Experimentation, Divorce, and “Dealing With My Demons”

by A Married Dude

OK, so I am engaged. And to the best, most incredible man I’ve ever met. He’s strong, sexy, sweet, considerate, hilarious, everything a girl could ask for — not to mention that sex with him is OUT OF THIS WORLD INSANELY AMAZING. We are ridiculously in love, hence the engagement. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him.

Here’s the kicker: I like girls. I have never had a sexual experience with a girl other than drunken making-out, but sexy, beautiful women do turn me on. I have a deep-rooted fantasy of having sex with a girl. It’s just something about my sexuality that I’ve never had the chance to explore prior to meeting my man. Unfortunately, my fiance is completely against the idea of a man-girl-girl threesome. Very, very much against it. My first reaction was “What kind of red-blooded male doesn’t want to watch his woman gettin’ it on with another lady-friend?!” But perhaps I just watch too much porn. I’ve reassured him that I adore his cock, and I am not a lesbian.

I am marrying him; I don’t want a romantic relationship with anyone else for the rest of my life. I would just like to introduce a little more sexual exploration into our bedroom life — specifically exploration that I have always desired. Let me point out that this is the only sexual thing that he has refused. We are both extremely sexually adventurous people, and we love trying new things. His complaints are that my desire for a woman to join us makes him feel inadequate, that I might discover I want to leave him for said woman, and that he doesn’t want to share me. I understand where he’s coming from (he’s been cheated on by every single ex he’s had), but I can’t help feeling a little stifled here.

Is there anything I can say or do to reassure him that this has nothing to do with how satisfied I am with him? It’s just something I really, really want to pursue. He has since begrudgingly told me that if that’s what I need, then “fine, whatever, just go do it.” But I want his support; I don’t want to make him uncomfortable, and I don’t want to start off our marriage with resentment on either side. I am never, ever going to cheat on him, or experiment with another girl behind his back. Ever. He trusts me; I trust him. But… goddamnit I just want to lick some tits and tongue a pussy, for the first time — and maybe the only time, as far as I know. How can we resolve or compromise on this without hurting each other?

There are a lot of long answers here about birds and cages and setting shit free and it coming back to you, though all birds look a lot alike so who really knows if it came back to you out of love or some other bird just happened across the cage and was all, like, “If Russell Crowe could do it in Robin Hood why the hell can’t I?”

And I wish there was a more meaningful short answer about how marriage on the outside is like an Obama campaign while marriage on the inside is like an Obama administration, but there isn’t. Love, and especially love in marriage, involves crummy sacrifices that are undertaken because you really do love the other person.

The short answer is to take him up on it and go ahead and do it, but then be absolutely sure to make a big stink about how it wasn’t all that great and you’re disappointed and how you owe him one (BUT DO NOT USE THE TERM “OWE YOU ONE”). This will make him feel like a good person for having been an open lover, while at the same time not feel threatened by licked tits and tongued pussies.

Of course, if you really love being with a woman and it’s something you’re going to insist on having to do all the time, well, at least you won’t be one of those insufferable couples who fights most severely over money. See, bright side!

Let’s say you know a lady and her daughter through your work. Both are adults, and really cool people. You friend them on Facebook, and realize there is a really hot son/brother. And you flirt a bit on FB, but then realize he’s married, and go to “Leave guy alone mode,” but still talk sometimes. Let’s then say, he’s moved back and is getting a divorce. Let’s further say that on New Year’s Eve you both got super drunk, and he grabs your hand and leads you outside to tell you he really likes you, and then just holds you while watching fireworks. Then, you don’t talk much during the next month, but around your birthday you find out he’s in another country because his dad is sick. Then your birthday comes up, and he flies home early to be at your party. Where once again, he tells you how much he likes you, but he can’t be in a relationship right now because of the divorce and his dad dying and he needs to deal with his demons. You accept this, because this is big life stuff, and sometimes we just need time to figure ourselves out. AND then you find out that he’s been dating this other girl for four months. How do you even wrap your brain around this, and stop liking this guy that you were maybe kind of in love with?

Did this gentleman actually say he needs to “deal with my demons”? Because if he said that, run away. Run fast, run hard, and make sure it’s in a general “away” direction. You never mentioned if the divorce was his fault. Because it sounds like the divorce was probably his fault. It also sounds like you’ve been back-burnered, to the place where dishes have been set to simmer for when the time is right to bring them to the front to be cooked. Did he fly home early to be at your party or was he flying home anyway and it just worked out well to tell you that it was for your party?

Maybe the easiest way to stop liking him is to imagine, in the most graphic detail possible, a night of his life with one of the other women. Make sure you imagine him having sex with her and going through all the bad porn positions, even that one where he straddles her chest and basically force fucks her mouth while her arms are pinned down. Imagine him the whole time saying how much he likes you. Just saying, that might work.

Then again, you could always just out him on his Facebook wall by asking him to clear up the confusion about dating the other girl and wooing you at the same time. I promise you’ll never hear from him again.

One of my greatest fears is having a son like this doofus.

My ex-husband and I have remained friends and we chat quiet often. We have known each other all of our lives but we have been divorced more than 20 years. We are both attached and have been attached since the divorce. However, we have slept together multiple times since the divorce. We did go a span of about 10 years without sleeping together and it just recently happened again, we spent the night together.

But now he’s kind of avoiding me even though he says he’s not. I am very confused because it’s always been a NSA situation. Neither of us never asked for anything from the other. But this time he’s acting very different. I know that he’s not happy with his partner, yet I don’t think he wants me either. So why is he giving me the cold shoulder after this rendezvous? It’s really bothering me and it’s hard to ask him when he keeps putting me off. We recently chatted for about 15 minutes and I didn’t get the opportunity to bring it up. I don’t want him to be upset about it and I don’t know why he would be. Unless, he is feeling something more and isn’t sure how to process it. He really isn’t a Casanova, he’s a one-woman kind of man. So I’m trying to figure out how this affected him. The other possibility is guilt. The third possibility is that he’s simply afraid that I’ll want more and he won’t talk about it because he doesn’t want to hurt me. This wouldn’t be so confusing if it had been an issue before, but there never seemed to be a problem before. How do I get him to discuss this with me — or should I give him more time? It’s killing me because he’s a best friend and like my family. I wouldn’t have slept with him again if I thought it would have hindered our friendship. It’s very complicated.

It may have been an NSA thing between you and him, but that doesn’t mean it was NSA between him and him, because he’s clearly attached some strings of his own to his behavior. Trust me, every once in a while a man has a moment of clarity where he looks at his values and how he publicly presents his values, and then he looks at how he actually acts, and, well, he’s paralyzed with a sense of shameful hypocrisy. (This does not apply to politicians.)

At the same time, it sounds like neither of you is living in some PG-13 fantasyland where everything about being an adult, divorced or otherwise, is easily defined. Marriage is a goddamn mess sometimes, and not the zany kind of mess resolved after 30 minutes when Paul Reiser finally agrees to not be such a neurotic jackass and see your side of it.

I don’t see why a little more time would hurt. You’ve given the whole “complicated” thing decades at this point, what’s a few more weeks? And if he really is that good of a friend, he’ll probably come around. If men are really good at one thing, it’s leveraging time to heal all wounds, be they self-, war zone-, or female-inflicted. And we’re especially good at using time to bury that shit down deep where not even we can get to it without a key (also known as two bottles of red wine).

A Married Dude is a married dude who doesn’t claim to know everything about marriage. Do you have any questions for A Married Dude?