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February 9, 2011
Savage Love
"I'm going to offer you my advice on one condition: you don't write to me ever again."
By Dan Savage
I've written before, but I didn't hear back from you — probably because my e-mail didn't contain flogging or santorum or whatever. But I won't be IGNORED, Dan.
I'm a thirty-two-year-old female. Second marriage, two kids: one kid with my ex and one with the man I cheated on my ex with (my current husband). My problem: a year ago, I found my "first love" on a social network. I'd been looking for him off and on for more than sixteen years. This person was a jerk who left me for one of my friends back in high school. But he was and still is the love of my life. Always has been. Always will be. He is not married, has never been married, and has no children. We began an affair about seven months after finding each other. My marriage, my second marriage, had been rocky before this. My second husband, of three years, stopped having sex with me after I became pregnant, and this continued after our child was born. We tried counseling. It didn't help. In no way am I using this as an excuse. I know what I've done is wrong. But I also have a pretty bad track record and have cheated on every man I've ever been with, except for my first love.
This man, my first love, is the worst person in the world for me. Yet I'm in love with him. I have ALWAYS been in love with him. He wants me to leave my white-collar husband for him, a very blue-collar guy. I live in a nice home in the suburbs; my first love lives in a small apartment in the city. Five months after we began having sex with each other, my current husband found out. Instead of leaving me, he has turned into a different man: extremely loving and attentive. He says this experience has made him realize how much he loves me and that he doesn't want to lose me.
My other problem: I didn't begin this affair to get my second husband's attention. I began it because I'm in love with my first love and always have been. My husband knows of my deep feelings for my "first." I mention divorce often, but it falls on deaf ears. I want to do what is best for my kids — and that would be staying right where I am. But I feel my only chance for "true" love, if there is such a thing, is passing me by. I've never felt for anyone as I do for this man. Every man who has come into my life AFTER him knew about him and knew that if he ever came back for me, I was gone. This includes my current husband. Dan, pull out all the stops on this one, as you famously do, and please tell me what to do.
— Serial Cheater In Love
I've read what you've written before, SCIL, but I didn't respond because I didn't have much to say to you and I still don't. I had the same reaction reading your e-mail today that I had reading all the other e-mails you've sent. My reaction is a little selfish, and I'm a little embarrassed to share it with you. But you keep pressing me, SCIL, and so here it is:
THIS BITCH CAN GET LEGALLY MARRIED AND I CAN'T?!?!
Sorry, sorry, sorry. That was cunty of me — nowhere near the level of respectful professionalism that people expect of me — and so now I'm going to have to make amends by scrounging up some of that advice shit you're after. But I'm going to offer you my advice on one condition: you don't write to me ever again.
Okay!
You say you've cheated on every man you've ever been with, with the exception of your "first love," SCIL. You seem to be engaged in a little circular reasoning/magical thinking here — you've concluded that he must be the love of your life because you didn't cheat on him, and you didn't cheat on him because he's the love of your life. No. You didn't cheat on him, SCIL, because you didn't get around to it. You two broke up when you were fifteen-years old. If you'd been with him a little longer, you would've cheated on him like you've cheated on everybody else.
If you leave your current husband and break up your first child's second home and your second child's first home, it won't be long before you get around to cheating on the love of your life, too. Because you're a cheater, SCIL, a habitual, serial cheater. You're precisely the kind of person who shouldn't make monogamous commitments.
Or get married. Or have children.
So what should you do? Stay? Go? Frankly, SCIL, I don't give a fuck what you do. Stay or go, it's not going to make a fuck of a lot of difference. Your personal life is a mess, SCIL, and it always will be. Because, you see, wherever you go, there you are.
That said: if your current husband doesn't mind being cheated on, if he can put up with your affairs and wants to put your children first, then I think you should stay with him for the sake of your kids. They deserve whatever stability and continuity you can provide for them between infidelities. Again, if you leave your current husband for the love of your life, SCIL, it won't be long before you're cheating on your third husband and preparing to uproot your kids a third/second time. I know it, you know it, everyone out there reading this knows it, even your current husband seems to know it.
So just stay put, okay?
My girlfriend of two years, my first real relationship, broke up with me a month ago. Although I felt like shit for most of that month, we somehow managed to struggle through to a close friendship. I wouldn't say I'm entirely over her, but I understand why it happened and that we won't be getting back together. All in all, I've felt like we've both been pretty mature and things are going well.
The complication: we still find each other attractive and we work very well together sexually. So she proposed an FWB arrangement, and I said yes. We laid down ground rules — we are not together, we are just friends who fuck, so no "I love you," no commitments, no expectations — and we started having hot sex. Is this foolhardy? We both know that I'd prefer something more. So the question remains: should we keep fucking?
— Can't Recall Acronym Procedure
How are you going to feel when your ex-girlfriend/current-fuck-buddy finds a new boyfriend and ends your FWB arrangement? If you can honestly answer, "I'll be happy for her," then keep fucking — but don't forget to ask for your balls back when she dumps you that second time.
If you can't say that and you decide to keep fucking the ex anyway, CRAP, you wouldn't be the first lovesick dumpee who agreed to enter into an FWB arrangement with an ex. If the short-term rewards (all that hot sex) and the potential long-term payoff (getting back together) make the risk seem worthwhile, then keep fucking.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
Commentarium (47 Comments)
the second one was made up and is publicity for the movie(s) no strings attached (friends with benefits).
it even tells us it's crap.
Um, that's actually insane. When Dan Savage answers a questions about enemas, do you automatically assume it's to promote a new Jon Mayer record?
Marry me?
Nice!
Dr. Laura-style advice for the serial cheater:
It's not about you anymore. It's about your kids. This "true love" entitlement is crap because a)you're a serial cheater, b) your "true love" is bad for you, and c) "true love" will only hurt your kids. Before you take your kids down with you just for the sake of "true love" please give your husband full custody, because you are obviously too selfish to look after their best interests.
Serial Cheater is the dark side of no-fault divorce. Sad truth is she'll have no problem forcing the sale of that nice house in the burbs and getting a chunk of whatever else hapless white-collar hubby has so that she can run to blue-collar "first love" with a fistfull of cash. Almost (but not quite) makes one long for the days when they would have been arrested, and white-collar hubby would have kept the kids.
After you have kids, buttercup, it's not about you anymore, it's about them, at least until they are grown. If you can find a moral bone in your body, go be with "first love" if you must, but leave them with the grown-up. You writing for advice is a waste of time, because, just about anyone worth a damn is going to advise you to do the right thing, and that's just not something you can do.
No-fault divorce??? This is far from a No-fault divorce. All he needs to do is get a hold of her emails and he will have the kids, the house and fucking child support.
She needs to have her ovaries removed and locked somewhere where she can't damage her faultless kids.
ยท@L1: nope. in most courts unless the wife is a mad crack whore, she'll get custody and the guy will be paying. but i completely agree with your second paragraph. her letter makes is seem like her own happiness is far more important than her children's
A bad person. Just a bad, bad person.
That wasn't cunty of you, Dan, it's a totally legitimate gripe.
Serial is simply immature. Trash too.
"Your personal life is a mess, and it always will be. Because, you see, wherever you go, there you are." I'd like to have this printed on business cards so I can just hand them out and save myself the time and breath of offering advice to people who never take it.
Speaking of not taking advice, I have a feeling SCIL is going to decide she's a SPECIAL case and Dan doesn't understand her SPECIALNESS or the SPECIALNESS of her "true love."
@LS "Speaking of not taking advice, I have a feeling SCIL is going to decide she's a SPECIAL case and Dan doesn't understand her SPECIALNESS or the SPECIALNESS of her "true love.""
That's SO full of win.
SCIL, Dan and the other commenters are right. Grow the fuck up and take responsibility for your kids. And see a therapist.
Speaking as a divorced dad, one thing I'd like to say to SCIL. If you decide to run off with your "First Love," which it sounds like you've already made up your mind to do and are just looking for external rationalization, LEAVE THE KIDS BEHIND. Leave them with your second husband, let your first husband have generous visitation if that's what he wants, but if you're going to go, just pack the fuck up and go.
Have fun getting a good start on your third divorce, but don't drag the kids into it. Don't get all wrapped up in "kids belong with their mother no matter what" bullshit, don't look at custody as a contest to win, if you're going to go do something that you seem to know is irresponsible and selfish, especially if you feel you can't help yourself, DON'T try to drag the kids along. If the thought of what they'll have to put up with doesn't worry you, think of how your special true love will feel all the sudden having two kids from your two previous husbands thrust into his already-financially-tight life. He'll ditch you long before you get a chance to stray on him.
Speaking as the child of a women who cheated and ran off with another man, I agree! Thank God I was raised by my dad and not my mom.
SCIL, is a selfish bitch. Her "true love" should be her children! They come first.
SCIL, you will regret your actions one day. Your children will grow up and resent you. Trust me, my mother was just like you.
Husband # two needs to take her to Mexico for a lovely snorkeling trip. And then come home once the tragic accident has occured.
Ironically I almost thought this bitch was my ex as the story fit her well. She too was a serial cheater and WDH's prediction was exactly what happened to me. Oh how I love reading these horrific stories to relive my own nightmare.
"Husband # two needs to take her to Mexico for a lovely snorkeling trip. And then come home once the tragic accident has occured."
AGREED. I feel a tragic accident is right around the corner.
re #2, i was the lovesick dumpee. get out now, it won't end well.
I'm sorry, I just can't get over the hilariousness of SCIL *demanding* that Dan give her advice. "I won't be IGNORED, Dan!" Her truly epic sense of entitlement tells me hubby #2 would be better off if she did decide to leave him. Those poor kids, though...
It's a joke, a reference to a famous line in the movie Fatal Attraction. Not sure why no one (including Dan Savage) seems to have picked up on this.
Doesn't negate the point that the use of this line is an illustrating her wicked sense of entitlement.
#2 FWB can work well. Years back I pursued a girl who, after a brief romance, it transpired was hopelessly in unrequited love with her gay male workmate. We were both living in a big city a long way from home and fate would improbably throw us into random encounters on the street so we divested ourselves of the portent of meaning and the prospect of a future together and had some wild times. If you go in with your eyes open there's no psychological castration involved. On the contrary, in one of those ironies of life, the tang of poon-tang on your pencil will probably give you a confidence that will put you in the line of fire for a real romance. Normally that's a cruel irony because, depending on your moral compass, it's not exploitable but not so here. We had companionship, discovered bath-based role play, I coached her how to deal with stress/anxiety, she gave me material for writing and when we eventually disappeared from each other's lives it was a tender farewell.
It took me a few moments to figure out what "the tang of poon-tang on your pencil" meant. ...i mean...pencil?
I love how women think they can get a moral pass for cheating if they do it for LOVE. Yeah, I know men do this too, but we see it all the time on TV and movies that a woman is justified in cheating on her husband (who is always a selfish lout) because she found her "soul mate" or some such crap.
SCIL would be better off living alone with the kids. Shared custody or full custody is not the question. The question is that her "love stories" are always a mess and her kids should not share that part of her life. Keep that private. Protect them from your love life. Give them some stability.
Frankly, the kids DO belong with their dad/stepdad in Home #1 and/or Home#2. At some point, this bitch is going to make an even worse choice. Her kids should not be put in harm's way (abuse, molestation) due to her shitty choices.
The funny thing about Serial is that despite her protestations, she most certainly isn't "in love" with her high school beau. I mean, this was the result of a brief relationship half a lifetime ago...when she was *16*. And even now she says he's the "worst person in the world" for her...
So yeah, sweetheart - that's not love - that's a high school crush. Which totally explains why the unanimous opinion is that this won't last: because it isn't founded on love at all; at the very most it's a projection of what she hopes one day will be love (but which we all recognize better will be the dying of the fleeting crush that it is).
The fact that she spent however long looking for him says that she had it in her mind already that this was going to be a (literal) "love affair".
Dan said it perfectly: SCIL should stay, have great affairs, and presumably her husband will realize that's fine. Open marriages are getting pretty common--we have had one for 15 years, and our kids are totally happy and well taken care of. She's not evil. She's just human. Her hubby realizes that now--
Next is for her to realize that she's fine, and stop trying to be monogamous, which she isn't. Next is for more of us readers to realize she's human, and she can raise her kids just fine when she gives up trying to satisfy some cultural fantasy.
I don't think the problem is SCIL being a polyamorous peg trying to fit into square holes. She never mentions still caring for those she cheats on. Instead, she complains about problems in the marriage. Even now, shes torn between leaving for her first love or staying for the kids and her own material comfort. Never once did she mention how she felt about her current husband.
You said twice that she's human. To be human is to err but that doesn't excuse all wrongs. Humans also learn and it doesn't seem like she learned from her experience cheating the first time. What should she have learned? The pain and disruption that cheating causes those around her. What should she have done then? Either kept her legs closed or got her husbands approval before she started an affair.
Oh yeah--and read "Sex at Dawn", which Dan reviewed in July...It gives a powerful perspective on non-monogamy, even in very successful marriages.
Damn it, Dan! There you go again; calling people out on their shit, and offering level-headed advice...
@Serial Cheater In Love: People like you are the reason that threapists stay employed. Both of your children are going to realise what an a**hole you are and estrange themselves from you.
Good advice this week. I was once in a similar situation to CRAP. He needs to leave. Post-relationship FWB is not empowering or enjoyable; it's emasculating. Move on and find a new girl. It's possible to have good sex with other people.
This was awesome. God I love honesty. Yes, we got the Fatal Attraction reference. But really, do you wanna channel that? The one dating rule that has really kept me out of deep doodoo: don't sleep with the crazy ladies.
Laugh out loud. But they're so fun!
Sleep with them but don't get involved with them? But then they automatically involve you with them.
So I'll raise it since no one else will: it's best to stay put and model an unhappy, disrespectful relationship for the children's stability? I'm not sure about that. She'll have to answer for herself. Upon mature reflection she shouldn't have gotten married and had children. Lots of people can say that.
I think you have a point, but I also think, at least from her description, she's had plenty of chances to think, maybe find out WHY she kept cheating on boyfriends/husbands, and then NOT gotten married until she was ready. But as it's been said, if she REALLY wants to get out, maybe she should - but she better make sure her kids are being provided for to. She had them, so she needs to take responsibility for that too.
@pfie, her husband can't "realize" that affairs are fine, he has to decide they are fine. It's not what he signed up for.
"cheaters" can raise kids just fine. monogamy is a different story. but you don't need a two-person monogamous relationship to raise kids successfully - just like you don't need a man and a woman to raise kids successfully.
If someone is cheating on their spouse, bad stuff is going to happen to the union, and that doesn't help anybody including the kids. but people who aren't going to settle for one sexual partner in their lives can still raise kids very well, as long as they are in the right partnership. my gf introduced me to open relationships, and it's worked very well for us. is this an anecdote? yes. is dan making gross generalizations? yes. am i being nitpicky? sorta
I have a problem with SCIL's actions, but I've never found that shitting all over someone to be an effective way of getting them to change. If I were talking to SCIL, I'd ask, "What do you want? What kind of life do you want to lead? What kind of person do you want to be?" I *think* the answer is that she'd like to be happy with Hubby No. 2, and be rid of these feelings about her teenage crush. The answer then is therapy, lots of therapy. There's something in her past (absentee father is my guess) that lead her to make these choices. It's easy to say, "Put your children first and be miserable"; it's harder to do. If she's open to therapy, to exploring where her feelings and behaviors come from, then there's some hope that once she figures it out, she'll be free of the compulsion. (As an aside, I also don't have a lot of sympathy for Hubby No. 2. He knew she was a cheater when he took her on; he's basically estopped from complaining when she does the same thing to him as she did with him.)
I was an ex-girlfriends booty call for about two years. I was in love with her. It slayed me when she broke up with me. And I stupidly believed that somehow I could convince her that I was the right one, despite her actions and statements to the contrary. Horrible limbo to be in. She would show up suddenly at my work, after no contact for a month or so, making me a nervous wreck. And of course I would sleep with her. Christ, come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure what I would do if she showed up at my door tomorrow. But I know I wouldn't harbor any false hopes. But she was a pleasurable fuck. Not the best I've had, but something worked right.
Okay, SCIL, is a mess. She is currently hurting herself, husband and children for starters. But, telling her not make monogamous commitments and to go on fucking the hell out of everyone but her husband seems to relinquish her of all responsibility. Fine, maybe you really just want her to go away, but for anyone else in a somewhat similar situation shouldn't they figure out why they cannot connect? What is going on? What if you will not respect the relationship because it is scaring the crap out of you and you are refusing to address the background issues. Wouldn't it be better to get it out and deal with it before you destroy the lives around you? What if the hurting could stop?
omg, SCIL needs to wake the fuck up! She's in love with someone she was with when she was 15, for 16 years? Get over it. She is delusional and I feel bad for her kids. And her husband.
Well done article that. I'll make sure to use it wlsiey.
6ePJmm However, the author created a cool thing!!!