posted by on December 5 at 13:15 PM

This week’s “Savage Love” revisits a subject—an extremely touchy subject—that any intelligent advice professional know well enough to leave alone: “a partner’s premature and avoidable physical deterioration,” as I delicately put it in this week’s column. The debate is over what can or can’t be said when you find you’re no longer attracted to your partner due to weight gain. (Short answer: Be honest and open and communicate—but only when the fatso is a man).

Now I find myself facing a similar issue at home. My partner has radically, suddenly, and unnecessarily altered his appearance, and I am no longer attracted to him. The situation is dire and I, the advice guy, don’t know what to do.

My boyfriend has grown a mustache.

I didn’t think anything of it when Terry went a few days without shaving. He’s just being lazy, I thought, and things will soon return to normal. But yesterday he returned from the gym having shaved most of his face—his cheeks, his chin, his neck—but not his upper lip. The sight of him with a mustache has left me traumatized. I am no longer sexually attracted to him—he’s gone from looking like a steaming hot sex object to looking like one of my uncles. That hairy thing on his lip trips some weird trigger for me; my reaction to it is visceral and violent. I can barely stand to look at my boyfriend, much less kiss him…. or anything else him. And I am at a loss for what to do.

Brutal honesty? I tried that. (“What the fuck are you doing?” “Shave that thing off.” “Don’t kiss me—gross—get away from me.”) But he is undeterred. He told me at first that it was just for a week—he wants to wear it to some cosmic disco thing—but that was no comfort, I told him. I want it gone this instant. But now Terry is upset. He’s accusing me of being controlling. He’s telling me that he should be free to grow a mustache if he wants to grow a mustache because he’s an adult and he’s not my property and blah blah blah. (His Visa bills, however, are my property.) I’m telling him that if I wanted to start a family with Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler or Burt Reynolds or Salvador Dali or Josh Bolton I would’ve proposed to one of them.

My angry reaction to the appearance of this interloper on my beloved’s upper lip has in turn angered Terry. He now says that now he may not shave that thing off after the party this Saturday. Maybe he’ll keep it through the holidays—or until his birthday in March. MARCH! I am now threatening to retaliate. My retaliation could take two possible forms: I dyed my hair blond once (everyone should do it once) and Terry absolutely haaaaaaaaaated it. So I’m thinking of dying my hair blond again. Or I could come to bed ever night with a photo of a vagina taped to my forehead. The second option comes closer, I think, to the effect that Terry’s mustache has on me.

Since we’re hopelessly deadlocked on both these issues—Terry’s alleged “right” to grow a mustache and my insistence that he doesn’t have a right to spring a mustache on me after 13 clean-shaven years; and what form my retaliation should take—we’ve decided to seek counseling. Not from a couples’ counselor, Slog readers, but from you. I’ve reported—at great length—and now it’s time for you to decide:

The Mustache Issue

The Retaliation Issue

Polls close at 5 PM today. Results are binding.