Savage Lovecast Episode 942

You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Locast at savage.love.

The New York Times had a story this week that I wanted to highlight because it confirmed a couple of my priors. There's been a lot of that going around in the last two weeks. A lot of people out there looking for stories that confirm their priors. And I guess I'm no exception.

But I didn't find this particular prior confirming story in the news, politics, or opinion sections of the paper, which is where most people are finding stories that confirm their priors since Kamala Harris lost the election to Donald Trump two weeks ago. Nope, I found this piece in the travel section and it's not about the election or fleeing the country.

It's about, well, it's about tourists who travel to places to have sex with other tourists. The New York Times can't call it sex tourism because that term has very negative connotations. Sex tourism is typically used to refer to people who go someplace far from home to commit a sex crime.

Which forced the New York Times editors to go with a somewhat clunkier descriptor of this piece? This story about tourists going places to have sex with other tourists, maybe a local or two. Isn't a story about sex tourism? It is a story, according to the editors of the New York Times travel section, about how, quote, the tourism industry has embraced the sexual wellness trend in the years since the pandemic ended.

The piece, under the headline Traveling for a Cuddle or More at European Sex Parties, opens with Olivia and her husband who traveled to Venice back in February to attend a sex party hosted by a female-focused sex party club called Killing Kittens.

They went to help them reconnect with each other sexually after many years of marriage. The couple, writes as Mae Benjamin, was finding it hard to do anything spicy at home, what with their two teenage children around and the dirty laundry piling up.

but instead of a gondola ride or canal side dinner the story continues the couple made their way to a private venetian palazzo, where around 150 guests of champagne and 8 oysters while listening to a classical pianist and a string quartet while downstairs a dungeon master demonstrated spanking and other basic BDSM techniques.

All right, prior number one of mine confirmed by this piece, Mr. and Mrs. Olivia, doing what I'm constantly telling couples in long-term committed relationships to do. If you want to get that sexual spark back, go on a sexual adventure together. At the start of your relationship before kids and laundry start piling up, adventurous sex is effortless because at the start, you're the adventure there on there, the adventure you're on,

But at some point, to get that sense of adventure back, to get back to adventurous sex, you got to make an effort.

And if you have the money, that effort can look like flying to Venice for a sex party where the ticket prices start at $630 per couple. Prior, number two of mine confirmed by this piece, when you make plans to go to an event like that and gay couples, we were going to sex parties like that long before the pandemic. The reconnecting starts before you get on the plane. You get horny and anticipation of the adventure you're about to have together.

You get horny thinking about what you're gonna do and you start fucking before you go. And then once you get home, you think about the adventure you just had and it keeps you horny and you keep fucking. Or as another satisfied customer said about the sex party he attended in Paris, this one hosted by a group called Pinky Promise, where do they get those names? The electricity came home with us. Exactly just like I told you it.

Prior number three of mine confirmed by this piece, most of the couples jetting off to these kinds of parties are monogamous, or they're believed to be monogamous by the family and friends they allow to assume they're monogamous. Their neighbors and coworkers, they think they went to Venice in February to ride around in gondolas in the pouring rain,

So, as I've said about a million times or more to people who tell me they don't know any nominogamous couples, you actually do.

You know couples who are non-monogamous, you just don't know, you know them. Couple of quick concerns about this piece. Jedding off to Venice is great, but not sustainable, environmentally, or for many people financially. These sex parties, they have enormous carbon footprints, and I'm not throwing stones from my glass house. I have flown places to fuck, but

The more people who fly to Venice, the sooner there's no Venice. And Venice is already choking on tourists. There's a certain poetic justice in thinking about tourists who come to Venice to choke on other tourists, but there's still tourists choking Venice. Also, killing kittens' events?

are all you can eat, but they don't serve breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So again, not everyone can afford to reconnect like this. Another price you pay, along with meals and hotel rooms for an sexual adventure like this, greater risk of contracting an STI or spreading one. Welcome to being an event asexual. You've got to be a little bit more vigilant about your health. If you go to events like this, get tested before and after. If you get something, get treated. And if possible, notify your sex partners.

And I got to say, one last little reservation or consideration. If every time you want to reconnect with your spouse, if every time you want to get that spark back, you have to fly to Venice or France or Berlin, you're probably not going to reconnect with your spouse that often. So you'll want to find a way to have adventures a little closer to home.

realize local sex parties are scarier because you might run into or run through your boss or his wife or her wife or your presumed to be monogamous neighbors or parents. Damn it, I was trying to talk you into going to a local sex party and I just talked myself out of going to one. Finally, got to love this comment. I'm the New York Times top comment on this story, which also confirms a prior of mine. Weekend getaways to orgies in Venice and Paris and the GOP wanted you to believe the economy is weak.

Yeah, my ultimate prior, the GOP lied to you. They lied to us. They've been lying to us for 50 years about everything. All right, coming up on today's show, as ever, tons of your cues, lots of my A's and my guests this week on the Magnum, Tracy Schorn, AKA Chumplady.

Tracy was betrayed by her husband, turns out he was leading a secret double life, cheating on her, putting her at risk, other crazy shit. And now on her blog, her podcast, and in her book, Tracy is a fiery foul-mouthed advocate for, as she calls them, her fellow chumps. Tracy is a critic of the reconciliation industrial complex, of which she thinks I am a part, not a fan of couples, counselors, authors, and advice columnists who encourage people to maybe think about taking a cheater back,

I don't usually argue with my guests, but Tracey and I really got into it in a passionate but polite way. It can be done. There's a little bit of my argument with Tracey on the micro. All of it is on the Magnum. If you've been thinking about becoming a Magnum sub, this might be a good week to do it. And speaking of my subs from now until December 31st, year-long gift subscriptions to the Magnum Savage Lubbcast are half off. That's only $24 for a year of Magnum magic.

which includes the longer ad-free show, access to love cast going back to 2006, sex and politics, and we have a new sex and politics coming out later this week where I do a little election post-mortem with writer Peter Rothplatz. What else? So much else. Savage Love Live Zoom Hangouts, discounted hump tickets, all of Savage Love's struggle sessions, and more.

Our subs help us keep the good sex content coming here. They also help us keep the lights on and the tech savvy at risk you've fed this holiday season. Give your loved one or hell, give your worst enemy a gift that won't end up in a landfill. Give them the love cast.

All right, let's get to that first call. This episode is brought to you by Liberator, makers of pillows, shapes, wedges and furniture for new and exciting sex. Just for Black Friday, Liberators offering an additional 10% off site-wide exclusively for our listeners. Stack that 10% discount on top of their already incredible Black Friday deals for the best savings of the year. Go to Liberator.com and use the promo code SABAGE.

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Hey, Dan, Nancy, and the tech savvy youth. So I've been dating a guy for about two and a half years. Our original connection was through Kink. It's developed into a more serious relationship. We live together in a small town. We are open, although we don't pursue it because primarily we're lazy. But anyways, he travels for work, and he has disclosed to me that when he's traveling, he visits Asian massage places, also known, quote unquote, as whackshacks.

And I have shared with him that while I think it's great that he's finding pleasure and he's getting some body work done at a good price, I'm just concerned about the ethics of how these workers are being taken advantage of as well as a probability of being sex trafficked.

And he's assured me that he tries to find quote-unquote legit places that don't feel too creepy, but I have some judgment about it. The other layer of that is he also has been really transparent about his interest in race play, specifically with Asian women. I know that some of the porn that he watches is pretty extreme, where there's a lot of racial slurs, a lot of degradation. He really likes

people doing kind of gross things for him as he identifies as a dom and that doesn't align for me and while I don't entirely understand it, I accept it and feel really happy that he shares openly.

But the problem is I think the overlay of the two, the combination of the whack shack and then the knowledge of what his primary kink orientation is. They're kind of influencing me to be pretty judgmental. And I don't want to end the relationship because it's really quite healthy and wonderful. But I also just

It just doesn't align with my values. A lot of that. And so I'm just really having a hard time deciding what to do.

I think I don't want to think about this question. I don't want to think about your problem and your boyfriend, but you have tasked me with thinking about your problem and your boyfriend. And the reason I don't want to think about it is because I'm not really allowed to say anything about race play into a microphone that isn't feed that man into a wood chipper, basically.

People are into race play. Often, over the years, when we've gotten questions about race play, it's not from some awful white person who wants to engage in race play or just began to engage in race play, tinged with, as it almost always is, degradation and eroticized white supremacy. On some unsuspecting person of color, sex partner,

Often when I get calls about race play, almost every call I've ever gotten about race play, it's a white person who's been asked to engage in it by a person of color, by a black person or an Asian person who's turned on by it. A lot of people's fantasies, most people's fantasies, almost all.

Hinky people have subby fantasies. And a lot of people with race play fantasies that are subby are people of color with race play fantasies. And again, all the calls, most of the calls I've gotten about race play are from a white person who's uncomfortable with what a black or Asian person has asked them to do or say during sex. Yours is the rare call about race play.

where it is the white person in the Dom role who is interested in race, but not saying that that's a black swan event. I'm not saying that that those people aren't out there that they don't exist. Just they usually don't call and they didn't. He didn't. You did. And you're the partner. So what do you do? Well,

This makes you uncomfortable. You worry that he may be patronizing jackshacks, jackshacks, massage parlors. We're not everybody working there is thrilled about working there. And that is possible. He could be doing his due diligence and not doing it well enough, not motivated to do it very well because he wants to go more than he wants to find out that he shouldn't go to this particular

Jack Shack that he's interested in going to, or he could just be lying to you about doing any due diligence about the places he patronizes at all.

I will say that if he does go to a place, the odds that he is engaging in active race play and DS degradation scenes with the masseuses in an establishment like that, probably nil is probably not a lot of conversation going on. And you can't control what's going on between his ears while he's getting a massage, what he might be thinking about or fantasizing about.

which means you just have to, like I wanted to, after listening to your call, not think about it. If you're not gonna break up with him over,

The fantasies and problematic kinks and nobody chooses their kinks. We choose how we act on them and we can act on even problematic kinks in non problematic ways with a consenting adult partner or partners. Ideally, whose interest matches our own who isn't just going along with something that may be doing them psychological damage.

because they want to please you or because they need the hundred dollar tip. You could encourage him to tip and tip. Well, that might make you feel a little less guilty about what he's doing on the assumption that the establishment, the woman he's tipping is working for isn't seizing her tips, which does sometimes happen. Yeah. Don't think about it or break up with him. Those are your options. Like he's going to do this.

He's probably going to do this, even if you told him you didn't want him doing this, or you forbid him from doing this ever again, going to these places. And you can't reach into his erotic imagination. You can't reach into that motherboard and yank out his problematic sexual fantasies about, quote unquote, race play. So don't think about it if you're not going to break up with him over it.

Just will yourself not to think about it, which is what I'm gonna do. Now, I am not gonna think about your question or your boyfriend anymore.

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Let them know the love cast that you use the promo code savage. Make some of your fantasies a reality this holiday season. Liberator.com. Let them know the love cast that you by using the promo code savage and getting that discount. Hi, Dan. I'm a mid 30s polypan person in the Midwest. And I'm calling to talk about monogamy norms that fall into polyamory and was wondering what your perspective

would be about how people in polyamory tend to fall into the relationship escalator, default monogamy standards while in polyamorous commitment with other people. How to address that situation in the kindest way while adhering to the campsite rule of leaving this person better than when you found them.

I find that many people don't have the DTR conversation defining the relationship and default to we are now a couple. We now text every day. We now see each other every week or semi-weekly or every other week or they have expectations of what this relationship is supposed to look like.

just based off of previous relationships in monogamy or maybe not. I'm not sure. So again, what's your perspective on this? Are these monogamous norms? Is this just a preference for people? I'm curious what a poly, a pure poly relationship, a poly relationship untainted by default monogamous settings would look like for you if

a text every once in a while or seeing somebody once a week or once every two weeks is an unrealistic kind of monogamy style crushing expectation. It's a relationship. You got to show up for that person. And yeah, that can feel like an obligation. It is kind of an obligation. But if you're happy to be in that relationship and free to end that relationship, if you're not but if you're happy to be in that relationship,

It shouldn't feel crushing to respond to a text every once in a while or send a text every once in a while and show the fuck up once or twice a week and fuck that person or hang out with that person or watch a movie with that person. So I'm just really curious about how you're framing this because you're saying you're in relationships and poly relationships. Okay, what does a poly relationship look like in the absence of seeing that person or communicating with that person? I don't think seeing someone that you're seeing

is somehow monogamy coded or communicating with somebody that you're seeing about when you're going to see them or just that you were thinking of them is also somehow monogamy coded or

relationship escalator adjacent in a way that would make a polyamorous person or a person who practices polyamory. I don't think people are monogamous or are poly in the way people are gay or are straight. I think that poly is a relationship model that works for people. monogamy is a relationship model that works for other people and there may be times in a person's life when a monogamous model worked for them. Time in the same person's life when a polyamorous model or an open relationship model might work for them. I don't think

Holly and monogamy are identities or sexual orientations. They are relationship preferences. Anyway, a little digression there. So you describe a text every once in a while seeing somebody that you're seeing every once in a while as somehow unrealistic expectations about what a relationship is supposed to look like. And I'm just again turning this back to you and asking you, what does a relationship in the absence of those perfectly reasonable

minimal expectations look like. Are you in a poly relationship with somebody that you don't call, text with, or see unless you happen to run into them? All relationships require some effort in maintaining and sustaining them and some attention. And I guess you could describe those as obligations and maybe describing them as obligations, ruin them for you.

Those obligations shouldn't feel like obligations in the context of a relationship that you're happy to be in, and again, free to exit if you're unhappy to be in that relationship. I guess I don't quite follow the premise of your question, and you're free to call back and rephrase it.

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Hello, Dan and Nancy. I'm a 39-year-old gay man living in Toronto, Canada. I'm currently in an open relationship with my boyfriend, and we've been together in nearly two years. This is my first relationship in a long time, so after so many years of being single, sharing my life has been an adjustment, but we're in a really good place. We love each other very much. We're crazy about each other, and we're even making plans to move in together. Our recent challenge has been sex.

Up until recently, we were only doing things like oral and jerking off, but I had been telling them for a while that I needed more.

And he wasn't ready to get there yet. He had never had anal sex, never had anything up his butt. And the few times we had tried, he wasn't getting much pleasure out of it. But after giving him a lot of patience and time and we talked it out, we're finally in a good place and we're having a healthy sexual relationship. The thing is, is that he's just starting off as a bottom. And I'm an experienced verse bottom.

And we're progressing slowly in that area. The thing, though, is that he wants to be able to top me. And the situation is, though, he has a small dick, and I have a big dick. And he can't really penetrate me.

And I'm not going to lie, I would love to have my boyfriend penetrate me because I love the sensation of getting fucked. But so I was hoping that maybe there was something you could recommend and tell me that we could try. For the record, I do own dildos and that I do use them myself. I'm experienced with that. But it's not quite the same of getting fucked by your partner.

so i was hoping there was something you might be able to recommend because the only thing i can think of right now is he wears a strap on. I just want to jump in here right at the start and say you and your boyfriend were having oral sex and jacking off together mutual masturbation and you were fully satisfied because you also wanted to have anal sex and now you are you are fucking the shit out of your.

boyfriend. And the way you describe your sexual relationship now is finally we're in a good place where we're having a healthy sexual relationship.

If you were satisfied with mutual masturbation and oral sex, there wouldn't be anything unhealthy about the sexual relationship that you had with your boyfriend. There are guys out there, gay guys out there who aren't into anal at all. Dr. Joe Court finally gave them a name to rally around sides. And I just don't want to equate

You know, having anal sex in the context of a gay relationship with having a fully realized healthy sexual relationship, you can have a fully realized, neutrally fulfilling sexual relationship that doesn't involve anybody getting fucked in the ass ever. All right, to the specifics of your problem, yours and your boyfriend's problem,

Your boyfriend knows he has a small dick, right? Your boyfriend knows that when he's tried to penetrate you, he can't quite do it either because he's got a small dick or you've got a fat ass or it's some combo of both. You got to work with what you got, right? And work around what you don't got. And he doesn't have a big enough dick, long enough to penetrate you.

And you do have a bunch of dildos laying around. This has come up on the podcast a few times recently, strap on dildos pegging, not just for lesbians anymore, even the Oxford English dictionary after they added pegging to the dictionary.

clarified that when the term was first coined in my column that it specifically referenced a man getting fucked in the ass by a woman with a strap-on dildo and now it's not tied to any genders a lesbian can peg her partner a straight man can get pegged by his partner a gay man can peg his partner get pegged by his partner and it does replicate very closely the feeling of getting fucked because you are getting fucked with a strap-on

dildo, and hopefully your boyfriend would rather succeed at pegging you than fail at fucking you with his dick. And you can still pleasure each other and you can get off. He can come on your haul and then fuck you with a big strap on dildo or fuck you with a strap on dildo and then

come into your gaping hole when he's done dicking you down dildo and strap on and pegging style. But I realize that this is tricky. A tricky thing to talk about because there are guys out there with small dicks who know it and are willing to talk about it and do what they need to do to work around it and work with what they got.

And there are guys out there who are kind of in denial about it and being honest about what their dick can do for you and can't do for you can really.

hurt their feelings, really traumatized them because they're so so conscious about the size of their dick. But hopefully your boyfriend, you say you're 39, hopefully your boyfriend is close to you in age and he has come to love his dick for what it is and is aware of what he's got and what he doesn't got and is grateful to the universe that he lives in a time when he can have the dick he has, enjoy the dick he has, that you can enjoy the dick he has, and he can also have

the dick of your dreams and his dreams whenever he wants to strap that dick on to.

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We're going to take a quick break from your calls to speak with Tracy Schorn, a journalist and cartoonist who runs the popular advice site, Chump Lady. Tracy is the author of Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life, the Chump Lady's Survival Guide to Infidelity. And she is not full disclosure, a fan of mine, Esther Perels or Caroline Hacks' not really a fan of my latest neologism, Tolly Amory, which we will get to. But first, Tracy, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me.

So how are you a chump? Who chumped you? What's chumping? Chumping is just my term for being cheated on. But I thought all the language around infidelity was really sloppy and kind of awful. So I mixed it up. So yeah, chump just means to be played for a fool. And you can't be chumped without a con artist or a con person deceiving you. So I use the term. So some people take offense at it because I think I'm calling them stupid.

You know, you feel stupid when you've been chumped, you know, so it fits. So I'm chumplated.

I did do a deep dive into your columns after stumbling over the one about Tallyamory. And there's a lot of solidarity. You've sort of done that thing that queer people did when we reclaimed faggot, dyke, sissy, and made them our own. In terms of affection and in-group signaling by creating this community of people who identify as chumps, people who were played for fools by the men or women, but usually the men who were cheating on them.

And that's the community you've created there at Chump Lady is really amazing. Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people were kind of looking for a new narrative. Yeah. Yeah. How did you come to be Chump Lady?

Well, Chumplady came later, but my actual Chum experiences, I was briefly married to a guy for about six months and I moved to another state with him for his job with my money. Don't do that, women. And six months after we bought a house and I moved my kid and all this, his mistress of 20 years called me and informed me of his existence.

And he had a double life going back decades. And long story short, I was like a date line special. When I confronted him, he threatened to kill me. I got out. I found myself spending a lot of time on boards, giving the kind of advice I wished was out there. And then eventually, after I rebuilt my life years later, happily remarried for 14 years, my husband was like, you should write a book. You should start a blog. So yeah, I kind of took on this persona because all the advice sucked. And I still do it because the advice sucked. And the advice was when I went through it,

What did you do to make him or her cheat? And how are you going to improve yourself to win them back? And the number one best-selling book in 2006, when I went through this, was Ann Perts, and it's an evangelical book. My husband's affair became the best thing that ever happened to me. And I just think that's bullshit. So yeah, and then she took back the narrative.

Your experience with infidelity is a pretty extreme example of deceit, deception. A man married you almost under false pretenses, obtained your consent to marriage under false pretenses, was living a double life. Do you see the distinction between that really kind of crushing

sort of infidelity experience or what he did was just so cruel and sadistic and over the top and didn't. A negation of your personhood. And the difference between that and like some married dude who 20 years into a marriage got a hand job on a business trip from a masseuse.

It's on a spectrum and I always come back to what's acceptable for you in a relationship, but I would just say if you spend any time on my blog, you will realize that I'm a very mild case, right? I served like a six month sentence and then, you know, I spent some time less than a year in the reconciliation trenches and I was out.

And this is a bad blip in my life. I learned a lot from it. But people come to me with, they are heroic getting out of it, but horrific stories. And I would say, yeah, the hand job, whatever. That's how all the infidelity discourse talks about it. I got drunk at a conference. I hooked up with a co-worker. You know, you're a hardass. Why can't you forgive?

That's how we put infidelity, we talk about it. It's a one-off, it's a mistake, occasionally, versus double lives. And when I've got millions, I've been doing this 12-year, millions of stories catalog to my site, and I'm telling you, serial cheating,

is a lifestyle for many people. And that's what the Ashley Madison hack revealed. The Indians and people who have double sexual double lives. And that's just, that's what they do, right? I am not an outlier. And people.

What I'm arguing and what people who come to my site argue is that what you don't know can hurt you, especially for women. We get STDs, you can get cancers. So many people have come to my site who've had prenatal screenings and found STDs, they've lost pregnancies, women have had cervical. I mean, like, I'm the big bummer, right? I'm the keeper of the stories of what it's like to when the dick wanders and what happens.

It's not just dick that wanders anymore. Oh no, women wanders too. I don't know. We got all sorts of cheating people. And to your point about the gender split, older women, I mean, the Google breakdown, older women comment, you know, women are over 40 or something, comment most of my site. Most people who read are between like 35 and 45, but almost half my readership, at least if you believe the analytic software right now, is men, but they lurk. So yeah, women cheat too. Sure, of course they do. It's a human problem, right? It's not a, it's a rainbow nation of fuck wits.

Tracy Shorn, journalist, cartoonist, leads, runs, writes the popular advice site, Chump Lady author of Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life, the Chump Lady's survival guide to infidelity. Tracy, I had so much fun sparring with you. I get questions about cheating and infidelity all the time, and I guess I sometimes need a reality check or a gut check or a different POV, so I want you to come back. Okay, I would love to. Thanks. That was fun.

This is just a taste of my conversation with Tracy Schorn. Tracy and I really go at it. It's a hearty, healthy, polite debate. It's all on the Magnum version of the show, which you can subscribe to and support us over at savage.love.

Hey, Dan, 35-year-old lesbian on the East Coast, recently married in a wonderful relationship. A few years ago, I was in a long-term poly relationship of seven years, and it had its ups and downs, but it really did teach me a lot about communication, my personal wants and needs. I didn't end graciously, though, over a Christmas break with her family, her brother, brother-in-law,

and other partner had gotten absolutely wasted and kept the whole house up past 3am. I had finally had enough and asked them kindly to stop drinking and go to bed. It was Christmas Eve and her parents, Normie, nor my partner could sleep and she had asked me to go talk to them.

Her brother-in-law proceeded to berate me, say hateful things, and set a relationship would never be accepted, that I would never be accepted, and that I should just shut the fuck up and go back to sleep. He is a towering six-foot man and was in my face.

threatening me and I had felt so terrible after that I had to try and like look for a hotel on Christmas Eve, which was impossible. The next morning I had confronted him and he refused to apologize and we got into a huge fight and led to him kicking me out. My partner had gone with me.

as support, but she was very unhappy about it and very unhelpful. And it just led to a huge fight between the entire family. They made excuses for him so that he couldn't be held responsible because he was drinking. There was a big reason why we broke up, and I never talked to them again. So skip to now. A few years later, she kind of wants to reconnect. Apologize, but I'm still sour really after all this time, and

Even when I tried to talk about it with other poly people, I was told that it was my fault for not knowing my place in the relationship and that confronting her family wasn't my job. And I was honestly shocked by this response. And I think I still carry this weird weight of, am I not allowed to speak my piece in my partner's family, especially when we were together that long?

I don't have that issue now and my wife's family is so wonderful, but was I wrong for how I handled that situation? Was it my place? Are we not supposed to speak up in someone else's family dynamic?

So let me get this straight. Christmas Eve, your partner's brother, brother-in-law, and your partner's other partner are getting shit-faced on Christmas Eve. It's 3 a.m. They're making tons of noise, and your partner asks you.

to go confront them and tell them to shut the fuck up and stop drinking and go to bed and you do that. And then there's a giant shit show and your partner is brother-in-law, throws you out of the house, and then there's a confrontation with the brother-in-law the next day. Happy Christmas. And your partner is there and says nothing in your defense, leaves you hanging out there, hangs you out to dry,

And so yeah, you didn't do anything wrong here. Your fucking ex partner did everything wrong here. She couldn't face confronting her own family members for reasons that seem obvious now and deputized you or asked you, maybe even manipulated you into going out there and doing the dirty work that she should have done herself.

Yes, when it comes to conflicts with family members, it is best, best practice. If the person who handles a conflict with a family member is

One of the original members of that family, if there's a conflict between, you know, there's something that your partner's family is doing that's driving you crazy or driving you and your partner crazy, that's something your partner handles. They go in there and they talk to their family. Only on rare occasions does it fall to the person who is the in-law to confront their in-laws about the shit that their in-laws are pulling.

But it does happen, but it happens rarely. And it shouldn't have happened that night because your ex-partner should have handled this. And they didn't. And so why are you sitting there feeling guilty about what you did that night when you were doing what your partner asked you to do that night? If anyone should feel guilty about how that went down, it is your ex-partner who is a coward.

And I'm sorry, you're out of this relationship, you've moved the fuck on, you married somebody else, you don't have to reconnect with your acts to bomb their guilt. Fuck your acts. And the poly people that you've met who think that

You were in the wrong for confronting your ex-partner's family, and that wasn't your job. I kind of agree with them, not that you were in the wrong for confronting your ex-partner's family. You were doing what your ex-partner asked you to do. But yeah, as a general rule, confronting family is not the job of the person who married into the family or polied into the family. It's the job of the person who was born into that family. But you didn't

Jump in to do that job without being asked. You were tasked with doing that job. You were asked to step up and you stepped up and it blew up in your face and your ex's face. And then your ex is a fucking coward and just fucking abandoned you to the abuse of her brother-in-law and brother and her other partner and so.

Fuck your acts. Don't have anything to do with your acts. Just don't return her calls. You don't have to assuage her guilt about how it went down by making nice with her now. Fuck her. All right, time for listener feedback. First up, some of the comments left on last week's show in the very lively comment threads at savage.love.

says, lust, pain, the noxious. Black queer woman and longtime subscriber here, I appreciate that you started your call with therapy Jeff on the last love cast by acknowledging your privilege and protection as cis white men. But the longer you converse, Dan, the more white the conversation became. Just a reminder, black women did what we always do, which is vote for progress. As we did in 2016, we overwhelmingly voted Democratic,

in the most recent election, not to be mean, but every time I hear someone say that they are surprised, this is America, it tends to be someone white. Great point, Lussbane, not going to argue with you. About that, 92% of black women voted for Harris, up from the 90% of black women who voted for Biden-Harris in 2020. Another group where Dems gained ground

One of the few I'm proud to say LGBT voters, a demo that of course includes queer black men and women, 86% of LGBT voters backed Harris in 2024, up from 64% that backed Biden in 2020, an enormous swing. Oh my God, if only all voters out there voted like

Black women and LGBT people. Says Matthew, to the body shy, big Viking looking fella, all six seasons of Vikings and the two season sequel are on Netflix now. I would also suggest getting into a hobby that's physically active. When you feel comfortable moving in your body, you'll be more comfortable in it all around and you'll meet people.

That's great advice Matthew quick shout out to no cute name and soft dig the magnificent superstar commenters at Savage dot love both had great advice for our lonely Viking caller too long to read or share here. So if you're listening, Mr Viking, please go dive into the comment thread on Episode 941.

for more support and great advice from the savage love community says invariant blackout to the caller who got the text from her boyfriend meant for the trans sex worker bisexual men exist attraction to genitals doesn't always have anything to do with attraction to certain genders and you're asking all the wrong questions why does it matter if your boyfriend secretly gay

or by or straight craving girl cock, you should dump him if you can't deal with his inability to be honest with you or himself about his desires and sexual activity. Yeah, I agree. Dishonesty, that is a problem. But gotta say, I can understand why a boyfriend's gayness, secret or otherwise, might matter to a straight woman. I have a little less patience with women who are paranoid about their boyfriends being a tiny bit bisexual.

but I do understand why a woman who stumbled over evidence that her boyfriend might be IDBND into dude but not dick would have questions. Also, an attraction to certain genitals doesn't always indicate an attraction to a certain gender.

Hey, I'm the one out here trying to normalize IDBND, but an attraction to a certain kind of genitals does correlate very, very strongly with an attraction to members of a certain sex. Not necessarily an exclusive attraction because bisexual people exist, but an attraction nonetheless. And I ought to say, in addition to what I just had to say,

Your sexual orientation is relevant information that the person you're asking to make a commitment to you has a right to have so that their decision, their consent to enter into the relationship comes from a place of fully informed consent. So for more listener feedback, check out struggle session every Thursday at savage.love. And now everyone's favorite part of the show might included the part where I shut my mouth and my listeners get to have the last word.

Hey Dan, I'm a gay trans guy and I am calling about the big ginger viking guy. I want to fuck him. I can't believe it took you so long to mention bears though. This guy that he really has to meet up with his local bear community, sometimes gay pathos have bear knights.

just being around other big guys who are into other big guys and who are friendly and nice to you because you're big and hairy and ginger. My ex described me as a twunk and I love riding a guy with a big belly seriously.

This is a call in response to the Viking who called last week who said that he hates his body. I'm a bi woman here. I'm very tall and I am fat. So I understand how he feels because I was that fat kid growing up too, and I'm a tall fat woman now. And my self-consciousness about my body used to hold me back too. I decided to put myself out there anyway, even though I was scared of

ridicule about my body. I put myself out there for dating and play. And what I learned was there actually were a lot of men and women, both who loved my big round stomach and my six eyes and my, you know, big tits and ass. That was desirable. And they treated my body with such lusty reverence that it started to make me realize, like,

No, I actually am sexy. I'm just not conventionally sexy or like Cosmo magazine sexy, but I am sexy. And there are people who believe that too. Hi Dan, this is a response call for the big red bisexual Viking that was really struggling with his body image issues. My friend, you are my exact type. I am a 39 year old bisexual woman.

I like my men big, I like them rugged, I like them bearded. And I love the idea of being pinned down by a big red Viking and the fact that you're bisexual and I would also get the opportunity maybe to see you on your knees sucking a dick. Oh my god, you are a fucking unicorn and you need to get out in the world. And if you ever happen to be in New Zealand, look me up.

And we're going to leave it there. We've got three ways. If you've got us your questions and comments or future shows, you can record and upload your question directly onto our website at savage.love.com or you can make a voice memo on your very own phone and email it to us at q at savage.love or you can call our landline, leave us a message at 206-302-2064.

The submission deadline for Hump 2025 is coming right up. Hump, of course, is the best little dirty film festival in the world. Anyone can enter. In addition to the $10,000 in cash prizes awarded by Hump Audiences, to their favorite filmmakers, each filmmaker who gets into Hump, receives a percentage of every ticket sold. Submissions for Hump are due by December 6th. All the info you need is at humpfilmfest.com slash submit.

Follow me on Instagram and threads at Dan Savage. Follow me at Blue's Guy at Dan Savage, and you can find Tracey Shoren. You can find her books or podcasts or advice column and her community of chumps at chumplady.com. You can also follow Tracey on threads and Instagram and Twitter at chumplady. The Savage Love Cast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and Nancy and the tech-savvy at-risk youth. We will all be back at you next week. My installment of the Savage Love Cast. Thank you for downloading and hang in there.