the triumphant return of advice!

Hey everyone! I haven’t done the whole advice thing in a while, but I got a good query from a young lady who seems to be in dire straits. What some of you old timers may remember is that I used to dole out advice semi-regularly with the wisdom and panache of a sassy gay man wrapped up in a no nonsense obese black woman, but due to lack of advice inquiries, the whole thing has slowed down…wait, that seems like a perfect segue into this latest advice query! You’ve still got it, Kelly!

Q:
My husband and I are in our late twenties, been together about six years and married for three (no kids). Overall our relationship is great, he’s an awesome guy, and I love the shit out of him.
The thing is, and it’s kind of a big thing, is that he doesn’t want to bang me anymore. We used to have an amazingly wild sex life, and it’s withered away to almost nothing. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time we had sex and that really bums me out. I don’t think this is my fault; I’ve stayed in great shape, take care of myself, and haven’t gotten gross in any way, and I’m still way horny. The issue seems to be that he devotes all his energy to porn & masturbating rather than me. I totally understand that guys whack off and stare at porn (I DO read your blog, you know), but I think it’s a little excessive… he has frickin’ calluses on his dick (I’ve seen the few times I’ve gotten to handle it), he’s always “too tired” to bone. And he just gets really embarrassed when I try to talk to him about it. I know some masturbation is healthy and fine by me, but it’s totally destroyed our sex life.
I’m starting to feel like Peggy Bundy nagging Al for sex, but he’d rather in the garage with his Big’uns. It feels really, really shitty. I don’t want this to be the reason for a divorce or anything, I love this sexless dude with all my heart, but I’m a sexual lady in my twenties and I still want to fuck. Is there any hope of reviving a lively boning relationship?

A:
Okay, well…first off, good on ya for seeking a solid and healthy resolution to this problem instead of doing what a lot of people do in this situation and just throw their cards up in the air and start boning someone else on the side. That, unfortunately for the day and age we live in, says a lot about your character.
Okay, now that the asskissing is out of the way, let’s get down to it. You are correct, dudes tend to look at porn, and it’s this humble advice columnist’s opinion that those dudes who don’t have weird issues that are rooted in some unfortunate form of shame, but that’s neither here nor there. Obviously in this situation we’ve got a partner who seems to understand the role of porn in the male sexual pantheon and another partner who’s, uh…to put it bluntly, kind of going whacktastic, and obviously isn’t dealing with any porn-shame issues.

Let’s digress for a moment. I whack off. Most people do, and as a man who has lived through puberty and the subsequent 20 year mardi gras of malthusianism that followed, I can say I’ve done my share of beating off. I’ve talked to friends about beating off, we’ve discussed what happens when you beat off five or more times in a day (it’s like dry firing a gun) and truly, we’ve all over-indulged to the point of rawdong, which is an unfortunate, but not uncommon side effect of being born a male with hands.

What I’ve never in my life experienced, nor heard tales of, is calluses forming on a dick. That’s pretty wild. Now, far be it from me to say that’s ‘outrageous’ or anything like that. It could have to do with your husband’s skin or his pounding style or any number of other things I’d rather not picture, but let’s just put it this way: if the callused up dong was the whole problem, I’d be telling you to relax (even though, and I can’t stress this enough, I don’t know how you do that…I’d say my crack team of cranking-off researchers have crested the threshold of human endurance more than a few times, so maybe we’re dealing with an almost superhuman ability to find the time to beat off, which brings me to my point…)

This is obviously more than a cosmetic issue. It’s ruining your marriage and the forensic evidence seems to suggest it’s taking up a ton of his time, to the point where he’s undoubtedly putting other things off as well. In short, he’s not just not boning you. Were it that simple, he’d be a regular, normal guy with a raw dong and a bad attitude beating off a relatively benign 5-6 times a day, but that’s not what’s happening. Here’s what I think:

You’ve heard psychologists talk about rapists before, right? One thing they always say is that rape isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Similarly, this beating off compulsion can’t be reduced to the self-satisfaction of the sexual urge. If it was, there’s no way he’d be doing it that much, nor would it make sense for it to COMPLETELY replace accessible sex. Beating off, more times than not, isn’t even about being so horny you can’t take it any more. It’s about boredom, it’s about escape and (and every single dude out there knows what I’m talking about here) it’s an avoidance behavior.

Once the regular routine daily quotient of beating off has been achieved (and that’s different for everyone. Could be once every three days, could be four to six times a day) any extra cranks to the chain are likely avoidance behavior, where you’re beating off to not deal with something else. Say you’re doing your taxes and it’s stressing you out, or you’re trying to find a job or you’re sick of trying to deal with your relationship or self loathing, or you just don’t want to get out of bed because you can’t stand your situation, or any number of the zillions of other things that come along in day to day life that can be mentally crippling, you just beat off. It’s mindless, physically rewarding, relaxing, releases endorphins and has a concrete beginning, middle and end, which so many daily problems (shitty job, I’m ugly, my wife’s fucking someone else) don’t seem to have. What is that the recipe for?

Addiction. Any escapist hobby can become addictive and I’d say that unless there’s something major that I’m missing here (he’s beating off to GAY porn, you’re insane, there are actually NOT calluses on his dick, he’s having an affair out in the garage) there’s absolutely no doubt that your husband has cultivated an unhealthy addiction to beating off/pornography. Your disappointment in his lack of sex drive likely only makes him want to seek refuge in the cloak of his addiction, much like the way confronted drunks tend to go binge drink and overeaters, when mocked about their fatness tend to seek comfort in food. Your husband’s bottle of Wild Turkey or his pie a la mode is in the garage on his computer.

Now, this is the kind of problem that’s bigger than an advice column. You, as a monogamous member of your relationship, have a right to expect to be fucked on a regular basis. If you look at Maslow’s pyramid (an easily googleable chart which outlines the importance of the things humans need, also referred to as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) , sex is right there by food, sleep and shitting, beneath even personal safety, so what he’s doing to you by not addressing this problem is akin to withholding sleep or starving you (There are people who have low sex drives who will undoubtedly read this last sentence and scoff, but sex is a fundamental instinct, and I stand by this. It’s literally torture to withhold sex from someone who is unwilling to fuck up the life they have by seeking it elsewhere).

SO, here’s what I’d say: show him this column. Make him see how seriously you’re taking this whole deal. Obviously, you’ve tried to talk to him but whatever it is that he’s truly refusing to deal with has become tied up in your sexlife and well, if it were as simple as having a conversation, he’d still be fucking you. Tell him that you’re worried about what’s bothering him and that you want to see him take steps to figure it out, whether that’s seeing someone professional or another route, but that you won’t just sit there while he ignores your needs and beats off in the garage for the rest of your lives. As hilarious as it sounds, he needs a bit of an intervention, a kick to the balls so to speak, because he’s clearly in the grip (pun unintended but enjoyed) of something more powerful than simple conversation will be able to loosen.

And if he refuses to listen or talk or try to make the steps to fix himself, tell him you’ll divorce him, and if that doesn’t motivate him, do it. If you stay stuck in the situation you’re in now, you’re either gonna wind up fucking someone else and look like the bad guy, or you’re gonna go crazy and your life is gonna start to suck on a chronic and eternal level. You seem like you’re at the end of your rope (otherwise why would you write into a smarmy dildo like myself for advice) so do yourself a favor and treat this like the very, very serious problem that it is (AND, don’t listen to him when he says that it’s not a problem and that I’m a retard and that I’m way off and that he’s not avoiding anything and that this VERY PART OF THIS COLUMN RIGHT HERE is total poison bullshit, because THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE WHO ARE ADDICTED TO THINGS SAY WHEN THEY’RE CONFRONTED WITH THE REALITY OF THEIR ADDICTION.)

Um, yeah. Good luck with this. Pretty rough. Calluses? Really? Wow. Anyone else out there get the calluses?