Do you think post-op transgender people have any obligation to
tell their lovers they were once the other sex?
On The Fence
Yes.
I’m in my 40s and straight. My wife of nine years is no longer
interested in sex. Period. She relents every few weeks, but it’s never
enjoyable for either of us. As a result, I haven’t had a blowjob in
about eight years, I can’t touch her beautiful tits, kissing is without
tongue, and our rare sex is missionary and in the dark. I’m
miserable.
I believe she’s depressed. She refuses to get help, saying that
if only I would do this or that, she would be more willing. But I do
this and that, and she’s still not interested. After a lot of talking,
she suggested that I find a girlfriend for sex. However, she set
conditions that were unrealistic: She wanted to meet and approve of her
before I slept with her; and I could only see this other person late at
night, with the wife’s permission, which would only be granted after
ALL other family obligations were satisfied (kids in bed, bills paid,
trash taken out, etc.). I preferred a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach.
She then withdrew the idea entirely. I proceeded to meet and sleep with
several different women anyway, and I am now seeing one regularly. Sex
is enjoyable again.
My question: I know that people would say I am cheating on my
wife, but am I wrong to feel just as cheated by her?
Need Some Answers
No.
You are a terrible person who shouldn’t be allowed to give advice
to anyone about anything. Whose idea was it to give an asshole faggot
like you an advice column, anyway? You’re a stupid piece of shit who
doesn’t know anything about sex or the human heart, and you will regret
everything you’ve ever done and every word you’ve ever written once you
die and have to stand before your Creator.
God Hates You
Maybe so.
A couple months ago, I sent you an e-mail thanking you for doing
what you do. Today, the power of your voice hit home. As you know, an
angry, sexually frustrated gunman went on a killing spree at a fitness
center in Pittsburgh. Reading the killer’s blog, I was struck by the
similarity of his situation to that of the lonely, sexually frustrated
men you counseled in your column the week before the shooting. Of
course the similarity between the shooter and your correspondents ends
there: George Sodini did not reach out; the men who wrote you
did.
The reason this strikes so close to home is that my situation for
years was very similar to Sodini’s and to the lonely men who you helped
in that column. Although I wasn’t a virgin, I was “clogged up” and
unable to get close to people physically and emotionally. I overcame my
fears and hang-ups, and life is good now. But it wasn’t easy. I was
never as angry as the man who shot up the fitness center, but I was
absolutely as lonely and isolated as he was and every bit as lonely as
the men whose letters you answered. Maybe if I’d been alone another 14
years — I found my life partner at 34 — I might have become
that angry.
Middle-Aged Family Guy
Thank you for the note, MAFG, and thanks — I think — for
pointing me to George Sodini’s blog. The blog has been pulled down, but
it is extensively quoted in news reports and it makes for depressing
reading. It’s never pretty when chronic sexual deprivation and a
lifetime of romantic rejection slam into a narcissistic personality
with sociopathic tendencies who happens to live in a country awash in
guns:
“I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch
of cologne — yet 30 million women rejected me, over an 18- or
25-year period. That is how I see it. Thirty million is my rough
guesstimate of how many desirable single women there are.”
So, hey, why not go shoot up an aerobics class full of women?
A woman I knew at college — an antiviolence activist,
righteous and right-on — used to say, “Testosterone is gasoline,
porn the match.” I disagree. Testosterone is gasoline — which
isn’t necessarily a bad thing (gas makes things go) — but sexual
frustration is the match.
I’m not suggesting that this tragedy could’ve been averted if only
some selfless woman had “taken one for the team” and married Sodini, an
asshole and a sociopath. The women who rejected him obviously saw him
for what he was and were right to run in the other direction. But if
someone had told Sodini, who hadn’t had sex since 1990, to see sex
workers — something I advised the guys in my column two weeks ago
to consider (among other things) — it might have taken the edge
off his anger and kept it from curdling into homicidal rage. Maybe if
we, as a society, valued sex workers and sex work, if we legalized and
regulated it, and if we viewed “paying for it” as a legitimate option
for guys who would otherwise go without for decades, perhaps this
tragedy could have been averted.
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t wish a client as sick as Sodini on
any of my sex-worker pals. But if Sodini had started seeing sex workers
back in 1991 and not, say, two weeks ago last Monday, perhaps he
wouldn’t have snapped.
But Sodini wasn’t taking advice from me. He was getting it from R.
Don Steele, author of How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35.
The book was sitting on Sodini’s coffee table in a video he posted to
the web. Steele apparently traffics in — and profits from —
instilling false hopes in losers like Sodini. (“Immediately improve
your success with women!” Steele says on his website www.steelballs.com. “Everything is
100% guaranteed money back.”)
Sodini felt that he was entitled not just to sex and a romantic
relationship, but to sex and a romantic relationship with a much
younger woman. And he was following the advice of a love-and-romance
guru who encouraged him to cling to that belief. Not normally a
problem, I suppose. But Sodini wasn’t just another socially maladapted
schlub furious with the world — and with women — for
denying him the twentysomething ass he felt he had coming. Sodini was a
nut. And he couldn’t understand why, if he was doing everything right,
he wasn’t finding the success that Steele guaranteed him.
Someone needed to sit Sodini down and explain that settling down
requires settling for and that young women are usually interested in
young men and that we can’t always have what we want and that there
might be women out there who would date him — perhaps women
closer to his own age, women in his own league in the looks and
social-skills departments (and Sodini wasn’t bad looking) — but
no woman was going to date him until after he got his shit together.
And someone needed to tell him that he wasn’t going to impress the
ladies by leaving How to Date Young Women: For Men Over 35 on
his coffee table.
And someone needed to tell him that some men — and some women
— are alone all their lives and, yeah, that sucks and it’s not
fair and it hurts.
Instead, Sodini had R. Don “Steel Balls” Steele telling him that if
he just bought a matching sofa set — really — and the right
suit, that success was guaranteed.
