Savage Love

Defense Of Marriagephobic Asshole

Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, DOMA, not compulsory. But instead of telling your partner that you don’t want to marry her, or anyone else, ever, tell her you need time. This freedom is new, hard won and not going anywhere. There’s no rush to commit to committing, DOMA, and no rush to commit to never committing. And you might want to ask your girlfriend how she feels. If she hasn’t been dropping hints, picking out china or proposing, it’s possible that she feels just as conflicted or ambivalent about marriage as you do.

I’ve just ended a four-year

relationship with a great man who didn’t lay his kink cards on the table until way too late. He’s your typical straight guy with a she-male fetish. Apparently, the dom pegging I provided wasn’t enough, because I found a secret email account where he was soliciting she-male escorts. I’m genuinely more pissed that he didn’t tell me he wanted to explore this – real cock – and didn’t give me the opportunity to make his fantasy fit into our life together. I can’t tell if any of these escorts ever met with him, and in usual hetero-male fashion, he is mortified that I know about his darkest cock-fetish secret at all. So my question is this: As a GGG girlfriend who would honor just about any fantasy, is this secret search for a stranger the betrayal I think it is? I get it that our play isn’t the same as the real thing, but isn’t cheating cheating?

Willing But Not Enough

The snooping-is-wrong absolutists will shit themselves if “snooping is wrong” doesn’t appear somewhere in this response. So here it is, gang, right at the top. Heck, I’ll toss it out again – “snooping is wrong” – even though I disagree. No long-term relationship is snoop-free, just as no long-term relationship is lie-free, porn-free or thinking-about-fucking-someone-else-while-I’m-fucking-you free. And when a little snooping uncovers something like this, well, it’s retroactively self-justifying.

On to your question, WBNE: Your ex’s secret search is the betrayal that you think it is. No question. Cheating is cheating, and the kind of cheating your ex was engaged in or contemplating amounts to a Very Serious Betrayal. He put you at risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection*, assuming he saw a sex worker, or he was thinking about putting you at risk, assuming he was about to. And it was all so unnecessary: He had a GGG girlfriend who he could’ve opened up to about his secret kink. He could’ve negotiated a deal that allowed him to explore this without betraying you or putting you at risk. But he didn’t ask for permission because he was deeply ashamed, first, and terrified of losing you, second. And now he’s really got something to be ashamed of – the lying and sneaking around – and he’s lost you. Unless…

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