Philadelphia Weekly

To read the original column, go to http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/16599/columns--savage-love

Hey, everybody ...

Some weeks back, One Less Douche wrote in about his new relationship. Thirty-five years old himself, OLD was dating a 20-year-old woman. "As a longtime reader, I know and agree with your 'campsite rule' about having sex with younger people," OLD wrote. "I have a responsibility to leave her in better shape than I found her. Part of that is easy--be honest, caring, open, GGG, etc.--but I would like to humbly request that you ask your readers who have been in relationships with a large age gap what their partners did for them that left them better off?"

Honoring the campsite rule requires simply being honest, caring, open and GGG, I replied to OLD. He also has to make sure this young woman emerges from this relationship with no STIs, no fertilized eggs, no restraining orders, no emotional trauma, and improved sexual skills.

Tons of Savage Love readers wrote in with specific, real-life examples of older partners honoring--or failing to honor--the campsite rule. Here's a selection of their letters.

I've had two flings and one relationship (still in it) with two significantly older men, and based on one memorable positive outcome, I can offer a good piece of advice for One Less Douche: Wear condoms with a smile. While in college, I didn't have the strongest boundaries when it came to boyfriends, and was pressured sometimes--against my better judgment--to not use condoms for a variety of lame college-boy excuses. I ended up having a couple STD scares and endured uncomfortable side effects from the pill (as well as the $25 monthly charge). Then I had a wonderful fling with a man in his early 40s who kept a variety of condoms of all shapes and flavors by his bed. He was a fantastic lover, by far the best I'd had at that point. He believed using condoms was a good way to show respect for his partner. The next time I had a younger boyfriend who didn't want to use condoms because they made sex less "skillful"(?), I had the confidence to tell him, "That's a shame. All of my best lovers haven't had a problem using them," and walk out the door. The boyfriend showed up at my door 20 minutes later with a pack of LifeStyles and an apology. I'm forever thankful to this older lover for teaching me to stand my ground.

When I was a 20-year-old study-abroad student (and virgin), I got involved with a man 14 years older. Neither of us was perfect--he should've gone slower in bed and used a condom; I should've been clearer about the fact I wasn't in love with him--but the big problem was that we were at completely different life stages in terms of readiness to settle down. The first thing about the campsite rule is remembering you're almost certainly not going to spend the rest of your life at this "campsite." So don't pressure your younger partner to say, "I love you," to move near you or in with you, to meet your parents or let you come meet hers, etc. Treat the relationship as precious, but temporary.

I was 22 when I was involved with a woman in her mid-30s who had just ended a long marriage. As an idealistic 22-year-old male who believed that love conquered all, I allowed myself to get caught up in the fantasy that our relationship had a future. She did as well, but only briefly. She did nothing wrong, really: Once she got over the initial rush and reality set in, she talked with me about her issues with the age difference, which included the fact that her conservative family could never accept her having a partner who was so much younger. She tried several times to warn me the affair was time limited, but I was too starry-eyed and, what's more, lacked enough life experience to understand why it wouldn't work. Now I'm 10 years older/wiser and I do understand why it wouldn't have worked. As she told me, I needed to have the chance to have my own life, and had we stayed together, she would've been a senior citizen at the point where I would be having my midlife crisis. The memories are great and I wouldn't trade them for anything, but I think OLD and anyone else who hooks up with much younger partners needs to be aware that lack of life experience will make young partners more susceptible to fantasizing about a future together that may or may not be feasible or well-advised, no matter how honest and considerate the older partner is.

I wish I had known about the campsite rule eight years ago when I met "Todd." He was 38. I was 18. To make matters worse, I had low self-esteem and felt obligated to fuck the rare guy who took an interest in me. He was only my second sexual partner. Was Todd GGG, kind and caring? No, no and no. For starters, he unexpectedly whipped his cock out as I sat in a chair in his apartment on our first date. At 18 I didn't have the strength of character to just walk out the door. He didn't volunteer to wear a condom, and because I felt insecure, I didn't demand that he wear one. We kept seeing each other and it never got any better. He would wake me up by poking me with his erection. He mauled my clit while trying to finger me, and refused to cut his nails when I told him he was scratching my labia. Any request I made during sex was met with sulking and hostility. It was hard enough as an insecure teenager to ask for what I wanted, and his attitude killed any notions of sexual assertiveness I might have had. I've got a whole slew of stories about this asshole, but I'll leave you with this: During all this bullshit that he was pulling on me, he was also demanding we incorporate his cross-dressing and desire to be pegged into our sex life! I wasn't enthusiastic about either of these things, but at least I tried. He wouldn't even trim his fucking nails. Basically, this guy was the biggest loser ever. Luckily I figured that out after a few months and dumped the motherfucker. My current guy is six years older than I am, and for the past five years has been a model camper. Too bad I had to learn the hard way how to tell a decent person from a douche.

When I was 17 I dated a 26-year-old. I don't think he was a Savage Love reader, as he definitely didn't follow the campsite rule. After a year and a half of dating, he started calling 20 times a day. He would tell me I didn't need to go to college or start a career because he was going to be an attorney and I could stay at home and take care of our children. After a while I decided to break up with him. I called him and explained I thought we were looking for different things and we should look for them in other people. He went off the deep end, yelled and screamed and cursed at me, called me everything under the sun, and then had his best friend continue the tirade. The day after the breakup, I started getting emails from friends wondering why someone had posted comments about me on their LiveJournals. Turns out my ex-boyfriend's best friend went to every person I had listed as a friend and copy/pasted a paragraph using my full name and saying how horrible I was, that I had cheated on him, everything except alleging I had killed his puppy. Everyone I actually knew deleted the comments, but one comment, left on the journal of an online webcomic, stayed up. I tried contacting the owner, but it hadn't been updated in years and no one responded. This meant when I applied for colleges and when I applied for jobs, this comment was fully visible to anyone who knew how to Google. I would have to explain the situation to anyone I knew that happened to randomly Google me, including potential mates.

I wanted to share my campsite rule story. I was 19 and had a 31-year-old boyfriend. He made me feel safe at first and took on the role of teacher with me, sexually and otherwise. I came to care about him a lot. He could tell how I felt, and he told me he was uncomfortable with it. I thought he was breaking things off, but he said it was just a "talk" about boundaries. I didn't understand exactly what he was getting at (although I figured it out later). He began taking me to parties a lot where we'd drink heavily and do lots of drugs. We'd go back to his place and almost always ended up in bed. At some point he stopped wearing condoms, claiming they "freaked him out." Being a healthy 19-year-old, I ended up pregnant in less than a month. When I told him, he said, "I won't have a kid." The only way he would be involved, he said, was in planning an abortion. I was in no position to raise a kid on my own. He drove me to my appointments, paid for half of the procedure and bought me lunch after. That was the grand finale of our relationship--a cheap-ass lunch. I found out later he'd been sleeping with other girls at the same time, all of them about my age. I was lucky, I suppose, in that I came out of this without an STD. But he broke my heart and definitely didn't follow the campground rule in the relationship. I was young and vulnerable, and he took advantage.

I pretty much credit my ex-older-boyfriend for making me feel like I'm a catch. We had lots of hot sex all the time, and he always told me how hot he thought I was, he always wanted to hang out, and he always came to pick me up, either on time or 10 minutes early. He didn't care if I had my period, if I hadn't shaved my legs, whatever--he still made me feel like I was the hottest thing he'd ever seen. Eventually we broke up because I was completely immature in other key ways, but it's been four years and I still feel like I'm so hot that I shouldn't settle for just any old jerk-off. He essentially left me more sexually experienced, with higher expectations about how a guy should treat me, and with solid self-esteem. Before I dated him, I would have thought that my current awesome and totally hot boyfriend was out of my league, but here I am, in a great relationship with the hottest guy I've ever seen.