We’re a straight couple in our forties. We have some very dear friends who are younger and queer, and we sometimes find ourselves giving them life and relationship advice. We don’t want to unintentionally muddy things with our heteronormative expectations.
So, here’s the question: If a gay man goes out with another gay man — something prearranged, intentional, with an articulated plan to spend the night together afterward — is it rude for one of them to flirt with other men and disappear for periods of time? There is no relationship to define as of yet, just a planned night out together.
To us heterosexuals, this seems like a very shitty thing to do. But maybe there’s a different set of expectations or a different baseline in the gay male community?
— Seeking His Input Today, Thank You!
What you describe is deeply shitty behavior regardless of sexual orientation. A good guy doesn’t bring a date (a date date) to a club or a party and then start looking around for better D. If the man who ran off to flirt with other men didn’t realize they were on a date — sometimes a person asks to “hang out” instead of making their romantic/sexual intentions/hopes clear — then it could’ve been a misunderstanding. But if this was an unambiguous date (a date date) and if they’d made explicit plans to spend the whole/hole night together, that guy — the one who ran off to search for better D — is an inconsiderate asshole.
Now, maybe that guy decided halfway through the date that your friend wasn’t someone he wanted to spend the night with… and maybe he had good reason to bail… but he needed to use his words to officially end the date and given your friend a chance to head home and/or shift gears and start looking for other D himself. I was on a date date with a guy once, and we quickly determined that we weren’t sexually compatible and instantly pivoted to being each other’s wingman, something it was possible for us to do because 1. the feeling was mutual and 2. we used our words.
Sometimes a person hesitates to use his words because he knows the other person isn’t going to like hearing them. But someone who opts to show rather than tell in a case like this — by serving up context clues like flirting with other men and/or disappearing to go get railed in a bathroom stall — is either a coward (the worst kind) or a sadist (the wrong kind).
I am gay and in love. I’ve been in a non-traditional monogamous relationship for the last three years. We’ve had a few threesomes during our time we’ve been together, and we have attended a few sex parties. Recently, we had to spend time in different places and experienced things with other guys separately. Now we are back in the same place and redesigning the terms of our relationship.
I am wondering if it’s justifiable to have sex with other people just to satisfy certain aspects of our desires that are not currently fulfilled within the relationship? Or is that the easy way out? Are we escaping a duty to adapt ourselves sexually to each other more fully in the hopes of achieving perfect sexual satisfaction together? Or should we assume that we are never going to fulfill each other completely and it’s natural to look for other people to fill certain gaps?
— Binging On Your Show
P.S. I’m a new listener and reader from Lisbon! English is not my first language. Thank you for your work!
If you and your boyfriend wanna have sex with other people and you’re in agreement about it — and you’ve had and open and honest conversation about rules, limits, boundaries, and safety — you don’t have to come up with a justification for opening your relationship (or keeping it open). “We talked about this, we’re in agreement, this is what we both want,” is all the justification you need.
With that said…
While allowing your partner to explore kinks you don’t share is one reason many couples open their relationships — sometimes just a crack — stepping outside your sexual comfort zones for each other is a good idea. If neither of you is willing to give something the one want to explore a try, BOYS, you boys wind up missing out on sex acts and/or kinks you might discover you enjoy.
Additionally, sexual exploration with/for a partner can benefit and improve your emotional connection. Being GGG (“good, giving, and game for anything — within reason”) was some advice I pulled out of my ass, but Dr. Amy Muise at York University actually studied people who were “motivated to meet a romantic partner’s sexual needs.” And what Dr. Muise found was that people who explored their romantic partners’ sexual interests and kinks reported high levels of relationship satisfaction and strength as a result of those explorations, i.e., getting kinky together brought them closer together. (You can read Dr. Muise’s paper on what she dubbed “communal sexual motivation” here. But be sure to clock the title of her paper.)
I would advise you to give the things your partner wants to try a shot, BOYS, and I would advise your partner to do the same for you — barring, of course, anything either of you finds disgusting, appalling or triggering. If you’re into feet and he’s not, he should be able to let you go to town on his feet. If he’s into fisting and you’re not, allowing him to explore fisting (and maybe fisting only) outside your relationship may be the better option. No one should do anything in the bedroom or darkroom or dungeon or wherever that they don’t wanna do — of course — but there’s a difference between “this is something sexual that turns me off and I don’t wanna do” and “this is something sexual that wasn’t my idea but I might be willing to try.”
Don’t think of it as adapting to each other — and don’t think of it as an obligation to do anything and everything your partner wants — but rather as a willingness to explore and grow together sexually.
P.S. You describe your relationship as monogamous, BOYS, but it sounds likes it’s been open pretty much the entire time you’ve been together. Sticking with what you already know works is also a good idea.
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