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Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
I have never been an HND; I have in the past been a CPOS (though not in this relationship). My girlfriend is lovely, supportive, and generally GGG, and though the sex is good, I have a significantly higher libido than she does and I would like to have a little more variety in my sex life. I want to be an HND, but I don’t know how to broach the subject with the girlfriend without ruining our relationship. We are very open about our sex life and our relationship in general, but I think this is probably a “next level” topic that may not go over very well. How do I bring this up without screwing up our relationship beyond repair?
—Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude
Savage’s reply is frank as always: “I would encourage you to err on the side of screwing up your current relationship with an honest conversation about your mismatched libidos and your natural and normal desire for a little variety. Lies, damn lies, and statistics all demonstrate that, in time, one or the other or both of you will cheat. Better to toss that out there now, even at the risk of calmly winding down this relationship before you revert to form/CPOS, than to see the relationship explode after someone, most likely you, winds up cheating.”
This Aspiring Honest Nonmonogamous Dude (AHND) takes greater pains than most of Savage’s correspondents to praise his girlfriend, not only in general but specifically with regard to their sex life. They have already spent several happy years together. He is anxious about his surplus of desire, but apparently nothing else. Yet that consideration trumps all others in Savage’s answer. Sexual compatibility—in terms of libido or in terms of tolerating nonexclusivity—is the coin of the realm. Love, emotional compatibility, the possibility of a life together, not to mention irrecoverable years already spent—these must all be staked against the value of a fully deployed libido. But what, exactly, is the upshot of “calmly winding down” a relationship with a high risk of infidelity? Potential romantic partners, unlike firms in the classical free-market model, are not infinite in number, and a life of comparison shopping is not free of cost. If the aspiring HND dissolves this years-long transaction in order to find a partner who is just as lovable but less jealous, or who shares his libido at every point, he will likely have a lonely road ahead of him.
I wonder what he chose to do, ultimately, and how it has worked out. If there is something to treasure in the old, traumatized ideal of lifelong monogamy, it’s not that it demeans sexual fulfillment. Rather, it’s that monogamy integrates sexual fulfillment with the other good things in life—having someone to pay bills and raise children with, having a refuge both emotional and physical from the rest of the world. It is an ideal that is powerful even when it is not fully realized (as it rarely, if ever, is), not a contract voided by nonperformance. A worldview in which sex is so central to life that it may be detached from everything else and sought apart from every other ingredient of happiness presumes a world in which happiness itself can be redefined—in which people can be retrained in what they expect and accept from one another. To approach the libertarian ideal of human relationships, emotional shock therapy of the sort contemplated by AHND will be required. The promised land of natural, ethical, autonomous sexuality lies across a desert of self-mortifying trade-offs between sexual fulfillment and all the other joys and comforts of life.
It may be the case, as Savage likes to argue, that humans are not by nature sexually monogamous. The great apes aren’t, after all. But of course, neither are the great apes especially interested in negotiating power-exchange contracts, engaging in long conversations about the contours of open relationships, or, for that matter, answering the anguished letters of anonymous strangers. As has always been the case, the answer to civilization’s discontents turns out to be yet more civilization. That is the tragedy of the human being in an age of proliferating options and stubbornly lingering dissatisfaction. The whole world may be normal at last, and yet to be good is as elusive as ever. Some things may not, in fact, get better.
Ella on May 07, 2011 4:47 AM:
The "it gets better" videos on YouTube are beautiful.
Sarah Marshall on May 07, 2011 6:12 PM:
Wow, Savage has really "opened the doors" to the discussion of sex. Kudos on the article as I really had no idea how far he has gone. Maybe Savage is making us a bit more open in general to the varieties of life and living it.
Brenda Helverson on May 08, 2011 8:12 PM:
Whether you like Dan or not, The Stranger is far and away the best newspaper in Seattle. I trust their political writing and rely on their election endorsements. Dan's leadership in the political arena is an asset to Seattle.
As far as his sex advice is concerned, I'm a bit too old to join in. So to paraphrase Earl Butz, I no play-a the game, so I no make-a the rules.