I’ve been a fan of your Savage Lovecast for a long time, but I had to write after hearing Marty Klein’s awesome talk about the fallacy of “sex addiction.” I am 27, and for most of my adult life, I have suffered from complete sexual dysfunction with partners. I was ashamed and thought I was too sexually screwed up to be with a partner because I’m kinky. (I have a fetish for tights and pantyhose.) I was also afraid to seek help out of fear of being labeled “abnormal” or “addicted to porn.” I managed to get a little better thanks to an encouraging, kinky, porn-loving, sex-positive female partner. In spite of feeling better, I am still having problems with partners. What are some good resources for finding a sex-positive therapist like Dr. Klein? I have been referred by several people to someone listed as a “certified sex addiction therapist,” and I worry this is exactly the kind of unhelpful, sex-negative therapist that Dr. Klein mentioned on your podcast.
NON-Addict Despite Dumb Intolerant Counselors’ Theories

“If the public knew how little sexuality training most therapists receive, they’d be stunned,” said Dr. Marty Klein, a sex therapist ...

A friend of mine on the opposite coast is a cross-dresser considering transitioning. He came out to a female friend he had known for a long time but hadn’t seen in a while, and she told her that she wanted her to come to her house fully dressed for some hot sex to “explore her bi-curiosity” or some shit. I told her to go for it, saying gender-transgression play is potentially hot. I neglected to mention that she should only go for it if she trusted this girl (hereafter known as “Evil Bitch”). Evil Bitch backed out as soon as she arrived, but took her out to dinner (still fully dressed) as consolation. When she first told me this, I thought, “Oh well, Evil Bitch got cold feet, that sucks.” Now my friend is telling me that Evil Bitch messaged a bunch of mutual friends he wasn’t out to, outing my friend to them. After my friend told Evil Bitch that what went down between them was private, Evil Bitch just responded with “LOL k,” and THEN posted pictures from their dinner date—fully dressed—on her Facebook. I told my friend to call Evil Bitch up and ...

My name is Nancy, and I’m 19. My boyfriend’s name is Carl, we have been together for almost a year—our anniversary is actually February 14!—and we have great sex frequently! I want to do something sexy for us on our anniversary. I plan on being with Carl for years to come, and I don’t want the sex to become monotonous. For a while, I’ve wanted to go to a sex store to purchase a few things to spice things up. I found a supportive, nonjudgmental friend who wants a few kinky things for her and her boyfriend. As you can imagine, we’re both excited to go on this adventure, but there’s just one problem: I have no idea what to buy! Neither does my friend! I was hoping you had a few essentials that my friend and I should know about or consider purchasing. My boyfriend and I have never used such things, but I’m positive that with your help making the right purchases, he will be all for it! Both my friend and I are college students, so we’re on a budget. I’m hoping to stay under $100 ...

I’m a straight male, 21 years old. I love women, I’ve always loved women, I’ve always loved having sex with women. However, in the last year, here and there, I’ve jerked off to transsexual porn. One night, after drinking with a friend and smoking some hash, I arranged a date with a trans sex worker. She was totally womanly, nothing manly about her, except for, you know. She licked my butt, gave me head, and fingered me. I’ve been on the receiving end of anal play before from girls, so nothing new. But somewhere during this encounter, I became the receiving partner during anal sex. At the time, I was too fucked up to care. But the next day, I started to feel REALLY bad. She was very safe and used condoms for everything. I just can’t get past the fact that I did the gayest thing a guy can do. I feel really depressed about this traumatic situation. I can’t seem to enjoy my life anymore. I’ve even felt somewhat suicidal. (I would never kill myself—I wouldn’t do that to my family and friends.) I still want to date ...

More than a thousand people showed up for a recent Savage Love Live event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It goes without saying that the students at UW submitted more questions than I could answer in 90 minutes. As promised, Madison, here are some bonus answers to questions that I didn’t get to during our time together…

Can an open relationship work if it’s this type: dating two people, separately, both serious, neither relationship is the “primary” one?

Define “work.”

Most people define “work”—in the context of a relationship—as “a loving, lasting, long-term relationship that ends only with the death of one or both parties.” But I define “work” as “a loving relationship that makes the people in it happy, whether that relationship lasts for the rest of their lives or whether both parties—or all parties, if we’re talking about a poly or open scenario—decide at some point to end the relationship amicably.” So yes, I do think the relationship you’ve described can work. Whether you’ll be in this relationship—or these relationships—for the rest of your life remains to be seen. You may wind up getting more serious about ...

I just started an intense relationship with a guy who has a boyfriend. This guy and I love each other. However, he is uncomfortable with me meeting his boyfriend. I’ve asked if it’s okay that we’re fucking, and he said they’re in an open relationship, so it’s okay. I asked if it’s okay that we’re in love, and he said yes. So why the secrecy? My lover’s only explanation is that his boyfriend doesn’t want to know about the guys he fucks around with. The whole situation is starting to make me uneasy. I can’t figure out why I want to know more about his boyfriend. Is it so I can verify that he’s not cheating, or that jealousy is an issue for them and that’s why I can’t meet him? I do know that I wish my lover would be more open with me. Should I just relax?
The Other Person

Monogamous couples have one rule about fucking other people—“don’t fuck other people”—but non-monogamous couples have all sorts of different rules, TOP, and sometimes a particular couple’s particular rules make it hard ...

This is a touchy and gross subject. I am a 17-year-old girl growing up in an adoptive family in Australia. I was sexually abused by my birth family, and I think it really fucked up my sexuality. The only thing that gets me off is the idea of people absolutely destroying their lives for an orgasm. I started with mild S&M stories and then moved on to grosser stuff like murder (stories and online images), pedo (stories only), and lately I’ve been thinking about my (adoptive) parents. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be a particular category. As long as it’s the most vile thing I can think of, it will get me off. There isn’t a pattern as far as gender, age, or relationship to the people I am fantasizing about; it just has to be horrible, the kind of thing that would destroy you in real life. These fantasies alone are scary enough, but because they are literally the only things that get me off, I can’t even really tell if I’m attracted to boys or girls or none of the above. I’m scared to talk to a counselor ...

At a dinner party, a straight man put a question to my boyfriend and me. He assumed that we, being gay men, would have an answer for him. We did not, Dan, and so we turn to you. What happens to one if one has to fart while one is wearing a butt plug?
Gays Are Simply Stumped, Yes And Sincerely So

If one is wearing a butt plug (“wear: to carry or to have on the body or about the person as a covering, ornament, or the like”), GASSYASS, then one may pass gas, silently or noisily, as one is wont to do, because a butt plug worn as a hat or a brooch or an epaulet—that is, a butt plug worn on the body—presents no impediment. But if one has fully inserted the bulbous end of the butt plug into one’s rectal cavity, and one’s sphincter muscles are gripping the neck of the butt plug, as they are wont to do, thereby ensuring that the bulbous end remains lodged in the rectal cavity while the flared base remains outside of the rectal cavity (one could, if one wished to be pedantic, argue that one ...

Sometimes I kick the proverbial hornet’s nest intentionally—“bullshit in the Bible,” for instance—and sometimes I kick the hornet’s nest accidentally. I honestly didn’t expect the outraged response I got after I wrote that poly wasn’t a sexual identity in the “sexual orientation” sense of the term. Some people identify as poly, of course, just as some people identify as, say, dominant or submissive. While I recognize that poly (or D/s) can be central to someone’s sexual identity, I’ve never viewed it as a sexual orientation, and I didn’t think this was a controversial point of view.

Many poly people disagree. I’ve received a ton of impassioned e-mails from polyamorous readers, most of whom see themselves as poly-oriented, not just poly-identified. And while some seem confused—I’ve never denied the existence of polyamorous people, I never said that people couldn’t or shouldn’t identify as polyamorous—I’m turning the rest of this week’s column over to the polyoutraged.

I’ve been poly all my life, since well before I knew there was such a possibility. As far back as grade school, I’ve generally ...

I’m a straight man at that age where the general public still considers me young. Although I’ve attended many weddings, I have no interest in marrying or even being in a relationship. I never have.

I’m not asexual. I’ve had and enjoyed sex. I just don’t feel the need to be with anyone. As long as I’ve got music and friends, I’m satisfied. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one. My parents want grandkids. My friends want to set me up. My television set only ever shows people in or pursuing relationships. My government wants me to father and raise future dead soldiers. I try not to internalize these views, but sometimes I wonder what’s going to happen if I change my mind somewhere down the road. What the hell’s wrong with me? Or not wrong with me? What do I tell people who insist that something’s wrong or that I’ll change my mind? And what should I do if I actually do change my mind?
I Don’t Give A Fuck

Honestly, IDGAF, yours is one of those letters that I have a hard time giving much ...

I am a 22-year-old straight female. I used to babysit for a wealthy family, but their children have outgrown babysitters. The dad of this family is very into martial arts/fighting and has invited me over several times for “self-defense training.” I have accepted his invitations a few times, and it has always started off as a normal workout in their home gym—treadmill, weights, swimming laps—but he is always pretty anxious to get to the self-defense part. Often he will blindfold me and then come at me, and I must then wrestle my way out of the situation using the moves I’ve learned.

I did this a few times, Dan, but I found it a bit unsettling. However, he never touched me inappropriately. Last time we did this, he told me he wanted to see how much pain he could take. He asked me to kick him in the groin with no protection until he couldn’t take it anymore. I thought, “This is strange,” but I was curious, so I did it. He was able to take it for a surprisingly long time. I haven’t been back since, but for the last six months, he ...

Reading you over the years has absolutely changed my mind on gay marriage. I wanted to let you know that. I also live in Maryland, and as you know, we voted last week to allow same-sex couples to legally marry. I was excited that I got to vote for marriage equality in my home state, Dan—even I agree that it’s fucked-up that people get to vote on the civil rights of LGBT people at all. Thanks for all your writing over the years—it’s really made a difference in my love and sex life. And congrats to you and all gay people in the United States for the big wins last week in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State.
Just Some Straight Guy

There’s something I want to say about the votes—and about the voters—in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington State. But first I want to say this to all my fellow queers: We built this. The breakthroughs we saw last week, which included the election of the first openly gay person to the United States Senate (Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin), we made that. LGBT people came out, fought back, and changed the world ...

DEAR READERS: I’m writing this week’s column in a drug-induced coma. Well, not quite a coma, but close. I was fighting a cold for two weeks, and the cold won: It morphed into an insanely painful sinus infection—you know it’s bad when your doctor urges you to err on the side of too much Vicodin, not too little. So a warning to everyone whose letter appears in this week’s column: My reliably sucky advice is probably going to be suckier than usual.

This probably falls into the category of a so-what’s-the-problem problem: I’m a bearish 44-year-old who can’t get a hot Latin 18-year-old guy to stop sucking my dick. Craigslist was involved initially. But now he comes by for weekly sessions of mutual head, and leaves immediately afterward. His round trip on the subway lasts longer than his stays at my place. He’s a sweet kid, but deeply closeted; given what little I know of his Dominican family and group of friends, he’s years away from coming out. I’m under no illusion that I’m what he’s looking for, but I am an available sexual outlet. The trouble ...

So I was innocently browsing the personal ads on Craigslist and saw one from a dude who was looking to try “saline balls” for the first time. Having no idea what this was, I Googled it. Even worse, I Google-imaged it. I pride myself on being unshockable, but I was completely and utterly mortified at what I saw. With that said, my copious Internet searching failed to yield the answers to the basic/most important questions regarding saline balls: 1) What is the procedure/process for salining one’s balls? 2) What about it turns on the saliner/salinee? 3) How long does the effect last? 4) Can it be (God forbid) irreversible?
Completely Utterly Mortified

“The technical name for what CUM is asking about is ‘scrotal inflation,’” says Dart, a leatherman, BDSM/kink educator, and host of the Dart’s Domain podcast. “It’s a type of body-modification play where the scrotum is infused with approximately 500 milliliters to one liter of saline solution via an IV/cannula drip, which results in the balls appearing to have enlarged to the size of a pair of grapefruits.”

Saline, of course, is simply salt water, and sterile saline solutions are administered ...

What the hell do I say to my straight 14-year-old son about porn? Should I say anything? My sister tells me that all the research shows my son has been looking at porn for three years already. Am I too late?
Distressed Anxious Dad

According to the Today show and the Boston Globe and the American Family Association and most of what pops up when you Google “kids and porn,” DAD, you’re three years late to this pants-shitting party. “The average age a child first views Internet pornography is 11,” Matt Lauer warned parents on Today seven years ago. “And those kids don’t look away.”

But the alarming statistic Lauer cited—which was used to justify all sorts of proposed crackdowns on online porn—turned out to be total bullshit. Way, way back in 2005, Seth Lubove, a writer for Forbes, traced the stat back to its source. The Today show got it from the Boston Globe, the Boston Globe got it from Family Safe Media, “a small firm in Provo, Utah, [which] is in the business of scaring parents into buying software to protect their kids from Internet smut.” Family Safe Media got it from Internet Filter ...