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So, So Married

Lordy, what a predicament! The more time you spend with this other man, the likelier it becomes that you'll cheat. But you can't stop seeing this other man because you study martial arts with him and that's such an important part of your life -- unlike, say, your marriage -- and you couldn't possibly give it up! And as everyone on earth knows, there's only one martial-arts school on the whole freakin' planet, so you're pretty much condemned to spend time with this other man -- what other choice do you have? -- until the inevitable inevitability inevitably happens. Puh-leeze, SSM. If your husband doesn't rate the supreme sacrifice of switching to some other martial-arts school, then nothing I can say is going to stop you from getting what you so, so desperately want. But after you fuck this other guy, SSM, don't run around pretending that you were just a victim of cruel circumstance -- martial arts made me do it! -- and not the so, so guilty instigator.

My problem may not be as kinky as most you get, but it's currently terrorizing my thoughts. While in high school and early college, I was fairly sexually repressed (right-wing, Bible-belt upbringing and all that), so I used online chatrooms to explore my sexual curiosity. I would find random pictures of people on the Internet, normal and nude, and send them to others, pretending to be the people in the photos I had found. I used both male and female "identities," as the gender wasn't really what turned me on -- it was the exhibitionist nature of sharing photos, even if they weren't really me. I only traded with others claiming to be 18-plus, and I never met anyone. It was all seemingly harmless Internet fun.

• Curt Doughty
• Dan Savage

Now I'm a 23-year-old heterosexual male, and I just began dating a girl that I like a lot. The problem is that now I seem to have recurring negative feelings about those online experiences. Part of me feels like it was a terrible thing to do, I'm an awful person for doing it, and it makes me feel horrible. This same part compels me to "confess" this to my new girlfriend and get it off my chest, which may appease those concerns -- but I imagine that it will also make me come off as really creepy and weird. AHHH!!

Confused And Distraught

Ah, the religious upbringing -- that hellish gift that keeps on giving you hell. Before those first pubes sprout, preachers are pounding it into our heads that there's only one correct way to express ourselves sexually. We are then condemned to spend the rest of our lives measuring our actual sexual desires and experiences -- which tend to be messy and perverse, as human beings tend to be messy and perverse -- against a simplistic, unachievable, stultifying and supposedly "blessed" sexual ideal.

Rest assured, CAD, adults that have indulged in nothing but Bible-belt-approved hetero sex -- that is, penis in vagina, strictly within the bounds of matrimony, always open to conception -- are rarer than Laura Bush's orgasms. Or American goals in a World Cup match. Or sane Scientologists. It was completely innocent and, as adolescent exploration of sexuality goes, completely harmless. You managed to safely explore sexuality, fantasy and gender without getting hurt or hurting anyone. Oh, you may have raised some false hopes in the folks you were chatting with, or helped to circulate pictures that the original owners may not have wanted passed around, but those are venal sins. If you do decide to tell your girlfriend about your online games, CAD, don't present it as some deep, dark secret, but as something freaky and funny you did when you were a teenager.

And, finally, you're not alone -- your behavior online is a lot more common than you seem to think. The Internet is teeming with people pretending to be what they're not -- from straight women pretending to be gay men to hairy old fags pretending to be smooth young twinks to FBI agents pretending to be 13-year-old girls. So just chill the fuck out, OK?

In my 26 years, I've had my fair share of relationships. I'm usually the one spooning up advice to friends hungry for wisdom. Sadly, I'm helpless to aid myself in my current situation. I met this girl four months ago, and she's "the girl of my dreams." If you met her, you would know that angels exist on earth. The problem is that she's married and has four kids. Her cheating husband is abusive to her (verbally, physically, etc.). He's raped her twice (once using a "date-rape" drug), and he was tried for the rape of a girl in the first year of their marriage. His kids seesaw between loving and fearing him.