April 2, 2008

I am a 28-year-old
straight girl two years into my first marriage. New job, new home, and new city
1,200 miles from my closest friends. It was really lonely at first, not knowing
anyone nearby. Plus, Hubby is far less social than I am, and has not gone out
of his way to help us make any friends to hang out with. He's happiest at home
on the couch, in front of a good movie, which is how we spend a lot of our
time.

Adding to that is the
fact that Hubby is now working late nights. I've spent a lot of lonely Fridays
and Saturdays at home. A hot bath coupled with a good book is fun only so often
before it becomes pathetic. Enter Elaine. She's my running/workout buddy, my
wine-bar buddy, and happens to be a lesbian. She recently split with her
partner of eight years, and as a result, we've been going out a lot more often.

Hubby is not happy. He
feels threatened by Elaine's lesbianness, and equates it to me hanging out with
a single straight guy. I did have a couple of straight-but-drunk escapades with
women WAY back in college (Hubby knows), but I am not gay, not interested, and
NOT A CHEATER. Plus, I am simply not Elaine's type. She has never once come on
to me, nor has she said/done anything that hinted at an other-than-friendly
relationship. How can I convince Hubby that my friendship with Elaine is
platonic and non-threatening? And keep him from pouting and griping every time
I mention her name? She's the only friend I have.

Sick Of Being Home Alone

It might help, SOBHA, if
you didn't use inelegant phrases like "two years into my first marriage," unless you
mean to imply that second, third, or fourth marriages are in your future. If I
ran around introducing my boyfriend to people as "my current boyfriend," it might give
him a complex, too. Just sayin'.

Here's how you set your
husband at ease about Elaine: Keep doing what you're doing—all of you.
You get to hang out with Elaine, which is within your rights (married people
are allowed to have friends and nights out); he gets to grumble about it, which
is within his rights (married people are allowed to have feelings and
insecurities). Only the passage of time—along with regularly offered
reassurances, your acquisition of other friends, and Elaine's eventual
acquisition of a new girlfriend—will convince your husband that Elaine's
intentions toward you are merely friendly, and that you're not itching to eat
pussy for old time's sake.

It would also help if your
husband spent some time hanging out with you and Elaine. Invite her over for
one of those on-the-couch movie nights. And if Elaine isn't willing to hang out
with your husband—if she's not willing to do what she can to set him at
ease—then your husband's suspicions about her intentions may not be
entirely irrational.

Recently, I brought up the idea of adding a
little kink to my boyfriend's and my sex life. Nothing extreme—just some
light bondage and some toys. A simple "No, I'm not interested," I would
understand, but he freaked the fuck out. He got angry, saying that he didn't
know I was a "freak who was into sick shit." The next day, he called me like
nothing had happened, and I've been hesitant to bring it up ever since. We have
been dating for a few months, and he seemed like a nice guy, not some sexually
conservative nutjob. I don't know what caused his freak-out and I don't know
whether I should head for the hills or what.

Slightly Kinky Lady

What caused his freak-out?
Dunno. Your boyfriend could be insecure or repressed or uninterested in kink.
And any or all of that would be fine, SKL, and something you might be able to
work with or around, if your boyfriend were capable of discussing his insecurities,
repression, and/or disinterest without resorting to sexual shaming and
emotional abuse. While I would never advise someone to run from a good, decent,
vanilla boyfriend, that is precisely what I would advise someone whose
boyfriend resorts to emotional abuse to shut down a conversation about the sex
life he shares with his girlfriend—that's shares, not owns.

But before you head for
the hills, SKL, give the asshole a chance to redeem himself. Perhaps he feels
bad about freaking out and is too embarrassed, ashamed, or clueless to broach
the subject. So sit him down and say exactly this—yes, memorize
it—to him: "What you did to me the other night was abusive and unfair.
Lovers should be able to talk openly about their sexual interests. So let's try
it again: I'm interested in some light kink. If you're not, that's cool. But
there's nothing wrong with me. If you're not willing to meet my needs, or if
you feel that my kinks give you the right to treat me like shit, then there's
something wrong with you."

If he apologizes and
promises to make amends (and pick up some rope), you can keep seeing him. If he
blows up again, SKL, DTMFA.

My (now ex-) husband
loved to fantasize about me fucking other men. At first I was repulsed, but he
kept at it, and eventually I started indulging his fantasies by making up
stories to tell him while we were having sex. Eventually, this led to my
husband asking if we could have threesomes with other people so he could watch
me getting fucked for real. We did this a few times.

I eventually had a
couple of affairs that I didn't tell him about. Of course he found out, and now
he's divorcing me. I feel terrible about what I did, but I can't help but
wonder if his need to see me with other men and my subsequent feelings of
inadequacy (and my need to be with a man who just wanted me) contributed to my
affairs. Now I am terrified to get into another relationship. I don't want to
wind up with someone who has fantasies like this again.

All Screwed Up About Sex

If the marriage of a cuckold fetishist and his
adulterous wife can't survive a routine infidelity then, jeez, what hope is
there for the rest of us?

Look, ASUAS, your fears are understandable after
what you've been through/been put through/put your soon-to-be ex-husband
through. But your odds of winding up with another cuckold fetishist? Pretty
slim. Your ex-husband's kink may be enjoying its 15 minutes, but it isn't all
that common.

Dan! Everyone has an opinion, but you're the
one with the advice column. So stop printing goddamn response letters from
readers every other week.

Quit It Already

You're right, QIA—I've been running way too
many goddamn response letters from my goddamn opinionated readers. It's almost
as if some of my goddamn readers think they know more about putting together a
goddamn advice column than I do. Christ, the nerve of some goddamn people, huh?

Speaking of goddamn response letters: Tons of my
goddamn readers wanted to share their goddamn opinions with IMHB, the man whose
wife declined to get reconstructive surgery/new boobs after losing both her
breasts to cancer. You can read their goddamn response letters at avclub.com/savage/boobs.

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