Dear Sasha,
I read your column, Classic Cuckold, and the response by Chris, Compersion Vs. Cuckold. I have no issues with your writing, generally. You give good advice and you tend to get your story as straight as possible before saying anything. You check facts, you read books and you talk to experts.
Which is why I, too, was disappointed by your answer to the supposedly homosexual Desperate Puppy, who had this particular fantasy.
It seemed like you gave a textbook glance at the fetish itself and explained it with the most obvious Freudian psychology possible, with no alternatives. It was… a little sad, I guess.
Of all the reasons why a gay man might want to see his partner with someone else, reproductive superiority doesn’t seem like it would top the list, logically, as it might for some hetero men. I’m not saying it’s impossible, and maybe it is why he feels that way. I just think it’s not that cut and dried.
Cuckolding is one of my fetishes, and my girlfriend and I have acted on this with some great results. In a quest to understand myself, this desire and to better relate it to my partner and those we wish to have join us, I have come across the same Freudian explanation.
While I understand it, it simply doesn’t sit with me that’s not what I’m in it for. I’m a sub in the bedroom and an alpha male in the rest of the world. I see my girlfriend as having the right to sleep with other people. I see it as my place to allow her to, and not to interfere. It does not make me crave my girlfriend more, and it does not make me jealous. It does not make her love me less, and it does not remove from our connection.
It just feels right. It makes us happy, happier than we have ever been, actually. I do enjoy it, and I suppose that makes me more of a wittol than a cuckold, but it’s what the kids are calling it these days. I guess I’m just saying there are a lot of reasons why Desperate Puppy could want what he wants, some that might make him feel weird or alone, and such a one-dimensional answer on your part could have left him feeling even more isolated. Not all us guys are in it to spread the seed.
Genetically Un-Predispositioned
Dear Genetically,
Thank you for sharing your own reason for wanting to see your girlfriend have sex with other people. It fills me with genuine relief to know that people are having their intimate needs met. I’m not kidding when I say I feel that this is the key to peace on earth.
To be clear, though, it was not Desperate Puppy who wanted to explore the idea of cuckoldry, but his boyfriend. When I said it was a “classic cuckold fantasy,” I meant just that: it was a very classic version of the cuckold fantasy. This is not to say that others experience this fantasy in the same way. In fact, by defining it as “classic cuckold,” I was implying that there are other varieties.
If I was wrong to define this particular situation as classic, I would honestly be surprised. In my experience (both personal and professional, if you could call this column that), classic cuckolds love to be regaled with filthy stories that require their immediate attention. They enjoy using their partner as a vessel for this desire. Gay or straight, male or female (and I have met some women who love being cuckolded as well, with the idea that they need to “win back” the affections of their partner), they are turned on by the ancient impulses of survival, competition and/or procreation.
Others were upset that I would suggest to Puppy that he do something that might make him uncomfortable to satisfy his partner. If there were always a comfortable way to support a partner in his or her unshared fantasies (initially anyway), I wouldn’t have a column. I wasn’t suggesting that Puppy go out and fuck other people. I was suggesting that he imply this. Honing your skills as an erotic storyteller is often a good compromise while you’re growing ac-customed to the idea of a challenging fantasy.
I know I’m often sharp-tongued and/or glib in this forum. It’s foolish to think some people don’t read it precisely because they enjoy this qual-ity. I am willing to concede that this may have been the case here, but I also think we’re sensitive about our choices, and when we feel our personal choices are being judged in a context we have come to respect, it makes us panicky. I am not judging, but at the same time, I am judging. People are entertained by judgment.
And I am here to entertain and inform. As for referring to our choices as “weird-ass,” I do that with love and respect and complicity. The mind is a vast and impulsive place.
I cannot let this go without addressing the word “othering” that appeared in a letter below my column. According to one definition, “other-ing is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an “other.”
In the context of sex, this definition needs to be refined, or maybe even punched in the ass, because it is often precisely through othering that we are turned on. Difference turns us on. Hello butch/femme, Domme/sub and on and on and on.
What have I learned from this? There’s a book of essays just waiting to be turned into a yearly collection: Best Cuckold Erotica. Cleis Press, are you listening?
