Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Part 8: Monica & Jess Love Cock Buffets with Dan Savage

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

In Part 8: Monica & Jess Love Cock Buffets, M and J welcome Dan Savage (author, media pundit, journalist, and LGBT community activist) to the attic via video chat. Dan delineates many differences between dating in the gay community vs. the straight one. He talks to Monica about why women are engrained to "vet a guy before they bed a guy" and talks to Jess about transgressive behaviors in the gay community. He discusses the notion that we meet a few people in life who are .68 and we make the choice to round them up to a 1. He talks about the equality complex and how we need to give ourselves permission to have successful short term relationships. Monica talks to Sam on the phone and relays to Jess what they talked about and Dan takes the challenges to a new level of scary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Monica, aka Miniature Mouse. I love boys. But I don't have one. And in fact, I've never had one. I could probably count on two hands how many dates I've been on in my entire life. And I decided it's time to change that. Hi, I'm Jess, and I love boys too. And in the opposite way of Monica, I can't count on all the hands in America how many people I've had sex with. And yet, I

still don't have a boyfriend. And I want one. And I'm Dax, and I love Monica and Jess in so many ways. They don't have partners. And that is a huge mystery to me because they're both incredibly attractive, so fun, so smart, and have so much to offer. So what we decided to do is examine these unhealthy patterns and bring in experts and outsiders to help critique us, advise us, guide us, pretty much call bullshit on us so that we can find the romantic companion that we're looking for. We started this thinking it was going to be just cute little dating challenges that we would go on and talk about and laugh about. Turns out it is very hard to be vulnerable in real time in public. Yes! I'm so excited! You're so lying.

We romanticize pathological love. One to ten. How much do you want love? Go. You can't even get the sentence out. I would just eat around it. It's a little selfish. Why do I want something? And then why have I designed a defense? We must put the chum in the water for the sharks to come, buddy.

Monica's like, so apparently I have to join Raya this week. He likes fucking. You don't even have a kiss, a handheld, anything. Your frontal lobe is just in the way. Push-up bra, low-cut top. That's what you should be doing. Masturbate every night. Rob's too uncomfortable for this. Please enjoy part eight, Monica and Jess Love Cock Buffets with Dan Savage.

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using the same URL. That's athleticgreens.com slash monica. and Jess. You know they don't like boys. They love boys. Wow. Part eight, Monica and Jess. This is a virtual Monica and Jess. It is. It's our first one. It's odd. I wish we were all together, but we do have a fabulous guest today, Dan Savage. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Dan. Thank you guys for having me. Oh, we're so, so, so excited to get your perspective. So last week we had Esther Perel, and she gave me the best.

Love her too. Oh, man. She really had a lot of mic drops for us. So her challenge to me was to go on an active date, not like sitting at a bar chatting, but doing something active. And to also tell the gremlin who lives on my shoulder that is trying to protect me but is doing too good of a job maybe to tell that gremlin, thank you for protecting me for 32 years, but I don't need you anymore and go on this active date. So we recorded that before the quarantine, maybe a day before I would say. So you didn't get that active date in.

a day before. So you didn't get that active date in? Actually, I did because I ended up just a couple of days ago going on a walk with this person, a six feet apart walk with this person, which actually ended up being perfect because it was really the only thing we could do. And it was active. It was also, I mean, this part feels like cheating, but it was kind of nice because it removed any physical pressure off the table. Like we couldn't touch and we couldn't be physically affectionate at all. So for me, in a weird way, it was nice because I wasn't thinking like, oh no, what's going to happen? Does he want to touch me? Do I need to touch him? Do I need, like, that just was totally off the table. So it was really nice. And it was the guy gave my phone number too. And I really, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. Oh, and those sorts of

dates, I guess, could continue now as long as you stay six feet away. Exactly. I mean, those are really the only dates we can have. He had a cute suggestion that we could be on something like this and both get the same groceries and cook the same food at the same time. That's dating right now. That's what we have to do. So how did this second one compare to a first? Wait, wait. So you already had the sit across from each other in a restaurant and watch each other chew date. This was the second date? Yeah. Correct. So this date was better than the first one.

Like I said, I think part of that is because of the pressure release. Like I wasn't thinking hard. You say you didn't feel any physical pressure. Like you didn't have to worry about whether you had to signal interest and he could kiss you at the end of the date, or if he was going to try to initiate when you weren't interested, but you'd already been on a date. Was there a kiss at the end of that date? There was not a kiss at the end of the first date, but he did text me like the next day that he wanted to see me again. So I was anticipating this next date having some physicality, which makes me anxious. But then it was sort of taken care of for me. I mean, it is a little bit cheating.

You know what I want to jump in here and say? It's so cute the way opposite-sex couples date, the way mostly straight people date. This hemming and hawing around the first kiss. So many gay first dates include double penetration, more than one person in the room or one other person in the room. And yeah, it's really cute. This going for a walk thing. Maybe gay people should try that sometime. Okay. Well, I'm so glad you're here because every expert we've had up to this point has been straight and Jess is gay. And so he comes in with a different perspective. And I thought it was really important that we have an expert that's gay that can weigh in on some of the things,

especially Jess is saying, because I think he feels like there's some heteronormative ideals and way we operate and we can place those on the gay community and it's not fair. It's not fair. Also, you know, if we look at it from a different perspective, a lot of what gets done when straight people date is accommodating and working around and assuaging a woman's very reasonable fear of violence at the hands of that man. Like two men go into a date with, you know, a reasonable expectation that they're both going to emerge from it unmolested, except for ways they wish to be molested, and alive. And there's so much violence directed at women by male partners, by male first dates, that women are always sort of strategizing about safety. You know, straight men have a higher bar to clear to prove that they're safe to be around. Gay men have a less high bar to clear.

And I say that as someone who is fully cognizant that there is male-on-male sexual violence and that there are terrible gay guys out there in the world. Jeffrey Dahmer ate my friend Tony. I'm completely aware that not everybody you meet at a bar or go home with that first time is safe. But women have to strategize around safety in ways that men don't. And so what you see, I think, a lot in gay culture is what many women would do if they didn't have to factor in controlling for male violence. Women are just as horny, just as interested, impulsive, sometimes even just as interested in anonymous sex. But with violence and slut shaming and the higher risk

of disease transmission going from male to female, then female to male, and the 100% risk of pregnancy falling onto the woman's shoulders, there's a lot more that women have to control for again than gay men have to control for. Yeah. And it's tricky because it almost feels like it's ingrained for women on such a molecular level that it's hard to even parcel out. This idea of feeling anxious about physicality feels like, oh, that's like a personal thing for me or that's because I'm inexperienced and this and that. But there is this layer of safety that's ingrained of what's going to happen and is it going to feel good or is it going to be scary or is it going to, you know, there is that element. Right. And there's

also, if you've consented to the kiss, often there's a worry that for a woman that means you've consented to everything. Exactly. And, you know, that's the top of the roller coaster and there's no getting off the ride after that. That's the attitude that a lot of men bring to that interaction. And so this idea that a woman could, anyone could withdraw their consent at any moment, even after things have started is foreign to a lot of people. And what you want to do on a first date or first few dates is determine whether someone is sensitive enough, sane enough, reasonable enough, safe enough that if you kiss him, that you're not going to be pressured to do more at that moment than you feel comfortable doing.

That that's not going to be interpreted as green light for everything, and then there's going to be a lot of pressure and coercion. Yeah. What are your thoughts, sir? Yeah, it is hard for me to separate. And what part of this is me growing up in a straight world and feeling a little shame from? And what is just completely different in the gay culture? And I try to explain that, and it comes across as excuses sometimes, or you don't know what it's like. It feels very defensive-y.

Do you catch yourself defending gay stereotypes or fighting gay stereotypes more? Because I catch myself defending the gay culture to my straight friends. And then I also yell at my gay friends, like, let's grow the fuck up and not be peter pan and let's stop fucking so much you know and let's have kids because we can so i see both sides like look at straight land just because you can't have kids doesn't mean you should the world is full of straight people who could and shouldn't have true for sure and our superpower is we don't have kids by accident you can't get drunk and adopt one night.

There are definitely things about gay culture that bring in a lot of toxic masculinity, that bring in a lot of dynamics that aren't necessarily healthy. But there's this pathologizing of gay men and gay male sex cultures based on the actions of the people who are trying to kill themselves, basically. We can look around and we see people who are drinking themselves to death, eating themselves to death, and we also see people who are fucking themselves to death. And it is easier to fuck yourself to death in gay land than in straight land as a man. Straight men would do everything that gay men do if straight men could, but straight men can't because women won't. There's no heterosexual equivalent of a bathhouse. A gay bathhouse is a whorehouse staffed by volunteers. And if there were such things for straight men, they would go, but they

can't. Female sexual reserve and hesitancy and fear, really, which is instilled in them by the actions of straight men, act as a check on the sexual sort of out-of-controlness that straight men can achieve. but it's external. And we gay men, and I think the challenge for gay men, and I say this as someone who's very sex positive, who doesn't believe in monogamy, who's married to someone that he met 25 years ago that he had a one-night stand with that first night. I'm very pro one-night stand. It's how I met my husband. We have to find the check inside ourselves. What straight men have is an external check. Unless they're an NBA star or a billionaire, we have to find that check inside ourselves.

We have to know when to push back from the cock buffet and say, you know what? I've had enough. Because the cock buffet, if you're a gay man and reasonably attractive as you are, as some people think I am, the cock buffet is always open. And you have to know when you've had enough. I've had so much cock buffet that even at 43, when I have had relationships and I want to fall in love, and that's why I'm doing this podcast,

to slow down, it's still, you know, I'm horny as fuck during this coronavirus. Like, it is crazy how my old instincts are kicking in and I'm talking to guys on Grindr and no one's meeting, which is great, and I'm really glad that no one's doing that. All forbidden fruits. And, I mean, I honestly think that we should all buy stock in condoms because everyone's going to be fucking after this, you know, when this is over.

And everyone's stuck with their kids, so no one wants any more kids. So condoms are going to go, like, way up. I don't have – Monica, you need to invest in that. I need a little credit for that. You know, particularly I think for gay men, there's always this attraction to what's transgressive. How you break the rules. What's against the rules. You're transgressing against the expectations, norms, also rules.

And when you first embrace your identity as a gay man, you know, usually the gay thing hits you like a comet at 12 and you're like, fuck, and it's not what you wanted and you dread it. And then you eventually embrace it. But, you know, we spend years jerking off about something we feel terrible about. Right. And we feel like we're breaking the rules and we feel remorse and shame. And then as adult gay men, I think we eroticize and want to return to that transgressive place because it's so intensely felt. And there's something so intensely felt, you know, remember the first time you had a dick in your mouth, whether you were out of the closet or not? That was such a moment of intense transgressive feeling. adult sex lives. And as sex becomes easier and we become more comfortable with ourselves as gay men, how do we recreate that? We look for other rules to break. We can't break the rule about being gay anymore or feel that, you know, frisson about being gay anymore because we've embraced being gay and we're out now. And so what other rules we can break? Well, it's coronavirus. We're all locked in.

Here's a big rule that we can break. You're 44. I'm 55. Yeah, 40. So 43, pardon me. rule that we can break. You're 44, I'm 55. Yeah, 43. 43, pardon me. Never want to round up. Imagine how I feel. But I remember the HIV, you know, the worst years of the AIDS crisis, and there were people who transgressed by not using condoms, who recreated the intensity of those early experiences, I think, by transgressing against what had become a community norm around condom usage, and they would break that rule. Well, with PrEP now, people are breaking that rule even more. Let's tell people what PrEP is. PrEP is... Pre-exposure prophylaxis.

Yeah, so there is a pill, it's a Truvada pill that you can take daily that 99% prevents HIV. I'm not a specialist at all. I'm not a doctor. But basically, it's an AIDS med that you take proactively. HIV-negative men take it, and it makes the transmission of HIV from someone who has it almost impossible, upwards of 99% safety. So basically, it's brought back to gay culture, anonymous or instant hookups that involve condom-free sex. Two boyfriends ago was HIV-positive, Tim. I almost was more educated on what undetectable meant than he was, and he was HIV positive for 13 years. Yeah, that's the flip side of PrEP is undetectable is uninfectious. It's arguably safer to have unprotected sex with an HIV positive person who knows he's HIV positive and is on meds than to have sex with someone who thinks he's HIV negative and might not be. And we had an interesting dynamic because I loved him and we were in a monogamous relationship

and he wore condoms all the time and understandably, but he shamed me for not even saying like, you don't love yourself. And then PrEP came out of two years later and he was like, oh, undetectable. I'm like, I knew this the whole time. And our relationship suffered because of it. Can I ask an invasive question? And we don't want to give too many identifying details. But was he older than you? No, I always date younger.

But he was the one that was my age appropriate. He was only two years younger than me. Oh, interesting. His ex-boyfriend gave it to him and it affected him, obviously. But I think he had a lot of issues about it. And I didn't because that's not my past. So it was interesting. Well, you know, there's some people who had HIV, have HIV, who maybe got stuck in what it meant to have HIV at the moment they found out they had HIV.

And it took longer for them to come around to how PrEP and U equals U changed everything, changed people's calculus around safety. You know, when protease inhibitors first came out and AIDS moved from a death sentence to a chronic manageable illness, people began to make very different choices around safety. use of condoms because people figured they could take risks not you know every time they had sex but sometimes that they felt like taking a risk in the moment knowing there was kind of a net with these new treatments that transformed what it meant to have hiv and now like with crap and undetectable equals uninfectious people make much much different choices the sex culture that has exploded in the last five years ten 10 years, really does resemble gay male sex cultures in the 70s, where there was a lot of anonymous sex, a lot of multi-partner sex, and no condoms and a lot of anal. And for me, sometimes it's a little freaky.

But that's, I mean, I was involved in that process and it was fun as hell, but I am checking myself. And this podcast is basically that I want to find love. And I've been in love a couple times. I fight these old instincts that I have. You talk about breaking the rules. I have one of the rules I break is why do I need such approval from hot, straight men? also a little, I don't know, internal homophobia or something that I need. You know, when I met Dax 20 years ago, I zeroed in on him. And I go, I'm going to get this guy to fall in love with me. I loved him so much. And it was from my own insecurity. And I do it with guys at the gym. And I do it with, you know, guys that I work with at my restaurant.

And they're all straight. Tell me what it is. It's so simple. There's this thing you still hate in yourself. And you would rather be with somebody who didn't also have this thing that you hate. You hate it about gay men in the same way you hate it about yourself. And it makes gay men seem like lesser than other men, less desirable than other men. I feel sorry for you. I have this sort of opposite wiring in my erotic motherboard. There's nothing I think is hotter than a guy who's a fag.

I have never had a bone for a straight guy in my life. The minute I find out a guy's straight, I'm like, oh, ruined Timothy Chalamet. Yes. And honestly, I've gotten so much better with age. I embrace a lot more, but it's still that kid on the basketball team. You want the affirmation and the approval. Well, and that's what we've learned over. So this is episode eight out of 10. And the sort of premise of this is that we both want relationships. We come at them from completely opposite perspectives.

Jess is at the Cox buffet, as you say. And I am sitting at the table and not getting up and never, ever, ever getting up and expecting it to come to me. And it's obviously not working. Well, it's a cock buffet for you, too. Dick is plentiful. But I am not approaching the buffet. I am in the corner of the restaurant. Waiting for the waiter.

My recommendation often, and I don't know if this applies to you, often for women that I know who express what you just expressed, is you want to balance those concerns for safety. have to do of any man that they're going to be alone with, particularly in a circumstance where there's perhaps an expectation that it might get physical. Balance that care and caution with some reasonable, controlled impulsiveness. One of the things I've written about a lot in my column is the relationship with a sleazy start. There are a lot more of them out there than we know about, because if your grandparents met in a very sleazy way, they didn't tell you about it. If your parents met in, you know, very likely if your parents met in rehab or like a sex dungeon in Berlin, and there are straight sex dungeons in Berlin, they didn't tell you about it. If your parents are swingers, they're not going to tell you about it. So we have this sort of distorted perception of how people in committed, romantic, loving relationships meet or met. Because the people

who met sleazy lie, and the people who met in a wholesome way tell the truth. And then it looks like everybody met wholesome. So there's a way you meet a partner that you could fall in love with, and there's a way you meet someone you're just going to have sex with. And so you wind up disqualifying people that you could fall in love with because you have this self-fulfilling prophecy in your head. You have this idea in your head that if we met at a bathhouse, if we met at a dungeon, if we had a one-night stand, if we met in rehab, if I went home with this person the night I met him, where I usually have this rule of we have to go on five dates before we can do anything intimate, then you disqualify those people. You say, couldn't be worthy of love because we met in a bathhouse. Couldn't be worthy of love

because we had a one-night stand. You had a one-night stand. You were in the bathhouse. You know that you are worthy of love. So I'm not saying only have impulsive, you know, arguably, actually riskier sex. Just be open to both kinds of meetings. That if somebody you want to vet, vet that person. If you feel this impulse and a connection and you trust somebody, or you feel the desire to do something transgressive and go to a crazy place and do a crazy thing, if you met somebody in that place and you clicked with that person, don't disqualify them them just as you would not want to be disqualified yourself. If you're at the cock buffet and you've been doing that and doing that,

and that's your program. And if you're Jess, you're on Grindr multiple times a day. And don't you think there's a mentality shift that has to be explicit for you? That's like, I'm also open to this being long term or like, I just think if you're in the mindset of sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, is there space for longevity in that? Yes, absolutely. It's situational. It depends on who you end up in bed with. You have a one night stand with somebody and there's no real like other connection there.

You don't spark off them personally. You don't enjoy chatting with them. There was a physical thing, but there wasn't any sort of like even initial emotional like click. You know, when you're in bed with somebody, you're having a one night stand and then you're like chatting a little bit afterwards and then two hours go by that you click. It has to be felt on both sides for something to happen, for it to take off. But it can be felt. And I also want to say that not everybody at the cock buffet is there because it's their only option, and they're sad, and they really want a relationship. Some people want the cock buffet, and that's all they want. And that's perfectly legitimate. One of the problems in committed long- term relationships is that so many people who don't want them are sort of hustled into them by

sort of a cultural pressure. We've talked about that a little bit on here. Yeah. Okay. Good people want to be in relationships. I want to be a good person. I'm going to put myself in a relationship. A lot of people end up in relationships who really would be better, you know, at having a lot of STRs, as I call them, short-term relationships. We talk about LTRs all the time and successful LTRs, which means somebody died. That's our metric for success in a committed relationship. Somebody's dead. Coronavirus is going to result in a lot of successful relationships, right?

Oh, God. And we also need to have a language, I think, around what's a successful short-term relationship, a successful relationship that both people emerged from alive. And an STR can be two hours after meeting up on Grindr. And if you're kind and decent and they're kind and decent and you have great sex, you create a little bit more joy in the world. Even if there's no click, you can be kind to each other. Or a successful STR can be three months. And somebody can be the kind of person

who has a lifetime of successful three-month STRs. One of the things that I see all the time is that when people want out of relationships, they feel like they have to blow them up. They feel like the only way they can legitimately leave a relationship is if it's high conflict and there's anger. So people will generate conflict and anger to get out or to justify getting out after three or six months all the time, rather than just being honest and parting amicably after three or six months because you're an STR type. And it's better for STR types to seek out STR types than to lead LTR types to believe that they might want an LTR when they know that they can't. There's a lot of people out there who are STR types who have a kind of false consciousness around wanting to be LTR people

when they're not. It's just like around monogamy. A lot of people out there make monogamous commitments they can't keep because they can't conceive of themselves as a good moral person, but not monogamous. So they psych themselves up to believe that monogamy is for them when actually they're not for monogamy. I love that. Interesting. I mean, I guess it's just looking inward and being truthful with yourself. How can you know if you're an STR or an LTR type?

I mean, I feel strongly that I do want a long-term partner for fulfillment and companionship and all of those reasons. I don't think it's societal for me, but I have thought about it a lot because I've been surrounded by these long-term relationships my whole life. My friends from home, from high school on relationships. And then I'm, you know, our friend group here is a lot of long-term relationships and that's what we're surrounded by. So it feels like, oh, I should do that. And so I've really thought about it a lot. Like, am I assured?

I should do that. Yes. But what do you want? I do feel like I want that as well. Well, maybe you want it now, but what does your life look like? What's your history? You know, sometimes people say to me, I want a monogamous relationship. I've cheated in every relationship I've ever been in. And I'll ask them, is a monogamous relationship i've cheated in every relationship i've ever been in and i'll ask them is a monogamous relationship what you want or is

what you think you're supposed to want based on a lot of people's actions it's clearly not what they want but they feel like they're paying you know respect to decency by claiming that it's what they want or believing it's what they want well that's sort of the background of me is like, essentially, I've been fairly anorexic in relationships in general. I don't know what that means. You're like, you throw up in relationships? What's an anorexic? No, that would be believing.

Oh, right. Okay. I'm sorry. I got my eating disorders messed up. Come on, Dan. No, no, no. I just, I avoid. And it's been, our listeners now know all our backstories a ton, but it is relevant for

you to know in assessing all of this is it was an Indian girl in Georgia. And I felt like there was a lot of moments early on in my formative young years where I felt rejected many times. And I felt that it was because of things I couldn't control, like the color of my skin and my ethnicity and all of these things. So I built up a lot of fantasy, like all the relationships I had were in fantasy, basically, you know, like the senior when I was a freshman who I couldn't have, like all these people who I couldn't have because I couldn't have who I wanted for real. So in your fantasy life, you had perfection. Exactly. I had people who were better than me, who had something I didn't have, who were perfect. Exactly. So you spent a lot of time fantasizing about things that reality doesn't deliver to you, which can set you up for disappointment. Always. Growing up where there's a

really oppressive beauty ideal in a monoculture, as I assume there was where you lived in Georgia, can not just make somebody feel unworthy, but can leave somebody with a lifetime of doubt when someone does desire them. Because you feel like you're being played, because I'm not what people desire. And so you wanting me makes me doubt whether I'm safe with you emotionally, physically, because it feels like a lie. 100%. But that's just, you know, a little cognitive behavioral therapy. That's a decision you have to make.

I know. To see yourself as desirable and to be hyper-rational about it. That, you know, the high school boys in Georgia all wanted the same skinny blonde doesn't mean that there aren't men in the world who want what I am. I have bought in as much as anybody to this perfect white ideal. Yeah, it's crazy. And I completely relate. I'm as pasty white as they come. You can see the blue in my veins through my arms. I'm translucently white. But I was a heavy kid in high school. I was fat. And when someone is attracted to me, my very hot husband is attracted to me, part of me thinks, you're lying to me. No one could ever really be physically attracted to me. I have a good verbal game, I think, and a good imagination and some skill sets, but people who just express a purely

physical attraction to me, I always thought there's something wrong with them. They must be crazy because no one would want me that way. Even today, I have to say, no, it's true. I have to argue with myself, will myself to believe someone when they say they're in tune because even today, I doubt it because I'm still that fat 14-year-old. Yeah, we're all 14 fighting that person at all times. We are supported by Tushy. Now, this couldn't be more relevant to us and this episode

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And also, look, we get these in the mail monthly. And every time I see that package arrive at my doorstep, I am so excited to open it and see what pattern is in there. It is the best. You can choose a monthly membership, build a pack. You can even match your undies with your other half. No matter what you choose, you'll get a soft, sustainable pair of undies delivered straight to your door with free shipping. Win-wins all around. MeUndies has a great offer for my

listeners. For any first-time purchasers, you get 15% off and free shipping. This is a no-brainer, especially because they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. To get your 15% off your first order, free shipping, 100% satisfaction guarantee, go to MeUndies.com slash Monica. That's MeUndies.com slash Monica. So circling back to the anorexia, so I shut that valve off at some point and everything was fantasy and nobody who liked me I was gonna say yes to because there was something wrong with them and so I've had no LTRs and STRs being like a couple dates max. So very, very little engagement in actual relationships. But I don't think we can go based on that history as to what I want, because I do really want a partner,

a buddy. So the STRs, the people that you've had a couple of dates with that it ended, were you always the one that ended it? For the most part, yes. Do you have like a long list of deal breakers? Oh, I'm totally critical. Yeah. I wanted, you know, when I was 30 and single, suddenly single again and heartbroken and didn't leave the house for three months. Three? That's nothing. Yeah, right? We're all facing a year in the house.

The first night I went out to a gay bar with some friends, I met somebody and went home with him. What I wanted as a partner was somebody older than I was, somebody who had a real job and not a silly job like I did. I wanted a doctor or a lawyer. Somebody who had more education than I did and somebody kinkier than I was. And I met somebody who was seven years younger than me, didn't go to college, worked in a video store and was completely vanilla and totally fell in love with him. And so if I had just said, you don't meet my criteria, you're out. If I hadn't been open to dating against what I thought I wanted, no LTRs are possible if you won't date against what you think you wanted. as they're possible if you won't date against what you think you wanted. And I think for someone with your history and the importance that fantasy played in your life, I would say, bear in mind

that you can have the messy, compromised reality of a partner and your fantasies too, including your fantasies about who your partner is. There is, you know, I always like to say, you know, there's no the one out there. There's the.68 that you round the fuck up to one. Yeah, that's great. You treat that person as the one. You psych yourself up to believe that person is the one. They are the one in your eyes, and there's some fudging there. There's some things you don't think about.

There's some things that you choose to step around rather than directly confront. And I think in a lot of relationship advice land and counseling land and sometimes therapy land, there's always this desire to get at the problem and pick at it and pick at it. And the trick to any LTR is there are problems you can solve and there are problems that even focusing on them or addressing them at all is going to blow it all up. There are landmines you step around and there are ones you diffuse. And knowing the difference, which sometimes means like trying and then going, okay, this is never going to be fixed. So we're going to stop trying to fix it because it creates conflict and makes us mad at each other. So we will just both pretend this isn't there. Right.

Yeah. And step around it. But what people do, what I often see in my friends who complain about being single is they'll break up with people for reasons that I think are trifling. You know, in the grand scheme of things, if they bring 68% of what you wanted to the table, the 32% that's garbage that you have to endure, that's still a passing grade. That's still pretty fucking good. So I would, if I was your relationship coach, encourage you if you get to that date too and you have assembled that list in your head of why you can't see this person, which is really a photo negative projection of your own insecurities around why they wouldn't want to see you usually, is to push past it, is to keep seeing that person anyway, even if you don't like X, Y, or Z about them, even if they want, well, you don't want to push person anyway even if you don't like x y or z about them even if they want well you don't you don't want to push past they want kids you don't like something that's

major and disqualifying it's major and disqualifying but you know push past like the stuff i've seen friends break up with guys over and then complain that they're single is ridiculous i think i'm the opposite of her because i'll take an N-E-T-R. And I'll do an N-E-T-R because all of my relationships have been successful. I love all of them. And I agree with that, Monica, for you, especially. I mean, and as much as I say, I'll take an N-E-T-R, I'm pretty picky as well. I mean, for me, it's a physical thing. And that's what all these people have been telling me, Dax and Esther, stop getting over their looks, Jess. I mean, it's important, but it's also not the most important thing.

But I think that I need to get over that. But you can tell me I'm wrong, Dan, and I should still go for the hot guy. I think you should still go for the hot guy, actually. Thank you so much, Dan. Okay, the show's over. Monica, we don't have to do two more episodes. I'm going to get in trouble for this. But often what brings people together at first, whatever kind of people they are, is some physical pull. And then there's a lot of

due diligence or screw diligence around determining whether you're a good emotional fit. Right. And whether you enjoy spending time with this person when their dick isn't in your mouth. The reason that people want Jess to pull away from the physicality, it's also not just about

the other person, it's about him. It's his own personal physicality, too, that he's making a priority when his personality is so shiny and wonderful. And we are all saying

that that has to be at the forefront before these things that you're trying to manipulate about yourself and change when you have something powerful at your fingertips. But also what I know to be true for anyone, unless you can tell me this, maybe I'm wrong. I'm open to being wrong. It doesn't matter how hot you are. Once you're in a relationship for 20 years, it doesn't matter. You could still be super hot. That level of physical attraction, it changes. Yeah, it does. You can still look the exact same. And you won't, but you could still. And you won't. But if you do, it's not the same. And I've seen it.

I see it in all these couples. And everyone is fucking so attractive. And the relationship changes, you know, the way you see each other changes. So to make that the end all be all, it's not, in my opinion, it's just not smart. Well, I agree. And I've learned so much from all of these people. And I see myself growing and changing because of it. So I do agree with you as well. You know, I've been with my husband for 25 years. A lot changes over the decades. It's important not

to take each other for granted. It's important to make an effort. There are a lot of great companionate marriages out there and a lot of great sexless relationships. You know, what matters is whether both people are happy. You know, if you have a sexless marriage and one person is miserable, that's not a recipe for success. If you have a sexless marriage and it's very intimate and loving and you guys support each other and enjoy spending time together and there's physical intimacy, if not sex, and everybody's happy, that's a great marriage. In gay land, you'll see a lot of sexless relationships where both partners love, support, intimate, they have a great groove, a great partnership, that daily life grind, they nail it. But they only have sex usually with other people, sometimes with other people together. And that's, I think, much more common in gay land,

where monogamy is not the default setting the way it is in straight land. Do you have an opinion on when that conversation should be brought up? I have a friend that is in a five-year relationship and they're starting to talk about it. It shouldn't be talked about in the first year, should it? Non-monogamy? Yeah, open relationship. It depends on your settings and expectations. You know, I think what gay people do that straight people should do is discuss monogamy as opt-in or opt-out. That monogamy like kids, religion, where you want to live is on the table. And I say this not to like, because everyone should be in a non-monogamous relationship. I say this because

I want monogamous relationships to succeed. There should also be a conversation around what it'll mean if one or the other cheats, which is, in all LTRs, almost inevitable that one person will. Is that the end of the relationship if one person cheats? I don't think it should be. I think that's so common betrayal that it should be something that we have the skill set emotionally to try to work through and get past, not to save the non-monogamous relationships, but to save the monogamous ones. There is an infidelity that the relationship can survive it, and you can get monogamous again. I've long said, you know, we talk about monogamy the way we talk about virginity. You're a virgin until you fuck someone, then you're not a virgin anymore.

You're monogamous until you fuck someone else, and then it's not monogamous anymore. And we should talk about monogamy the way we talk about sobriety that you can cheat and get drunk and then you can sober the fuck back up and get monogamous again you get back on the monogamy wagon i feel like we're kind of far afield from from the issue around the ltr and making it work sort of emotionally sexually with attraction i think the thing that sustains attraction is not feeling taken for granted. You will not have as much sex at year 25 that you did at day 25, but the sex you have is often better but less frequent. And you want to really communicate to each other that you're not taking each other for granted. You know, sometimes I see people be very critical of gay men and LTRs who are, you know, going to the gym and taking care of themselves.

Because that's a projection from straight line. Once you have a partner, you don't have to take care of yourself anymore. Taking care of yourself was to get a partner. Now that you have it, you can stop. But taking care of yourself is one way you signal to your partner that you're invested in them still finding you attractive in that way they did at first. That thing that first brought you together, that physical pull, that physical attraction, that's something you treasure and that you're going to do what you can, despite time being a meat grinder that destroys us all, do what you can to sustain that. I think that's really important. And the other way you sustain it in an LTR, whether you're monogamous or non-monogamous, is just knowing that at the start

of the relationship, that person was the adventure you were on and you were the adventure they were on. You were the risk they were taking. They were the risk you were taking. And that gets the adrenaline pumping. It's very arousing. The first time you fuck somebody, they could be an ax murderer for all you know. You are taking a giant giant risk you're making yourself vulnerable in a way that that is searing once it's an ltr once you've lived together for five years once you could identify their fart in a room full of other farts you're not the adventure and they're not your adventure and so what you have to do to not i think die of boredom is figure out how you go on adventures together to bring that adventure back to your life and back into your life means consciously creating adventures that you as a couple go on together. That doesn't

mean having three ways. That doesn't mean going to sex dungeons in Berlin. It can mean those things. For a monogamous couple, it can mean just shaking up where, when, how you have sex and recreating that if a sexual connection in the LTR is important to you, which it is for most people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's hop into Jess's challenge from last week because it was a doozy. Man. Okay. Long story short, Patty, the millionaire matchmaker, we talked about out of your league. And I thought this guy at my gym was out of my league. And her challenge was for me to ask him out. And I go, I've known him for five years. I don't feel comfortable. I'm nervous. It was a shit show. I was just so nervous.

I asked him to go to dinner and he said yes. And we had a great time and he left and everything was good. Then it got tricky. I will be full disclosure about the show. He didn't know that this was a challenge. He didn't't know that this was a challenge. He didn't need to know it was a challenge. The point is that you were asking someone out on a date. But he didn't think it was a date. Well, first of all, so many people have told us that we're putting too much expectation on it by saying this is a date. This isn't a date. This is a date. This isn't a date. Date's made. You created an opportunity. You carved out some little space and time where if there was some mutual attraction that could surface. Great. Then I told him about the challenge and it was a little awkward for a couple of days at the gym.

He's like, I feel fine. Then we got past that. We had a lot of conversations. Everything was good. The next person was Esther Perel. He was a big part of that episode talking about not having those butterflies and not putting parameters on a date. And we talked about Sam a lot. And at the end of the episode, she goes, I want you to listen to this episode with him. And I was like, fuck. Oh my gosh. Yeah. So in between that, Monica called him and why don't you tell him what happened? And then I'll tell them about how we watched the episode on zoom and listened to it last night. Right. So before we recorded with Esther, we thought it might be an interesting idea because Jess called me after his date with Sam. He called me immediately and he said, friend zoned. I was friend zoned immediately. It was really fun, but I'm in the friend zoned. I was friend zoned immediately.

It was really fun, but I'm in the friend zone. And I was like, why are you saying that? How do you know? And then he said, I don't think he thought it was a date. And I said, okay, like, where's all this information coming from? And so I had a lot of questions about people's perception versus the reality of what is going on and how we're communicating. So we thought it would be interesting if I spoke to Sam. At first it was going to be on air, but that seemed like a lot. So that I spoke to him and just had this conversation because we never get that. We never get that in life where we go on these dates and we don't know what the other. Right. Half my questions at the Savage Lovecast are people wanting to know what the other person was thinking or feeling as if I have some special ability to pry people's brains open

and read the tea leaves that they don't. Usually we can only guess at it, but you got to subpoena and depose. Exactly. I did. And, and first of all, he's lovely. He's so perfect. He's wonderful. And how old is he? 40. Oh, good, good, good. 40, rich, hot, successful. And of course, this is why I was insecure and I thought he was out of my league.

And so how did the convo go? So Jess hasn't heard this and Sam said that I could be honest about everything he said. So I'm going to be, I'm so nervous. Oh my God. I am too. But Jess, first of all, like I said, he's lovely. He's wonderful. He thinks you're magical and special and has like beautiful things to say about you. But what you just said, he's 40, he's rich, he's hot. That's the way you described it. But that's how you're ranking in your head.

No, rich is not important. I'm telling you what he is. But it's important. No, no one has had money that I've ever dated. But the reason he's on a pedestal for you is because there's all these. Mostly his looks and his personality and him being successful and rich are maybe fourth and fifth. Sure. All right. So he told me that five years ago, the first time he met you, it was at the gym. You came up to him and you said, hey, I'm going to be a star too.

I'm going to be in this movie, Chips. Oh, no. So when he told me that, he wasn't like, so I was grossed out by that or I didn't like that. He was just, that is a memory he has. That is so embarrassing. Oh, my God. But, Jess, the reason I'm choosing to say this is because when you just described him,

you did describe those things about him. But I don't want to feel. Okay, sorry. Continue. Well, no. The rich, the successful and wealthy thing, whether that makes him more attractive to Jess, that makes it more marketable. It means there's more competition for him because that is something that's generally desirable. I like the guy at the front desk that is hot. Success and money are not something that I've

ever gone for, ever. But yes, there's this thing that Sam was at the gym because of that, that I thought he was out of my league. Okay, continue. Right. But what he's taking from that interaction is, oh, this person thinks that I have some level of something and that he's connecting with me on that. That turned him off. I don't know if it turned him off. This was five years ago. He just, I mean, yes, to be honest, yes, I think it's a little uncomfortable for him. It's uncomfortable for me that I even said that. I don't even remember that. It's disgusting.

And by the way, he was very clear. He was like, I'm not saying people don't value that stuff. He was very self-aware. And he's like, I'm also not judging a whole person based on one interaction. He's totally not. You know what the lesson here is? You know, often when we're attracted to someone, we're awkward in that first interaction, which is why you don't want that first interaction to be your only interaction. Often the worst thing falls out of your mouth, the first, oh my God, I remember the first thing I said to my husband was not the best thing to say. What'd you say? I've been looking, you know,

I have no game and I'm very intimidated by people I think are attractive. And, you know, if somebody I am personally attracted to, I've had people say that they thought I was mad at them. You know, like a friend who, somebody I met years later who was a waiter at a restaurant I frequented just thought I was glaring at him and I was actually like taking him in. I was memorizing every detail

so I could jack off about him later. And I've been watching my husband, you know, my now husband was at this club and I was standing with a drag queen in a corner by Kocak saying, oh my God, look at that guy. Look at that guy. He's so hot. And then he came up to Kocak to get something, I think E, out of his coat pocket. And the drag queen said, well, tell him, tell him, tell him. Oh no.

And I looked at him and said, God, it's so embarrassing. Because my husband has a beautiful mouth. I said, you have a pretty mouth. That's nice. No, it's very deliverance. It's a very creepy thing to open with. And he looked at me and said, the better to eat you with and walked away. Oh.

So that made me think, okay, there's somebody that I could spar with. But we didn't stick around. Like he didn't stick around after I talked to him, he left. That was our first interaction. You know, he got high and I got a little drunker and we circled back and had our second and third interactions that same night. And after getting the awkward first interaction out of the way where I almost disqualified myself by coming across like a serial killer, we, you know, established in the second and third interactions that we actually clicked. Right. So, you know, what you said to this guy, don't initially was off-putting. What I said to my husband initially was off-putting. He was shutting me down with the better to eat you with, and then turning on his pretty heel and walking

away. You may have shut him down with that first comment. You shouldn't have waited five years to have the second interaction. No, that's true. Or I should have brought ecstasy to the gym. Another lesson. Oh, that's so embarrassing. What else did he say, Monica? He was not judgmental at all. He thinks you're fantastic. He really does. He said he did not think it was a date, but that's interesting. I was talking to him about this. I'm like, I guess how clear do we need to be, you know, when we're asking people out on dates? And like, also I was telling him, I was like,

it doesn't really matter if it's a date or not. Like who cares? It's just hanging out. She's getting to know each other on a deeper level. And he agreed with all that. But then he started talking about another guy or somebody he was into or something. And you downed your drink and said, OK, ready to go. No, that is so not true. OK, that's that's your reality. And I'm telling you what his reality is. That's in his head.

Okay, yeah, I'm not embarrassed about that. The drink was halfway. We only had one drink. It was halfway through the meal, and we had so much more conversation. He said you had two drinks. So this is my point, is people have different realities of what is going on. We can't even agree on how many drinks everyone had. So, you know, it sounds like what Monica's saying is that he might not be interested in you

in the same way that you were interested in him all these years. And if that's the case, what I want you to take away from this is that you have it within you to ask somebody out on a date that you're interested in and go out on a date. 100%.

And this, like, getting friend-zoned is not a thing. People are attracted to you or not attracted to. But that's what I'm trying to tell these and Monica and Esther. And it's like, you don't know. And that can grow. I know as a gay male, if someone's attracted to me or not. And that's just the truth. I've had enough sex and I have enough flirting with people that I know that when someone's

attracted to me and when someone just likes my personality. There are though, you know, outlier examples out there in gay land, and I think it's more common in straight land, where people were friends for a while and then an attraction grew. We're so invested in those stories because we wish they were more common than they are. That's true. People want to discount sexual attraction or physical attraction and minimize it because it makes us all feel insecure, because it makes us all worry about whether we're attractive enough to draw that initial interest.

of physically desirable traits that we allow ourselves to believe because of the beauty ideal that really torments us all, including often people who seem to the rest of us to meet that beauty standard and beauty ideal. There are people who are attracted to all different types and kinds of persons. And there's not a lid for every pot.

I don't traffic in that there's somebody out there for everyone because some of us are going to be alone. And it's better to create a life for yourself that's fulfilling whether you're partnered or not than to live in false hope or be miserable until a partner comes along. As if a partner isn't off in the beginning of new miseries. And partnered people who live to be partnered may get dumped. Their partner could drop dead and then they're unpartnered again. If their life is only happy, if they have a partner in it, they're setting themselves up for recurring misery. But there are a lot of people

who are attracted to a lot of different types of people and for different types of reasons. And sometimes the reason someone's attracted to someone has more to do with, I don't want to say personality, but more to do with an emotional dynamic that doesn't emerge until they've gotten to know them. That there is not even an emotional dynamic, an erotic dynamic that doesn't emerge until there is a reason that you've been thrown together again and again, whether it's being asked out on dates that you went out on because you had nothing better to do, or work brought you together and there's somebody that you weren't attracted to physically, but as you got to know them better, something sparked.

And they click into that and it creates a physical desire where there wasn't one just from the visuals at first. That is a thing that happens. And that's why we kept on hanging out with Sam and kept on talking about Sam because of that. I love that you got these notes from him. I think it's so amazing to see people's lenses. For sure.

And I want to make it clear. He at no point in that conversation said, I'm not attracted to Jess. When I thought it was a date, I was like, oh, no. Like, none of that happened at all. His perception was when he started talking about another guy and you, in his opinion, the day ended quickly. He was like, oh, oh, I think that's why. Yeah, but that's all. But what I'm saying is I'm not telling you right now that Sam is not interested in you. I don't know if he's interested in you. That's not what I asked him. But I think Sam told you that. Well, we'll get into this because we

talked for two hours. Okay. Yeah. So go ahead. So last night we got on Zoom. I was beating my heartbeat. Full disclosure. I even gave him an out.

You can just listen to it and call me because I was so insecure and so nervous. And he goes, no, let's do the challenge. I go, I love that. I love that. So we got on Zoom. We talked for 40 minutes before about Corona and life and missing the gym, not missing each other. And he's a friend of mine that we watched the whole episode. He cried when I started crying on the episode because his dad died too and my dad died. At the end of the episode, he just was over the moon on the show. We didn't talk about ourselves.

And in the episode, Esther Perel goes, if you're going to hurt my feelings, don't say anything. I will learn more from what you don't say than what you do say. She said that. And he didn't say anything about us. He didn't say anything about feelings. And he tapped on talking about how much I've grown from the show and how much he is Learning about himself from the show and it was an amazing conversation and then we hung up and that is his answer Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's in what he's said but also what he didn't say exactly that he had the you've created the opportunity for him to express a lot of mutual interest and it's obviously not there. He thinks I'm his friend and I consider him my friend.

But the idea of Sam was amazing. The idea that Sam and I, whatever. So I went down this road on this show, on this podcast about what if, and I'm still intrigued by it. And me and his friendship is that much closer now because of it. We are supported by Raycon. Look around you. It is a wireless world and everyone needs a great pair of wireless earbuds. But before you go dropping hundreds of dollars on a pair, you need to check out the wireless earbuds from Raycon. We both have them

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GetRoman.com slash Monica for a free online visit and free two-day shipping. This is often, I think, a challenge for gay men is, you know, we talk about being sorted into romantic possibility or friend zone. I think the more difficult challenge for a lot of gay men is figuring out who our friends are versus who our romantic potential partners are. Yes. That often what draws us together can be confusing because am I attracted to you as a friend or am I attracted to you as a potential love interest? Straight people, the evidence of this is all the commentary we see about whether straight men and straight women can be friends. The evidence of this is all the commentary we see about whether straight men and straight women can be friends. Straight people typically don't draw friends from the opposite sex pool, right?

Straight guys' friends are almost always straight guys. Straight women's friends are almost all other women. Gay guys, their friends are almost always other gay men, and their lovers are also gay men. And we have to figure out how to differentiate those two kinds of attraction, which I think can be kind of blurry. You know, I would say about Sam though, he had every opportunity to let you know that the feelings were mutual in that phone conversation. Also at that dinner date that broke a pattern,

you know, maybe you guys had gone out for breakfast, maybe you'd hung out at his house. You'd never, like, sat down and had dinner together alone, which I'm sorry, most people are going to interpret as a date. And if at that time he took the opportunity to tell you about someone he was interested in romantically, that's the equivalent of someone saying, it's not you, it's me. It's a flare, it's a kind of signaling of interest or disinterest that gets them off the hook and you know spares the ego that it was a soft like nudge you back not to the friend zone but signaling to you the kind of relationship that he has with you that he values obviously

because you guys have this long connection but he doesn't see you as anything else otherwise he wouldn't have talked about even if he had been attracted to some other guy and hang out with other guy, he would know that it would shut down any possibility with you if he mentioned that other guy at that time. And he chose to mention that guy for a reason. And it was to shut it down. I'm sorry to say. Yeah, we've talked about other guys for the last five years. So it didn't throw me off at all. That's what we do. We have a friendship. But Dan, if we're saying that most people are 0.68 and we're rounding up to one, then... No, not most people are. There are a few out there that you will meet some 0.68s.

It's your job to round one of those fuckers up to one. Right. But so Sam, when we spoke, he said, which was interesting, he was like, when I listened to your show, I relate to you. I connect with you. I'm like you, you know, he's not like Jess. He's like me where he has these kind of standards that aren't exactly right. That are not too high, but aren't rounding up there's too many tailbreakers and a lot of like judging within 30 seconds whether this person is gonna be worthy of being around for a long you know he has the same issues that i have in a lot of ways and so i guess my thought was like i can see it in other people of course it's so hard to see in yourself, but I can see it in other people. Like, but maybe Sam is just not to the rounding up stage yet.

But what if he gets there? I don't know. I mean, I guess why would we wait? Who cares? Like move on. But I mean, maybe this is another gay straight difference, but there's just so few people in life, gay straight difference, but there's just so few people in life, men for me that I enjoy so much, but I'm not attracted to where I wouldn't want to spend a ton of time with, you know what I mean? I don't know. Like for me, the personality and the vibe between me and another person, physical attraction comes next for me. I just feel that maybe that's possible. And I would challenge you again to interrogate that because as a woman, you've internalized a lot of cultural messaging, but also a lot of fear. And so getting to know the guy and feeling comfortable with the guy before the physical attraction may be a control

for that fear. And it's a perfectly reasonable fear. Men are testosterone-soaked dick monsters, and they're a danger and a threat to themselves, and particularly a danger and threat to women. And so it is in your own advantage, from an evolutionary perspective, to really vet a guy before you vet a guy. But that doesn't mean you don't have the capacity for there to be an initial spark of physical attraction.

If you can set that aside, if you can tell yourself there is a thing I typically do for my own safety that's a reasonable, rational thing to do that has convinced me that all this must be done before there can be a physical attraction, and you can say this is my dynamic, this is what I do, and this is why I do it. Then stepping outside of that and allowing for there perhaps to be an initial physical attraction to allow yourself to perceive it without then feeling like you have to act on it. Right, right. I wanted to hit on something you just said, though, about looking at somebody and wondering whether they're the person you could round up to the one, wondering whether they whether the person you could spend your life with. If you feel like dating is you look at somebody and you have to ask yourself,

can I spend 60 years or 50 years with this person? Those stakes are so high. Yeah. The answer is almost always going to be, yeah, no. Right? Because it's so consequential a decision. What you need to do is look at somebody and say, do I enjoy spending time with this person? Would I like to spend some more time with this person? That can turn into 50 years. Looking at somebody after two dates and saying, all right, all chips in. Is this the person?

Is this the one? Am I going to make them into the one for myself? That's going to give everybody cold feet. And this is getting back to my like, wish we had a conversation or an acknowledgement of like, STRs is a thing that can be rewarding and successful. Is this someone I could spend, you know, I would enjoy spending some time with, maybe the summer with, you know, is this somebody that like would be really pleasant, you know, to make plans six months out to go on a vacation, like to take it by chunks, you know, because an LTR is really just an STR that just kept going and going and going yeah everything's a successful short-term relationship first before it can be a successful long-term relationship i put strs on my tinder profile now because i'm down for an str like because people want ltrs and like that'll happen if it happens there's no ltr without the

successful str yeah my personal experiences are prescriptive and you know, the way we did it doesn't work for everybody. I get that. But like when I first met my husband, he was so not what I wanted, but I was like, he'll be a good summer fling. I'm going to bone this twink for the summer.

And then I'm going to like, go find the right guy for me. Right. And it just kept going and going and going and going and going. And sometimes people ask us the secret to our success. And Terry will say, we just keep not leaving each other. Right. And you've said this before, which I love. You're focusing on the 85% that's great about him and not the 15% that's bad. You have to figure out what the price of admission that you're willing to pay to be with somebody is. This is a silly Lucy and Ricky kind of example,

but when my husband and I first started living together, he's a little bit of a slob. He doesn't put things away. He would make a sandwich and leave the mayonnaise and the mustard and the ham and the bread all out and open and then leave the plate on the table and wander away. And I would follow him around yelling at him to put the bread away before it goes stale

and the ham away before we get food poisoning and die. And put your plate in the sink. And then one day I just did it. I like, as he made himself the sandwich, I put things away. And when he was done, I put the plate in the dishwasher myself. And I was like, oh, that was easier. You know, and is he worth it? You know, is that a price of admission I'm willing to pay to ride this ride? And I see a lot of people going, he leaves his laundry all over the floor, and no matter how many times I yell at him about it, it never changes. And my reaction is maybe stop yelling at him about it and pick his socks up, and then look around your life and look at the things that maybe he's already doing for you and not yelling at you about. And is there some

reciprocity there? Is there some balance there? Yeah. I clean up the kitchen. My husband has done the laundry for 25 years. I haven't like folded a shirt in 25 years. So like, am I going to bitch about being the only one who wipes down the counters in the kitchen? I could. Yeah. But why? Exactly. I read something once, which I thought was so profound in, I think, relationships, but also in working relationships across the board, where if you think you're doing 75 percent of the work, you're doing 50.

Everyone thinks they're doing more than the other people. And the truth is, there's just things you aren't seeing that they're doing for you or for the group or for everything. And I have to think about that all the time because I sometimes fall into that trap of like, I'm doing everything. The price of admission is a good trick, I think, for people in your position, Monica, to ask yourself, is this a price of admission I'm willing to pay? They don't want children. I've always wanted children. That's a steep price. Is it one I'm willing to pay to be with this person? People have to answer that question. They're not like my physical ideal, but they bring so much else emotional to the table and

I'm still physically attracted to them. If it's a monogamous relationship, never getting to get with someone who is my physical ideal, a price of admission I'm willing to pay to be with this person. Everything about the relationship can be filtered through that. The trick of paying the price of admission is once you pay it, you don't bitch about it. You don't complain about it. You know, riding this ride, getting on that roller coaster was worth the five bucks. You don't spend your entire time on the roller coaster complaining about the ticket price, right? Picking up after my husband's price of admission I'm willing to pay. I don't complain to him about it. I complain to other people about it. Yeah.

I think that that piece of advice is extremely helpful probably for people currently right now who are stuck at home with their significant others and their children. And it's a new world for a lot of people in that way. I think the flaws are feeling glaring and, you know, they're under a magnifying glass. And so this is good to remember. The flaws that drive us crazy, at the bottom of it is this feeling of inconsideration. My feelings aren't being taken into consideration. It drives me crazy when you leave your underwear all over the floor. Why can't you be considerate and remember to put it away? And the trick often, if you're going to pay that price of like being the one who throws things in the hamper, is to look for other ways that your feelings have been taken into consideration that

you don't feel acutely aware of all the time, because your feelings are being taken into consideration. And so your partner isn't doing X or is doing Y out of consideration, but they have some sort of blind spot around Z, and they're never going to be able to, like, nail that. And so if that's a price mission you're willing to pay to keep X and Y coming, you know, you have to highlight for yourself the ways in which sometimes your feelings have been taken into consideration. Because when they have been taken into consideration, the issue is resolved. And so it's not in the forefront of your mind. But there are ways that, you know, however strongly you feel about something, there's consideration. The issue is resolved. And so it's not in the forefront of your mind.

But there are ways that, you know, however strongly you feel about something, there's unlikely to be a change because that person, that's just like a tick. And you're not going to find somebody out there who is tickless. You're not going to find somebody else out there who doesn't have a million little things that they do that might drive you crazy if you spend all your time focusing on them or trying to change them. Yeah. I actually, after Greg, I had a friends with benefits, fuck buddy for four years. And eventually I had to kind of end it because I think he was in the way of me finding love. And why couldn't you find love with him? What was it about him? Like somebody had a four year successful, that's a successful long-term relationship. I know.

His name is Archer. And he called me the other day and he's listening to this. Oh, my gosh. Hi, Archer. And he goes, I didn't know all these things about you. He goes, yeah, my friend Natalie thinks I'm going to end up with you. And I go, this is a weird thing. And I laughed and we talked about it.

He goes, it's the best sex I've ever had. I go, me too. But I've tried to date you, Archer. You treat me like a fuck buddy. And he goes, I know. I'm so sorry. You're right. He doesn't text me back.

He texts me at two in the morning. It's just disrespectful. And I go, I don't know who you think you're messing up with. For the first couple of years, I was so flattered because I've never been used for my body. I've always been used for my comedy or my friendship. So to be used for sex for so long, I loved it. But then it got to a point where he wasn't respecting me as a person. But that was an interesting conversation I had a week ago.

And now he's in the East Coast with his family. He's quarantined and so I just thought that was interesting that that is another person in my life that I never considered and he's successful and cute and funny and yeah so oh my god marry him like if he's had some if he's had some breakthrough or epiphany around the ways he held you at arm's length that made you feel like you couldn't have a relationship with him. You know, if he was defensively or because of some internalized homophobia or whatever, treating you like a fuck buddy because he didn't feel worthy of a relationship or didn't see the relationship that was staring him in the face or the potential or possibility for it and has come through that, date him again. Like, so this idea that some people have is like, we hung out, we had sex like eight years ago for a couple of years and it was great, but, but it didn't work out. Therefore, permanently disqualified from any consideration as a potential partner. No, no, no. Like people

learn and change and grow and can sometimes appreciate later something about you or your connection that they weren't in the right place to appreciate when you were fucking well within the four years i have brought that up and made efforts to go on dates and he does work a ton i have to only can do 50 of the work and i am comfortable with just being his friends with benefits maybe but it was just an interesting conversation that i have from this podcast a lot of these people are coming out of the woodworks and one guy even texted me goes i don't feel so shitty now because you used me for sex he goes i didn't know you were why you were using me for sex so much and you didn't want to date me i go well i just came out and i wanted to you know and he's like that makes me feel so much better i always thought it was me oh Oh my God, that's heartbreaking.

Yeah. It's really interesting to hear what people make it about and how much I made it about me and how Sam made it about him and Archer made it about him. We all do. I want to link two things you guys just said. You said you didn't want to do more than 50% of the work. And Monica, you said that there are times when you're not even aware of the work the other person is doing. We are acutely aware of how much we've done and are doing or contributing to a relationship. And often we can't see what the other person is doing.

So bean counting around who's doing how much and how much work I'm doing in the relationship, your own assessment, the amount you're personally doing, is going to be off. Also, looking around, there's a lot of relationships where one person does more of the work. And if you say, if I'm doing more than half the work, I can't be in this relationship, you might then crash out of what could have been a long-term loving relationship where you did 60% of the work. And how awful is that? This obsession with completely equal contributions, whether financially or emotionally, even sexually, can undermine relationships that, you know, they're all imperfect. Every relationship is kind of a, you know, a jalopy that's just trundling along with like parts falling off on the way to the funeral home for one person, and then it's a successful relationship. And we spend so much

time looking in and wanting to make sure. You know, Esther writes about this, I think, beautifully. We expect to get so much from our relationships now, what a village used to give us. We now want from our relationships all emotional support, all intimacy, friendship, sexual connection that lasts for decades and is just as hot 30 years in as it was 30 minutes in. We have unrealistic expectations that we place on our relationships, and then they collapse from the weight of. And I think one of those unrealistic expectations is there won't be times

where I'm doing more than half the work. In a very long-term relationship, there's an ebb and a flow there. Maybe you're going to do more of the work at the beginning, and then there may be a time later in the relationship where they do more of the work. And it may be imposed on them. Maybe 10 years in and one of may be a time later in the relationship where they do more of the work. And it may be imposed on them. Maybe 10 years in and one of you has a health crisis and the person who never did anything to keep the home up is suddenly the person doing everything to keep the home up. And you've cashed in your chits around who's doing how much for whom then. Right.

It's true. Yeah. We all get so hung up on this contribution, equality, fairness, I think because we connect it to our worth. Like, oh, you must not respect me if you don't pick up that plate. Like we equate our whole being to a plate. And we don't want to be taken advantage or feel like we're fools. Yeah. But I'm going to butcher this quote from Shakespeare from Midsummer Night's Dream. Like we're all fools. Yeah. What fools these lovers be is universal. It applies to us all. We are all fools. So we have this anxiety around being played for a fool or taken advantage of by someone we're dating. You will be played for a fool at times by your romantic partner, and you will be taken advantage of,

you will also do that to them. There's no LTR without wrongs committed, betrayals, forgivenesses. And there's no LTR if you have a long list of deal breakers or if you treat every date like a hunt for the deal breaker, a hunt for the reason I can't see this person, which so many people do. Like I'm going to do my forensic accounting and figure out, you know, run the math, run it through my computer program, figure out how I can disqualify this person and confirm for myself that I'm not worthy or there's no one out there who's worthy of me rather than going on that date, looking for the things about that person that could compensate for the things about the person that you don't like. Sometimes those things are only revealed after leases are signed and children are made. Wow.

That's true. Dan, okay, so we need challenges to complete by next week. It sounds like Jess is supposed to marry. Oh, man. My challenges are similar but different. I think, Monica, you should do something sleazy and take a risk. But because we have this safety control now, it's a different kind of safety control,

which is social distancing, which means doing something sleazy on your phone, connecting with someone and having phone sex or having a video chat with someone that's erotic. If that's not something that you feel like you can do, like you're not going to masturbate on the phone with somebody, you can help somebody else masturbate on the phone. You can be the person who's listening, hearing, sharing their fantasy, building on it a little bit, but connect with somebody in a sleazy way and then connect with that person again in a not sleazy way. Okay. And is this someone I'm already connected with or a new stranger? No, I think it's a rando. Oh my god! There's a lot of people on

all the apps right now who are looking to pass a little bit of time at home. I know I'm setting a high bar for you, aren't I? This is really scary. But it could be one of the two guys she's seeing, right? Sure. They're not so rando. And if it would screw things up with the guys you're seeing, make it one of the guys you're seeing.

But you need to be able to run on two tracks even with the guy you're dating where there's sometimes you know there's the like things you want from emotionally and the comforts you want from them but you also want to feel like you can be sleazy and get down with them because you're going to want that in a relationship and if that's something that they don't want from you or screws up the relationship you don't want to be with that person right i write about this a lot like there's so many great relationships out there that have sleazy starts and we don't know about it and that sleazy start can really bond you right because it's a shared secret and it's part of that what's so like exciting and adventurous about the initial stages of the relationship if you had some like crazy sleazy start you've always got a story and

because people don't share those particular stories you've always got a secret but you'll be sharing it next week yeah yeah that i'll be sharing with the world oh my god okay well i'm terrified so that's that's a challenge uh and jess yeah i want you to have some phone sex with Archer. Help him pass some time in quarantine. If he's game, it has to be consensual. You guys had great sex. He's already like, just as Sam signaled to you a disinterest by saying, oh, there's this guy I'm really into at the dinner that you went out on.

Archer has signaled to you an interest. He just told you that his best friend tells him that you're who he thinks he's going to wind up with, which is him putting in his best friend's mouth his own wish. Right? So if you feel comfortable with it, have that sex again. But then after you guys come, stay on the phone for another hour. Oh, my God. Don't come and get the I just came shames and bail. Come and then hang out.

I'm not trying to get out of this, to be honest, but I am thinking, what if we had an actual date? Since we've had sex so much, what if we have a date, a virtual date? Yeah, that's what I want you to do. I want you to have a date for sex and then to have a date after. Oh, I guess you want both. Yeah, I want both. Well, I say one thing that really worked about you two was a strong sexual connection, and I'm telling you Well, I say one thing that really worked about you two is a strong sexual connection

and I'm telling you to lean into and lead with that. The sex negativity in the culture is telling you that you should set that aside, right? And just go on a date. I'm telling you bring that on to the date because if you guys do wind up together it's going to be in part because of that sexual

connection that was always so strong. So that's a strength in your connection to Archer. And I want you to lead with what works about the relationship. Rather than saying, to figure out this relationship works, we need to set aside what we know works. It's super uncomfortable. Well, then you don't have to do it. No, no, no.

You don't have to do it. No, we have to do it. Jess, you at least know him and have had sex with him before. Are you crazy? Monica's is by far the hardest times the thousand of every challenge combined. This is the scariest challenge ever. Ever. Monica, have you ever had phone sex, Monica?

No. She's shaking her head. Well, you're going to this week. Oh, my God. And if one of your sort of issues are stumbling blocks, and I can see you're blushing around video chat. I can see you blushing around establishing a relationship. It's this fear that on some level that you are undesirable.

This psychic scars from childhood. And this doubt that this person who's expressing in a kind of like an appropriately i know i'm a straight guy being vetted courtly romantic formal way his interest in you um and you doubting that that he might is actually attracted to you when someone's doing something sleazy with you there is no doubt that they are into it and into you it is pure and distilled desire so you getting online and like having a sleazy like connection that that's safe because you're distant if you're worried about pictures like do it with just the chat do a phone you can do right you can also have a like a successful interaction with somebody where it's all done with text

messages depending on the kind of fantasy you want to spill out. I want you to do something sleazy at a distance. I have to buy a new dildo. My dildos aren't big enough. Where'd that come from? Because I'm thinking about Archer's dick. Oh, my gosh. Oh, wow.

Oh, man. I'm cooped up. Corona. They're still delivering dildos. I know that for a fact. It's considered an essential item. This was amazing, Dan. Dan, thank you so much. This was really, really wonderful and helpful. Well, thank you guys.

It was really great chatting with you. And thank you for inviting me to be a part of this experiment. Good luck with your challenges. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.