I Lost A Coughdrop in His Asshole: The ILX Gays TMI Thread

A somewhat appropriate time to bring this up I guess (not that this thread has anything to do with "appropriate"): I was pretty vanilla-ish, sexually, during my 20s (a somewhat late start, sexually, and some anxiety about being gay in my very early 20s take the credit for this, I suppose), but the eventual realization that I was pretty definitively a bottom (can count the number of times I've topped in the last 8 years on one hand) has led me to realize that I'm quite fond of being dominated. Now, having a long term partner has undoubtedly made me more comfortable with this than I would be otherwise--there's a level of trust that has been built up that, I believe, has allowed for a degree of comfort that I doubt I would have with less familiar partners.

Lately, though, I've been curious about pushing the boundaries of my relationship beyond our simple top/bottom arrangement. A couple weeks ago, when we were fooling around, my partner rather spontaneously whipped my ass with a belt. Not hard, but hard-ish, I suppose. He didn't ask first; he has a remarkable level of intuitiveness about what I'm going to respond to sexually, and he was right about this one--it was easily one of the hottest things I've ever experienced (he repeated this move once, a couple days later, but lamentably, not again since). Not sure where I want to go from here, to be honest, or if there is anywhere to go from here--just kind of enjoying it and excited to see how it progresses (if at all).

(Hope this isn't too rambling, btw. I am a bit drunk.)

The New Gay Badness.

I spent the last three weeks on vacation with my boyfriend and the couple we're seeing. We were drinking a lot and screwing a lot and there were weird social tensions, it seemed like once or twice a day somebody was getting ignored or shut out. Generally everybody was having a great time except me. More like I was having 75% great time and 25% terrible. I'm the least socially adept of the four of us and so would find myself at any given moment plunging into elaborate food preparation, long walks, or compulsive smoking. I had a few hangovers and with them an accompanying meltdown.

Meltdown #1: I tried to reset the situation to pre-poly parameters, just two happy couples on vacation. The other guys got angry at me for trying to make such a unilateral decision and ignoring their "feelings of love" which I'd neglected to consider. Meltdown #2: I confronted one of the other men, asked him why he was avoiding me in sexual situations, and he told me that as close as we are as friends (best friends, in fact) he wanted to keep our physical relationship strictly confined to snuggling and kissing. At first I was stoic about it. Meltdown #3: We did MDMA and I got blackhole depressed and while I slept the three of them all had wild sex. I woke up and couldn't get the "OMG my best friend and my boyfriend are having an amazing great sexual relationship and that feels terrible" train of thought out of my head. I confessed to my best friend that I wasn't stoic at all about shit and that I felt like I had been broken up with and then forced to watch as he fucked my boyfriend instead. This was not a good day for anyone. Meltdown #4: I dabbed, and not even being a weed smoker, I got higher than I've been in my life. I woke up feeling helpless and terrible and taken advantage of and spent the day in a terrible place of suicidal ideation and awfulness. I felt like I'd fallen prey to jealousy and idiocy, that I'd hurt all my favourite people, and that they'd be better off without me.

And then it all passed? I started packaging my bad thoughts as being products of binge drinking and drug doing and latent depression, and abandoning them. I plunged myself into the long-term domestic love that I have for my boyfriend, the intense platonic love I have for my best friend, and the intense sexual love I have for my best friend's boyfriend. One day me and my best friend were walking and we confessed that with each other's partners we'd had the best sex of our lives the previous night and it didn't feel like there was any jealousy or inadequacy, just gratefulness that we'd found such a functional and terrific group of people to spend our time with, and we hugged and kissed and cried and it was totally fucking beautiful.

Through the whole ordeal I confided in several friends over the phone. Some told me to get out and go home. Others told me that I was with three men who loved me and to remember that at all costs. Still others told me this shitshow was related to professional insecurity or childhood trauma. But one friend said, "this situation is everything you've always wanted. You're too cynical for easy love, too generous for a single lover, in need of more stimulation than an entirely positive situation. This is it, you got what you need, be happy-sad peaceful-angry or whatever but you're at least interested, and upended, and in love, and that's what you've always needed."

I probably would have anyway, but especially now after reading fgti's heartfelt post, I feel especially silly for drunkenly writing two wordy paragraphs in order to basically say, "hey guys, i like being spanked."

idk, i feel pretty cavalier abt sex in general. everyone's experience is diff.

i feel like i'm constantly scandalizing my friends lately and i'm not really meaning to be shocking or outre. a lot of soi-disant "liberated" ppl have been super judgy w/ me and it's a bit disheartening and surprising.

O, that last sentence reminded me a lot of a line from rilke's "sonnets to orpheus":

Whatever image you take within you deeply,
even for a moment in a lifetime of pain,
see how it reveals the whole — the great tapestry.

clouds, "liberated" gays v often demand RESPECTABLE behavior from the tribe.

fgti i hope everything stays good with you, but all that math!

I never really thought of myself as someone who would be working on a streak with dudes in their early 20s, but they're the ones saying yes right now.

at a sexytime party a few weeks ago, i accidentally put sanitizer gel on mine.

it burned just a little til i washed it off, but still.

owwwww

you just washed it off?

takes "clean only" to such new levels

yes alfred, i'm that fuckin butch

i did unprotected with a random on craigslist. now i have to tell my bf i cheated on him and wait for 3 months to get tested. feel like literal garbage.

i know no one wants to touch this but ugh. i wish i could throw away all my sexual bullshit and start over. repression, depression, all of it. i have no idea how to be a human being.

Have you ever enjoyed sex at all? If so, count yourself fortunate.

Sorry, that wasn't incredibly supportive. I'm sorry that you feel in a spot that made you lay it all out on the line with the ultimate riskiness.

eric...

mattresslessness i hope your boyfriend supports you as you figure yourself out

thanks. i'm gonna give it a shot.

mattresslessness, the whole "i have no idea how to be a human being" thing is something I've felt way too much in the past (thankfully less so in the present). Your current situation sounds incredibly shitty, but I hope you and your boyfriend come through it all ok.

i think there are three issues. #1 is legitimate, i want to top more and he has a hard time enjoying it, so looking outside should be on the table (thanks dan savage). #2 is being scared about actually hammering it out so being dishonest. #3 is reckless behavior, throwing basic common sense to the wind. 2 and 3 are terrible and where i am fucking up, 1 is not.

xp aw thanks, you're sweet. glad to hear you're feeling that less. :)

I have to wonder just how much the whole "I wanna top/bottom, but I'm with an exclusive top/bottom" thing fucks with gay relationships. Like, the looking outside option is...ok, but I think it has to be realistically assumed that not all people are going to be fine with that.

Of course, by observing this (and offering no solution), I realize that I'm effectively complicating the one thing about this situation that you feel is legitimate, so I'll just shut up now.

i have the less discussed problem ("problem") of not really caring for anal sex either way which is kind of an issue in my relationship insofar as i'll do it when he asks but i don't ever push it for it myself so it doesn't happen as much as it needs to

xp no not at all! that's part of it, the feeling where i can't really tell if this person is ok with it or not, the vagueness i think is a defense mechanism on his part, hedging and being passive-aggressive is a defense mechanism on mine and between those two habits the subject is always eluded. like i would prefer not going outside if he could genuinely enjoy bottoming, it's happened a few times i think. it's just this has been an ongoing issue for years, we haven't successfully addressed it, i got impatient and caved in a moment that hearkened back to my furtive and frantic past.

Which means an additional shitty thing about your situation is going to be having to walk that very fine line between explaining to him "this happened at least partially because of this issue in our relationship that you won't address" and "I did this very, very shitty thing to you." My advice, at least when it comes to addressing the immediate topic at hand, I guess, is to not fall too hard on the former point atm.

xp it's definitely less discussed that not everyone loves anal sex, nor should they. gay men tend to fixate on it, maybe to an unhealthy degree.

xp yeah that's solid.

yeah you gotta take all the Ls on this one before you bring up the culpability he has in whatever sexual incompatibility you guys have

my therapist told me to "speak from the heart" lol

It's def true that gay relationships end as much for sexual position incompatibility as any other incompatibility.

m, you are not garbage

That is true.

I thought t3d was coming back to ILX and shit.

you guys are nice. i did a shitty thing and i have to deal with it. doesn't mean i'm worthless, just that i have to hang in there and try again. shamefaced admission tonight :/

good luck matt, you are one of my favorite posters and definitely not garbage. doing shitty things sucks, it is very difficult ime to own both my shitty actions and the rightful emotions i have about circumstances in which i decided to do take a shitty action. i have to remind myself a lot that it is human and possible to feel simultaneous and conflicting things at once, i am getting better at it but it is hard. i've been working through a lot of sexuality stuff in therapy for the past 5 years or so and the amount of shame and resentment that festered and blew up and manifested in some serious acting out and lying in my relationship is pretty crazy, i am super grateful to have (mostly) moved beyond a lot of that but SO much work remains in terms of honestly and adequately communicating about my sexuality to my partner

ah good to hear you're making progress and i'm not the only one.

that went .. ok. i'm relieved. he talked mostly about how he's been depressed for the last few years. he sort of avoided how he felt about what i did, other than worrying a little bit about me. i could tell it hurt him though. it usually takes a few weeks for him to sort out his feelings about something like this. in the meantime, space.

we could be moving into 'good friends' or maybe 'open relationship'. he is very avoidant of all status talk though so it's confusing if i'm only wishing for the latter and it's not actually doable for him.

he's so strange. very abstracted all the time. he doesn't seem to care for the different arrangements / options that arise from the day-to-day structure of life. he only really opens up when the topic is ideas or other peoples' stories. i appreciate that about him very much because he's brilliant in that regard, but it makes it difficult to work out concrete actions, which i find myself needing in order to navigate a relationship.

anyway, glad i could vent here in the good ole coughdrop thread.

he said "if we can't be friends about stuff like this, there's no point" which i thought was pretty awesome.

New sexpression: eclair

explain...

When it gets really really dirty

dude EW

hey guys. things are pretty interesting these days!

many ports of call?

this past friday night was my boyfriend's 38th birthday. we had a big dinner snd had a whole mess of friends to the bar. afterward, we ended up meeting some gays at the eagle, including this one super cute guy who we've both had a HUGE crush in for years. anyway, we ended up at his house at the end of the night and my boyfriend & i basically devoured him alive. at one point my boyfriend and i were greedily eating out his hairy muscular armpits as he writhed in agony. ugh, it was stupidly hot. the next morning we ended up walking a couple miles back to the car and processing the experience. it's the first time both he & i had fooled around together with a 3rd -- up til now we've always fooled around separately. needless to say my guy had a really good birthday.

but besides that the last week and a half has been more action than i've seen in a while. ended up have my 2nd experience bottoming during a flip-fuck with a good friend. ended up topping the hell out of another acquaintance after running into him at the bar. plus things between my bf and i have been getting hotter & more frequent.

my boyfriend's been getting together with a good bisexual friend of his and doing some sexual surrogacy type shit, i dunno.

oh, and i bought a buttplug. which i'm wearing.

guys he's wearing a buttplug rn

make sure to clean out before you plug!

part of this has to do with the fact that my boyfriend & i don't have anal sex so after 8+ years im suddenly getting to explore that from both sides, as it were. plus the relatively recent opening of the relationship and me having the sort of confidence in my sexuality that i didn't when i was single. altogether it feels like i'm going through a 2nd puberty, hormones on full blast right now.

that's exciting, ps. i sort of miss openness, we stopped because of (reasons) but those sloppy bar makeouts were really fun/sexy. and yeah, it was...interesting having my long-delayed slut phase concurrent with being in a loving LTR

also are you wearing the buttplug like, out and about?

heh, i wore at work for a few hours this morning. it got uncomfy but only because the base wasn't sitting comfortably between the cheeks.