Homewrecking, Personal Scratching, and "I Love You"

There’s this Other Dude. Other Dude and I get along quite well — we can talk about life and feelings and share an absurd amount of interests/values — we're in the same social group, so I see him at least a few times a week. He's also super-good-looking and tells me fairly regularly he considers me to be super-good-looking, and we've maybe even consummated our mutual attraction once, which we both decided was a mistake. We're really compatible in a lot of important ways, and if it weren't for one problem I think I'd really be into him, even more so than guys I've had long relationships with. The problem: He's had a long-distance girlfriend the entire time I've known him.

I feel pretty bad about being the counterparty to these shenanigans, but it really does seem like he's either checked out of the relationship or is scared to take a risk, because every single mutual friend wants to know why the hell he keeps acting like we're dating (but without the sex, unfortunately) and won't break up with her. I'm not sure if he even realizes that it's totally apparent to everyone but him that he's into me.

We've talked about the fact we like one another, but it doesn't seem like he wants to break up with her, and furthermore, I don't want to be the one to try to get him to. That's a lot of pressure for a faux-lationship to take, and I don't want to be a rebound, because although I'm loath to admit it, I do actually care about him. So I'm kind of backed in a corner of either being a little hypocritical or being a homewrecker. In a perfect world, he'd break up with her on his own and whatever happens with us happens, but it's been a while and I don't know if he will any time soon, and I have a feeling that in a situation like this, an earnest talk about how I feel for him wouldn't help matters at all.

Should I just move on and try to cut him off? He pretends to not be jealous but then, a few beers deep, will act out if he figures out I'm interested in another guy by either being really harsh and making fun of him or getting weirdly handsy. Or should I just kind of keep him around, set boundaries, and hope he grows up sometime soon? I don't think he's intentionally jerking me around, I just think he's kind of clueless and a little immature. Help?

Walk away. You’ve got a nice sort of tension there with Other Dude. And I’m sure it’s thrilling, but obviously not so thrilling that it’s unmanageable. The yearning is piquant but not actually threatening to your heart and your sanity. Which you seem to know! As do your friends.

I mean, you fucked him. And that wasn’t enough to pierce the veil, to get him to open up to you and tell you how you suspect he might really feel about you? That means that he’s not really feeling it. Certainly not enough to deep-six this long-distance thing. Plus, does his girlfriend know that he sleeps with other women? Is that part of their deal? It’s OK if it is, but not OK if it isn’t. Why pine after a guy who's willing to step out on his girlfriend? I'm not even persuaded that cheating makes him a terrible, awful person — especially if he decided, after sleeping with you, that he wanted to be with you instead and owned up to his mistake to everyone involved — but he knows he could date you (or at least sleep with you) if he wanted. He doesn’t.

The only corner you’re backed into is one you’ve made for yourself, because better to be stuck in an intractable situation than actually deal with the pain of rejection, right? There’s absolutely nothing immature about moving on if you just do it and don’t rub it in his face. If he realizes after you’re dating someone else that he made a mistake, then maybe you can accept an apology or sincere supplication and give him another chance. (But come on, that’s not going to happen.)

I think if you take a look at what you wrote you’ll see — and pardon the armchair psychology here, but this is the labor with which A Dude has been tasked — that you’ve troweled a lot of complexity onto a situation that isn’t that complex at all. Seems to me that you know that you should leave Other Dude to his own devices but that it’s safer for you to feel slighted but patient. Fuck that noise.

Why does my roommate's BF (who I guess is also my roommate, but I don't want to admit that degree of closeness to him) scratch himself in front of me? While I eat? How do I make it stop? I know this isn't your usual relationship type question, but please help!

Also, they're terrible for each other — more him for her, but I'm not going to be all holier-than-thou and not own that my friend has Faults. It's been three years, and at first she was all "my parents hate him, but they just don't know him like I do," but now we think she knows that NONE of her friends like him (he's a nice enough person, but terribly immature and annoying, and does not have friends of his own). Also, their relationship borders on the abusive at times — not physical, thank god, but overly controlling in lots of little ways. It's gotten to the point that she never does anything without him, not because they're SOOO IN LOOOVE, but because he'll throw tantrums (and yes, tantrum is the right word, even though he is 30) about how "it's not fair" and she’s "so rude" that she go someplace other than work without him. So she takes him along with her like she's Teen Mom in order to avoid a fight.

So I guess this is relationship-y, but not my relationship. How do I get her to see that this needs to stop before he does something crazy like propose? If you can't answer that, will you at least tell me how to get him to stop scratching his balls in front of me while I eat? It's not the kind diet plan I was looking for.

It feels *so* good to scratch your balls. Balls are a little sensitive purse of skin that sit in a dank cloth prison all day, despite having evolved to swing freely in the dry breeze of an African treetop. Considering their circumstance, it’s a miracle they don’t scream and run their little tin cup against the inside of our zippers demanding a walk in the yard more often.

But decorum. Anything more than an idle scratch on an arm (which I feel like is sort of sexy when a man does it?) in front of anyone but his partner is gross. Human, but gross. There’s a whole argument to made about what this says about how we deal with each other’s bodies, especially now that there’s little need for pristine hygiene in the age of modern medicine and whatever, but I’m going to give you this one, especially because I can think of few things more obnoxious than the image you’ve painted in my head of this guy in tatty sweatpants just going to town on his testicles while you’re trying to eat your cereal which he has psychically infested with pubic hairs.

He’s your roommate now, though, whether you asked for him or not, so you really only have two choices over which you have complete control: shut up and take it or shut up and move out. I really want to say you can talk to your roommate about this guy, tell her that she’s dating a disgusting jerkface, and maybe you should do that once you’ve decided that you’re willing to move out if she doesn’t dump him — it’s worth a shot! — but at the end of the day you’re roommates, which are friendships that seem very intimate but are often willfully held at balls’ distance because having someone up in your business so literally every day is tough. Many of us spent years living with people we happily no longer talk to; maybe this is going to happen to you here, too.

So you can talk to her about the fact that her boyfriend’s a lump if you really feel like it would help her. But don’t do it until you have enough money saved up for a deposit on a studio, because if she starts resenting you for getting up in her relationship, for judging her, then you’re going to want to get out with a quickness.

And the next time you’re about to chonk into a bowl of Sebaceous Snacks, just tell this guy to stop scratching himself. Maybe he doesn’t notice he’s doing it? Either way, you have every right to say — out loud, casually but forcefully — that he’s being gross. Throw in a “dude” so he knows you’re not secretly coming onto him. (I know, but just trust me on this one.)

So, this is a weird thing. A little backstory: I've been with my boyfriend officially for almost nine months, which to me isn't that long. We're both students in our waning years of undergrad on the East Coast. He wants to move across the country after graduation. I understand this, since it's where his field of expertise is, where he'll be able to find the most work, blah blah blah. He's going to end up there eventually with or without me. He's been really pushing me to think about coming with him, which I totally will once it gets closer to the time at which I'll have to make an actual life-changing decision. But here's the thing. He's talking (really seriously, like convincing me how much I'd love living with him and being kind of pushy about it) about moving across the country together and living together and all this stuff … but he hasn't told me he loves me. I know he loves me (he's very affectionate and would never never cheat and is all in all just way too nice to me), but he won't say it. So how can he be talking about something as serious as moving across the country together if he can't just tell me those three little words? ARGH.

Jesus Christ, lady. Tell him exactly what you just told me: “You want me to move cross country but you haven’t ever said that you love me.” Then say *nothing.* You’ll get your three words lickity split.

Sometimes people say they wish that there were other words for love in English, because in other languages it’s impossible to have relationship problems, I guess? But I really like how we use the same word to describe the swirling quasar of emotion we feel for our wives as we do to describe the way we feel about good pastrami. It’s a present reminder of how feeble language can be when trying to express what it feels like to love and yet how amazing it is that the three most treacly and bankrupt words in the language can, when said by the right person, explode a heart into a star.

I think people hold off on saying ‘I love you’ because they’re afraid of what it means, which is so dumb, because what people should really be afraid of is what it continues to mean. ‘I love you’ is a threshold. If he’s been holding back because he’s afraid of what it might mean or he was saving it for a special occasion, maybe you guys need to have a lot of long talks about what it actually means to you both. Those are good conversations to have before you starting hiring moving vans.

Is it OK that I basically always touch myself/demand that my guy stimulates my clitoris during sex? I come, like, every time, but I don't know how common it is to ALWAYS require that little bit extra. My boyfriend doesn't mind but I just want to know who else is doing this, I guess? In my entire life I have only come from just the sex (without clitoral stimulation) maybe 3-5 times. Is anyone put off by this? How come people having sex in movies/TV/porn never seem to do it if it's not just me?

Yes. I don’t know what porn you’re watching, but even in that hyperreal valley of sexual athleticism, I’ve seen plenty of women touch themselves while being fucked.

Maybe some guys are put off by this, but they are wrong and you should not fuck them. There are few things better in the world than making a woman orgasm (seeing your child’s first baseball game while making a woman orgasm; watching your daughter walk down the aisle while making a woman orgasm) but any guy worth his sweaty salt knows that all women are different and that the best way to learn about how their particular body works is to shut up and watch.

Even better, I suspect more women are like you than can just get off on penetration alone, so you’re fine. Promise promise promise. Never think of it again. Go forth and have multiples.

What was the best sex you ever had? And why was it so good? I'd be curious to hear about this and am using the anonymity thing to ask the question that I'd pretty much like to ask to every dude I've ever met.

I woke up this morning from a dream in which someone showed me a picture of my ex driving a Jeep. I knew the Jeep belonged to her roommate’s boyfriend. I knew this meant that my ex was now sleeping with her roommate’s boyfriend. And in my dream, I pushed my way out of the strange hotel lobby cocktail party, telling my friends on the way out that I was going to go murder both my ex and Jeep Dickless.

Then I was awake and not ashamed enough, so I went to her Facebook page to check if I was some sort of oracle. I’m not, unless you count thumbing through her recent pictures looking for clues being able to divine the past.

The sex with her was the best sex I ever had. All of it. And it wasn’t just because I loved her enough to still be torn from an otherwise very restful sleep with anger and jealousy and resentment years after I last spoke with her, but because it was all that and dirty and desperate and silly and innocent all at once, too, the kind of sex where you almost feel guilty about it not being your first time but you’re also so happy you know what you’re doing that it seems to all make sense.

I’ve also had amazing, caring sex with relative strangers. As well as amazing, hateful sex with those for whom I once felt great affection. I’m not saying that love has to be in the picture for great sex. But I think everyone knows that fucking someone you love with everything you’ve got is — if not the best thing — at least one of the best things. Plus I’m not even sure how much that state of mind is even real, which just makes it hotter.

Previously: Roleplay, Voyeurism, and Spark-Rekindling.

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude?

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