Being a selfish bitch is good!

Q: I’m a 25-year-old
straight female. I’ve been dating my boyfriend for only a few months,
but we fell in love fast. He is a caring person, and I want to make
this last. However, he doesn’t turn me on. It has nothing to do with
looks—he’s gorgeous—but rather with the fact that I am submissive
and like things rough (rape fantasies, being tied up, et cetera). He is
GGG and tries, but he is just too timid. The last guy I dated used to
toss me around like a rag doll, and I miss being dominated.

I talked to my wonderful GGG boyfriend, and he agreed right away to
have a threesome with my previous guy. I haven’t talked to the previous
guy yet, but I’m sure he’d be into it. This threesome would allow my ex
to do something really kinky, which I know he would love, and I would
get the abuse I need and my boyfriend would get a “lesson” in
the art of sub/dom sex. But…

1. Am I being a selfish bitch?

2. Is it a bad sign that he’s not satisfying me sexually at three
months?

3. Thank you! Needs Some Abuse

A: 1. You have needs, NSA,
and you’re articulating them clearly and thoughtfully; you’re being
considerate and deliberate. And, yeah, you’re also being a selfish
bitch.

Good for you.

You have a right to be a little selfish—we all have a right to be
a little selfish—when it comes to sex. You have needs and you want
them met and you want your gorgeous boyfriend to meet them. Why?
Because you’re a selfish bitch, no question, but that’s not the only
reason. You also want him to meet your needs—ably,
skillfully—because you want to stay with him, NSA. Showing him how to
meet your needs—even if that requires bringing in the kinky ex for a
tutorial—is one way to make that happen. The current boyfriend agreed
to the threesome idea quickly because he can see that. Take yes for an
answer, NSA!

2. Some couples click right away, and some couples take some time to
find their groove. My boyfriend doesn’t allow me to write about our sex
life in any detail—privacy is his kink—but he will allow me to say
this: The sex we’re having at 15 years is a lot better than the sex we
were having at 15 weeks. So don’t despair that your boyfriend isn’t
totally satisfying you at three months.

3. No, NSA, thank you. It’s not often that a letter from a straight
reader forces me to go lie down in a dark room for half the day with a
warm washcloth over my eyes. The threesome you describe is beyond hot;
you’d be a fool not to go for it, and I’d be drummed out of the
Brotherhood of Amalgamated Male Sex Advice Columnists Who Are Men
(Local 609) if I didn’t urge you to go for it. This threesome will help
your current boyfriend up his game, thereby saving this relationship,
or it will provide you with memories that you’ll cherish for the rest
of your life. (And by “cherish for the rest of your life,” I mean,
“masturbate about for decades to come.”) Either way, you win. Go for
it, NSA, and please send a full report after it’s all over.

qI’m dating a woman who
happens to be another chap’s wife. He knows. In fact, he sometimes
joins in. The problem is that he had cancer some years back. It’s in
remission, but his immune system was hit hard. How his body would deal
with various sexually transmitted infections is in question. I love my
lady friend—but since I’m dating around, we’ve started looking up
info on the internet about “safe sex” and have found a lot of
contradictory info. You can get hepatitis B from kissing? HPV can sneak
around condoms? Gonorrhea is starting to become antibiotic resistant?
All this is making her feel like I might unintentionally expose her
other beloved to something nasty.

My question: Does “100-percent safe sex” even exist? Is there any
way to protect my lover’s husband? —Daunted by Threesome
Reality

aThere’s no such thing as
“100-percent safe sex,” just as there’s no such thing as “100-percent
safe chicken salad,” DBTR. (Sorry—just saw Food, Inc.) There
is only safer sex: use condoms when appropriate, have more sex with
fewer partners, get regular STI screenings. That said, DBTR, hepatitis
B is almost never transmitted by kissing, and there’s a 100-percent
effective vaccine for it. And while HPV can sneak around condoms,
there’s a highly effective HPV vaccine, too. And there are effective
treatment options for those drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea you’re
reading up on. As for your lady’s man’s immune system…

“If his cancer has been in remission for years, his immune system
would be considered completely healthy,” says Dr. Barak Gaster, my
medical consultant at the University of Washington. “Even when an
immune system is decimated by heavy chemo, it’s amazingly able to
reconstitute itself.”

But the only way to ensure that you’re not introducing an STI into
your triad—one that you’re not already carrying—is to commit, for
the time being, to having sex with only these two people.

qI have to say that this
Adultery Confessional Theatre is getting tired. Can our culture start
to deflate the drama on extramarital affairs a little? Bill Clinton,
Eliot Spitzer, Larry Craig, Jon and Kate, John Ensign, Mark Sanford:
Yes, it sucks if kids are involved and it often leads to divorce. But I
wonder if setting the panic bar a bit lower wouldn’t save more
marriages. Maybe we should embrace the fact that few of us will remain
monogamous over the life of a marriage and remove sex from the
pressured centre of domestic life. Anne In NJ

aMy reaction when the
Sanford scandal broke could be summed up in six words: Dying is easy;
monogamy is hard.

I’m with you, AINJ, and I have hammered away at those points for
years: At the bottom of all these sex scandals—Sanford, Ensign,
Spitzer et al.—is our unnatural fixation on monogamy. Human
beings—male or female—aren’t wired to be sexually
monogamous, and the feigned shock with which we’re required to greet
each new revelation of infidelity on the part of an elected official, a
reality-show star or a sports figure would be comical if the costs
weren’t so great. Elevating monogamy over all else—insisting that it,
and it alone, is the sole measure of love and devotion—destroys
countless marriages, families and careers.

Which is not to say that people shouldn’t honour their commitmentsm,
or that there aren’t folks out there capable of remaining monogamous
over the five-decade course of a marriage or that the hypocrisy of
assholes like Sanford—who called on president Clinton to resign
during Monicagate—isn’t worthy of censure. But think of all the
people who’ve cheated and gotten caught. Now think about all the people
who’ve cheated and gotten away with it. Our idealized notions about
sex—within marriage and without—are at war with who and what we
are. Sex is powerful; relationships are fragile. Why on earth do we
insist on pitting them against each other, physically or politically?

Download Dan’s Savage Lovecast (his weekly podcast)
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Email Dan at mail@savagelove.net.

This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.