queer advice #101: bedraggled crone
writing this with one hand, distracting a fussy puppy with the other
Welcome to another edition of queer advice but first I need you to know that I am SO TIRED and I do NOT KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS. The cause of my fog is Mookie, the puppy Liz and I are fostering for a local dog rescue. The two words I would use to describe Mookie are “open-hearted” and “bitey.” He was in bad shape when he was rescued and came to us skeletal and malnourished. Even so, he loves to party and does a lot of what experts call “play biting“ and Liz calls “upside down shark behavior.“ As time passes and he approaches a healthy body weight, he has revealed himself to be quite the leg and arm humper. He is also, to be clear, very sweet and cuddly and we spend a lot of the day kissing his little nose and telling him that we love him.
I thought having a puppy around would revitalize our senior dogs, but they mostly ignore him and rebuff his attempts at friendship. Last night, however, Louis begrudgingly started to wrestle Mookie like “play with the foster puppy” had just lined up with “Louis” on our house’s chore wheel. Weezy is only interested in stealing his tiny toys and snarling in his direction. Despite his recent breakthrough, Louis’s overall vibe is: very jealous. He does not want the puppy in his crate, even though he himself does not go in his crate. Whenever Liz and I pay attention to the puppy, Louis rushes in and gives us the look of a dog who’s been abandoned by the side of the road after years of faithful service. Like Weezy, he’s obsessed with Mookie’s stuff. He will not stop stealing the puppy’s chew sticks and finishing them in 2 bites, because he is an adult man 5x the size of Mookie.
Liz and I signed up to foster puppies as a distraction from the news. And it’s working!! Mookie has to go outside every hour and requires constant supervision or else he will chew on electrical cords. He currently has some kind of parasite or virus that’s causing vomiting and around-the-clock diarrhea (we are leaving for the vet shortly). We got like 4 hours of sleep last night!! We are too tired to doom scroll.
In this state, I thought it would be a cool time to go through my queer advice inbox and answer questions in-between running after Mookie. We have a lesbian who would rather watch TV than fuck, someone who was ghosted by their best friend, and a queer book club besieged by a loud talker.
In other news, thank you so much to everyone who ordered zines last week!! We raised $500 for Palestine Legal. And thank you so much for reading TV Dinner! This newsletter only exists because 11% of readers are paid subscribers. If you enjoy this newsletter and open it every time it lands in your inbox, take the plunge today. It’s $5.
xoxo, Maddy
I'm a 47 year old lesbian. After raising 2 kids alone and working my ass off for years as a small business owner, I found myself both badly burned out, and (somehow, magically) newly married to a very bright and charming woman. I'm 47 - a withered, bedraggled crone - and she's a fresh, horny 31. We've been married eight years. We are very close, we laugh a lot, and we just genuinely admire each other. We are monogamous. We have hobbies and friends and cats. Her experience with dating before we got together was minimal - she hadn't really been that interested in anyone before, as she tells it. She considered that she might be asexual, and I had to think long and hard about whether that would work for me - someone who had dated a lot and liked sex quite a bit. Well, then we got serious and we found out that she very much wasn't asexual. We had sex daily, at least a couple times a week for the first couple of years. It wasn't great, if I'm honest, but it was cute and fun and she got off regularly. She's a bit of a pillow princess, which I thought I liked until I was married to one for a few years. Then I got a little bored. Eventually I just... Lost interest. Our sex dwindled to once a month, once every couple months, and sometimes longer. Part of it feels like a hormone thing. (I am menopausal.) Part of it is stress and burnout. (I am recovering and have been feeling better for about six months.) But I don't really feel like sex, ever, and even during sex I find myself struggling to attend and enjoy it. I would rather sleep, talk, or read. My wife misses having sex, and I miss being a person who likes having sex. I tried to talk to her about how I have been feeling, and in spite of my best intentions I hurt her feelings and things got even weirder - when we tried to have sex she felt like I was probably just doing it out of pity. I have not gotten far into the topic since then. I know talking is the only way forward, but I'm just wondering if there's really truly hope for me. I know people schedule intimacy and use lots of lube and communicate communicate communicate. But can you *really* come back from not having any desire at all?
Signed, a happily married, withered gay crone who would rather do the crossword than touch a boob :(
Chelsea, 47
Congratulations on your kids, business, and 31-year-old wife!! There’s a book called Come As You Are that gets recommended in the comments of this newsletter a lot. I read it several years ago and don’t remember the specifics, but it’s all about why women (using that word loosely, as always) struggle to enjoy sex and get their rocks off. It talks a lot about the roadblocks of exhaustion, overwhelm, body image, etc. and how to move past them. The author, Emily Nagoski, has a new book called Come Together, which is about sex in long-term relationships. I have not read Come Together, but I appreciate the commitment to cum puns.
My practical advice for having sex when you are tired on multiple levels is that making out whilst getting yourselves off can be a chiller, more approachable third option. Scheduling sex like any other activity can really de-platform it as a magical special occasion. I’m also a big believer in morning sex, or sex at any time that’s not the end of the day. I just watched an episode of White Lotus where two characters hook up after a wild night out and I was like, “How do they have the energy for this??” If I have one drink at dinner, I’m falling asleep at ten.
As I read this question, there’s a part of you that’s totally fine with the way things are and views sex as too much effort, and a part of you that misses sex and wishes you could get back into it. I think you have to figure out for yourself what you actually want from your sex life without worrying about whether or not your wife will be into it. Like, give yourself the homework of figuring out how to get horny and then talk to your wife about revamping your sex life. Because really, you’re answering your own question here. You have to talk to your wife. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t agree on what the problem is and you can’t agree on what the problem is if you don’t talk to each other. You could continue to push through and have sex that you’re not really into, but that’s not sustainable and doesn’t fix the underlying problem of the sex that you’re having. Also, your wife (understandably!!) does not want to have sex where you’re just humoring her and going through the motions.
A best friend ghosted me and I don’t know what to do.
We’ve been friends for over 10 years and close friends for nearly that long. She’s seen me through really challenging times, and I her. I am close with her parents and she’s stayed at my family’s home. We’ve visited each other all over the US when we’ve lived in many different cities over the past decade.
The last time we saw each other/talked was this past summer. I was officiating a wedding across the country where she lives and she was my date/handler for the event. We saw each other in the days leading up to the wedding, at the wedding, and multiple times after. I have been dealing with poor physical and mental health and she was there to help me through the trip.
About a week or so after my visit she had a big cross country move and has been living with her parents. It’s stressful and uprooting and I’m sure she’s been going through a lot.
After the visit I wrote her a card to thank her. I called and texted to see how she was. No response. I figured her move was stressful and she was processing. She has continued ignoring my calls and texts. I went from worrying about her to worrying if I’d done something wrong. I reached out to her mom a few months ago and she said that my friend was doing okay, and definitely stressed with the move, and thanked me for checking in. I asked a mutual friend if she had heard from our friend and she said yes but less frequently than usual.
My final attempt at reaching out was about a month ago, texting her: “It’s been feeling weird to keep checking in without hearing from you. I care for you very much and would love to know what’s up. Sending love regardless.” No response. The one other time we went without speaking for a few months ended with a long email from her telling me that I hurt her and how she felt. We had lots of emails and then talks about that the clear the air and recover our friendship. I first thought this might be something like that, but in no way have I expected to have no contact for 7 months.
This has been so painful. I obviously think that my poor health was too much from her and she didn’t want to be in my life anymore. I think about her all the time and I’m truly at a loss as to what to do or how to process.
Saddened, 34
In times when I’ve been ghosted or in a conflict marked by a lot of ambiguity, I find it really helpful to become very black-and-white in my thinking and remind myself silence is communication and if this person wanted to talk to me, they would. You’ve done everything you can to reach out and check on your friend. She knows how you feel. If she wanted to respond to your texts, she would.
This is not a question of what to do next, as much as accepting that your friendship is over and you’re probably never going to get a specific reason why. When someone does something hurtful, it’s easy to look to them for “closure” and permission to move on. This is a dirty trap. Only you can move on with your life and heal. Also, you were friends with this person for 8 years and one day she just stopped speaking to you!! The fact that you’re fixated and feeling awful about the situation is a sign that you’re human, not that you’re doing anything wrong. A friend breakup is not so different from a romantic breakup. You’re going to feel anger and grief and heartbreak for a long time. I don’t believe there’s a correct way to process something like this, besides doing your best to forge other connections and friendships. You have to do all the classic breakup activities like writing the other person a letter and ripping it up, doing something new with your hair, and/or finding distractions in travel or a new hobby. You will feel better with time, but some days will be harder than others. These are universal breakup truths that apply whether someone tells you very directly why they’re exiting the relationship and why, or if they just drop off the face of the earth. The main difference is that in the former scenario, you actually know what’s happening verses the latter, where you have to put together a story of what went sideways after months of no-contact and imagining different plotlines where your friend is like, permanently supine is a depressive Victorian stupor in her childhood bedroom or kidnapped by gremlins.
I am so sorry this happened to you and the bottom line is that you don’t want to be friends with someone who would dip like this.
I have a question about friendship and accommodation when people have mutually exclusive needs. I'm in a book club with ~10 friends which is a great time! recently we had a newer friend join, and they are very cool, funny, and interesting, and they have a lot of great comments and insight about what we read. The only issue is that their speaking voice is very, very loud, basically everything they say is yelled. due to allll kinds of traumaaaa I am really sensitive to yelling/raised voices, and two other friends have separately expressed similar concerns -- experiencing anxiety, dissociation, etc when around this friend. I don't know my new friend well enough to know why they speak so loudly, but i know they are obviously not doing it on purpose! I want them to feel welcome in our book club, but I also want to feel welcome in book club, and other friends have expressed that they might not be able to come back to book club due to this person's yelling. I don't want to shame my new friend, or make them feel embarrassed! but I don't want my book club to fall apart! I feel like there isn't a good option here?? would welcome any advice xoxo
a bad friend????, 25
You sound extremely kind and conscientious and I know you know how to talk to this person without being a jerk. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t understand what’s going on, and part of being in community is talking about stuff that feels uncomfortable and awkward. I would be really surprised if this person hasn’t gotten feedback about their speaking volume before and doesn’t already have some methods in place for modulating it. Or maybe not! But the least helpful thing you can do is write someone or a situation off without speaking to them first.
queer advice #100: yearning
Thank you so much for subscribing to T.V. Dinner. I’m so happy you’re here. If you have a question for me, tell me about it here :)
is it just me? is it a little much to be 39 marrying a 23yo? did they start dating at 37 and 21 or something, which—is I guess legal—but is this not something that's going to factor into the dynamic? —or did I misread this?
Ty for the friend ghosting advice. I buzzed my hair like the week before I sent in this question!!! Makes sense. And tbh writing to you made me feel 50-75% less obsessive about thinking about this situation. I think I needed someone to tell me it was over.