Savage Love

Is my boyfriend emotionally abusive, or is he just insecure?

By Dan Savage

You probably get this question every day. I'm a man who loves it when my girlfriend fucks me with a strap-on. Another great thing: my girlfriend ejaculates frequently and plentifully when we have sex, and she has done so when she's pegging me. Which leads to my question: what are the possible issues from getting female ejaculate in your ass? I am thinking about modifying a toy in a way that might enable her to squirt up my ass. It probably won't work, but I am going to try. Because if it does work...

— Oh My Fucking God

I get questions about female ejaculation every day — where does that shit come from? How the hell can I/my girlfriend learn to do that shit? Is that shit really piss? — but you're the first person to ask me about modifying a sex toy so as to enable a woman to come in a man's ass. (You're going to want to patent that thing if it works, OMFG.) 

Allow me to quickly dispense with the usual questions: it comes shooting out of a woman's urethra; practice, practice, practice; that shit isn't piss. How do we know it's not piss? Science! 

In 2007, a crack team of sex researchers in Vienna "collected" lady ejaculate from two lady ejaculators — not a huge sample, admittedly, but two lady ejaculators are better then none — and rushed their lady ejaculate to the lab, where it was "evaluated biochemically." They published the results of their study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine ("The Female Prostate Revisited: Perineal Ultrasound and Biochemical Studies of Female Ejaculate," JSM, September 2007). They concluded that lady ejaculate isn't piss, it's come: "The fluid emitted were clearly different than urine voided prior to sexual activity," they wrote. "The values show that the source of fluid expulsion during orgasm is not urine, but is rather similar to male ejaculate." 

As lady ejaculate is chemically similar to gentleman ejaculate, OMFG, the risks of a lady ejaculating in your ass would presumably be similar to the risks of a gentleman ejaculating in your ass: you would be at risk of acquiring any sexually transmitted infection she might have. But if your lady ejaculator is disease-free, OMFG, then letting her come in your ass is a risk-free, if not squick-free, activity.

I'm a twenty-four-year-old female living in London, where I have just finished a degree in circus arts. I'm in a relationship with a great guy. The problem is that while I have had long- and short-term relationships before, he hasn't, and he can be very emotionally needy. For example, he can't/won't sleep without me in the bed. We've been together for ten months, and he often tells me that I'm everything in his life. I've told him that under no circumstances is this normal, and I've confirmed my right to have a life outside of him. The real crux of the situation is this: I worked on and off as a stripper in a high-end club for two years. I haven't done it while with him because of the physical demands of my degree. Now I'm done and broke and want to return to this work. This is an issue for him, as you can imagine. I won't compromise: the job was great for me and allowed me such sexual (and financial!) liberation. I didn't orgasm for the first time until after I took control of my own sexuality via stripping.

I don't know how to handle this issue: he knew this about me when we met and says he hoped it wouldn't carry on. I feel upset that he hasn't accepted the whole of me and I guess part of me wonders if I'm in the wrong relationship. I love this man, but I feel trapped.

— Clown College Graduate

Inexperience might explain extreme emotional neediness, CCG, but it's no excuse. It's just as likely that your boyfriend's clingy, manipulative shtick — he just can't sleep alone, you're his everything, if you go back to a job you loved before you loved him, well, he'll be vewy sad — looks to me like controlling, emotionally abusive behavior in pathetic sad-clown drag. 

But you like him, CCG, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Tell your boyfriend that you're going back to your old job and he has a choice to make: get over it or get over you. 

If he sucks it up and makes an effort to change, he was just an insecure little douchebag and, hey, you helped him get over it! If he doubles down on the whining and clinging, then he's a controlling dick and you're well rid of him.

A quick comment on monogamy: I agree with you on the point that we tend to assume that all the other couples we know are in monogamous relationships, when in reality many are not. Recently, my mom told me that she wouldn't mind if my father had an affair. Sex has become harder for her since menopause, and she doesn't consider it the be-all and end-all of a marriage.

I've been married for a year, with several years of dating before that, and sex and arousal can be difficult for me and I have a lower libido than my husband. I'm not complaining — my husband is a wonderful lover and has been good about taking things at the right pace for me. And when the sex works, it's amazing. One thing that really takes the pressure off me, though, is that we agreed long before marriage that faithfulness for us meant honesty, not exclusivity. My husband knows that if he wants to fool around, he can — so long as he's safe and honest (with me and with her). The same goes for me.

Does my marriage, or my parents' marriage, count as monogamous? We look monogamous and probably will always look that way — and at the moment, we all are. But we've agreed that strict monogamy isn't a requirement. Since I doubt that we're alone in this attitude, you can add this group of "theoretical nonmonogamists" to the list of people who get wrongly classed by your critics as totally monogamous out of a lack of imagination and knowledge about other people's lives.

— Invisible In Canada

I'm convinced that there are a lot more PTBMCs out there than people realize — that's "perceived to be monogamous couple," a married/partnered couple with an understanding about when outside sexual contact is permissible. But for most of these couples — for you, IIC, for your parents, for me and my husband — the term "nonmonogamous" isn't a good fit. 

Tell an AMC — "actually monogamous couple" — that you're nonmonogamous, and they'll assume you're a couple of huge sluts, i.e., that you're actively seeking outside sex partners or that you're swingers. There's nothing wrong with seeking outside sex partners (in moderation!) or swinging (ditto!), but that's not what you're doing, IIC, it's not what your dad has permission to do, and it's not what my husband and I are doing. So if we — you, me, your mom — tell an AMC we're "nonmonogamous," we have to spend the next fifteen minutes qualifying that statement. Andthat requires us to disclose more details about our actual sex lives than (1) we wanna say and (2) they wanna hear. 

So I've got a new word to describe relationships like yours, mine, and your mom's, IIC: "monogamish." We're mostly monogamous, not swingers, not actively looking. Monogamish.

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