TMI Tuesday

A dear friend is stuck in an unhappy relationship. What advice would you give to the friend to cope–how can they make lemonade out of lemons?

Holy shit get out of it. Seriously, life is too short to be stuck in an unhappy relationship and try to make do. I don't believe you should have to cope with that. I know, there are kids, shared property, etc. etc. but still. Do you think your kids can't tell that their parents are unhappy?

Do you agree that marriage was a pragmatic institution and in today’s society traditional marriage is not a need but merely a want?

I think marriage is to a certain extent still a pragmatic institution. If you're not married to someone there are a whole realm of things you legally cannot do with/for them. Obviously I'm excluding some other legal relationship you might have. But seriously, when I joke that Sveta and I got married for tax purposes, that's not totally a joke. We might get divorced for money reasons at some point if this country doesn't get its shit together about health insurance.

So I'm pro-marriage for people who want it, but I don't think people who want it are being frivolous. Gay people getting married is important, both to them and their acceptance as well as for legal reasons. Marriage, as far as the law is concerned, is mostly secular and legal. I don't know how one would do away with that aspect of marriage, but if someone figured it out and they did, I guess I'd change my opinion on the necessity of marriage in modern society.

How do you encourage creativity in the bedroom?

We check things out. We read, watch videos, look at ads for toys, that kind of thing. We also talk to other people (and often enough share techniques with those people in more than an academic sense) and use that to enrich our own lovemaking. But there's always more to learn. Seriously, I'm hardly a naif when it comes to fucking, but even I am continually amazed with the variety out there. That's why I think it's vital to fuck around. And I mean both to experiment and to fuck as many other people as possible.

Sexually, who has influenced you the most?

Honestly, I think Sheri might take the cake on this one. She's the one who's most pushed my boundaries. I would say that with guys, I refer back to my dad (sorry Mike, even with you) as a benchmark, but he hasn't taught me as many fun things as Sheri has. It's a narrow race though; I've learned plenty from my family, even Mom.

During sex are you focused on positions or the quality and connection with your lover?

I'm rarely focused on positions, per se. Sometimes I'm not looking for deep love and sometimes I might want to tick something off the ol' bucket list, but usually I'm more interested in quality than position, though I do have positions that, all other things being equal, I prefer. But if sex is just an hour of missionary and it works, that's fine by me. Ok, so an hour is a bit long for one position, but by that I mean that if all I get is one position but the sex is good, I don't care. I might suggest changing positions if things get boring or if something isn't working, but I don't usually mind.

Have you ever dated or slept with a neighbor? How did things turn out?

When I was a kid I fooled around with our neighbor until my parents said in no uncertain terms that I was not to deflower the neighbor boy or his parents would find out and it would get everyone into trouble. Joke's on them though because Sheri had already had his cherry, got bored with him, and passed him on to me. But other than fooling around, some light petting and fingering, and seeing my pussy while he jerked off, I didn't go any farther because I didn't know at that point that Sheri had already had him. When I found out years later I was pissed.

Other than that, unless living in the same dorm counts as neighbors, I can't think of a time when I have fucked a neighbor, let alone dated one.

Have you ever broken up with a significant other then “cheated” with that same person while they were in a relationship with someone else?

In fairness to me, the breakup was totally amicable and wasn't really more than, "I guess we should probably see other people?" "Yep, works for me. Let's just be friends." I can't even remember whether he initiated the "break" or I did. This was at a certain point in my life when I was dating people one at a time, even if I was fucking other people simultaneously. Everyone was informed. I wasn't cheating, mostly.

And then we kept fucking occasionally, because that's a thing I do. No one should be surprised that I have fucked someone with whom I was friends. We remained friends, and we were both occasionally horny, and he'd been fine with me fucking around while dating him, so it was no big thing, until I learned that he had become seriously involved with another girl, who I didn't like, and yeah, I guess I turned a blind eye to that fact and kept fucking him when he felt like it. I'm not proud, but I'm not particularly ashamed either. It was his cheating, and as far as he knew I didn't know, and he never told me. They didn't last, and both he and I drifted apart eventually, like you do. I never told anyone except Gwen, and she was in my camp so that doesn't really count.

Have you ever been in a secret relationship? Why was it secret?

A number of them, secret from various people. Usually because those people either wouldn't approve or I'd get in trouble with them. I try not to do that anymore.