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SAVAGE
LOVE
BY
DAN SAVAGE
I
am a 28-year-old, post-op transsexual woman. I met a great
31-year-old guy. We have been dating for a year, and he recently
told me that he didn’t think he was sure he was in love with
me. He said that he didn’t know if he could give me any sort
of commitment, that he is afraid of what his peers would think
if they knew my medical past. I can’t say that I’m sure I’m
in love with him either, but I do know that we thoroughly
enjoy each other’s company and miss each other immensely when
we are not together. However, he asked to take a step back
and reevaluate the relationship.
I transitioned in my late teenage years. I blend in very well,
and few people know that I am trans. I am like any other woman
in that I want a husband and children, and he says he wants
a wife and kids. I asked him a few days ago if he could give
me an answer as to whether I should move on or if he wanted
me to wait. He couldn’t give me an answer. I have my own life.
I am a full-time student training to become a nurse. I made
time for him because he became important to me, but am I beating
a dead horse here?
—Transitions
and Crossroads
You
enjoy spending time together, you miss each other when you’re
apart, you want similar things (commitment, kids)—that sure
sounds like love to me. And if it’s not quite love,
TAC, it’s close enough to round up to love.
A (longish) aside: The way many people in long-term relationships
talk about their relationships—the way I sometimes
talk about mine—can do a real disservice to the single
and/or dating. The further the early stages of an LTR recede
into the past, the likelier the coupled are to blithely toss
off bullshit like “Oh, I knew the minute I met him/her that
he/she was the one. I was sure.” In reality, of course,
we didn’t know, we weren’t sure, we had doubts, insecurities,
issues, etc.
Truth is, no one in a successful LTR knew for sure that it
was true and lasting love until it lasted. And after
the passage of time proves that we bet on the right person,
we stuff those early doubts, insecurities, and issues down
the ol’ memory hole and start telling people how “sure” we
were right from the start. (For the record: There are lots
of smug married people out there yammering on about how “sure”
they were right from the start who have divorce proceedings
in their futures.)
Anyway: There are too many smugly coupled-up people out there
paying our partners—and ourselves—the false compliment of
a backdated certainty. And that would be fine if single people
within earshot weren’t forced to listen to our smug bullshit,
some of whom go home thinking, “Well, this person I’m seeing—this
person I enjoy spending time with, this person I miss terribly
when we’re apart—she must not be ‘the one’ because . . . I’m
not sure.”
Back to you, TAC: I’m glad you have a life and goals, TAC,
because that will make it easier to do what you must. Go and
tell this guy that there are no sure things, but that you’re
as confident as a person can be that you two are a match.
(But he’s not your only potential match—just as no one is
really “sure,” no one is “the one,” only one of many potential
possible ones.) Then tell him you’re not going to wait forever
while he “reevaluates” and stresses out about things that
neither of you can control. And finish by telling him to give
you a call when he’s ready to make at least a mini-commitment:
going steady, on a track toward engagement and ultimately
marriage and (adopted) children.
Then—and this is the most important part—go back to living
your life, TAC, go back to school and career goals. Move on
without waiting for him to tell you to move on. Don’t call
him, don’t e-mail him, don’t text him. Don’t pass up other
dating opportunities in the hopes that he’ll get his shit
together. If you’re still single if and when he calls, great.
See him again. If not, well, it’s his loss.
I’m a 20-something freelancer, and I have a barter relationship
with a facility that lets me work there for free. I’ve become
friends with the guys who run the facility. Recently, one
of my girlfriend’s best friends had sex with one of these
guys a few times. I recently found out that one time, postcoitus,
he secretly filmed my girlfriend’s friend naked using his
iPhone. He’s shown the video to a few mutual friends but didn’t
tell me or show me.
I think this is some super-vile shit, and I’m horrified that
someone I considered a friend would be such an asshole. I’d
like to tell him how I feel about this, but at the same time,
I can’t afford for my relationship with him to sour. I’ve
heard that he deleted the video, so maybe what my girlfriend’s
friend doesn’t know can’t hurt her. One potentially pertinent
piece of information is that my girlfriend’s first sex partner
secretly filmed her and showed it to everyone in her high
school, and it scarred her. I think she would be super upset
to find out about what this guy did to her friend. I want
to do the right thing here, but it’s not obvious what that
is. Help!
—Video
Is Defining Ethical Obligations
What
your friend did to your girlfriend’s friend is vile, VIDEO,
potentially illegal, and—most importantly—not a very nice
way to treat someone who was kind enough to fuck his brains
out.
You do have to do something, VIDEO, but your options
aren’t limited to either beating him nearly to death with
a baseball bat or beating him all the way to death with a
baseball bat. It’s possible to confront someone in a friendly-ish
way, employing a tone that at once communicates your affections
for him even as you chide him for doing something that undermined
those affections.
“Dude,
I heard about that little video,” you say to him, perhaps
over a drink. “And I was glad to hear you deleted it—you did
delete it, right?—because that’s a shitty thing to do and
you’re not a shitty guy. It’s also an illegal thing to do,
and people have gotten busted for doing that kind of shit.
Be careful, man, you could really fuck up your life.”
If you can tamp down your righteous fury long enough to put
it to him that way, VIDEO, you will have reinforced what should
be communitywide/specieswide social norms—no dirty pictures
or videos without the consent of all involved—without nuking
your professional relationship with the guy. Good luck.
My roommate and I were wondering why the “tech savvy”
youth who work on your podcast are “at risk.” He says your
podcast is a community-service program for at-risk kids; I
say that they’re at risk working for a sex columnist. Which
is it? We would call, but we live in Canada.
—Canadian
Fans
There
are no phones in Canada?
One or two TSARY are on work-release programs or doing community
service, CF, but it’s the 90 minutes they spend with me every
week that represents their primary risk. It’s not that I would
put the moves on any of them—I’m a stickler about personal
hygiene—it’s just that they come in for rather more advice,
most of it unsolicited, than the average Savage Lovecast
listener.
mail@savagelove.net
Find the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
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