The Stranger

Third Time

Dan Savage — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:10:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage My partner and I are both AFAB nonbinary queers in our mid-30s and have been together a long time. We don’t believe lifelong monogamy is realistic. We even started our relationship practicing ethical non-monogamy, then defaulted to monogamy for many years. We now have two very young children and are planning a third in the near future. Between parenting and a longstanding libido mismatch, our sex life has been hard for years. When we do have sex, it’s good, it’s just infrequent (maybe 1-3 times per month) and logistically difficult. I’m generally content, and sex simply isn’t a high priority for me right now. Over the past several months, my partner has asked about opening our relationship again. I’ve tried to engage, while also feeling that this stage of life might be the worst possible time to experiment with our relationship structure. Recently, after a long conversation about opening up,…

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The Unraveling

Dan Savage — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0800

Record your question for the Savage Lovecast at savage.love/askdan! by Dan Savage I had a great time at Mr. Mid-Atlantic Leather last month in Washington D.C. For those who don’t know, MAL is an annual fetish event for gay men. There is a lot of socializing in the lobby of the host hotel and a lot of kinky play in the rooms. One of the highlights for me was a mummification party. However, things got awkward when I had to explain to my friends that my husband thought I was on a business trip. We’ve been together for 25 years, living a happy life in a very blue college town in a very red state. Early in the relationship, he discovered that I am into BDSM when he found some Polaroids and some bondage gear in a duffel bag in the back of the closet. I had planned to tell him, just not at the very beginning of our relationship. Instead of…

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Quickies

Dan Savage — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:18:00 -0800

I have a boyfriend who never asks for anything. He also never says “I love you.” Do you think this is a red flag? by Dan Savage 1. I’m an 81-year-old heterosexual woman whose husband died last May. I have found that my 56-year-old gardener of fifteen years can make me sexually happy. But now after four months he says he’s not respecting his wife by having sex with me. He relates this to going to a Catholic priest for confession. He seems to enjoy our sex. What should I tell him? “You’re fired.” P.S. Kidding, kidding — don’t fire your gardener. Tell him you’re grateful for the sexual happiness, you don’t want him to do anything that makes him feel uncomfortable, and then give him a raise. P.P.S. Will no one free us from these meddlesome priests? 2. What is the most frequently asked question you get? Hard to say — but I suspect I’ll get a lot more questions like the one above as my readership ages along with me. 3. I have a boyfriend…

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The Roomies

Dan Savage — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage About a year ago I moved in with childhood best friend and his husband. We’re all in our mid-thirties. It’s been going great, and I consider the three of us to be fairly close. About a month ago, the husband and I stopped at the local pharmacy on the way home, which is how our various medications wound up in a pile on the table. While trying to dig my meds out from said pile, I noticed one of his prescriptions that I know can either be used as PrEP or as treatment for HIV. (I work in medicine.) Through conversations with my friends/roommates, I know they are in a closed relationship, so I believe this means the husband has HIV and is treating it. I shouldn’t say anything to either of them, right? I don’t consider it any of my business (he’s treating it! I’m not sleeping with either…

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The Parent Trap

Dan Savage — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0800

Should I Open Pandora’s Box with My Elderly Parents?

by Dan Savage I’m a gay man in my fifties, comfortable in my skin, but I suffered severe bullying throughout school, which was often abetted by teachers. A recent class reunion prompted me to write a tell-all letter to the current school director regarding that trauma. His gracious response was incredibly healing. My family has accepted me since I came out in my 20s, but they don’t know the full extent of my ordeal. While I shared the letter with my supportive brother, I’ve hesitated to show it to my parents, who are in their 70s. They claim ignorance (“We didn’t know you were suffering!”, “You never told us you were gay!”), yet they acknowledged long ago that I was “different” from toddlerhood, and they often criticized my “un-boyish” behavior when I was a child. To give you one concrete example: some older kids called me a gay slur when I was seven.…

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Cissies

Dan Savage — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage I am a 45-year-old femme-presenting genderqueer AFAB person. When I have romantic relationships with cis het men, I’ve noticed two general types: They either enjoy sex and prioritize pleasure and making things fun for their partners and themselves, but make no special big deal about it, and we usually have frequent enough sex and that’s enjoyable and good. Or the sex starts out pretty good but — at some point — they make it known to me that they need to have sex regularly, that they can’t tolerate a lack of sex, that they get grumpy if they don’t have sex, that they’ve been in sexless relationships before — blah blah blah — and soon the relationship starts to revolve around how much sex we’re having. Usually around this time the sex either gets worse or I realize that it wasn’t that good to begin with and then we start…

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Quickies

Dan Savage — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:55:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage 1. What if I’m turned on by my own trauma? What do I do with this? You do therapy with it. And then after you’ve worked through your trauma with the help of your therapist (which includes unpacking your feelings about being turned on by your trauma), you can — taking the tiniest of baby steps — explore these turn-ons to see if they’re something you can safely and enjoyably incorporate into your IRL sex life or if they need to remain fantasy material only. 2. I’m a cis bi female fifty-something subbie in a committed relationship. I enjoy being teased and denied. I wish I could use a cock cage but sadly I lack the proper anatomy. Is there something equivalent for vagina-havers? Preferably something that doesn’t require piercings to hold it in place. Has the insane popularity of male chastity devices in the last decade — cock cages…

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Christmas Wrapping

Dan Savage — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage I’m a 28-year-old gay man who isn’t going home for Christmas for the first time in my life. I’ve been out since I was fourteen and my family has been amazingly supportive, and they love my boyfriend of four years. (They hated my first and third boyfriends, so it’s not like they love anybody I bring home.) We’ve spent the last three Christmases with my parents and sisters and nieces, but this year a kinky gay couple with an amazing dungeon invited us to spend Christmas at their place and we’re going. My boyfriend played with these guys before we met, so he knows them, and there are two other kinky couples coming. My boyfriend and I have some gear but nothing like these guys have. We’ve always fantasized about being in bondage together in a real dungeon and so we immediately said yes. When I told my parents we…

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Good Working Order

Dan Savage — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 10:50:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! by Dan Savage My partner is still in love with her ex. For ten years she believed him to be the love of her life. It’s been two years since they split and there’s no possibility of them getting back together because he betrayed her in the most despicable possible way. It was the kind of betrayal that sends most people to jail. That’s all I’ll say about it. She insists the betrayal was a symptom of his “illness,” so in some form she makes excuses for him and what he did. Such was the love she had for him. She’s told me that I make her feel the same way he did, but we’ve only been together for a few months. So, our relationship doesn’t have the same depth, and our connection can’t be compared. The issue is this: whenever we share a moment that is similar to something they once shared…

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Creepy Dancer

Dan Savage — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 10:10:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage Cisgender bi-female late forties, living in the Bay Area. My boyfriend and I have been dating six months and are very much in love. His friends party quite a bit, lots of drinking and other party favors, and we all enjoy feeling good on the dance floor. The first time I met one of his friends — a guy in his thirties — it was a big, fun night, I wanted his friend to feel included (it was mostly couples), so I put my arm around him and bumped hips with him on the dance floor. We were all dancing together. I’m pretty sure he grabbed my ass when I was making out with my boyfriend on the dance floor. A month later, we are all out dancing again and he started saying things like, “You’re trouble,” and, “If your ‘boyfriend’ wasn’t in the picture, we would have something going…

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Quickies

Dan Savage — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:20:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! by Dan Savage 1. Is Donald Trump a gay man? I can’t think of anything that screams “closeted gay” louder than building a golden ballroom. Donald Trump has been married to three different women (two of whom were immigrants), he’s been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault by dozens of women, and he was found liable — by a jury of his peers — for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. I don’t care if his golden ballroom has a line of gilded slings, Goldschläger in the lube dispensers, and waiters running around in gold lamé Rocky shorts, that man is not one of mine. 2. You’ve talked about how urine is sterile but also switched to calling it “mostly” sterile. Is it safe to use in a neti pot? Sterile is binary — something either is or isn’t sterile (sterile is not a spectrum!) — so it wouldn’t be accurate to describe…

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Happy Spanksgiving

Dan Savage — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 12:32:00 -0800

Got problems? Yes, you do! Email your question for the column to mailbox@savage.love! by Dan Savage I’m gay and go to a small liberal arts school. I have a crush on this one guy, but he brought up — unprompted — that he’s Aro/Ace. I really like him. We have great conversations in a lab we have together, and I think he’s super attractive. But every time I’ve tried to extend our friendship outside of the lab by suggesting we study together or go see a movie we both want to see, he seems closed off to the idea. I don’t know what to do. I can just be sad about it, I guess. Or is there a chance he might be attracted to me? I think he enjoys talking to me. And I definitely enjoy being around him. Anxiously Ruminating On A Crushing Experience Quick definition of terms: Someone who’s aromantic (Aro) doesn’t experience romantic attraction. While some aromantic people want partners — or want…

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