SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE

DEAR DAN: I’m the other woman. His wife doesn’t know. When I met my lover five years ago, he talked about how he had a platonic marriage. He had every reason to expect a sexless marriage. They started therapy and are now having “scheduled sex.” I cautioned against this approach but didn’t call it what I think it is: consensual rape.

I fell in love with my lover. When I see a text coming in from him, a wonderful warmth courses through my body and I feel loved. He says he feels a similar excitement — “melt” is the word he uses when I text him — but he is emotionally unavailable because he “loves the wife who won’t blow him.”

From the outside they look like a happy family and he wants to keep his family whole. I am conflicted. I love him, I don’t think she loves him, and I know he loves her. He says he just wants someone who wants to have sex with him. They’ve been married less than 10 years and have three young children.

In your experience, has scheduled sex ever helped a sexless marriage?

— The Other One

P.S. Stop the presses! My lover asked his wife about an open marriage. He said she “cried bitterly.” At first, I felt sympathy for both of them, but then it occurred to me that she might be manipulating him. I’d love to hear what you think.

DEAR TOO: If you wanna start fucking this dude again, TOO, you can fuck this dude without constructing selfserving rationalizations or casting aspersions on your lover’s wife. His wife burst into tears when he asked about opening their marriage — something he’d already done, which she may suspect, and something many people take as a sign their marriages are about to collapse, which she may fear. Being asked to open a marriage can be an upsetting conversation, particularly for someone with small children. I think you should give this woman you’ve never met, who’s done you no harm, the benefit of the doubt and not see her reaction as emotionally manipulative.

Scheduled sex can be good, great or awful, just like spontaneous sex. One thing scheduled sex isn’t is “consensual rape.” There are good reasons why a couple might choose to have sex at a set time. Lots of sex therapists and marriage counselors recommend scheduled sex to couples whose marriages have drifted into sexlessness.

I shouldn’t have to explain to you, someone who’s been sleeping with a married man for five years, that scheduled sex can be consensual sex and good sex. To keep an affair going for five years you have to create opportunities. Affair sex is scheduled sex.

But scheduled sex can’t work miracles. If one spouse is no longer attracted to the other spouse and/or one spouse has lost interest in sex and/or sex has become impossible or painful and the lost-all-interest spouse refuses to do anything about it, scheduling sex isn’t going to help.

Both halves of the sexless couple on the therapist’s couch often identify being busy as the problem. But often one half of the couple isn’t telling the truth; it’s not that they can’t find the time, it’s that they don’t want to. It can be hard for someone to say out loud that they’re no longer sexually attracted to their spouse. No one wants to hurt someone they love (doesn’t wanna fuck ≠ doesn’t love). And since opening up a marriage is a non-starter for most couples, the marriage has to end if celibacy is a non-starter for the other spouse.

This dude loves his wife, she loves him, and they love their kids and want to keep their home together. But your lover also needs to fuck someone who wants to fuck him, and he can love you for that. Resist the urge to justify your choices by making assumptions about your lover’s wife. You’re in no position to judge the sincerity of her feelings for her husband, which are probably every bit as complicated and conflicted as your own feelings for him.