In this week's Savage Love: What works

I am a 38-year-old gay man with a serious problem. My boyfriend of five years has developed a strange fascination. We’ve always watched porn together, but now he has been looking at straight porn and even lesbian porn (!!!) more and more often. More than once he has expressed an interest in having a MMF threesome—and he’s a self-proclaimed gold-star gay! This week, I discovered he had hidden a Fleshlight from me. I could tell he had used it. What is going on with him? On the other hand, we still have sex pretty frequently. He really gets off when I call his ass a “pussy,” which I’ll do to turn him on, but I find it pretty weird. He also tells me he gets off on the thought of the two of us fucking a woman together. This really seems bizarre! Could my beautiful bottom boy be turning bi? If he is, I don’t know how we can handle it.
Guy Alarmed, Yeah, By Younger Boyfriend’s Interest

Turning bi? Unlikely.

Always was bi and only just realized it? Likelier.

Always was bi but identified as gay because (1) he prefers men as romantic partners and (2) the biphobia he encountered in gay male spaces/bedrooms/buttholes convinced him to stay closeted but he doesn’t want to live a lie anymore and he’s done hiding from the man he loves but instead of using his words and coming out to you like a grown-up, GAYBYBI, your boyfriend is letting you know he’s bi with his porn choices and a big push to make a MMF threesome sound like a sexy adventure you would both enjoy? Likeliest.

As for how to handle it, GAYBYBI, you’ll have to use your words: Ask your boyfriend if he’s bi. (Spoiler: He’s bi, bicurious, or so homoflexible he could tour with Cirque Du Soleil.) If you’re not interested in having sex with women, tell him so. If being with you means he can never have sex with a woman, tell him so. And if you would never knowingly date a bi guy, tell him he deserves better.

People who are courteous to strangers (“Excuse me, can I squeeze past you?”) and contemptuous with intimate partners (“Do you have to stand there, you fucking dumbass?”) don’t value their partners and don’t deserve intimacy. People who are assholes to everyone don’t deserve intimacy either, of course, but they get points for being consistent.

Another jack-off buddy? No, no. Additional jack-off buddy.

I would describe the difference as googleable, COLIN. But since you asked: A nonmonogamous person has sex with their partner and others; a poly person has or is open to having committed and concurrent romantic relationships. For one example: An ethically nonmonogamous woman fucks the boyfriend/husband she loves and other guys she doesn’t; a poly woman has two (or more) guys she both loves and fucks.

In regards to your first complaint, IWFU, there are sex workers out there fighting for their rights and fighting the stigma against sex work—along with fighting prohibition, the Nordic Model, and SESTA (google it)—but you don’t see the men who employ them stepping up and joining the fight.

“[It’s time for] all of you clients out there [to] get off your duffs and fight,” as sex worker and sex-worker-rights advocate Maggie McNeill wrote on her blog. “Regular clients outnumber full-time whores by at least 60 to 1. Gentlemen, I suggest you rethink your current silence, unless you want to be the next one with your name and picture splashed across newspapers, TV screens, and websites.”

In regards to your second complaint, IWFU, it is true that I’ve said—on one or two occasions—that oral comes standard and any model that arrives without oral should be returned to the lot. I’ve also said that you can’t be in an LTR without paying the price of admission, and I’ve said that a lot more often. If not getting oral at home is the price of admission you’re willing to pay to be with your wife, and if allowing you to get oral elsewhere is the price of admission she’s willing to pay to be with you, then Godspeed, IWFU, and tip the sex workers you patronize and speak up to fight the stigma against doing sex work and hiring sex workers.