Savage Lovecast Episode 963
51:32 Share

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. If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for a sexual home, well, there's nothing you can't ask on the Savage Lovecast.

You guys, I have what I think is a good idea, but before I share it, I want to say the protests on April 5th were so inspiring. Emily Nussbaum, staff writer for The New Yorker, said it best. People who've won Pulitzer Prizes for criticism often do say it best. Massive, visible, varied, passionate national protests are the

are the main way to make it crystal clear how many people care and are pissed and are paying attention. Nussbaum posted to Blue Sky after the protests. Also, just on a basic emotional level, Nussbaum continues, when you're feeling numb and cynical from doom scrolling and being deluged with scary and terrible news, it's satisfying to go for a long walk, laugh at funny signs, and have friendly conversations with strangers."

I couldn't join everyone in Seattle for the long walk on April 5th because I'm out of the country. I'm on my way to Berlin to host the Hump Film Festival there. But I could feel the energy all the way over here. And the pictures of the signs, uh, giving me life. I especially loved and I appreciate everyone who sent pictures of people waving ITMFA signs. Okay, so here's the thing I wanted to share that I'm so excited to share. I have an idea.

And I think it's a good one. It's a phrase. I'm a phrase maker, an OED endorsed phrase maker. So I wanted to toss this out there. I wanted to see what all of you think, because if you, my listeners like this idea too, I

We might be able to make it happen together like we made pegging happen together and monogamish and it gets better in ITMFA and GGG. So I was listening to Tim Miller's interview with Mallory McMorrow on the April 3rd installment of the Bulwark podcast. McMorrow is a Democratic state senator in Michigan who's running for U.S. Senate. And at about the 40-minute mark of the episode, we'll put a link in the show notes, McMorrow had this exchange with Miller.

I was at a meeting with Alyssa Slotkin, now Senator Slotkin, and she said that a guy came up to her at a farmer's market once and asked, what's your guy's hat like?

And she was like, what do you mean? Make America great again. It fits on a hat. What's your guy's hat? And that's been something that I think about a lot. I came from product design and branding and media. And the idea of a story and a vision is really important. All right. I want to throw two hats at you. Then we'll talk about Donald Trump. There are two hats that are kind of out there right now in the democratic world. You've got...

Ezra Klein over at the New York Times going around with a hat that says abundance on it, talking about bringing more abundance to the American society. She's got AOC out there on the road with a fight oligarchy hat.

Do either of those appeal to you? Where do you think, what might you think might be more fruitful for the party? Is there something that you could take from one or the other? What do you think? I think there's some truth in both of those. But if I'm very honest, I think both of those fall into a trap that Democrats fall into. They sound very...

lofty and elitist. Like to the average person who is not listening to the Ezra Klein show, what is abundance? I don't think that actually says anything, but if you explain it to people that if we are going to spend billions of dollars on things like high-speed rail, we should actually have high-speed rail. It's not enough just to introduce policies and budgets. If you don't do the thing, that's real. You know, if you're going to fund housing, you should build housing.

So, Dems are looking for something that fits on a hat. Something, still, we're still looking for something that fits on a hat. Something that doesn't sound lofty or elitist. How about do the thing? Mallory McMorrow says Dems have to do the thing. Not just talk about the thing, not just talk about housing, build it. Not just talk about high-speed rail, build it. And I agree. Democrats should be the party of do the thing.

That'll fit on a hat. Housing shortage. Do the thing. Build housing. Actually build it. Talking about it. That's not doing the thing. Holding hearings isn't doing it. Seeking input from stakeholders, some of whom have a stake in preventing the construction of new housing, isn't doing the thing. Building housing. That's doing the thing. High-speed rail. Do the thing. Build high-speed rail.

Right now I'm reading Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's new book, Abundance, and perhaps the most maddening chapters are about California's failure to build voter-approved high-speed rail from San Francisco to San Diego. They've spent billions studying it, planning it, but they haven't done it. Oh my God, Dems in California, do the thing, build high-speed rail. And if you can't

Figure out what's preventing this thing from getting done. Undo the things that are preventing this thing from getting done and do the thing. Renewable energy. Do the thing. Build more of it. Lots of it. And build out a new modern grid that gets that energy to the places where it's needed.

Fighting Trump. Do the thing. Use every tool, every lever at your disposal, Dems, to block Trump, to slow him down, to gum up the works. Cory Booker, Senator from New Jersey, did the thing, that 25-hour speech in the Senate. Other Democratic Senators, you need to do that same fucking thing.

You know who did the thing? Josh Shapiro, Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. In 2023, a section of I-95 collapsed in Philadelphia after a truck fire. The closure threatened to paralyze the state for six months or more and paralyze Pennsylvania's economy because I-95 is a major corridor and that's how long under normal circumstances it would have taken to rebuild a chunk of the highway as big as the chunk that collapsed.

Governor Shapiro declared an emergency, waived regulations, cut red tape, and did the thing, got the thing done in 12 days. We're in a housing crisis and a climate crisis. So Dem governors declare an emergency if that's what it takes to build new housing as fast as Governor Shapiro got that highway built and get that housing built. Do the thing. Get high-speed rail built and get it built fast.

Out of power, do the thing, which would, again, fit on a hat. Out of power. It's a promise. In power, it's a mandate. You were elected to do the things you ran on. Also in power, do the thing, a yardstick. A means by which voters, voters who voted for you, can measure whether you're delivering on the stuff you said you would do.

If you're not doing the things, if you're not delivering, why not? What's in the way? If there are roadblocks, red tape, outdated regulations preventing you from doing the things, things that need to be done, the question then becomes, what are you doing to blow up those roadblocks, cut that red tape, repeal regulations that are hurting, not helping?

Dems have been looking for something that fits on a hat for a decade now, and I think this may be it. And it came out of Mallory McMorrow's mouth in that interview, not mine, her interview with Tim Miller, which we edited down a little bit for brevity. Do the thing. Yeah, I guess it's a little vague. So is make America great again. Trump said he would. He didn't say how. Do the thing again.

Also a little vague. What are the things you're going to do? How are you going to do them? That you get to define on the campaign trail and then do once you're in office. But the first thing we need to do, we need to get that on a hat. Do the thing.

All right, coming up on today's show, Adam Smith, author of Deep Sniff, is here to talk about the Trump administration's crackdown on companies that manufacture poppers. What that crackdown means, what its signals may be coming, but also what poppers mean to people.

men, mostly men, mostly gay men who use them. Also coming up this week for Magnum subs, we're going to have a new sex and politics for you. Watch for it in your feeds on Thursday. It's my conversation with Dedeker Winston of the Multi-Amory Podcast and Brett Chamberlain, founder and executive director of Open. They join me to talk about on sex and politics, the politics of non-monogamy. All right, let's get to that first call.

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/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 Helix Sleep, the very best mattress designed with your comfort in mind. Right now, get 20% off the mattress purchase. Go to helixsleep.com/savage.

This episode of the Savage Lovecast is brought to you by Dipsy. Dipsy is an app full of hundreds of short, sexy audio stories designed by women for women. Get an extended 30-day free trial when you go to dipsystories.com slash savage.

Hi, Dan. Okay, so I'm a lesbian in her mid-30s. I have a am-I-the-asshole question. So I've been out like nearly two decades. I'm married. I have a wife. I'm one of those gays who doesn't really talk about being gay. I just am for the majority of my life. I just am. Whatever. I don't get a pride. Whatever. But yeah, I'm out and proud of lesbian, I guess. So I have a friend, a really good friend, who's getting married later in the year to a

her male partner. She has been with him for nearly a decade since I've known her. She's, you know, she's never been with women. She's never said anything about women anyway. So she called me a couple of weeks ago. Her wedding is like at the end of the year. Um,

And I thought it was about wedding planning stuff, but she basically came out to me as pansexual. And I'm like, great girl, live your best life. That sounds fantastic. She's like, I told my partner, he's been really supportive. Um,

And I was like, oh, wow, that's, that is amazing. Are you gonna, are you gonna open up the relationship at all to maybe have some experiences? And she was like, no, we're going to keep monogamous. This is just something I wanted to come out to myself about. And I was like, okay, that's great. That's,

That's fantastic. Like, live in your best life. So last week, I got an email invite to her coming out party, which she's having in a bar at the weekend, and invited like 50 of our friends. Am I the asshole that I think this is like a bit too much that I'm like, I totally get her? No.

coming out and whatever, but I'm like, okay, well, you're, you know, going to get married to a man at the end of the year and you're going to live this life and you're not going to open it up. And that's great. But a party when I was like 15 and I came out, I, I, I didn't get a party. I got kicked out of school. So I, I just, am I the asshole? Are people having coming out parties now? And I'm totally up for it, but I'm like,

She's organizing with her soon-to-be husband, with her coming out party. We're going to have balloons. Am I the asshole? I think I might be the asshole. I understand. I don't want to call it your frustration, your annoyance. I understand why this is something you've had to process and think about a little bit when you came out.

You got kicked out of school. Wasn't a party. When I came out, a priest rushed to our house. My mother called a priest and a priest came to our house immediately. You know, like a priest might, if someone was dying, me coming out was a crisis. You coming out was...

had consequences and they weren't balloon strewn consequences. It was getting kicked out of school. You paid a price. I paid a price. But when you came out and when I came out, isn't what we wanted, what we were hoping to build by coming out ourselves, a world where when people came out, they could expect not to get kicked out of school, not their moms to call father Tom to come and

Issue last rites to your heterosexuality. We wanted people to be celebrated by the people who loved them, who now knew them better because they had come out. So yeah, I get it. Maybe part of your reaction to what your friend is doing, part of my initial reaction to hearing about what your friend is doing is tinged by resentment. You paid a price. You paid your dues. You suffered. Yeah.

For your lesbianism, for your identity, claiming your identity. That's what coming out was. That's what once upon a time, and I think still to a great extent, that's the thing that all sexual and gender minorities had in common was having to come out. Was all the people in you, around you, in your life coming?

having this idea of who you were and that not being actually who you were and you having to open your mouth and tell them who you actually were at great personal risk. And sometimes it was consequential. People got kicked out of their houses. People got beaten up by family members. People got killed. People got kicked out of school. People looked out their front door and saw their mom sitting with a priest on the porch and

Shit went down. I lost friends. But isn't this what we wanted? The person in an opposite sex relationship who knows themselves not to be heterosexual but is assumed to be heterosexual by everyone in their lives just as I was assumed to be heterosexual by everyone in mine until I came out and you were assumed to be heterosexual until you came out. We still have that in common with your friend. Only your friend gets to come out at a time and in a place and in a social milieu where...

She can send out engraved invitations to her coming out as Pan, but still monogamous party. Yeah, I can understand why you might be rolling your eyes a little bit, but in all honesty, my eyes rolled too a little bit because of the privilege.

Your queer friend now enjoys because of the dues you paid and I paid and other queer people who came before her paid. And I hope she's appreciative of that. Maybe that's something you could talk with her about. Maybe you'd feel a little less eye rolly about going to this party if your friend sent you in addition to that invitation, a thank you note. But go to the party and stand in the corner with your wife. And if you feel the need to roll your eyes at any point, just do it.

Turn to the wall and roll your eyes. Feel free to roll your eyes. If there's nothing else, those of us who came out decades ago have nothing else we earned. It is the right every once in a while to roll our fucking eyes.

And I got to say, because I just can't stop thinking about your question. I got to say, having a party, does your friend realize how straight coded that is? Engagement party, wedding shower, bachelor party, bachelorette party, wedding reception, gender reveal party, baby shower, baptism reception, and a first anniversary party, first baby birthday party, next baby, gender reveal. Yeah.

Having a party to mark every significant moment of your sex life, relationship journey, reproductive journey, that's kind of straight-coded. Not that gay people aren't having wedding receptions and baby showers as more gay people marry and have babies and...

Bachelor parties, we are, of course, doing those things. And bachelorette parties for the lesbians. Hen squared parties. We're doing those things now too. But it is really straight-coated to figure out a way to jam one more party into those significant events of your life. You know, like they made up gender reveal parties five minutes ago. Your friend is now making up the pansexual reveal party.

More power to her. I think you should go celebrate her. And yeah, they're monogamous now. Maybe they won't be monogamous forever. So yeah, go to the party, toast your friend, cheer, and feel free to roll your eyes.

Hi Dan! I never had kids. For lots of good reasons. I moved in with dad about a year ago. Kid moved home after being away for a year-ish or something, bringing a couple of pets. They're not allowed here. The pets wind up being confined to a room because it's a rental. That is kind of a problem, but that's a different problem. The real problem is kid goes away,

asks, quote unquote, dad to look after the pets for a few days. Doesn't have a backup plan. So of course, dad makes all these pronouncements about how the pets need to be taken care of. And then like, he gets stuck with the question that's not a question. I'm the one who's home all day. So I closed the door with the pets for a day.

to get a break from the stink. Am I the worst? I'm probably the worst. Dad goes in there to feed them in the morning and because the stink is concentrated, he throws a fucking fit, throws all of the laundry, laundry, laundry, laundry, laundry into the hallway, strips the bed, throws the sheets into the hallway,

there's shit all over the floor. Kid doesn't know how to operate a vacuum. Probably just can't operate a vacuum because there's shit all over the floor. And then there's a toy when I'm picking up, probably got thrown to the floor when dad was stripping the bed. Thank Christ dad did not see the toy.

And thank God I'm in there wearing gloves, right? Because laundry and fast food dishes, which are mercifully empty. This room is probably above average for a kid this age. But Jesus, Dan, like, what do I do with the toy? Do I like sanitize it and put it back under the stuffies when I remake the bed? That is so squeaky. I'm freaking out. I don't want to touch this thing. I don't want to do anything. I just want to go back in time. And like, I don't know what. So you locked...

These dogs, I'm assuming it's dogs, in a room in your boyfriend's son's bedroom while he was away. And you and his dad had agreed to look after these dogs. You were home alone. You locked these dogs in that bedroom where apparently they did what dogs do if dogs are confined in a room. They had to relieve themselves. Because you locked them in that room, they...

piss and shat all over everything. And because you couldn't leave all that shit and piss on all the clothes on the floor and on the sheets and comforters on the bed, your boyfriend had to throw everything into the hallway and you guys had to put everything into the wash. And in pulling the sheets off the bed, a sex toy was dislodged that wound up sitting on the floor in the

Well, first, don't confine dogs to a small room because you don't like dogs or resent your boyfriend or your boyfriend's kid for bringing dogs into the home, which he was allowed to do by your boyfriend. Don't do that. Don't confine dogs to a room and expect them not to piss and shit all over everything because they will.

What do you do now about that sex toy? Is it really a surprise to you that a 20 year old in his own room is masturbating and might have a sex toy that he's using? Shouldn't come as a surprise to you. And if you've been a long time listener and reader of mine, I don't understand why it would squick you out so very, very much that a 20 year old young adult man has a sex toy that

That he sometimes uses that is now sitting on the floor in the middle of his room because of your actions, because of the choices that you made to confine the dogs in the room, which required the stripping of the bed in his absence, in the absence of the kid.

So now what do you do? Well, you clean the room, you vacuum, you sweep, you talk to your boyfriend about how long it is his son is going to be living with the two of you. If you don't like living with your boyfriend and his son and his son's dogs, and this is going to go on indefinitely, you think about moving out. Maybe the solution here is you and your boyfriend have separate apartments or residences. If what you want is this kid to move the fuck out, uh,

Maybe the thing that you seem to dread most, which is the kid knowing that you know about the sex toy, maybe that'll act as an incentive. Maybe him having his nose rubbed in how little privacy he actually has. And if he's a slob, we have to go into his bedroom to retrieve dirty dishes. How little privacy he has a right to expect or deserves. That'll act as an incentive for him to get his own fucking apartment to move the fuck out of

and take his dogs with him. So yeah, wash the sheets, wash the blankets, wash his clothes, steam wash the carpets, mop the floors, vacuum, and leave everything folded up on the end of his bed. And leave the sex toy not sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. Use tongs, wear gloves if you need to, have some barrier while you pick it up, and put it on his nightstand.

This episode is brought to you by Dipsy. They're back! One of the best parts about having a partner is sharing everything with them, including your fantasies, right? Whether you're looking to set the mood, try something new, or just share a little excitement, Dipsy's spicy audio stories are the best way for you and your partner to explore something new. Dipsy is the female-founded app for spicy audiobooks and more, created by women for female pleasure.

Their app has over 1,000 spicy audiobooks, all crafted by a team of professional writers and top tier narrators. On Dipsy, even the tags are hot. There's a story called Courted 2, A Good Man. The tags are Her and Him, Historical Smut, Hookup, Rough and Wild, Flirty, and Irish Accent, Dag, or Dipsy.

For Lone Wolf 6, you've got praise, hedoms, teasing, and Jesse, who gets his own tag, he's that good. He's a gruff cowboy with an extra deep voice who likes a rough ride. Whether you're looking for a rugged cowboy or a Scottish sailor, a sexy rendition of Pride and Prejudice, or the god of the underworld, you'll find characters you love on Dipsy.

With their easy to explore app, you can search for your favorite romance genres like contemporary, historical, dark, sports, western, romance, sapphic and more. New chapters are released every week and you'll always find something new to enjoy. It's incredibly entertaining you guys. Right now, listeners of the Love Cast can get an extended 30-day free trial. Just go to dipsystories.com/savage to start your free trial.

That's D-I-P-S-E-A, stories.com/savage for 30 days at full access for free. Dipsystories.com/savage. Hi, Dan. I'm a queer cis woman, 20. I've dated both men and women in the past.

I have noticed this thing that's been happening to me and I wondered if you can make some sense of it. I have been in a relationship with two men and I've seen a few more and one thing I've noticed that has consistently happened is I will feel like I have very real feelings for them both like romantic and sexual and then one day I'll wake up and I'll feel so intensely

Like, I don't anymore. And it's not even that. It's, like, visceral. I feel disgusted by them. I don't want anything to do with them sexually. I even feel embarrassed to be associated. And it happened so fast, out of nowhere. And this happened pretty recently. Over break, I was home, and I was seeing this guy, and I really, really felt like I had really strong feelings for him. I go back to school, and he's playing some music, and he comes, and I just...

I cannot be around him. I feel disgusted by my own, like, I feel disgusted in my own body, feel disgusted by him, and nothing prompts it. And this is the third time this has happened. And in the past, I've never experienced this with my female partners, someone non-binary, and so I've been like, oh, well, I'm a lesbian. And I feel pretty happy with that until another man comes around, and all of a sudden I do feel like a heavy ceiling fan. And this is only something that has ever happened with my AMAB partners. And

And I'm feeling really confused if this is normal because it kind of sucks to keep hurting people by my indecisiveness. And post this feeling, I just, like thinking about these partners just makes me feel so uncomfortable. Like I have like, I just cringe. It's very confusing. And I've never felt this post any Ortman partners. And yeah, I wonder if you can make any sense of this.

I don't know if I can make sense of this. This is the sort of thing that I feel like it'll make sense to you or you'll make more sense to yourself over time. And in five or 10 years, you'll come to a better understanding of who you are sexually, romantically, what it is you want and why at this stage of your life, from the perspective of you at 30, you were having these reactions to the men that you fucked and dated, uh,

While you're having this reaction, though, now that you know this about how you feel, where it always seems to end up with you or for you, if you're fucking and dating a dude, keep fucking dudes. If you're attracted to a dude every once in a while, go ahead and fuck that dude, but stop dating.

Maybe you're bisexual, but homo romantic. Maybe you're attracted to men and women and people of other genders, all gender expressions, but it's only women that you romantically drawn to. And when you fuck and date men under the assumption, the assumption you allow them to have that you potentially could be with them romantically, or you're psyching yourself out to believe you could be with them romantically, well,

Your body takes over at some point and just you have this kind of erotic immune or sexual immune, romantic immune system response that just rejects this dude. Because you might want to dude in your pussy every once in a while, but you don't want to dude in your life as a romantic partner. Maybe that's what's going on. Or maybe you've just...

Dated a string of dudes who the more you got to know them the more disgusting they revealed themselves to be and this is just a coincidence a string of coincidences Time will tell but this is your truth right now that you really aren't cut out for a romantic and sexual relationship With a guy which means now that you know this about yourself. It is unfair for you to

Fuck guys and date guys, allowing them to assume that something romantic and sexual is possible with them, with you, when it's not, when you know it's not. So ethically, you should stop dating dudes. Sexually, you can keep fucking dudes. But when you want to date and fuck, for now, stick to women and other assigned female at birth persons.

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 a bespoke 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. No matter where you start, your website is flexible to what you need with intuitive drag and drop editing, beautiful styling options, unrivaled visual design effects, and more ways to list what you offer. No experience required, which is good.

Squarespace makes it easy to showcase your expertise and engage clients with video content on your site.

Upload and organize your videos, create stunning video libraries, and even monetize your content by adding a paywall. We just added some newer videos to our site. No problemo. And now we can crow about it to our email list. With Squarespace email campaigns, all the tools you need to engage clients, promote your services, and grow your business are built in. Schedule emails that reach your audience at the perfect time, keeping your work top of mind and building a fiercely loyal fan base.

Head on over to squarespace.com slash savage and save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using offer code savage. That's squarespace.com slash savage and the offer code savage. Hi, Dan, Nancy. I'm a tech savvy at Risk Youth. I am a cis gay man in Chicago in my 30s and I have a relationship labeling question.

For context, my primary partner and I have been together 12 years, open for the last 10 years, and within the last two years have been leaning into polyamory. Outside of my primary partner, I have two other relationships that I would place somewhere between boyfriend and friends with benefits. Both of these connections are amazing in and out of the bedroom, and have both supported my personal growth.

One of these relationships started as a mentor friend with benefits situation in college and has been going on around 10 years. He's about 15 years older than me and is married and I'm friends with his partner. Our relationship grew over time despite moving to different cities and we talk and text each other every week and visit each other a few times a year.

We have an amazing BDSM connection that has continued to grow and somehow just keeps getting hotter the better we know each other. About two years ago, he gave me a unique piece of jewelry and asked me to be his boy. Though it's maybe superficial, it added a layer of emotional depth for me and definitely strengthened our bond. My other relationship started about a year and a half ago. We met through mutual friends and hit it off right away.

Together, we've been able to explore many different kinks and fantasies, going as far as writing each other personalized erotic fiction. Unfortunately, he had to move across the country within the last couple months, so now I'll only be able to see him a few times a year.

We mutually decided that neither boyfriend or daddy and boy nor dom sub quite describe the relationship and we're feeling like friends or friends with benefits just really doesn't do it justice at all. So we're trying to find a way to describe our relationship and are wondering are there any new terms to describe relationships out there or maybe old ones that we missed?

How do we go about creating something unique and meaningful for us that can also be easily communicated to our other friends and partners? You're kinky. You're a kinky gay man. I've been to kink events where I've met other kinky gay men who have introduced me to their husband, their sir, their sub, their slave, their alpha, and their boy. There's lots of labels out there to describe kinky.

kinky gay relationships and a lot of people are using all sorts of different labels but

For this person, and you first talk about this relationship you've been in since college with this mentor of yours that has a sexual dimension and he gave you this jewelry and you dismiss it as superficial. It doesn't sound superficial to me at all. It sounds like a deeply meaningful, symbolic gesture when he asked you to be his boy, when he took one of those off-the-shelf labels that worked for him and in his case worked for you.

That relationship may not be socially sanctioned in a formal way, but it's meaningful. This other guy that you're with, you're searching for a term that you can apply to him that would be instantly understandable to friends about what it is that you mean to each other, this other partner. And you reject, sir. You reject, master. You reject, dom. You reject all the off-the-shelf words that would be instantly understandable

grokkable to other gay men, kinky or not about who you are to each other. And you seem to be asking me if there's some other word that you haven't heard of yet, or a word we can come up with together right now that would encapsulate who you are to each other, what you mean to each other and.

be understandable, that other people would know what you meant by that. That word doesn't exist. If we come up with something new or there's a word out there that even though you're out and gay and in your thirties and in all these relationships that you haven't heard of yet, other people won't have heard of that word either, which means you're just going to, you would still, even if there was this other word that magically applied to

this third relationship that you're in and you felt comfortable using that other magic word, you would have to explain what it is you meant by that.

There are some off-the-shelf words to describe relationships, right? Your friends with benefits, your boyfriend, girlfriend, your fiance, your husband, your wife. Everybody knows roughly what you mean by that. But marriages can be, one marriage can be very different from another marriage and what somebody's spouse means to them and how they function as a couple.

can be unique and surprising in unexpected ways, in ways that people wouldn't assume that a husband and a wife or a husband and a husband would relate to each other, or a wife and a wife, or a spouse and a spouse if you have two non-binary people in a very special magical relationship. We always sometimes have to explain our relationships, what they mean, what they mean to us, how we treat each other, and how we want to be perceived by others, by friends, by intimates.

So the conversations that you're hoping there's a word out there that will somehow spare you from having to have, even if this person, this third person was your husband, you might still have to have those conversations and explain who this guy is and what you mean to each other and how he fits into your life. Yeah. There's not a label that spares you from having to have those conversations. And you know what? Why would you want to be spared from having those kinds of conversations? Those kinds of conversations are

Not superficial. They are meaningful. And it's, you know, you don't have to tell everybody everything about your business. But when you have those sorts of conversations about the people in your life that you're closest to and what they mean to you and how your relationships work, that's a way of letting someone know that they're

that you're close, that you have an intimate relationship, a bond with them too, which is why they're being brought in, read in to your relationships and how they work and what they mean. But if you want a label, dom, sir, boy, master, slave, friend with benefits, boyfriend, husband, alpha, sub, there you go. Those are your labels to choose from. Good luck.

This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep, makers of my mattress and your next mattress. Have you heard of Wired, Good Housekeeping, Forbes, Wirecutter? They have all awarded Helix Sleep a Best Mattress Award for being the best mattress. The Helix lineup offers 20 unique mattresses, including the award-winning Luxe Collection, that's ours, the Helix Elite Collection, a mattress designed for big and tall sleepers, and even a mattress made just for kids.

To figure out which mattress is right for you, take the Helix Sleep Quiz right now to find your perfect mattress in under two minutes, and your personalized mattress will be shipped straight to your door free of charge. With their 100-night sleep trial, you can try out your new mattress, see how your body adjusts to it, and if you decide it's not the best fit, you're welcome to return it for a full refund.

Helix offers models with memory foam layers to provide optimal pressure relief if you sleep on your side like me, or models with a more responsive foam to cradle your body for essential support in stomach and back sleeping positions like my husband.

Plus enhanced cooling features to keep you from overheating at night. Like my boyfriend, Helix owns its own manufacturing facility here in the USA and Helix mattresses all come with a 10 to 15 year warranty, depending on the model. And again, they offer a 100 night trial. So you can try out your new Helix mattress risk-free and again, that 10 to 15 year warranty. And right now Helix is offering 20% off site-wide for our listeners.

Go to helixsleep.com slash savage. Let them know the Lovecast sent you. helixsleep.com slash savage for 20% off. With Helix, better sleep starts now.

I have a question about kink and play and subspace when it comes to play partners. So I have recently, I'm a bisexual cis woman, recently out of a period of bad health and I've started going back to kink events as a submissive and I have had some really fun times both with Impact Play and Shibari with different tops or doms.

And one thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is the feeling that I get after a scene with somebody who I may or may not be romantically interested in or sexually interested in. So in particular, I have been playing with a rope top who is very competent and who is able to

create feelings of intimacy and care and certainly very sensual experiences and I am able to go deep into a subspace and I feel very swoony when I'm coming out of that space but this is a person that I don't necessarily want to have any further interaction with aside from play like I don't want a romantic relationship with this person I don't want a sexual relationship with this person but when I come out of subspace I

I definitely can't remember that that's not what I want. And then I had a really fun time with an impact play top. Again, really fun time probably with this person would quite like to be friends with them, but not necessarily looking to establish anything more intimate or I'm not looking for another relationship in my life right now. And I'm just wondering how,

how to sort of think about those feelings. This is a relatively new thing for me, playing with people that I'm not romantically interested in. And I just like, I guess, some reassurance or some reflections from people on whether this is normal to come out of subspace in a very kind of swoony state and to kind of have to take some time to recover and get my wits about me again. So at a play party, after somebody...

ties you up after somebody is good at impact play, gives you a good impact play experience. You feel swoony. What does that swoony feeling mean? Since that feeling of swooniness after play for you in the past, because it sounds like in the past you've done this in the context of committed romantic relationships where there is sexual attraction. In the past, that swoony feeling after the intensity of

of play has been mixed up together with romantic attraction, sexual attraction, maybe sexual activity. And so now you understandably read it, read that swoony feeling or understand it as a component of, or indicator of a certain romantic or sexual attraction. What you need to do, and this really isn't a hard thing to do is just slap a different label on it. Think of it differently. What you're feeling when you're coming out of subspace, uh,

After a bondage top gives you a good experience at a play party or an impact player if somebody flogs you and it's a good experience, you're feeling what you're feeling. And I think you should not get in the way of your feelings, but it's not romantic or sexual attraction. It's gratitude. And if there is an orgasm, oxytocin, the love hormone that gets released when you have

have an orgasm and that makes you feel swoony in a romantic and sexual way. Like makes you feel bonded to someone. But oxytocin isn't just released when we climax. Oxytocin can be released when there's prolonged skin to skin contact and

which there's going to be during shibari. That kind of bondage is an intense kind of skin to skin, even if it's only the tips of the fingers of the bondage top is tying you up. That's in contact with your skin. The ropes are in contact with your skin. Oxytocin is also released after strenuous exercise and flogging is a kind of strenuous exercise. Sometimes people who are into extreme sports call it an endurance activity and you've endured a

You've endured impact play. And that can also trigger the release of oxytocin. And so you're just riding that wave of good feelings, intense feeling, a bonded feeling. And you can let yourself feel bonded to the guy who tied you up. You can let yourself feel bonded to the person who flogged you without you having to understand that as some sort of indicator, again, of romantic or sexual attraction.

So it is kind of love you're feeling in that moment when you come out of the bondage or come out of the impact play experience, but it's love for the experience and it's gratitude for the person who gave you that experience.

Not a romantic experience, not a sexual one necessarily, but definitely, as you said, a sensuous one. Don't get in the way of those feelings. Let yourself feel affection and gratitude in that moment and express that affection and gratitude to the top who created that experience for you, who gifted you that experience, who met for you that need of yours. And that top in the wake of meeting your needs might need...

to hear from you that it was good and they were good and it was a good experience for you. Give them a hug. And hey, aftercare isn't just for subs in kink and BDSM play. The guy or the person who topped you, who tied you up or flogged you, they need a little aftercare too. They want to know it was a good experience for you. So go ahead and swoon at them if indeed it was a swoon-worthy experience.

All right, time for listener feedback. First up, a few of the comments about last week's show from the comment thread at savage.love. Says patient polyamorist, great advice, Dan, for the guy whose occasional weekend getaways with benefits gives his married partner some negative feelings.

If his married partner had called, I'd have suggested that she have a weekend getaway herself with someone else. Someone other than the husband she doesn't fuck and the boyfriend she does. I think the issue, patient polyamorous goes on, I think the issue is that she sees a power or freedom in equity. She can fix that by seeking the level of freedom and power she perceives her BF as enjoying."

Yeah, she could attempt to even the scales if her issue is the boyfriend getting more ice cream than she does. But if what she wants is her boyfriend all to herself, retaliatory weekend getaways with other guys isn't going to make her feel any better. If she's jealous when he goes off with someone else because she only wants him to

and only wants him to want her, there's a good chance she'll get angry that he doesn't get jealous when she goes off with someone else. Says Thingamajig, after all the letters and calls this week, and the podcast, and the column, about people trying to turn friends into lovers, I just have to ask, am I not the only one out here who doesn't want to see my friend's genitals? Thingamajig, I can confirm that you are not.

I opened the show last week talking about the former mayor of Minot, North Dakota, who lost his job after accidentally sending a sex message to a city employee. I didn't think the mayor of Minot should have lost his job. Zoftig the Magnificent disagrees. I'm not sure, says Zoftig, that I want to give the same level of forgive and forget or benefit of the doubt to people in power that I would to the rest of us.

So while I agree that your average minion slash corporate grunt shouldn't get fired for an accident like that,

Maybe a mayor should. Well, a mayor did, Zoptig, which means you won this round. All right, to read more listener comments or to leave a comment yourself, go to savage.love, click on the latest Lovecast or column and scroll on down to the bottom. We play as many of the audio comments you send in every week as we can, but we can't play them all. So if you want to make sure other listeners and readers get to hear or see your comment, drop it into the comment threads at savage.love.

And now here are some of the audio comments Savage Club listeners left on our answering machine this week about last week's show. Hey, Dan and the tech savvy at Risk Youth. I have three long-term committed relationships. Been poly for a while now. And this is a response call to the guy whose partner didn't want him to fuck his friends. And I'm here to say, please don't fuck your friends.

I totally side with the partner on this one. I feel like this is actually a really fraught topic within the poly community. And I've been criticized by other poly people for having this opinion. It's my only boundary. I just do not want my partners to fuck my friends or their friends. Like, yeah, no, they can fuck their friends. That's fine. But if it's friends in common, I just don't want it. And it's interesting because I feel like there are poly...

people and poly communities out there where like they're only fucking their friends and nobody else. And that's beautiful and awesome. But like I live in a medium, small city and my friendships sort of overlap with my professional relationships and my work is really high stress and I just don't want my friends

friendship space to have any romantic drama in it whatsoever. And I have a really strong boundary around not fucking my friends and not having my partners fuck my friends. And so I get it when the partners don't do it. And so, yeah, maybe just don't go to those cake nights or get drunk at them with your friends if you're trying not to fuck them. It's hard. You need to put up some boundaries, respect your partner's boundaries. And I wish you luck. Hi, Dan and team. I wanted to...

leave a comment for the gentleman who invited his now ex-girlfriend to Hump Film Festival. I wanted to say that I have invited lots of friends, partners, lovers to Hump Film Festival before, and I think people's reaction to it says a lot about how much they respect and trust you. It doesn't have to be everybody's thing, but someone's reaction to you inviting them, I think,

can show how aligned you are. And I think Dan's absolutely right. You absolutely dodged a bullet caller. - And we're gonna leave it there. Got a question for me, go to savage.love/askdan to record and upload your question directly onto our website, or you can make a voice memo and email your question or your comment to [email protected], or you can call us at 206-302-2064.

And leave us a message. Chicago, Madison, Cleveland, Columbus, Long Beach, Durham, Burlington, Vermont. Hump 2025 is in you this weekend. Berlin, Montreal, Ann Arbor, Bend, you're up next. And don't forget Berlin. I will be hosting both Hump screenings in Berlin on April 22nd and 23rd at Babylon Kreuzberg. Come say hi. Stay to watch the amazing lineup of 23 new hosts.

Hump Films. To watch the Hump trailer and order your tickets, go to humpfilmfest.com. If you can't make it to a theater, you can stream Hump at home. Everything you need to know is at humpfilmfest.com. And mark your calendars. Our next Savage Love Live, our Zoom hangout exclusively for Magnum Savage Lovecast subscribers, making subs, is on April 30th, noon Pacific.

Follow me at bluesguyatdansavage. Follow me on Instagram at dansavage. Follow Adam Smith on Instagram and threads at adam.smith. That's Smith like Smith, but with a Z. Learn more about Adam at his website, adam.smith. And if you want to learn more about poppers, read Adam's excellent book, Deep Snip.

The Savage Lovecast is produced every week by Nancy Hartunian and me and the tech savvy at Risk Youth and Nancy. We will all be back at you next week with another installment of the Savage Lovecast. Thank you for telling me.