For anyone who still wants to listen to him, the above clip is two and a half minutes of Dan Savage justifying the open sexual relationship he has with his husband Terry Miller (hope neither of them ever brings home something “extra” to share). I support being a slut, but I’m not interested in someone using clunky euphemisms to defend their slutty behavior. Just be a slut! Stop talking about it. “Humans are programmed to seek sexual variety”? What a patronizing and inhuman excuse for anyone who’s ever cheated on their spouse. Sorry, honey, I was programmed to do it.
Everyone in a relationship has their personal issues. Every couple is unique and deciding to stay together despite problems with health or differing sex drives depends on many other factors that might be more rewarding. If good sex is the only thing keeping two people together, then I don’t think it’s a relationship that will last. Good sex certainly helps, but sometimes it’s better if one partner chooses to improvise to stay sexually satisfied rather than break up something that is much greater. I realize this is just a porn sex news site, but sometimes we have to deal with reality and I applaud Savage for acknowledging couples with unique problems. There are lots of loving couples who are struggling with difficult sexual situations.
As far as Dan goes, he’s on the evolutionary psychology train, which is more than a bit sexist, to the point that it’s almost completely discredited by new studies about WOMEN’S sexuality. Do I have a problem with his being “monogamish” in his relationship with Terry? No, because his relationship is ultimately none of my business.
Is he disgustingly overexposed lately? Is he overreaching in presenting his opinions as universally applicable life principles?
Yeah, I’d have to say so.
LOL. Obviously, too many people reading this shit got cheated on. Don’t worry. It’s not your fault you couldn’t keep your partners interested in you and only you. It’s not your fault you all have such low self esteems. :) Oh, and Jesus loves you. Yay!
LOL. This post is just downright simple-minded. But what can I expect from a porn blog trying to “branch out”?
“the above clip is two and a half minutes of Dan Savage justifying the open sexual relationship he has with his husband Terry Miller (hope neither of them ever brings home something “extra” to share).”
Because that makes you feel jealous you’re not getting any?
” I support being a slut, but I’m not interested in someone using clunky euphemisms to defend their slutty behavior.”
And yet you just dedicated a blog post about it. It seems you are interested enough.
“Just be a slut! Stop talking about it.”
Then why is this porn blog still running? Because you are a hypocrite and yet you are too dumb to notice it.
“Humans are programmed to seek sexual variety’? What a patronizing and inhuman excuse for anyone who’s ever cheated on their spouse.”
LOL. I’m sorry your previous lovers cheated on you because you can’t keep their interest long enough ’til forever, Zach.
Damn Savage is a lying sack of shit. We are programmed? We are programmed? This useless asshole has spoken out against biological determinism, and yet now to justify his particular tastes he subscribed to it and affirms it? Seriously? This is the same man that has suggested that ‘gay’ identity and sexuality are ‘fluid’ and nothing biologically determines sexual identity, and it’s all well and good when it comes to fucking around, cheating, or in pseudo-intellectual terms: open-relationships.
I have no problem with the types of relationships people involve themselves in. If people are happy to be in open-relationships, so be it. But do NOT say, we’re programmed in order to blanket all of us here. Some of us, want committed monogamous relationships. Someone of us can be in them. Who the hell made Dan Savage the sex-pert king? Me thinks, he needs to get off his pedestal and go back to his Michel Foucault books. He obviously didn’t learn anything. Lesson 1: Do not establish yourself as the lightening rod truth of sex.
My ass we’re programmed. I’ll accept that premise from him of all people, once he supports the idea that queer people are indeed born that way as opposed to social constructions his ilk like to suggest we are.
Fuck him, he’s a fucking hack.
I like Dan and think he’s very well spoken, but as a gay man in a monogamous relationship for almost 20 years now, I can’t agree with his criticisms of monogamy because they simply do not apply to me. Not feeling sexually alive? On the contrary, I feel sexually alive every time my husband and I make love. That has never changed over the years. If anything, it’s gotten better. Sexually frustrated? On the contrary again, I feel completely and totally sexually fulfilled in my relationship. He gives me the best head I’ve ever had by far. I couldn’t ask for a better lover. Programmed to seek sexual variety? Not me. I never get tired of sucking my husband’s dick. In fact, I constantly crave it because I know firsthand how good it’s going to be. And the fact is we’ve incorporated sexual variety and sexual adventure into our own sexual life together by trying new things out with each other.
Fact is, my husband and I have always had a very passionate and intense sexual life together. We talk about sex with each other all the time (whispering little innuendos to each other over the phone during the day, making little comments to each other in the evening after we get home from work, checking each other out as we undress, etc.). Bedtime is always synonymous with playtime, and we go at it just about every night.
So monogamy does NOT have to mean sexual boredom. Believe me, I’ve been having way too much fun to be bored! ;-)
“So monogamy does NOT have to mean sexual boredom. Believe me, I’ve been having way too much fun to be bored! ;-)”
LOL. Who are you trying to convince, Mary? Is this one of those affirmation techniques people do every morning, like telling yourself how pretty your pimply mug looks today in front of a mirror?
Whatever helps you sleep at night, girl. XD
So sorry you haven’t gotten laid in 20 years, but I can certainly understand why.
It’s an old game, my love
When you can’t have me, you want me
Because you know that you’re not risking anything
Intimacy is when we’re in the same place at the same time
Dealing honestly with how we feel, and who we really are
That’s what grown-ups do
That is mature thinking
Stop hating on Dan. I just finished his last book and agreed with just about every topic he covered. I think he’s been a great spokesperson for our community and deserves a little respect.
You may want to expand your worldview and construct some ideas on your own….
Oh, what an original thought. I’m sure no one has ever constructed that before.
I live in a red state with a partner of 33 years. You don’t think I have views of my own? Seriously? Get back to me when you turn 25 and have moved out of your parent’s house.
You must be one of those dickbags that posed for the NO H8 campaign., huh?
Some of you people are just being ignorant and spiteful. While Dan may have over-explained and made-up an annoying new term for having an open relationship – I think he was pretty spot-on, on what the emotional issues and benefits are/might be/can be when you look at the struggles of monogamy vs non-monogamy.
It’s a porn blog frequented by dried up, loveless, hags. Of course people are going to be pretentious and judgmental. It makes them feel better. :) Let us be understanding, hon.
I love they used a blur filter on the camera-I’m sure he put in the settings himself.
LOL!
I might be alone with this, but I believe Dan Savage’s intention may be to start an open dialogue about this very topic.
Not just in the gay community but in society there is too much ‘looking down’ judgement. People judging others for being or thinking different. And then there’s the hypocrisy of people judging others for something they do in private (or even worse telling people what they shouldn’t do while doing the very same thing in private).
When it comes down to gay porn for example you can’t miss the ‘eeeew, I don’t like that’ ‘what, you like that? You sick fuck!’ judgemental posts.
Open relationships may very well work in some cases (when both partners are on the same page) and in others it signifies the final stages of said relationship.
You are absolutely correct in that MANY relationships starts of 1:1 but soon they are expanded upon and YES it DOES signal the end of the union
When did The Sword become The 700 Club? This is a porn website but you all sound more like Focus On The Family. Open relationships are valid relationships. Commitment is about more than what you do with your dick. Sex is fun and healthy. Enjoy it and stop worrying about other people’s relationships. Leave that to the Republicans.
Being in a “relationship” and looking for excuses to cheat and validation from others for doing so just makes you an embarrassment.
yes, but how does that in ANY shape, way, or form inhibit YOU from living your life, breathing air, eating food, making money…..HOW? why do u care about this so much to make a soap box judgement like this? clearly he is RESPONDING to questions…he didnt wake up, sit in front of a camera and make a random video to justify his lifestyle
“why do u care about this so much to make a soap box judgement like this?”
Because I’m unwilling to entertain another person’s complete bullshit?
I like how you put ‘relationship’ in quotes as if to say only your stupid, fucking, stultifying version of a relationship is the true one. How fucking arrogant is that? Obviously monogamy is a thriving, totally functional, wonderfully enriching, and never faltering philosophy?
Jeez, just because we gays overturned DOMA, it doesn’t mean we have to become uptight, evangelizing queens for the failed, miserable methods of the heterosexual lifestyle.
Howl and wail and gnash your teeth all you want, but people fucking around on each other is not a real relationship. It’s just people fucking around on each other. People fucking around on each other do not deserve consideration.
I’m sorry that you’re stuck in a ‘I’m a 14 year old girl either/or mentality’ on relationships, but people have been engaging in perfectly functional polyamorous relationships for centuries. Get, I don’t know, with the 15th century, you moral purist.
AMEN Aslogan…some people are just jealous and envious because their minds can’t handle the level of maturity that it takes to be in a relationship..so people will do just about anything to avoid real commitment like cheat, hire an escort and/or be an escort themselves to keep that from happening. It is sad and pathetic how some gay men think that gay liberation and identification means being a “forever child and acting on impulses” while justifying their actions…oh well
“When did The Sword become The 700 Club?”
Since Zach took over.
“Sex is fun and healthy. Enjoy it and stop worrying about other people’s relationships.”
LOL. HONEY, come on. Do you really think that these people and the author are having enough “fun and healthy” sex to distract them from worrying about other people’s relationships? I love your optimistic view towards other people. It warms my heart.
“Leave that to the Republicans.”
And we’re assuming that this is not exactly what is going on here because?
Went to a (straight) wedding a few weeks ago. The officiating pastor told the happy couple three keys to a long and happy marriage. One of which was “Once you’re married, you cannot do single things anymore.”
I do believe there are couples for whom open relationships can work and work well. But it is not a model, in my opinion. If you want to fuck around, most of the time that means you need to be single. I’m alarmed by the increasing number of gays who think that entering a relationship requires little change in sexual behavior.
Word. If you want to be a slut, own it and just be a slut. Pretending to commit while also wholeheartedly hanging on to your slutty ways is just universally demeaning. Don’t make promises you know that you can’t keep.
Who ???
Amen, Amen, Amen! SOOOO tired of his excusing his promiscuity by pointing to biology. There are a lot of things we were “programed” to do that we do not. If he doesn’t want to be in a monogamous relationship, that’s fine. I fully support anyone who doesn’t want to be in a monogamous relationship or who shouldn’t be in one in remaining single. But I’m actually offended when he points to his open relationship model as a model for marriage. If you can’t stop sleeping with other people outside of your marriage, then you’re not married. I know that may be a little prudish; but it’s how I see it. Marriage is two consenting adults making a life long commitment to each other. Not each other and the residents of lower Manhattan.
Yes, I agree. If you put at the same level the relationship you have with your partner ( compenion, husband ) with all the intimacy that life in common brings and all others fuckbuds ( …lower Manhattan…LOL ) you debase the first one and even if it’s possible to love many partners at the same time ( I really doubt ) I don’t believe a human being can share equal proportions of fellings so, for me, ‘poliamori’ is too much lust and little compromise.
As a married man (to a woman) I disagree. Sleeping around is necessary to our survival.
How do I choose at the end of the day…? I’m married to a woman but I can’t have sex with men…That would be a deal breaker.
My marriage functions very well, and it’s none of your business really.
We are faithful to each other in our hearts, and it’s all that counts!
That’s a disgrace and you honestly should be ashamed of yourself.
Can’t see why. You don’t know my life.
“We are faithful to each other in our hearts, and it’s all that counts!”
Sounds like something an adulterous politician could have said.
“You don’t know my life.”
You gave more than enough information.
Ummm are you jealous because you can’t get it up for a woman maybe…?
I’m sure your lifestyle is way worse.
Then you have a best friend, not a wife. Marriage is about commitment; not convenience. It’s perfectly fine to date around or even maintain a relationship with someone that is fine with you getting something on the side, but that’s not marriage. And getting married under the circumstances is nothing more than an attempt to legitimize yourself and your non-committal relationship. People should get married when they’re done “hunting”…when they have found the one person they want to spend the rest of their lives with. And frankly, you’re right about your life. If that’s how you and your wife want to live your lives…go right ahead. But do not defend your relationship to me as the ideal example of how relationships should function.
But since we are here…how do you identify? Just curious. And does your wife have the same freedom as you do to seek out sexual partners?
Not saying it’s ideal. We are married , happy and that’s how it is :)
I would say I am bisexual . And yes she has the same freedom, sometimes we share guys. Sex is always protected with outsiders, we have no children (because we think cats are better )and not planning to have any.
You do not have children because you like cats better, and YET, you just said that fucking around is crucial to the survival of our species? So basically, you your just spouting this, to justify your fucking around. Why not just be honest about it and say it’s just your libido as opposed to conjuring some half-concocted notion in order to intellectually justify what is plain and simple, fucking around.
” Marriage is about commitment; not convenience. It’s perfectly fine to date around or even maintain a relationship with someone that is fine with you getting something on the side, but that’s not marriage.”
While I don’t necessarily disagree with you, I’m challenging your use of that specific language. It speaks to a belief system that was shaped by a particular culture. I’m thinking that there are at least several thousands of Europeans (hell, even Brits) that would dispute your point to varying degrees. Clive Bell was married to Vanessa Bell but had a mistress, and Vanessa Bell lived in a long-term romantic and co-parenting relationship with gay artist Duncan Grant (you might argue the negative affect it had on Vanessa and Duncan’s daughter, given that they raised her to believe that she was Clive’s daughter, but that’s peripheral to the relationship issue).
People get married for a lot of reasons, and not all of them have to do with romantic commitment. Marriage as legal union predates marriage as romantic/spiritual/religious union by about 1100-1400 years IN THE CHRISTIAN ERA ALONE (remember, the Catholic church only got interested in the solemnization of marriage when it figured out a way to make money from it). The idea of marriage being entwined with sexual fidelity had nothing to do with commitment to a parter, but rather about how a man’s (or, less frequently after the rise of Judaism, women’s) property would be distributed after he died, and it was in the general patriarchal interest to keep money in “legitimate” families (Levite law required a widow to marry one of her brothers-in-law, in fact, to that end).
Hell, try and find more than a few dozen monarchs WORLDWIDE in all of Christian history, male or female, who didn’t have pieces on the side. I suppose that by a strictly monogamous standard, they didn’t have real marriages, but that wasn’t the point of those marriages at all; the royal marriages were intended to produce legitimate royal heirs (Price Charles is only lucky, then, that he didn’t knock Camilla up; he’s already got issues for the whole breakup of his marriage anyway; Henry VIII clearly didn’t give a shit, because not only did he cheat on his first three wives with their ladies-in-waiting, he actually had a few illegitimate kids with some nowhere-near-royal women. The Catholic church wasn’t down with it, but very few other people were stupid enough to challenge the king over where he put his dick).
Again, within the parameters of your argument, wherein the meaning of marriage is relative to the culture you grew up in, I can’t dispute the assertion that sexually non-exclusive marriage could be viewed as “less than valid,” BUT it’s only applicable in our relatively puritanical culture. You can speak for what you believe in this matter, but really, that’s more judgmental opinion than categorically absolute fact for everyone.
Stop trying to hijack the thread with hypotheticals that you do not embrace nor embody…
Half Porco: So which half is the “pig,” the husband who is married, or the closeted gay guy that only comes out on certain occasions?- I think it is the husband who thinks fucking women justifies him as more masculine than a gay guy who doesn’t. Then again I’m biased-I’m a hateful “faggot” who is just plain jealous that you could get pussy on the side, Right Half Porco?
Fuck you.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What the hell is this, necessary for our survival based on? Where’s your research? As it currently stands, our world is over-populated to capacity, because procreation has gone a muck. There are more humans that can be sustained due to resources and we’re at a point where just about everything, water, food, and other means of basic survival for human beings are dwindling. What are you basing your point of view on? You have no premise for your information. Basically, you just wanted an outlet to flaunt your ‘heterosexuality’ on a gay porn site.
But looking at and commenting on a porn website is just hunky dory in the morality department? Its not cheating if all I do is jo to men!
YES, if I deny my husband sex because I would rather jerk off I would consider that cheating, loss of interest and desire and yet somehow I (and countless others) do not have the quest to hunt down these men in pictures and videos (not even an escort) to SUBSTITUTE for the real thing in my bedroom….furthermore we do not lose time with friends, family or call in late or absent to work because we have to pleasure ourselves, because well that would be signs of an addictive and self-desructive personality.
Lastly, the fact is most ALL men have been self-pleasuring before they entered a relationship and for many it will continue even while in a relationship and YES for even some women…personally it is nice to watch a hot movie together and jerk off, kiss, touch and voice those carnal desires that end once fluid flows…ah now that’s nice!!
There. Right there. See, I was hoping you’d respond that way. In terms of your relationship YOU have determined jacking off to porn is NOT cheating, but OTHERS DO consider it cheating. Just as OTHERS might NOT find an OPEN relationship cheating.
So, take your own moral definition and go stfu by sucking your husband’s cock and leave other people’s understood moral definitions to themselves, you dickbag.
RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU CONSIDER MASTURBATION TO PORN CHEATING???
I saw the whole thing and where exactly did he say that they have a sexually open relationship? And I wouldn’t be surprised with Terry’s newfound hotness he was the one who asked to play around lol. With that said, Dan’s arms are looking mighty tasty.
Also I remember that Anderson Cooper and his boyfriend supposedly have a monogamous relationship, which was the explanation that Anderson gave when pictures of his boyfriend making out with someone else.
But yes I agree with him that an open relationship can lead to one of them becoming emotionally attached to someone else, which can destroy the relationship.
Sorry I meant to say that Anderson and his bf are in an open relationship.
This advocation that WE are programmed to seek someone out for variety is UTTER and TOTAL bullshit; there is a reality that is quite simple and well stated: Either you are ALL in or you FOLD!! Yes, we find others attractive both mentally and even sexually but there is a clear line that need not be crossed or played with it….hanging your behaviors on this nonsense that we are programmed is NO different than saying that we are prone to violence and should start considering ways to off those who have wronged us. We DO NOT need to act on “our programming” because it is simply NOT there for everyone and that is the way it is DAN SAVAGE.
I do not want to be with someone and discover that they find me limiting without exploring our relationship more vibrantly and more honestly. I think some gay men and some some straight men think they can juggle many people and situations and the ANSWER to that is NOT A FUCKING chance…you just end of with a mess. If you are not ready to commit then stay SINGLE because that word defines itself and needs no rationalization.
Lastly, I too did not hear that Dan and Terry are in an open relationship; I think he is weighing an argument for as a sex columnist and nothing more.
Jeez, dude, as fanatical as you sound its no wonder your previous bf’s cheated on you.
I can only speak for myself and the 14 years that my now husband and I have been together…no cheating because we are together in mind, body and spirit…we have grown together as mature men and we embrace one another and we embrace that sometimes we find someone else attractive because DUH that is natural and we yet we RESPECT the commit and marriage that we are in not be led around by the short-term sensation of something SO FLEETING AS A FLING, we denounced our egos and internal power struggles of vanity and other self-appointed distracting things but rather the LONG TERM SENSATION of LOVE, SEX, HUMOR, PASSION and SO MUCH MORE for the sake of our union.
He uses the term “mongoamish,” FWIW.