He Gave an Ultimatum to His Cheating Boyfriend: Recommit Or Quit

Savage Love Letter of the Day by Dan Savage
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I'm a gay man in my early 50s who has been in a relationship with a man twenty-two years my junior for the last eleven years. I love him with all my heart, but I am about to call it quits. We've been through an extremely rocky patch just lately, but now that things had calmed down in our lives, I thought we were ready to recommit to each other, maybe even get married because it's something he's wanted for a long time.

Here's my problem: throughout our relationship I've caught him cheating at various times. He says he's not, that it didn't happen, and if it did happen, it wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be, and even if it is that bad, his horrific childhood is to blame, not him. I told him just a few days ago that I wanted to recommit or quit because we haven't had sex in some time and I feel that I deserve to be in a sexual relationship because I don't know how much longer I'll be able to have sex at all. My health is good, I'm very sturdy, but sex is a young person's game and I know that if I try to find a new relationship it will be difficult because the only people who want to fuck an old man are generally either old men themselves or kinda creepy. I'm not complaining about that, mind you—I don't want to be with another old man myself and after my boyfriend's numerous infidelities, my self esteem has really taken a beating.

So, to shorten the story, I confronted him about the red flags I'd already seen: Grindr, Adam4Adam, Radar, and Hornet apps on his phone, texts, all sorts of stuff. He denied and minimized. So while he was at work, I snooped. I went through all of his secret email accounts. (I found six, but I'm sure there's more.) I deleted his hookup profiles and replaced his folder full of naked selfies with one of me giving the camera the finger. I even messaged a few people I know he's had sex with and implied that he has an STI. Yes, that was bad—or, as my therapist said, "an unhealthy choice"—but seeing all that stuff made my blood boil. When he came home, I confronted him again and told him that I just can't live this way, that I deserve to be in a loving relationship (a loving and sexual relationship), and confessed to everything I'd seen while I was snooping and I told him that I'm leaving him. He reacted very badly, to say the least. He says he loves me, that nobody else ever loved him, and that I'm the only one he ever has or ever will love, that he doesn't want to live without me.

I'm putting it in your lap, Dan. I've read your stuff for over ten years, and while I occasionally think you're full of shit, I respect your opinions even when I don't agree. So please tell me how to get past his online and IRL infidelities or tell me to just DTMFA. I'm not promising that I'll take your advice but I absolutely promise to listen.

Wavering And Angry

P.S. I also do not care to be hugged, good for you for putting that out there right up front.

Oy.

First up, what you did—snooping, deleting your boyfriend's photos and apps, the messages you sent to his contacts (!!!) implying he had an STI—was excessive, cruel, and a little scary. (And your therapist should've pushed back a little harder.) I get it: you had every right to be angry and you lashed out in anger. And that's what makes it scary. If you can't control yourself when discover proof of something you damn well knew to be true already, e.g. your boyfriend was cheating on you, is it any wonder your boyfriend shaded or denied the truth when you questioned him about it?

I don't say that to excuse his cheating. If your boyfriend wanted an open relationship, he should've asked for one. If hookup-app-enabled flirtations give him life, as the kids say (until they heard me say it, at which point they promptly stopped), your boyfriend should've cleared that with you. Your boyfriend also had the option of including you on his adventures and in his flirtations. But come on, WAA. By your own admission your boyfriend has been cheating on you from the start. [Insert Maya Angelou quote here.] If cheating isn't something you can get past... how have you managed to get past it all these years?

Or maybe you recently decided you can't live with his cheating anymore. Or maybe you simply can't ignore the hurt anymore. Or maybe he stopped being discreet enough for you to suspend your disbelief and his failure to continue taking your feelings into consideration even as he cheated on you is what really stings. If it's any of the above, WAA, you should probably break up with him.

But if his cheating was easier to live with back when you two were still having sex, well, that's different.

Okay. Um. Yeah.

You're going to have to forgive me for this, WAA, but I'm going to be painfully blunt. It's possible your boyfriend isn't sexually attracted to you anymore. I'm not suggesting you're unattractive. (It's been my personal experience—ahem—that there are lots of young, hot, not-at-all creepy guys out there who are into fifty-something guys, along with plenty of older, hot, not-at-all creepy fifty-something guys into other guys their own age.) But there's a big difference between 30 and 52. And while it's nice to think that our partners will continue to find us desirable even as the decades grind on, it's not always the case. Which doesn't make his neglect okay and if this relationship is as important to him as he claims, your boyfriend should've been making an effort to meet your needs.

And if a relationship that's both loving and sexual relationship is what you want, WAA, you can and should (and just did) make that clear to him. Ball(s) in his court. If he can come through, great. Maybe you can stay in this relationship. If he can't and you aren't willing to settle for a loving, open, honest, companionate relationship and/or marriage, then you'll have to end it.

But if you stay... you gotta know he's gonna keep cheating on you. Your boyfriend is not suddenly gonna become a different person. So you need to be clear—with him and with yourself—about what you are and are not willing to accept. Would you settle for the kind of consideration and discretion that would allow you to pretend he's not cheating on you? Or would you agree to sex with others so long as you were included? Or are you asking him to never, ever touch anyone else with his penis ever again? If only the last option works for you—if it's monogamy you want—you need to ask yourself whether that's a realistic ask, given what you know about him.

A quick word about your approach...

You say you want to have sex, WAA, but you didn't make it clear to me you want to have sex with your boyfriend. Did you make it clear to him that you wanna have sex with him? Or did you give him the impression that you just wanna have sex with someone, anyone, so long as that someone is significantly younger than you are and he's obligated to be that someone? Even if he's still attracted to you—and he very well could be!—that approach is gonna turn him off.

Finally, WAA, you're obviously contemplating the end of your sexual life: "I don't know how much longer I'll be able to have sex at all. My health is good, I'm very sturdy, but sex is a young person's game."

People can and are sexually active well into their eighties and beyond. But if you're done in a decade, WAA, and you're still with your boyfriend then—which is only gonna happen if you can manage to get past his cheating and get your sex life back on track—what is your boyfriend supposed to do once you're no longer "able" to have sex? Just as you don't wanna be celibate in your fifties, your boyfriend isn't going to wanna be celibate in his forties and fifties. So at some point in the future, WAA, you're gonna have to give your boyfriend permission to seek sex outside the relationship. If you can imagine yourself giving him permission to get it elsewhere then, maybe you could find it in yourself to give him that same permission now—provided, of course, that he doesn't continue to neglect you sexually.

P.S. Someone hugged me on an airplane last night.

P.P.S. You mentioned your therapist. Does your boyfriend have a therapist? I'm notoriously bad at math, WAA, but if you're twenty-two years older than he is and you're in your early fifties and you've been in this relationship for eleven years... that means you first got together when you were about 30 and he was about 18. Which means he was either not long out of the terrible home he grew up in or he was still in that terrible home. If your boyfriend only wants to stay with you because he's been emotionally or financially dependent on you his entire adult life, well, that's a shitty basis for a relationship. And if he only stays because he afraid to go, you shouldn't want him to stay. He needs his own therapist.

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