You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast, www.com.

If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

while there's nothing you can't ask on Savage Mubcast.

If you're thinking about starting an advice column of your own, and a lot of people are, because I hear from them all the time asking for my help and getting their advice columns off the ground, I never respond because I don't want any more competition than I already have.

But if you're thinking about starting an advice column of your own, there are two things you need to watch out for, two traps. The first is bias. And you have to acknowledge your bias, and it's not what you think it is. We have a bias in the advice rocket toward what I call the solvable problem. You get a lot of mail, a lot of calls all the time, and it's not a problem that can be

solved without a time machine, a priest, and a wizard. And you kind of have to set those questions

aside without feeling too terribly guilty about them. Sometimes you write those people back

personally, but you can't fill your column or your advice podcast with the unsolvable problems and you get a lot of those. The other

trap, the other thing you have to watch out for is the DTMFA issue. DTMFA stands for dump the

motherfucker already. You get so many questions, so many calls from people who, and I'm sure

you're familiar with this if you're a long-time

listener, will say, my partner is lovely, we are lovely together, everything is lovely,

then comes the butt, and after the butt comes a horror show, after the butt comes abusive

behavior, after the butt comes unacceptable fucking bullshit. And you have to say to this

person, time to dump the motherfucker already. Sometimes people just need that permission. They need

to be told they're allowed to dump the motherfucker already. And often you are just seconding

what that person heard from their friends and family already.

Dump the motherfucker already. The reason it's a trap is you can, without even noticing that you're doing it, fill your column and fill your show with nothing but DTMFA calls. So you have to

set a lot of those aside and look for solvable problems and interesting questions that don't

just involve break the fuck up. I created

the acronym DTMFA so I could handle these questions with some speed and alacrity. Yes, just

dump the motherfucker already. You don't even need to spell that whole sentence out. Just

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