Savage Love

My friend is making me feel bad for hooking up with a guy I didn't know was off-limits.

By

Dan Savage

I’m an evangelical Christian in a country where that is not a political statement. My husband and I have been married five years. We have great sex several times a week despite having two kids under the age of two. We get along so well that even a couple of my atheist friends have admitted they want what we have. What most of them don’t know is that we waited until after the wedding to have sex — or even kiss.

Most secular folk would consider it reckless to tie the knot before making sure we were “sexually compatible,” whatever that means. You seem like a pretty secular guy, so let me ask you: What exactly were we supposed to watch out for?

Consider our specific situation: Two adult virgins, ready to promise to our God, friends, family, and government that we will stick together until one of us dies. Is there anything we could have learned about each other through sex that would have changed our minds?

I’m not stupid (I’m a physician), but I can’t figure this one out. Please tell me what disaster we might have brought upon ourselves by not going for a test ride first.

— Happily Married Woman

For someone who claims she isn’t stupid, HMW, you’re doing a pretty convincing job of playing dumb.

You damn well know what “sexually compatible” means, HMW, as you’re lucky enough to be married to a man with whom you’re sexually compatible. You want the same things he wants (I’m taking your word for that), you satisfy each other equally (taking your word for that), and you’re both content (taking your word for that). That’s what people mean by sexually compatible.

That you wound up married to a man with whom you’re sexually compatible despite not fucking him once or twice before marriage can be credited to one of two things: You were smart (you figured you two would be sexually compatible and those calculations proved correct) or you were lucky (you hoped you two would be sexually compatible and, as luck would have it, you were). But don’t pretend that your happiness was guaranteed by waiting or by God.

It’s understandable that you’re pleased that everything worked out for you, HMW, but your smugness and self-satisfaction seems a little un-Christian, if I may say so. Where’s the humility? Where’s some of that there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I stuff? There are plenty of people out there who made the same choices you did — they waited, they made a solemn promise before God, family, friends, etc. — and their marriages fell apart due to issues of basic sexual incompatibility.

And finally, HMW, I can think of a million examples of things you “could have learned about each other through sex” on your wedding night that might have led you to change your mind about waiting. I’m just going to toss one out there: Suppose your husband announced when you got to your honeymoon suite that he wouldn’t be able to climax unless you took a massive shit on his chest before vaginal intercourse commenced. Would that have changed your mind about the advisability of marrying him without fucking him once or twice first?

I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman who lives with two other women around the same age. My roommate G has a boyfriend. She introduced me to two of her guy friends. This past weekend, I went barhopping with the two guys. Long story short, I slept with one of the guys. After I told my roommates about that night, G revealed that she had slept with the guy before. Now G is upset with me. I would like to sleep with this guy again, and I don’t feel like G is right to make me feel like crap or make this all about her. Any thoughts?

— Had Some Fun

You know that scene at the end of Inglourious Basterds when Brad Pitt’s Nazi-killin’ character pulls out a huge knife and carves a swastika into the forehead of the one Nazi he isn’t allowed to kill, because he wants everyone to know the dude was a Nazi even after the war? Unless your friend G is willing to do something similar — carve her initials into the forehead of every random dude she fucks — she can’t complain when a friend accidentally hooks up with a guy she hooked up with two years, two months, two days, or two hours ago.

G is not right to make you feel like crap, HSF, and I recommend that you fuck the shit out of this guy at least two more times to drive that point home.

The wife and I regularly attend a straight sex club here in Texas. There’s another couple who comes to the parties. They’re very attractive. They get naked, they have sex with each other, but they don’t play with others. Basically, they hang out with swingers, but they don’t swing themselves. We think that amounts to prick- and twat-tease behavior on their parts. Do we have a legit beef?

— Husband And Wife Together

No, HAWT, you don’t.

The website for the sex club you attend emphasizes more than once that couples who attend are not obligated to swing or play with others. It would be unfair to extend an invite like that — come and enjoy the sexually charged atmosphere, play only with each other or not at all, it’s all good! — and then slap a “prick- and twat-tease” label on a couple who comes and doesn’t play with others.

And just because this couple isn’t swinging today, HAWT, doesn’t mean they won’t be swinging someday. Perhaps after they see that swingers really do respect their limits — once they’ve seen, again and again, that they’re not going to be pressured into doing anything they’re not ready to do — they’ll become comfortable enough to start playing with others. Glaring at this hot couple from across the room, HAWT, will only serve to delay the arrival of that happy day.

Speaking of sex clubs: Last week the Portland Press Herald reported about the closure of a club in Sanford, Maine, where opposite-sex-attracted adults were having opposite-sex sex in a building that was — THINK OF THE CHILDREN — kinda close to a public library that wasn’t open when opposite-sex-attracted adults were gathering to indulge their sick opposite-sex desires. But, you know, still! Adults were having sex in a place that was kinda close to a place where children who don’t have access to the internet at home sometimes go to “read”!

The owners of the club didn’t have a permit to operate an adult business in Sanford, and they’re not going to get one, because Sanford doesn’t issue permits for adult businesses, which means one more small business has been destroyed by burdensome government regulation. (Where are the teabaggers when we need ’em?)

Anyway, this quote from the police spokesperson in the Portland Press Herald’s report jumped out at me: “The officers were appalled at the number and variety of sexual acts being performed — and one of the officers has worked vice crimes — right out in the open where everybody was sitting.”

My goodness! Opposite-sex-attracted adults were having opposite-sex sex in front of, gee, other opposite-sex-attracted adults who paid to get in and wanted to watch. But at least the children of Sanford are safe from the adult sex parties that they couldn’t attend and didn’t know were going on until the details were splashed all over the front pages of a daily newspaper that’s available for their perusal in the public library where they go to look at porn on the internet.

Good work, everybody!

Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

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