Get naked

Q I found your recent reply to the 25-year-old woman who is worried that she won’t be able to give up her cheatin’ ways to be wise, especially your suggestion that she tell her boyfriend that she’s fighting the urge. I wonder, though, if it might be worth her while to consider another possibility: that she just isn’t the monogamous type. Many people seem to start with the idea that finding a mate and remaining loyal to him/her for a lifetime is the normal thing to do, and any deviation from this scenario is selfish or sick. There’s tremendous social pressure from family and friends to conform to that life plan.

And yet, maybe—just maybe—it isn’t right for everyone. If she’s someone who enjoys having a variety of sexual partners, couldn’t it be that she should stop listening to those voices that tell her it’s wrong and just go with it? Some people leave school, settle on a career as young adults and pursue it all their lives, while others switch fields as frequently as their interests change. If we can tolerate either strategy in working life, why can’t we tolerate either strategy in relationships?

A Yes, you can make a perfectly good argument that some people just aren’t cut out for doing the same thing with the same people (whether in a job or a relationship) year after sheesh-I-get-the-idea-already year. The problem is that the desire to continuously chase something new prohibits you from fully committing yourself to the situation you’re currently in. You’d be forever relegating yourself to life in a cubicle (filled with sad little knickknacks and quite possibly a bobblehead), when you could—by doing the hard work of learning how to keep things fresh and exciting—end up in a corner office (with a non-particleboard desk and quite possibly a higher-end bobblehead). Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about not conforming to the dictates of society, but you just have to make sure that you aren’t making choices out of fear (deep-dish intimacy can be frightening to some people) and mere habit.

Q I’m a 38-year-old gay man and I can’t get enough dick. I think about sex all the time. After work I go to Chelsea and look for trouble. I go to video stores and suck cock. I need it every day. I’m insatiable. I’ve never had a monogamous relationship and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to settle down. I’m not getting younger and I really want to find love because I can get lonely and I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been horny since I was 16 and I can’t stop. Do you think I have a chance for love or am I destined for the glory holes?

A Just to be clear, constantly sucking dick is not what I was referring to with all that bobblehead imagery up there. Still, you could learn a thing or two from the reply above. That incessant hankering you have for sex is your way of self-anesthetizing emotional pain. You’re sad and lonely and want to share your life with someone, and whenever the pain of that reality rears its head, off you go to suck yourself into a state of faux bliss. The video stores—much like cheating while in a supposedly monogamous relationship—have become a crutch. It’s been your go-to behavior for so long that you haven’t even tried to do things differently. If you truly want a full-fledged relationship, you’re going to have to stop the easy, superficial sex and work on getting it the hard way: opening yourself up to people, developing deeper emotional bonds and actually running the risk of getting hurt. You definitely have as much of a chance at finding love as everyone else, but now that you’ve done more than your share of the anonymous sex thing, it’s time to know and be known.

Send letters to Jamie Bufalino c/o Time Out New York, 475 Tenth Avenue, 12th floor, New York, NY 10018, or send e-mail to sex@timeoutny.com.