Q I have a slowly terminal disease and don’t have more than five or six years left. I haven’t told my wife, which brings me to my problem. We had lived together for seven years when she cheated on me the first time. We worked things out, we got back together, but we continued to live separately. Then I cheated on her. We got back together again but continued living apart. After a year of therapy, we got married, but again we kept our households separate. Fast-forward one eviction and three years of living in a studio driving each other crazy, and she cheated on me again—this time in our house. I moved out instantly. A few months and a terminal diagnosis later, I don’t have the will to file the divorce paperwork. We’ve talked a few times about trying to figure out how to fix us, but I don’t know if I can ride this messed-up roller coaster anymore. On the other hand, I don’t want to waste the rest of my life being a divorced fortysomething, but I still feel idiotic trying to fix our fucked-up relationship. She reads your column every week, so if you publish this, I’ll have to talk to her about my illness, so at least that won’t be an issue. What should I do about us? —Doubting the Marital Future Again
A There are lots of people involved in the organized kink scene who do BDSM without the sex, SLIM. For some, the BDSM is the sex. Bondage, D/s, spanking, etc, is all they require to get off. But you’ll also find plenty of folks like you in the organized kink scene—that is, men and women who wanna do BDSM while remaining vanilla/technically faithful to their nonkinky partners at home.
