Savage Lovecast Episode 999

We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Sometimes even I don't know where to go for advice, which is why I recommend checking out How To, the long-standing advice show, and 2026 Ambi Award-nominated Best Personal Growth podcast. It's hosted by my friend and award-winning journalist Mike Peska. You might be familiar with Mike's work on the just the longest running daily news podcast. Each week on How To, Mike tackles a listener question, including one of mine, ranging from mental health and finance to relationships and beyond. And he gets help from world-class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or the awkward silence or the stairs. No question is too big or too specific. I was happy again to appear in a recent episode of How To, focused on the topic of how to emigrate as a threpple. How To is a great companion to our show and you will learn something new listening to How To. I always learn something new every time I listen to Mike. So follow How To with Mike Peska on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and let him know the Lovecasts send you. You're listening to the Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage's Sex and Relationship show for grown-ups. If you're under 18, get out of here, young'un. Have you been naughty or nice? If you're stuck in a relationship, quandary, or if you're looking for sexual love. I usually open the Lovecast with whatever tops the list of things I can't stop thinking about, and that usually works out just fine for me and hopefully for you, our listeners. But all I can think about right now is episode five of Heated Rivalry, which I watched last night and, fuck me, hell, it made me cry twice. But I can't talk about heated rivalry at the top of the show because this week's guest, the great Mike Peska, who knows about sports, he wrote the book. Upon further review, the greatest what-ifs in sports history, Mike is here to talk with me about heated rivalry. I invited Mike on the show because gay guys everywhere are talking about how realistic the gay sex is, but no one is talking about how realistic the hockey is. Until now, I talk about that with Mike. That is on the magnum. We're also not going to talk here at the top of the show about Jeffrey fucking Epstein, except for this. One of the photos that was released last week shows Epstein with a tribal tattoo around one of his biceps. Real or temporary, no idea, don't care. But someone asked me on Blue Sky whether that tattoo meant Epstein, serial rapist of underage girls, was actually secretly a gay man. We are not doing this. Oh, was Hitler gay? Oh, was Jeffrey Epstein? No, and no. Gay men. We have plenty of monsters of our own that we have to claim. Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ernst Rome, Roy Cohn, Peter Teal, Milo Yiannopoulos. We have enough monsters. We are not taking your monsters, your straight monsters off your hands. And yeah, for the record, those tattoos, tribal tattoos around one of the biceps, a little gay coded in the 1990s. But Axl Rose in the 1990s was famous for wearing the single most gay coded article of clothing a man could possibly wear in public, skin tight, black leather, assless chaps. And that man was and is not gay. So please fuck all the way off with this tribal tattoo means Jeffrey Epstein was secretly gay bullshit. All right, so what are we going to talk about? We're not going to talk about heated rivalry or Jeffrey Epstein, although I just kind of talked about both of those things. I'm going to talk about my mom, how much I love my mom, how much she loved the holidays, how I think of her every year when we put up the tree. My mom made me love Christmas. She did not make me gay, which she worried about as I was reminded this week reading one of her journals, our basement flooded our literal basement, not our euphemistic basements. And we're now going through boxes and boxes and boxes of crap that we had to carry upstairs and throwing away things we do not need or want anymore instead of just shoving them back in closets. And there are boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff my mom saved for me and sent to me. Heapsakes, mementos, every report card, every school project, every picture I drew in kindergarten, Sister Mary Amadeus, my mom's homeroom teacher in fourth grade, also my homeroom teacher in fourth grade, also my grandmother's homeroom teacher in fourth grade. I have a report card, Sister Mary Amadeus, build out in front of me right now. Her notes to my parents, Dan is a fine student. He tends to socialize too much. And about Jim, I get frequently unprepared. That was true then. Now, of course, when I go to the gym, I am prepared. Among the papers and report cards and art projects my mom saved for me. She sent me her journal, particularly the section of it that she kept when I came out. And she was worried it might be her fault that she somehow made me gay, but not my brothers. That's not how it works, as I was eventually able to convince her mostly by pointing at my brothers and asking why they were straight, what made them immune to the gay force field that my mother had that pulled me in but somehow didn't pull either of them in. Oh yeah, mom didn't make me gay, but mom kind of did make me a hoarder. We don't live in a hoarder house, nothing like you've seen on TV, hoarder reality shows, just all these boxes and boxes and boxes and stuff stored in every closet. A lot of it's stuff my mom saved for me. This is our last show of the year. We are taking next week off. We have some gift recommendations coming up, but if you're looking for a New Year's Eve resolution recommendation, in addition to the usual ones, join the gym, eat better, touch grass, have that threesome, then come in after action report and talk with me about it, I'm going to give you a really good New Year's resolution. Throw some shit away. The things you're holding onto for your kids, if you have kids, your kids don't want those things. At some point, it's going to get thrown away. The only question is when and by whom? Don't make your kid feel guilty about having to throw it away themselves. You do it. You throw it away right after you have that threesome. All right, coming up on this week's show, even as the birthday of Little Baby Jesus approaches, a lot of you are out there cheating on your partners, but at least you have the decency to feel bad about it and call into the show to ask me to help you process it. We also hear from an enterprising young woman who wants to break into the selling used panties business and on the Magnum, again, the great Mike Peska is here to talk with me about hockey and heated rivalry, but mostly about hockey. Important programming note, we are taking a week off. We're preparing our thousandth episode for you. We're hard at work for you still. That episode comes out on January 6th, but no LoveCast or after action report next week. You will be getting columns though, Savage Love, Struggle Sessions will still be coming out. And hey, you still have nine more days left to take advantage of our sale right now. You can buy the Magnum LoveCast as a gift for someone else through the month of December. It only cost $24. Go to savage.love and click on the gift button. And while there may be only two shopping days left until Christmas, there are 22 shopping days left until Feast of the Ass, which means you have plenty of time to order Feast of the Ass merch, hats and t-shirts, and have them on hand for January 14th, Feast of the Ass. If you go right now to savage.love slash shop. All right, let's get to the first call of the last show of 2025. This episode of the LoveCast is brought to you by the good folks at Squarespace. They make it easy to build a beautiful website, blog, or online store. Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code SAVAGE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by Field, an app where curious people come to connect. Download Field on the App Store or Google Play and find out why so many of my listeners are already using it. This episode is brought to you by Mars Men, supplements that support healthy levels of testosterone. For a limited time, LoveCast listeners get 60% off for life, for life, and two free gifts when you use the code SAVAGE at mengo2mars.com. Hey, Dan. I am a cis gay man in my 30s. My situation is that I'm married to a woman. We have kids together. I came out almost four years ago now. And pretty early on in that journey, we decided to open our marriage and start dating other people to just explore while we still had kind of the support and security of our relationship. We've sort of supported each other through this journey along the way. So pretty soon after opening our marriage, I met and started seeing this gay couple and then started dating more seriously, one of them off and on for the past three years. And it got really serious. We traveled together. We met each other's friends and family. We did everything together. We texted all the time. And along the way, I had this nagging feeling like the relationship I had with him was going to keep me from having more with someone else. And like while he made himself very available, there was just this nagging voice that said I might want more with someone else and that I might not even have time to find that relationship with all the other constraints in my life, like kids and co-parents and full time job and family and friends. So I guess this summer we started conversations around formal titles and I kind of decided that I wanted to be single for a little while and didn't want us to call each other boyfriends. But I love him as a person and I loved our relationship and I just kind of felt like if I did that, I would again be taking up that room for that future partner that where would he fit in if he was already like in all these spaces. So we ended up breaking up two months ago and I miss him a lot. I think about him like every day and he's a huge part of my story and this huge connection to him and his husband and their people that I just totally lost. So I'm not sure if I should reach out or if I should just let him heal and have a space. The only plan and on which you should reach out to this guy is the planet where you're calling him to apologize and tell him that you were wrong and that you want to be his boyfriend and you want to integrate him into your life. Double standards much. You say that you weren't sure that you could be with this person because he couldn't be with you full time because he had a husband. You have a wife, I believe you mentioned at the top of your call and you have kids and you co-parent and you didn't say that you and your wife were separating or that you planned to divorce. So what you were looking for or what you expected from him, him to give to you is something that you aren't able to give to him which is being his full time partner. I mean how is this not kind of ideal considering your circumstances? A man who is married to somebody else as you are married to somebody else will understand that you can't be there for him at all times just as he can't be there for you at all times. Seems ideal unless what you want is more from a guy than you're able to give to that guy and there might be some guys out there who would be happy to give you more than you're able to give them. Maybe facts not in evidence, maybe you and your wife have talked about if and when you meet the guy that you would like to be with, you'll divorce, but you didn't say that. So I'm going to assume that that's not the case, that would be highly relevant information. Where that the case? I'm just going to assume that's not the case, that you're married and to a woman you came out after you married and had kids and you've decided to stay together but you would like to have another partner. Okay, why not another partner who himself has another partner? Sounds ideal and I just want to say a word about your wife. We just had Kelly Foster-Lonquist on the show, author of the memoir Beard, she was married to a gay man. Is she okay with you dating other guys? Is she? How does she feel about this? How does she feel about you out there finding romantic and sexual love with the same-sex partner, giving you that space? Would she want to meet that man? All this matters also is she being given the same grace and the same space to get out there and date and meet men who are sexually and romantically attracted to her? How she feels about this guy and about you integrating this guy into your life so long as you're married to her? Her feelings matter too and you don't talk very much about her feelings, I just want to make sure that her feelings are being taken into consideration here. So should you reach out to him? Yeah, only though if what you're reaching out to him to say is I'm sorry, I was wrong, boyfriends is a term that I would be comfortable with and I'd like you to meet my friends and my family and if things are low conflict at home, my wife like you to meet her too. I'd like you to be a part of my life. Yeah, dude, I think you screwed up by showing this guy the door. I think you should call him on Planet Apologize. Hi Dan, I have a sexy business question if you will. So when I masturbate, I usually wear underwear to hold my vibrator in place and I'm the kind of mild pervert who loves to sniff my underwear after and the other day I was thinking it would be fun to find someone who wanted to sniff them too. Then I thought I'm creaming in so many panties, why am I doing this for free? Maybe it would be fun to sell them, write fun little cards about what I was masturbating to, make a whole mildly perverse little business, but I have no idea where to start. What price point to ask for? Any safety issues or postal regulations that I should worry about? Do you have any advice on starting an online companties business? There are two ways that you can start this online companties business that you're thinking about. One is to create a social media presence that's sexualized where you're showing off, where you're in bikinis and half dressed and you're really vamping and it's you're very much objectifying inviting that kind of objectifying male gaze, that kind of sexual attention, and guys sliding into your DMs. A lot of the guys or enough of the guys who slide into your DMs will be guys who are interested in perhaps purchasing your panties. You will get requests without you necessarily having to hang the shingle that you're selling dirty panties from guys who want to buy your dirty panties. I know guys, I know gay guys who have very hotty-thotty Instagram accounts and they make a nice little sideline in selling feet pics and dirty underwear, worn underwear, not dirty, not filthy, not poopy, but stinky underwear to the perverts who slide into their DMs, uninvited. That's one way to do it. The other way to do it is be very explicit about it, but that's what you're here to do, that you are online and it turns you on. And that's a value add for the guys who might want to buy your panties, not just that you're willing to sell your panties to these perverts because you want to monetize your dirty panties, but that there's something in it for you too, that it kind of turns you on to do it. You're going to get a lot more attention, a lot more offers, and you'll be able to charge more, most likely, especially if you're writing little notes about what you were masturbating about. What you need to recognize in either of these cases is nobody's going to buy your panties sight unseen. People who buy the panties or use jock straps or come towels or dirty stinky socks, but people that they think are hot want to know that the people that they're buying these things from are people that they think are hot, which means they got to see you, which means you can't really do this discreetly or privately very easily. I mean, if you start the hottie, I'm showing off Instagram account and you just monetize the guys who slide into your DMs, you can keep it all kind of on the down low. But if you really want to rate it in, you're going to have to put it out there, which means if what you're asking is how do I sell my panties and preserve my anonymity, which you don't say, but a lot of people have asked that question. The answer is you can't. If you want to sell your panties, the route to that kind of fame and fortune, that trail has been blazed again and again and again. Get on social media, show off on social media. You will get the DMs from the perverts. They will roll in. If you want DMs from those particular kind of perverts, invite them in and you will get 100 times as many and be able to charge more. Good luck. You guys, my band is overhauling our website. That sounds hard, but isn't because we use Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings with a professional website, grow your brand and get paid all in one place. We decided we just needed a new look and Squarespace is all about a new look. With Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build up a spoke online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Squarespace offers a complete library of professionally designed and award-winning website templates with options for every use and category. 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That's squarespace.com slash SAVAGE and the offer code SAVAGE. Hi Dan, I'm a married 50 year old Polly woman from the Mid Atlantic who's been happily married for over 25 years and my husband and I decided to open our marriage about four years ago, largely driven by my interest in rekindling with a former love that I had briefly dated but had never really been able to stop thinking about. Only after opening our marriage and being able to be with this former lover for about three years did my lover confess that he in fact is married and has a bit of a green card induced marriage and an unhappy sexless one at that. Fast forward to today. I've attracted the attention of a really fun, attractive, hot, sexy, vibrant, easygoing guy who I would love to start a relationship with and he's been very shall I say forward and expressing his desire for the same. However, in the interest of full honesty with my husband, I let him know that this suitor is in fact also married and is not in an open marriage and that would mean I have yet a second lover who is not operating in an ethically non-monogamous manner. My husband was able to kind of indulge my interest in reconnecting with my former lover because he knows all of the history between us and this kind of dysfunctional marriage that made it easier for him to justify. This latest suitor though does not have a similar backstory with me. Obviously, we're just getting to know each other. So Dan, my question is my husband really doesn't want me to pursue this while he's stopping short of coming out and vetoing this new relationship. He's let me know it makes him deeply uncomfortable to know that he's essentially an accomplice in a relationship that could really hurt someone, namely the unknowing wife. I'm torn Dan. There's a part of me that feels as though this is a liberating moment for me to kind of step into my autonomy and pursue a relationship that's fulfilling to me in all of its unknown kind of adventure rather than playing kind of doomsday scenario planning where the worst possible scenario could happen and that would be discovery that could lead to a lot of pain and perhaps end his marriage. I would really love somebody out there to do the research to gather the data so we could know roughly how many guys are actually and women are actually in unhappy sexless marriages and might be out there doing what they need to do to stay married and stay sane for perfectly legitimate reasons. People stay in unhappy sexless marriages for good reasons and how many guys and gals are out there telling people that they're in unhappy sexless marriages that aren't unhappy or sexless but it's what they think the person they're telling that shit to needs to hear in order to drop the trousers and fuck the shit out of them could be a lie. You have no way of independently verifying whether this guy your former lover from long ago is fucking his wife or his wife is fucking him or whether his wife is not fucking him because he's an asshole and she is no longer attracted to him and they stay together for other reasons that might be the jibbit but it might be his fault the marriage is sexless if the marriage is sexless but the marriage might not be sexless and you have no way of knowing and I just wish we had some rough numbers but of course because people lie about this shit the numbers would be tainted by the lying people do about this shit and so we will never know but there are people out there in sexless marriages that they're not going to leave that they're not going to exit and people will say oh you should do the right thing you should get a divorce you should ask for permission to get sex elsewhere but to ask is to often wind up getting the divorce that you might not want to get in the first place and that your spouse might not have wanted to get but you forced the question by asking for permission to go get sex elsewhere and there are reasons people in functional kind of loving low conflict sexless marriages that aren't making them ecstatically happy on all fronts might want to stay together like to take care of their kids and some of those people to stay in those marriages for perfectly legitimate reasons like we have kids and we want to not impoverish them or destroy the home that they're being raised in the only way they can do that is to go fuck somebody else and then go home to the family that they don't want to break up that falls under my do what you need to do in order to stay married and stay sane exception against people out of the cheating piece of shit category if they violate the monogamous commitment that they made anyway there is a category difference here though between the guy who's told you what could be the truth or could be the lie that his marriage isn't happy and sexless and the guy who's just straight up out there and dogging around on his wife I think you could make an argument to fuck that guy your former lover who's in sexless marriage still morally compromising you're still party to an infidelity I don't think your husband is an accomplice or is complicit in any way and the choices that you're allowed to make as a free and autonomous individual operating within your zone of erotic autonomy but yeah you could fuck that guy but this other guy yeah I don't think you should fuck that other guy you don't have to fuck either of these guys actually if you don't want to fuck a guy who's married to somebody else who doesn't have permission to fuck other people these aren't the only other man on the planet besides your husband you could keep turning over rocks until you find guys you're into who aren't married or have hall passes or dadd agreements or are in functional healthy ethically non monogamous relationships that is also an option that's open to you but I want to be complicated about this and complex about this because I'm the one who's always telling people who are in marriages trapped in marriages that can't exit for good reasons that sometimes you got to do what you got to do in order to stay married and stay sane and that person can't do what he needs to do in order to stay married and stay sane if he doesn't have somebody to do that with and that could be someone like you in a circumstance like this I'm comfortable with you fucking at least the first guy but I'm not your husband you don't have to or get to live with me you do have to live with your husband and if the other guys you're fucking are creating conflict with the guy that you happen to be married to and still fucking maybe they're not worth it what do you want not family not friends not society at large what do you want what do you want and how do you want it without the noise of external opinions you have the space to find out on the dating app field curiosity leads the way towards intimacy with others and yourself desires interest the space to change again and again there's room for all of it there if you have a fantasy say it if you have a desire included in your bio no one ever got what they wanted without asking for it and on field you can ask for it and if you ask for it you might just get what you want on field there's no need to write your profile like a job application and pretend to be what someone else wants within the field community the cultural norm is to be radically honest about who you are and what you want and that helps you find exactly what you're looking for they don't gate keep connection in an age where dating apps create hurdles to finding your people field is built differently they don't try to guide your desires either you get to be you and you you can change on field who you were yesterday may not be who you are tomorrow 62 percent of field members evolve their sexuality interests and desires within their first year on the app in a place where there's no pressure to be anything who will you be expand your curiosity there are 20 plus sexuality and gender identities listed on field in this space you can explore who you are without judgment see what you have in common know what you're looking for field just rolled out their shared desires feature that immediately shows you what you have in common with someone else download field that's fe ld on the app store or google play and find out why so many of my listeners are already using it i'm a 30 year old gay man in california and i'm calling because i need you to be the angel on my shoulder some context i've been in three long-term relationships in my adult life and i've managed to cheat in all three of them even in the open relationship i'm not proud of it just like i'm not proud for occasionally having something guys in a closed relationships one of them was a former friend with benefits we met once upon a time an adult video arcade where guys go to watch porn and jerk off and sometimes play with each other we met up here and there until he got a girlfriend he's bi and i respectfully backed off he stopped going to the porn arcade for about a year but eventually started again sometimes we would message each other and reminisce on the old times and he told me about his new sex debates one day i messaged him that i was going to the arcade we met up had sex and i felt like shit afterwards i told him i couldn't message him anymore because i felt bad for his girlfriend and that i wished him well and hoped he would stop doing what he's doing for the sake of his girlfriend flash forward to today there's guys to hit up on grinder back when him and his boyfriend were looking for a third it ended up never happening and they closed their relationship however i kept in touch with one of the guys and we would occasionally sexed recently he asked if i wanted to hook up and i asked if him and his boyfriend were open now he said no and asked if that would be a problem remembering the shame of sleeping with my arcade buddy the year before i told him it was a problem and to hit me up if they ever open up in the future i was tempted to tell him to hit me up if he was ever in my area he lives about half an hour away but i resisted doing so but i'm still kind of yearning to do so i've confided with some friends about this and one friend told me that this guy obviously wants to be and isn't getting what he needs from his boyfriend and he's likely going to cheat anyways so i'm not the one ruining his relationship another friend told me i should feel bad for even entertaining this dan as much as i said i need you to be the angel on my shoulder it's like i want you to be the devil on my shoulder and tell me to go ahead i want to be a gaze gay honest, upstanding, and respectful of people's relationships but a dark side of me is tempted to sleep with this guy who's in a closed relationship and is looking outside his relationship stay sane he obviously doesn't have a problem with the fact that he's closed and it is his relationship but no that's bad to think like that i need to be good dan please help me so this good bad framing is going to result in you fucking this guy because you want to be a good gay you don't want to be a bad gay you want to be a good gay who doesn't have sex with this guy because he's in a monogamous relationship but setting up this devil on one shoulder devil on the other shoulder this conflict between good and evil it really does make evil doing bad here running off and fucking this guy hotter and the erotic tension will continue to build with that framing because to fuck this guy is to transgress against the kind of gay person that you believe you should be what you think is good and decent and as you obsess about doing the right thing here not doing the wrong thing here and continue perhaps to masturbate about it you're just making it likelier and likelier that you're gonna go and fuck this guy so it encouraged you to drop the good gay bad gay good devil on one shoulder bad devil on the other shoulder framing and just remember that it didn't make you feel particularly great when you fucked the guy at the arcade who had the girlfriend that good bad whatever being a party to an infidelity facilitating someone else's cheating on their partner being a party to those lies didn't make you feel great i mean sort of just gently sidestepping the good bad framing here with great didn't make you feel great about yourself and post-nut clarity the gift of post-nut clarity in that moment after the arcade hookup with the guy with the girlfriend should have given the insight that that feeling you had to sit with afterward is not a feeling that you want to sit with even if you're super into this guy even if there's something hot about occasionally being the bad gay doing the bad thing yeah think about how you felt think about your empathy for that girlfriend and if this isn't the case when the guy tells you i'm in a sexless relationship where it's really all miserable and there's no way out this is just somebody being a cheating piece of shit you're gonna feel even worse so it's not about what you should do to him just don't do that to yourself but yeah you can if you want dickful thinking if you want motivated reasoning there's lots of ways you can rationalize sleeping with somebody who's in a monogamous relationship including trotting out my sometimes people got to do what they got to do to stay married and stay sane line and you using that and claiming to be the thing that this person is doing to stay sane and stay in the relationship and then you're actually good but you don't want to do it you don't want to do it you do not want to fuck this guy you felt bad when you fucked the guy with the girlfriend you're gonna feel bad if you fucked the guy and you won't feel sexy bad you'll feel post-nut clarity disappointed in yourself so don't do it there are four billion men on the planet most of them are not in monogamous relationships especially most of the gay men on the planet you have options beyond this guy and arcade guy with the girlfriend go fuck some of them this episode is brought to you by Mars men most men start losing testosterone in their late 30s this is partly due to a protein called SHBG that inhibits the release of testosterone Mars men is designed to help free locked testosterone so your body can actually use it no synthetics no needles just real ingredients that help you optimize energy focus and strength Mars men supports healthy T levels energy and stamina and it's made in the USA and third party tested they offer a 90-day money back guarantee so there is no risk worst case you don't absolutely love it and you get your money back but over 91% of users report higher energy levels thousands of guys are feeling incredible results thanks to Mars men just check out the reviews on the website to see for yourself and for a limited time lovecast listeners get 60% off not for the first month not for the first prescription not for the first year for life and two free gifts when you use the code savage at mengotomars.com that's mengotomars.com use the code savage at checkout after your purchase they're going to ask where you heard about them please support the show and tell them you heard about them on the savage webcast Hey Dan I'm in my mid 40s living Canada and here's our situation my wife and I've been together for a decade and a half and our relationship is great I love her she loves me we give each other lots of space to do things and about three years ago we opened things up so we could have no experiences meet new people have like make new connections it's been great and we've both done this it's been terrific here's the thing my wife is not someone who shows a lot of affection she just doesn't she doesn't do public displays of affection and like she doesn't really like text a lot or sex a lot she doesn't send nudes this is not her jam but many of the people I'm connecting with even in a really casual way they do those things they sex they text they love to send me pictures and like just let me know that they're thinking about me and that's great so here's my problem is how do I deal with the fact that the woman who I love the most the person who I want the most attention and affection from is giving me the least and these other women who I like and I have good connections with and it's great they're showing me so much more affection and attention and I just want it from my wife and even though I tell her I'd love for you to do this and do that and whatever and like it's not her jam and I'm not interested in pressuring her I don't want her to do things she doesn't want to do but for whatever reason the woman I love the most is sending me the least and the people who I like like in different ways they're giving me so much more when it comes to affection and attention and to be honest I'm like feeling some resentment toward my wife because she's not giving me the stuff that these other women who I don't actually care nearly as much as I do for my wife they're giving me more how do I deal with this you should feel nothing but gratitude for your wife you're in an open relationship there's a certain kind of sexual attention that you enjoy getting from women and because your wife is who she is you are able to have her and have the love stability commitment your marriage with her have her in your life and also have this kind of sexy sending nudes dying to get on your dick sexual attention from other women so rather than looking at your wife and saying oh you're not giving me the same kind of heat and sexual attention that these women who are competing for my attention and affections are giving me that I resent you and that there's something lacking in our marriage what you should say to yourself we should convince yourself of is that you're able to have all of this not despite who your wife is but because of who your wife is and there's some things you're going to get from when you're in a functional healthy ethically non-monogamous relationship there's some kinds of sexual attention or sexual activity that you're going to probably get outside the relationship that you don't get at home and rather than resent your spouse at home for not giving you that same sexual attention or engaging in those exact same sex acts or making you feel the exact same way you should be grateful to your spouse that you can have them and get your ass eaten by these other people too that you can have your cake and eat it too that you can have what it means to be in a long-term committed relationship with your wife and accepting the person that your wife is and your wife isn't terribly physically affectionate not into pda not into sexting and sending nudes but being with her doesn't mean that you have to go without pda or go without your phone blowing up because somebody's sending you nudes and sex messages you get that too you have that too not despite your wife but because of your wife so be thankful be thankful i have a friend a lot of friends i have a friend with a giant dick there is nothing he likes more than face fucking the shit out of somebody than getting deep-throated you know who can't do that for him his wife she doesn't like it makes her puke she doesn't enjoy it not good he gets it from other people he's bi he gets it from other men and women mostly men not me hi before anybody leaps to a conclusion here kind of wish it was me sometimes never been me we don't have that kind of friendship we're not friends with benefits he's a listener hey how's it going not angling just citing he gets it from other people and he doesn't go home and then look at his wife and think oh you don't suck my dick the way i just got my dick sucked he goes home to his wife and thinks i get to have my dick sucked this way whenever i want just not by her but because of her because they have an open relationship whereas they used to have a closed relationship so all of his needs are being met not by his wife but because of her and that's how you should feel about it you are getting your dick sucked in the form of these text messages and nudes and pda in this way that you enjoy because of your wife but not by your wife take the win dude be grateful thank her when you have a long sex session with somebody else if you guys have the kind of open relationship where you talk about your experiences with other people what you should do is you should look at your wife and say you know what one of the reasons i love you and love being with you is that i can have this too thank you choose that choose gratitude over resentment hi dan i'm a 30 year old female living in upstate rural new york and my boyfriend is 37 he lives about an hour and a half from me we've been together about two years we're at the point where we want to live together and unfortunately we have not been able to find an apartment because i have a recently adopted pit bull and two cats and two cats i live in a house currently that i own and he lives in an apartment we both don't want to give up our jobs at the moment his job is much more secure and high paying than mine is and i'm more likely to change careers i'm still kind of growing my career and my job is also hybrid so i'm able to work from home so the issue obviously is that we can't find an apartment and so we've been house shopping he had to take out or get the pre-approval himself because first of all he's a veteran so he gets a VA loan and because his credit is better than mine and because i can't take out a mortgage while i currently own a house and so we went house shopping not expecting to find anything really and we put it in an offer on a place that was kind of a shit offer and they accepted it question mark so here we are and i'm struggling because the feminist in me is screaming that i'm being an idiot for selling my house and moving in with my boyfriend who i hope to marry someday but it hasn't been a priority for us who owns the house and aka gets the equity on it so we're trying to figure out the best way that makes both of us feel safe and secure it's not that we don't we both feel very strong and confident in our relationship but we're just trying to be realistic here whether that's me like having a rental agreement from him whether that's me being on the deed like being added on to the deed so that i also own half of the house whether that's tracking receipts and i don't know just making sure that if we break up the money i invest into this place like isn't totally gone i am not a financial advisor you may have stumbled into the wrong advice podcast there might be other advice podcasts out there that are better positioned to give you the advice that you need after listening to your call all i want to say is just like shit or get off each other's faces like if you want to get married it's been two years and your house shopping together why not get the fuck married and then if it's a marital property state you live in what's his is yours and what's yours is his including your house if you for feminist reasons don't want to merge economically with this person because they have a penis and you have a vagina and hold on to your own house but if you hold on to your own house and rent it out and then pay him rent to live with him in his house that he owns yeah if the equity of his house increases and you were just a renter and two or three years five years you break up you're not entitled to a share of however much the value of the house increased while you were there helping to i don't know take care of it somehow or paying him rent so if you don't want to get into that you don't want to try to track receipts which sounds fucking exhausting and you're worried about being financially left in the lurch if the relationship should run its course just call the fucking question get the fuck married already if you're going to move in together and own a house together if you want your name on the deed i feel like you should have to help buy the house which would probably mean selling your house and then co-owning the house that you're in by helping to pay for that house by investing the money the value of your house in the house you two now share but if he owns it outright he owns it outright and if you don't want to get married yet then you're going to be a tenant and if you don't want to be a tenant for feminist reasons or you worry about your long-term financial prospects hold on to your house and rent it out maybe you'll make a little profit on renting your house out but if i were in your shoes i would just get the fuck married already and move the fuck in i would shit or get off that face all right time for listener feedback first up a few comments listeners left in the comment threads about last week's show at savage.love says by danfan about my conversation with dr alisha walker about why people cheat when they could leave or ask for permission dan says by danfan far fewer people disagree with your take sometimes cheating is the least worst option for everyone involved then with your far more permissive take do what you need to do in order to stay married and stay sane many folks don't want to stay married to cheaters leaving may set a monogamous spouse free to find someone who can love them as well also you're forgetting that there is a fourth option suck it up there are millions of people out there single and partnered with unmet sexual needs sometimes masturbating is the least worst option for all involved all right by danfan lumps taken but i gotta say i reject the assumption that someone who cheats doesn't or can't love their partner counter intuitive i know please see the collected works of ester perelle sucking it up also an option and many people who wind up cheating actually did suck it up they chose that option sometimes for years or decades before they did what they needed to do in order to stay married and stay sane says randy totally with dan unheeded rivalry i was skeptical at first but ended up loving the show what resonated was how the show leans into the guy's slightly kinky side like dan the unexpected get on your knees comment took my breath away this isn't heart stopper all bluebirds flowers and butterflies the guys are gorgeous the sex is great there's dramatic tension and i want one of those montreal apartments totally agree about the montreal apartments they just need to turn the lights up in those apartments and maybe get some bulbs or filters that are not amber finally says ted the bellhop lady who is friends with all of her exes i would also be reluctant to date you my hunch is that straight male straight female friendships in general are almost always about a guy who wants to be more than friends my hunch is that often the woman knows this and enjoys the attention and power it gives her my anecdotal experience has often confirmed my hunches all right if you have something to say about something i said on this week's show go to sabbage.love and join the conversation say it get it off your chest and now sabbage love cast listeners who left voicemails on our answering machine about last week's show get to have the last word on this week's show hey dan i want to give some feedback about episode 998 and the woman who can talk about what she wants in bed in a logical sense but can't say it in the moment and i have some ideas of what might work because i also tend to clam up but i could probably point to something or wear something so i'm going to say like what about uh writing stuff down that's like taped to your bedroom wall and you just point at a thing that you want or maybe you associate like have a deck of cards or something something on piece of paper that maybe says a circle with a slash on a like a playing card or a flash card and you put it in the brim of a hat and you wear that hat into bed and that circle with a slash means you want orgasm denial tonight make little like flash cards or what can you do this nonverbal that you can also share what you want hey dan from episode 998 i loved your recent discussion about the free use kink however i am guessing you don't share the kink because you neglected to mention the aspects that make it so hot for their participants for example for the sub they experience what it's like to truly be an object of desire they relinquish autonomy over their erotic value instead their partner's spontaneous use of their body reinforces that value they're so desirable that their partner must have them in unpredictable situations and oh my god how hot those situations can be for example say you're cooking in the kitchen and your partner begins using your body they enter you from behind while you're still cooking then now the game is whether the sub can maintain their concentration while their dog fucks them to their satisfaction and the continued on erotic behavior from the sub can be essential depending on the scene or maybe you're at dinner in a restaurant and they guide your hand into their lap not necessarily for a hand job but just to remind you that they have for use of your body at all times the little gestures add up ultimately the spontaneity of the dom keeps a sub in a constant state of anticipation and that on its own is incredibly arousing and we are going to leave it there got a question for the savaged love cast you can record it and email it to q at savage.love or you can call us at 206 302 206 4 and leave us a message or you can go to savage.love slash ask dan to record and upload your question you still have nine more days to take advantage of our gifting sale when you buy the magnum love cast as a gift for someone else in the month of december it's only 24 bucks for a whole year go to savage.love and click on the gift button also time is running out to get those discounted early bird tickets for the hump 2026 spring tour we have an amazing lineup of hump films for you to enjoy in a theater as hump was meant to be enjoyed snag those cheap tickets now which also make great gifts at humpfilmfest.com prices go up january 7th so get your discounted early bird tickets now follow me up blue sky at dan savage follow me on instagram at dan savage follow mike peska on instagram at peska gist mike peska dot sub stack dot com is where you'll find mike's newsletter and the gist list and you can listen to the gist mike's amazing daily news politics and sports podcast on all podcasting platforms the savage love cast is produced every week by nancy hartunian and me and nancy and the tech savvy at risk youth we will not be back at you next week rather than stall them at a savage love cast but we will be back at you january 6th with our thousandth episode and back at you in 2026 with a new episode every week thank you for spending so much of your 2025 with us we look forward chatting with all of you in 2026 happy holidays happy new year this episode of the savage love cast is brought to you by load boost by vb health load boost is a supplement designed to improve the taste the volume and the overall health of your semen if you're already putting in the work why not make your performance unforgettable made in the usa nsf certified and produced in an fda registered facility thousands of guys across 50 states and 45 countries swear by load boost if you want bigger finishes and better reviews from your audiences if you want better taste better mouthfeel go to load boost dot com today and use code savage for 10 off or click the link in this week's episode description that's load boost dot com and use offer code savage