Menage a Trois with His Mutt is Getting You Down

I know this man says that he is committed to you and loves you, but his actions say otherwise. You can either deal with the issue directly, through discussion, or you can go at the problem in a more oblique, nonverbal way. The method you choose has to feel right to you. I'll lay out some options, and you choose what suits your personality.

If you want to deal with the issue head on then: Tell him that all actions are communications and he needs to tell you what having the dog in bed with you or at the doorway is saying to you. He needs to talk about what the behavior says about his feelings about you and about his willingness to be with you; he also needs to examine how he wants you to feel and how he wants you to interpret his actions. He may try to deflect your question, but you need to be as stubborn as a dog with a bone (no pun intended).

The danger with a frontal approach is that you may get his back up and he may become more attached to the behavior. If he tends to be closed to self-examination, or prone to defensiveness, then the frontal approach may not bear fruit.

The less frontal approaches are numerous. One approach is called 'extension joining' in which you extend upon his craziness. To do this you could bring a few pets of your own (maybe a huge dog that makes Maggie look like a marshmallow, or invite an entire zoo into the bedroom, like a rabbit, a gerble, a parrot, etc.) and unleash them during sex. You might say that you realized that having animals in the bedroom really brings variety. (If he balks about your animals, tell him that he should just shut his. . . mouth.)

Just kidding on this last comment, which is too caustic. But, if he complains, you can just be flip the way he is and give him the same message back like, 'What's the big deal, just ignore the clucks and squawks.'

Since I believe that he is using the dog as a distancing tool, which tells me that he is frightened to get too close, you could make yourself even more distant. Fall asleep before he can think about having sex with you; make yourself unavailable--you know, the 'not tonight honey, I have a snout ache' approach.

These less frontal techniques may help to get him to park the pooch, but they aren't going to resolve the deeper issue that is causing him to use the dog to drive a wedge between you. Sooner or later this issue needs to be owned and resolved, if you ever hope to feel like 'top dog.'