Q: When I first started dating my girlfriend, I asked her about past boyfriends and she said she hadnt met the right guy yet. After dating for nine years, I found out about a past boyfriend and looked through her e-mails. I found out she dated her married boss for three years. She broke up with me for looking and for judging her. I feel like she lied, and she thinks it was none of my business. Weve been broken up for five months. Shes reached out, but I cant get over my anger or disgust that she was someones mistress. Am I a bad person?
Still Angry And Disgusted
A: Yup.
Havent met the right guy yet ? Havent met any guys ever.
Almost everyone has done something and/or someone they regret doingalthough its possible your ex-girlfriend doesnt regret fucking her married boss for three years, SAAD, and its possible theres no need for regret. Sometimes people have affairs for all the right reasons. Sometimes abandoning a spouse and/or breaking up a home with kids in it, aka doing the right thing and divorcing, is the worse choice. Life is long and complicated, and its possible for a person to demonstrate loyalty and commitment with something other than their genitals. Sometimes people do what they must to stay married and stay sane, and their affair partners are doing good by being bad.
Its also possibleand perhaps likelierthat your ex-girlfriend made an impulsive, shitty, selfish choice to fuck someone elses husband. Its possible hes a serial philanderer, a cheating piece of shit, and then, after fucking him that one time, your girlfriend felt pressured to keep fucking him and wound up having a years-long affair with her married boss. And then, when it was all over, she stuffed it down the memory hole because she wasnt proud of it and wanted to forget it.
Its also possible she didnt tell you about this relationship when you asked because she intuitedcorrectly, as it turned outthat you are, in your own words, a bad person, i.e., the kind of guy who would punish his girlfriend for having a sexual history, for making her fair share of mistakes, and for deciding to keep some things private. (Not secret, SAAD. Private.) In other words, she correctly intuited that you would punish her for being human.
Finding out about a past boyfriend doesnt give you the right to invade your partners privacy and dig through their ancient e-mails. Your girlfriend was right to break up with you for snooping through her e-mails and judging her so harshly. And she didnt even lie to you, dude! Her boss clearly wasnt the right guy, seeing as he was married and her boss, and the relationship ended before you two even first laid thighs on each other nine years ago.
And from where Im sitting, SAAD, it looks like she still hasnt met the right guy.
To be perfectly frank, I dont want to help you get over your anger and disgustnot that you asked me to help you get past those feelings. It kind of sounds like you want your anger and disgust affirmed and Im going to go with that and affirm the shit out of those feelings: Stay angry! Stay disgusted! Not because those feeling are validtheyre notbut because those feelings prevented you from taking your ex back when she reached out. She may not know it yet, but shes better off without you, SAAD, and heres hoping you stay angry and disgusted long enough for her to realize it.
Q: Im a few months into OkCupid dating, and its going well! Ive stuck to two automatic pass rules: anyone who mentions my looks and nothing else in the first message and anyone with no face pic. Its worked out great so far. But Ive noticed that most kinksters on OKC dont post face pics. I can understand this. I once came across a coworker on the sitedidnt look, passed immediatelyand I can imagine nobody wants their boss or coworkers to know theyre looking for puppy play and CBT. Not everyone has the luxury of taking a risk like that. So Im tempted to drop my no face pic = pass rule for kinksters. But then I imagine how that would go: Chat, chat, chat. Hey, can I see a face pic? Oh no, Im not physically attracted to this person! Then I have to awkwardly un-match and feel terribly shallow and guilty for a while. So do I keep my rule and pass on some very promising profiles without face pics to avoid hurting someones feelings? Or do I bend the rules? Im just not looking to hurt anyone in a bad way.
Not That Kind Of Sadist
A: Lead with your truth, NTKOS: Hey, we share a lot of common interestsBDSM, CBT, TTbut I usually require face pics before I chat. I understand why you may not be able to post your pics and why you would want to chat for a bit and establish trust before sharing pics with me privately. So Im happy to chat so long as youre okay with the risk that I might pass after seeing your face pic. Still, even if were not ultimately a sexual or romantic match, every kinkster needs some kinky friends!
Q: So Ive fallen in love with one of my good friends. I am in grad school, and we met because we are in the same intensive program and we spend a lot of time together. When we first met, I had no interest in this person. And for the majority of the first year we worked together, that feeling maintained. However, over the past few months, Ive found myself falling in love with this person. Their intelligence and beauty is simply intoxicating. I love our friendship, but at times it is a bit overwhelming being in their company because Ive developed strong feelings for them. I dont think they share these feelings. Or at least I havent been given any indication that they share the same feelings. How do I go about telling them? Id like them to know this is how I feel, but I also dont want to lay the weight of my feelings on them or ruin our friendship.
Growing Romantic Attachment Disrupts Studies
A: You have two options: You can be honest with this person or you can be that unsettling friend with an ulterior motive. Personally, GRADS, I think fessing up is better than shutting upsublimated/unexpressed desire has a way of souring a friendshipbut if your grad program is ending soon, Id encourage you to wait. Most graduate programs are two years (some are less!), and youve been working together for more than a year. So there should already be a light at the end of that intensive tunnel. In the meantime, savor the agony and pray on it, as Mike Pence would say. (Only you should swap out prayer for masturbation.) And, hey, you didnt have feelings for them until recently. So who knows? They may develop feelings for you by the time your intensive grad program ends.
And, yes, telling a friend you have a crush on them is always a riskit could ruin the friendship or make things awkward for a while. Just be honest, direct, and unambiguous (I would like to date you, not I hope we can hang out sometime), and explicitly invite your crush to say no if the answer is no.
On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Boing Boings Cory Doctorow: savagelovecast.com.