This week in Savage Love: On the down blow

I’m a gay man. After a decade together and five years of marriage, my husband informed me he wasn’t really interested in sex anymore. That was a year ago and we haven’t had sex since. He told me I should leave him, if regular sex was “really that important” to me, but if I chose to stay, I had to remain “faithful.” To him that means me not having sex with anyone else. I’m 35, he’s 38, and he doesn’t see his unilateral decision to end our sex life as him breaking faith with me. There’s also the issue of financial dependance. I am NOT dependent on him, he is dependent on ME. I didn’t want to abandon him during a pandemic while he’s unemployed, so I stayed. Now he tells me he’s asexual and accuses me of being unsupportive of his sexual identity if I so much as mention missing sex. To make a long story short, three months ago I met a guy at work. We’re the only people on our floor currently coming into the office and we got to talking and it turned out he’s bisexual and married but open. I’ve been blowing him a couple of times a week for the last two months. He’s close to my age, and I really need this. We aren’t in the same department, so I don’t report to him, and he doesn’t report to me. He doesn’t reciprocate, but I don’t care. I wasn’t on Grindr and didn’t go looking for this. Do I need to feel bad about it?

Cheating Homo On Knees Eating Dick

So, your husband insists you honor the commitment you made to him (not to have other sex partners) but he’s released himself from the commitment he made to you (to be your sex partner) and invited you to divorce him if you didn’t like it. And you didn’t divorce him. You stayed. Not because you wanna stay in this marriage, and not because you’re obligated to stay in this marriage to affirm his sexual identity, but because he’s unemployed and you don’t wanna turn him out on the street during a pandemic.

Okay.

You don’t need to feel bad about this—you don’t need to feel bad about the dick you’re eating at work—and if you’ve been reading my column for longer than a week, CHOKED, you knew I was gonna say that. So, you wanted a permission slip and you’ve got it, signed and notarized. And now if you stop giving those hot non-recip blowjobs to the bisexual guy at the office, I’m gonna be pissed at you for wasting my time. So don’t let me down here, CHOKED. Keep eating that dick.

Of course, eating that dick isn’t a long-term solution to your problem, CHOKED, but that dick will make your life more bearable in the near-term. (It sounds like it has already.) But ultimately, CHOKED, you’re gonna have to counter your husband’s ridiculous ultimatum with a perfectly reasonable ultimatum of your own: He doesn’t have to be sexual with you—he never has to eat your dick ever again—but he can’t expect you to live a sexless life. Tell him you’re gonna seek dick elsewhere, CHOKED, and if he doesn’t like it, then he can leave.

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Just wanted to commend you for your advice to “Having A Realistic Discussion On Needs” in last week’s column. I say this as someone who recently went through a similar—though blessedly temporary—situation with my girlfriend. The first time I lost my erection before I came, I was a little bummed, but my attitude was basically, “Dang, well, at least I made her come.” My girlfriend, however, had a mild-to-moderate freak-out: Was everything okay? Was she doing something wrong? Was I not attracted to her anymore? Like HARDON’s partner, I also “got in my own head,” and the same thing kept happening. It got to the point where I was avoiding sex because I didn’t want to deal with the crisis-counseling session that would inevitably ensue if I couldn’t come again. After a few weeks of this I was finally able to get through to her that talking and obsessing about it was only making it worse. She backed off, I got to a point where I could relax again, and it wasn’t long before our happy, healthy, way-hotter-than-you’d-expect-from-a-couple-of-divorced-40-year-olds sex life picked up where it left off.

As you implied to HARDON, sometimes you just need to STFU and hope for the best. Guys being who we are, nothing sets our deep-seated insecurities ablaze like being pestered about our dick problems, no matter how well-meaning and sincere the pesterer is. We’re kind of like toddlers who suffer a minor boo-boo: If we see you frantically running toward us waving your hands and asking what’s wrong, we’re going to flip out. But if you don’t make a big deal out of it, we won’t either. Just wanted to share my straight-dude perspective and thank you for your level-headed response.

Please End Needless Interrogations Speedily

Thanks for sharing, PENIS. And while I sometimes feel like I should say, “Everybody doesn’t always need to come during sex,” I worry about some straight guys reading that and then giving even less of a shit about getting their female partners off than they already do. I don’t want to accidentally widen the orgasm gap: While more than 95% of straight men self-report that they always come during sex, according to the Archives Of Sexual Behavior, only 65% of straight women said the same. We should all want our partners to get off and should make a good-faith effort to get them off, but we shouldn’t make a huge deal out of it if our partner, every once in a while, for whatever reason, doesn’t get off.

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I just read your reply to HARDON and I think you missed something. (I know, I know! Who am I to tell you anything?!?) I’m a mature woman who had a younger male lover for a while. Same scenario in that he was super fit, had stamina, was eager, etc. All was good—except that he had to finish himself off with a hard and furious handjob every time. I suggested that he go on a masturbation diet: Stop jerking off every day and when he did masturbate, use props, e.g., wrap a cloth around his hand, grind against pillows, Fleshlight, whatever he could think of, because I had the idea that the intense and hard hold he used when masturbating was the culprit. And I was vindicated! It took a few patient tries, but he got there!

Someone In Toronto

Thank you for sharing, SIT, and I would’ve addressed the issue you raised—the issue you successfully addressed with your hot young man—if HARDON had mentioned something similar, i.e., her boyfriend using what I’ve long called the “death grip” to finish himself off. Dive into the Savage Love archives, SIT, and you’ll find tons of advice for guys who used the death grip during masturbation and then couldn’t get off during partnered sex because the inside of a vagina, a mouth, or a butt doesn’t feel like the inside of a bony clenched fist. My advice for guys who suffer from death grip syndrome is the same as yours: Stop jacking off like that, use a lighter touch, get some lube and maybe a Fleshlight, and retrain the dick. It doesn’t work in all cases—some guys can’t come back, for other guys that’s just what their dick needs—but I’ve heard from plenty of men over the years who successfully retrained their dicks.

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TO MY READERS: I had to file this column early due to the Labor Day holiday. But I want you to know that I’m furious about what happened in Texas last week (a law banning abortion went into effect) and what didn’t happen in the Supreme Court (the Trump-packed court didn’t block that law from going into effect, essentially nullifying Roe V. Wade). Texas’s new anti-abortion law empowers individual citizens to sue anyone they suspect of having helped a woman get an abortion—doctors, clinic staffers, parents, anyone. Lend a friend some money to pay for an abortion? You could be sued. Drive a friend to a clinic? You could be sued. If a lawsuit brought against you is successful, you could be ordered to pay the person who sued you $10,000 and reimburse their legal expenses; if you prevail in court, you get nothing—no damages, none of your legal expenses reimbursed. Women still have a constitutional right to an abortion in the United States, but abortion is effectively illegal now in Texas and will be soon in other states, as GOP legislators and governors drive a truck through the hole the Supreme Court just ripped open in Roe V. Wade. My advice to women and men in Texas: Stock up on morning after pills—available over the counter (for now)—and vote every last GOP motherfucker out of office.

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