hardly seems like the person writing in was downright “sex-negative.”
She could’ve responded better, sure, But it’s hardly the most egregious offense you’ve responded to lately. Being spontaneously unnerved doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with trying to assert moral superiority or exacting sexual/emotional leverage or any other thing. I don’t know if other readers will find this kind of dressing-down a little over the top, but it seems like a reaction to something other than the e-mail as written (or at least as published).
Puzzled In Brooklyn
 
Don’t you think you were overly rude and condescending to Reconsidering In Toronto? If she was genuinely surprised by her partner’s request, I don’t think it is “establishing her moral superiority” to exclaim “What?!?” Yes, everyone should be open-minded and sexually adventurous, but can’t a person just be simply surprised and taken off-guard, instead of the reaction having to be part of some social power dynamic? Lighten up.
Reader And Fan
 
I read your answer to RIT this week about the dick-shriveling power of “What?!?” in response to a request.
My comfort zone has recently increased with the help of a more widely experienced friend. I think I react well to new suggestions, but sometimes I need some time to consider what has been proposed. So I just say I need to think about it instead of yes or no, so far always followed by yes. Maybe this is a good practice, maybe it just works in the situation I’m in currently? Can you give some general advice about how to react to new suggestions that may make you scared, curious, and excited all at the same time?
Learning Exciting New Things
 
•••
 
They all can’t be gems, people. And how many times have I mentioned the fact that I frequently write this column in an impaired state, i.e., in a bar, drunk, and/or stoned? Many, many times. That doesn’t excuse botching my response to RIT—it only, you know, provides some context. Thanks to all for setting the record—and me—straight.
 
Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
 
Send your Savage Love questions to mail@savagelove.net
 

 

NOW | September 24-October 1, 2008 | VOL 28 NO 4
Copyright 2009 NOW Communications
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