Savage Love: husband refuses to spice things up in the bedroom

[vass]

I’m a 43-year-old woman, married for 19 years, and I need your help! Like most middle-aged moms, I read Fifty Shades Of Grey. I understand that it is fiction. But it has motivated me to spice things up in the bedroom. The problem is that my husband is a dud. He’s not open to trying anything that isn’t missionary or doggy. That’s the extent of it. I feel as if I’ve tried everything. He’s happy with the way things are. Period. What do I do?
Woman Has Interesting Perversions

Here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go warn your younger self not to make the same mistake that so many women make in their 20s. That is, dumping guys with relatively harmless, easily indulged kinks—the foot fetishists, the guys who wear panties, the guys who want their girlfriends to wear superhero costumes while they peg their ass—because kinky guys are “weird,” “not normal,” or “probably gay.”

Backing way the hell up for a moment: I’ve been writing about sex and relationships, men and women, kinky sex and vanilla sex for 20 years. It is my informed opinion that men typically become aware of their kinks—they typically become hyperaware of them—when they’re teenagers. Many women, on the other hand, don’t seem to become aware of their kinks until they’re in their 30s or 40s. Maybe it has something to do with the sexual peak, which men are believed to hit in their teens and women in their 30s (and which many people believe to be bullshit), or maybe it simply takes women longer to overcome the misogynist slut-shaming that they’re subjected to as girls and to openly embrace their sexualities and sexual interests.

Whatever the cause, I’ve seen it happen again and again: A woman tosses aside a series of decent but somewhat kinky guys until she finds a guy whose sexual interests are “normal,” e.g., missionary, doggy, and no-hands-on-the-back-of-the-head oral. And that’s the guy she marries. Then, 10 or 20 years later, she develops some “weird,” “not normal,” “probably gay” sexual interests of her own. Now she wants to spice things up, but—fuckadoodledoo—20 years ago, she dumped a nice kinkster and married a total sexual dud instead.

So here’s what you do: Get in a time machine and go tell your twentysomething self not to dump someone because he’s kinky, WHIP, because one day you’re going to come into your own kinks. And when that day comes, you’ll want to be able to say something like this to your husband: “So, hey, you know how I’ve been jerking you off with my feet/letting you wear my panties/dressing up like Aquagirl and fucking your ass for the last 19 years? It’s been a lot of fun, honey, and you know I love you and you know I love your kinks. But it’s payback time. I just finished reading this book, and it really turned me on and now I wanna get canned and you’re going to can me.”

If you don’t have access to a time machine, WHIP, tell your husband that while he may be happy with the way things are, you’re not. Which means things have to change.

Comments

[vass]

Wow, projecting much?

Also, I'm not well up on DCU outside of the Batverse. Is there actually an Aquagirl?

[cereta]

There is, but she's usually dead.

[vass]

That reduces her appeal as a sexual roleplay character a lot. At least for me. I suppose for some people it would increase the appeal. D:

[ciaan]

There've been at least two of them, I think. But definitely not well-known characters.

[recessional]

I . . . what? What even IS this letter? What does it even have to do with the lady's actual, you know, QUESTION? What the hell I can't even!

[redbird]

I know that advice columns are aimed at a lot of people, not just the letter writers, and Savage is clearly more concerned with his younger readers, but yeah, "you shouldn't have married this guy" shouldn't be the focus of the letter. A cute intro, but at that length it reads more like victim-blaming. To say nothing of us having no evidence from the letter to suggest that he's right about her background.

In the follow-up, will he tell a reader it's their own fault for marrying their first lover without pre-negotiating what to do if one of them discovers a kink interest in time for the silver anniversary?

[recessional]

I'm actually more squicked with his response the more I read it. So women should have to engage in 20 years of a sexual relationship they're not happy/comfortable with on the off-chance that at 40 they discover they're mildly kinky? Or even not-so-mildly? Sexual relationships are based on "payback", of someone spending years on building up "favours" that their partner is now in debt to them over? I, just, what?

Not to mention, yeah, a) victim-blaming and b) he has no idea what her actual history is, from the letter.

[delphi]

I really wish I could still be surprised by Dan Savage, but nope.

[dorothean]

Welp, I hope Dan feels better now.

[rymenhild]

Okay, I actually like Dan Savage more than half the time. This is the other half. I don't even think there's anything worth engaging with in his answer -- it's just, "I have a deadline and five minutes to scrawl out an answer, I'll type whatever the hell I want because no one will stop me and it doesn't matter if the advice is any good anyhow, because I have a massively syndicated column and a show on MTV."

[jo_lasalle]

I like Dan Savage, and I think he's on more often than not, but this answer was a little bit bizarre.

[amadi]

Yep, that's Dan Savage, asshole fuckstick being an asshole fuckstick. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Victim blaming, per his usual. Casting sex in relationships as obligation and commodity, per his usual. Being entirely creepy about the sex in hetero relationships, per his usual.

[shirou]

I don't think this is victim-blaming because the LW can hardly be called a victim. It's unfortunate that her husband isn't interested in trying new things, and it's not a good sign for their marriage if he doesn't care about her wants/needs (although I can see him being skeptical about a sudden change brought about by a trashy novel), but he hasn't done anything to harm her. That said, I absolutely agree that Dan is more interested in chastising the LW for a trend he claims to have observed than in actually helping her with her problem.

Dan's diatribe aside, the pithy final paragraph is good advice: the couple needs to have a frank discussion about how sex can meet both their needs. If it turns out that they simply are no longer sexually compatible, the LW will have to think about her priorities in life and whether her husband is worth keeping.

[adrian_turtle]

If there's not enough "ewwww!" at the top level of "you shouldn't have married him," and "it's a good idea to invest 20 years having kinky sex you don't much like, for the possibility of later payback," there's another layer of creepiness bothering me. Some of it may just be hitting my personal sore spot, but it's probably not a unique sore spot. And wow is it ever sore, even many years later.

Savage is equating "into something kinky" with "into the kink I like." This is wrong. Excruciatingly wrong. There's no reason to expect a bondage enthusiast to have any interest in painplay, or dominance, or roleplay, or dressup. It's not binary. "You're kinky? Great, me too!" (like "You're religious? Great, me too!" and "You care about politics? Great, me too!") is a recipe for frustration unless it's the beginning of a much more detailed conversation.