My partner and I (both men in our mid-30s, in an open relationship) have a big issue. When we met, he said he was a total top, and there was no way he would bottom; he just didn’t like it. I always said that I was versatile, but bottoming isn’t super comfortable for me, though I would tolerate it. Lately, it’s been harder to tolerate, to the point that I would call myself a top/side now.
Even more recently, my partner hooked up with an older man whom he bottomed for. I was upset at first because he said he would never bottom, and the few times I have asked him have been met with disapproval. But then this older man came along and convinced my partner to give it a shot. He said he really, really enjoyed it, but is not willing to do it with me. He said it was a “daddy/son” dynamic that I just can’t provide.
This is getting to be a pretty big sticking point in our relationship, as I simply do not want to engage in sex with him anymore. I don’t know what to do, or if I am just overreacting and potentially yucking his yum with a new friend. What do you think? Before this, I was seriously considering proposing, but now I am second-guessing myself. The first couples therapy appointment is scheduled already, but any other guidance?
— Not Daddy Enough
Rich Juzwiak: I don’t think that the writer is overreacting. This is a cause for concern, and it may even signal incompatibility. I think that sometimes when people make declarations, they don’t always finish the sentence. Sometimes it’s an accident that they don’t finish the sentence, and sometimes it’s intentional.
When the partner said he was a total top, and there was no way he would bottom because he just didn’t like it, the end of that sentence could’ve been: with you. You can have different types. If you’re versatile, you can have different types of people you’re willing to do things with. And sometimes this is terribly binary of you. Maybe, in the case of this guy, the guy was older, and he had a daddy-son thing. You might not want to get topped by somebody shorter or smaller than you because of those optics and what society says about how people fit together. There are a lot of factors.
First, I want to emphasize to our letter writer: Don’t rake your partner over the coals for being a liar. It’s reasonable to assume he painted an incomplete picture for whatever reason, but that it was close enough to his truth anyway.
Jessica Stoya: The letter writer is feeling that their partner told them he would never ever do this thing, then their partner got angry at them for asking if it was a thing that they could reassess, and now all of a sudden he’s having a great time doing that with someone else and won’t discuss or try to find an angle that would work for him that they can use together. There are a lot of reasons to be angry.
Rich: I think it’s interesting, given the sexual caveat that they had in the beginning of the relationship, where the writer understood that he would not be topping this guy and that this guy had said so explicitly. But as I said, maybe he didn’t finish the sentence. Then he went and did it, and talked about it. So to me, that could be human inconsistency. Maybe he forgot that he had said that, but it could also be that there’s more to the story here. To me, this is evidence that what he meant was, “I’m not going to be bottoming for you.”
I think that you’re right, there is reason to be upset here, but I also think that if you want to have a harmonious, open relationship, then you have to let people have these dynamics as they are. You can set rules and boundaries, but you’re going to have a hard time if you’re policing every hookup — especially with gay men, because they say that they’re total tops and then they turn out to be vers a lot of the time.
Jessica: I’m thinking of the phenomenon of Doms who are like, “I’m a Dom. I will never ever sub. I have no desire to sub.” And a lot of the time, they do at least on one occasion, meet a person who inspires some interest in submitting or some curiosity about it. They don’t always pursue that, but usually, there’s a moment where their certainty in the identity of the role they will always play in a dynamic, and it being a core part of who they are, gets a little shaken.
Rich: Yes, absolutely. For a long time, my philosophy, and this is a joke, but not really, is how do you get a top to bottom? You mount him. Now I’ve said this amongst gay men before, and they’ve disagreed. So I don’t know. I say this as a 6-foot-1-inch-tall guy who has a large frame. That’s not everybody’s experience, let’s say, but it’s common.
Jessica: I say this as a 169-centimeter woman who often looks as if there was a strong wind, I might blow over. The number of times that I have laughed in a dominant man’s face and informed them, “Oh, no, it’s just a matter of time until a woman comes along who disabuses you of the notion that who you are is a BDSM dominant.”
Whether it is about the person in question experiencing an interaction with a person where all the stars align, a particular physical action being done on them, or coming across a video or a story that gives them a certain fantasy, people regularly find these little sparks of a part of their sexuality that they did not know existed. When we’re in open relationships, the reality is that there’s a much higher volume of exposure and permission to act on that exposure.
So we have to know that when we open our relationships or agree from the start to open relationships, our partners are going to go off and have experiences they don’t want with us or can’t have with us. Or sometimes they’ll bring it home and go, “Hey, I’d love to do this with you.” Simultaneously, though, it’s really bad faith behavior to bring something you know your partner wants home as an anecdote and double down on, “But I won’t do it with you,” in a way that is justified by an assumption that it is confined to one and only one dynamic. That’s rude and also looking for reasons not to make it work.
Rich: I agree. I think that the partner really just should’ve kept his mouth shut about this. You make a great point about self-discovery through sex. It can read as gloating in a way. We’re not doing that, but I’m doing that with somebody else, even though you want that. It is rude.
Jessica: But then he has an open mind with this presumably random person, and then returns to complete rigidity with the partner. There’s a world where the guy could’ve come home, and said, “Babe, there was this weird dynamic with this older man that was daddy-son, and I wanted to bottom, and I had a really good time. Can we talk about how I’m feeling about it and consider what we might be able to do that could show me a whole world of enjoying bottoming, and then we can trade off?” That’s not what happened here. The rudeness and the fact that that’s totally not what happened here are the concerns for the relationship from my perspective. It actually doesn’t matter whether it’s daddy-son bottoming or what schedule the trash gets taken out on.
Rich: If I had to guess, because I obviously don’t have access to the partner’s mental space, it is a type thing, really, for him and that the letter writer is probably shorter or smaller in stature than him, or certain markers are going to just make bottoming for him a nonstarter, whereas with other people, it would be fine. And so I agree, it’s just the way that he laid it out makes it so that he wasn’t entirely clear. Again, that he came home to reveal this information and then remained so fixed when he knows that the partner would like to do it is not particularly nice.
About the potential incompatibility, there are ways for two tops to have a sexual relationship through oral, or, since you’re open, you find a bottom, and you tag team him. People love doing that together. It does facilitate a different kind of bond when you do that with a partner versus when you’re just having sex together. So if people are interested in that, that is a really fun thing to explore. But it feels like our writer is hung up on this one issue, and it also feels like his partner is saying, “It’s not going to happen with you.”
So at that point, it’s been messy and impolite, and that’s great stuff to work on in therapy. Still, the fact of the matter may be fixed here. You’re a side/top, and your boyfriend is a bottom for only people who are not you. What do you do with that? Can you go on with this relationship knowing that? Or is that just fundamental incompatibility something that’s going to break up the relationship for you?
Yes, that’s sad, and it’s obviously a negative situation, but the positive here is that you’re learning about your dynamic, even if it’s in imperfect ways. You’re understanding the limits of your compatibility. I think that sex in this way is a good method for people to learn about themselves and each other. So even if it turns out that you don’t stay together over this, you went through the process. This wasn’t a random occurrence. You learned. You both went on your journeys of catching dick, and this is what came out of it. I think you’re better off not being with somebody who isn’t right for you.
Jessica: To that, if this relationship is not able to be repaired and our writer moves on, it’s very much worth looking at what worked and what didn’t work for more detail about what he’s looking for in his next relationship. That can include asking some questions like: Do you bottom? Will you bottom with me? How do you communicate about fun sex adventures that I am not having with you? Then, evaluate whether that style of communication works for them.
On Match.com, initial dates are often like job interviews where potential partners ask questions and judge the other on these questions, as well as appearance, body language, and so forth. I would seem to be a real catch. However, that is until the woman I am dating asks if I was married.
