Ask Dr. NerdLove Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Is It Ok To End A Relationship Over Sex?

May 10, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

How do you know if/when to end a long-term relationship when everything is great except for the sex? How do you know when it’s irrational to keep trying to make it work?

I’ve been dating my girlfriend Helen (not her real name) for 5 years, and lived with her for 3. We’re both in our mid-20s. Before meeting Helen, I had very little success in the dating and sexual realm; this is my first real relationship and she’s the only person I’ve had sex with more than once (I had a couple of one-time hookups years ago). We mutually decided to be polyamorous from the start, as both of us identified with it, though in practice I haven’t dated outside our relationship.

Helen and I were friends before we started dating, and as soon as we did we went through the typical honeymoon phase, including a deep personal connection and lots of enthusiastic sex. The thing is, even after the honeymoon phase wore off the non-sexual parts of our relationship continued to be amazing. We have similar values and (weird) personality types, share similar niche academic interests, communicate openly and honestly, and have a mutual love of cuddling. We still find ourselves regularly getting lost in fascinating, hours-long conversations. We’ve supported one another through hard times and mental illness. We’re best friends, and until recently I was 100% sure I was going to spend the rest of my life with Helen.

Over the course of our relationship, though, we’ve been having sex less and less, and Helen has seemed less and less sexually attracted to me. Nowadays, we sometimes go months without any sort of sexual intimacy. Even when we do have sex, while Helen still says she enjoys it, I always have to initiate and it’s clear that she’s mostly doing it because she cares about me and the relationship, and less out of visceral desire or excitement (she’s also told me as much, FWIW). It feels like she always prefers snuggling up with me on the couch and watching another episode of a show together over having sex, no matter what I do. We’ve had many conversations where I’ve tried to ask Helen in a lowkey way what I could do to be more attractive or make sex with me more enjoyable for her, but her responses are either unhelpfully vague or that it’s more about her than me.

To make matters worse, it isn’t that Helen’s sex drive has gone down in general, just that it’s gone down for sex with me in particular. While I wouldn’t say she has a high sex drive, and stress sometimes completely kills it for a week or two at a time, generally speaking she still masturbates, and when she has other partners she still enthusiastically has sex with them (this is based on conversations we’ve had, not my own assumptions, to be clear).

This is a problem for me. I have a high sex drive and really value sexuality. I masturbate almost daily, and often 2-3 times a day. And I’m still very attracted to Helen. Even after 5 years. I still feel over the moon every time we have sex, and it makes me feel close to her in a way few other things do.

I know it’s not realistic to expect daily sex in a long-term relationship, and that sometimes people will have a stressful week or month that might dramatically lower their libido temporarily, and I’m ok with that. That said, I really want my primary partner to make me feel desired, to sometimes be enthusiastic about sex with me, and to have sex with them a couple times a week on average. I want to feel like my partner is getting as much from sex as I am. I want my sex life to be more than just a very occasional quickie or handjob to keep me happy.

It really hurts to feel like your own girlfriend doesn’t desire you anymore. I try not to let it get to me too much and focus on the other good things in our relationship, but in some moods this dynamic makes me feel undesirable, lonely, and sexually frustrated, which is how I often felt back in my unhappy years as a college-aged virgin.

At the same time, aside from the sex our relationship is wonderful and I’d be devastated if it ended. When I compare our relationship to those of my friends and family, Helen and I have one of the healthiest and closest I know of outside of the bedroom. That connection feels really special and I feel like I’d be a fool to give it up.

Sometimes I wonder if I should try my hand once again at polyamorous dating to get my sexual needs met now that I’ve been vaccinated, but other times I wonder how much that would really help. And, to be honest, my past experiences with online dating as a partnered, polyamorous, introverted guy have been extremely dispiriting and not particularly fruitful.

My question isn’t so much about how I can be more attractive to Helen or communicate better about sex with her, we’ve been seeing a sex-positive couple’s therapist about that, but rather how do you know when you’ve given it your all and it just isn’t going to work out? How do I even go about thinking about this? What questions should I be asking myself? I feel so lost and uncertain.

Thanks,

Lost in a Relationship

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Why Do I Attract All The Wrong People?

May 5, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a 28-year-old straight white male. I am a virgin who’s had some minor success with online dating in the past though I still haven’t gotten a full-on relationship. I’m kind of socially isolated: I have plenty of acquaintances but no close friends that I hang out with.

Anyway, after having taken a three-year break from OLD after a few hard rejections online in order to take care of my mental health, I created an OKCupid account three months ago. Initially, I wasn’t taking it that seriously, I just wanted to see who was out there as well as whether or not I could get any likes with new pictures (I’ve had life long body image problems, I was worried that no one would like me since I’ve gained a little weight). To my surprise, I got several likes from girls on the platform. Most of these turned out to be duds: they were either too conservative (anti-trans, for example), not attractive to me, didn’t seem to have anything in common with me, or were bot accounts. However, there was one girl on there, let’s call her C, who seemed like a good match: she was liberal, chubby but cute, and shared my interest in video games and tabletop roleplaying. She mentioned that she wanted to get married and have a child within the next five years. This was alright with me, I wanted a relationship with a girl that could ultimately be my wife if things worked out, I eventually want children, and five years from now seems like a fine time-frame for all of this to possibly happen (I still live with my parents, but I recently finished my Masters and hope to get a job that allows me to live independently soon).

So, after a few weeks of hesitation, I liked and messaged C and we seemed to hit it off. After a few messages, she asked me what I was looking for on the site. I told her that I wanted to find love, eventually, get married, and have children. She seemed happy about that and we continued messaging for a couple of days. I was asking basic get to know you questions about her interests, her spirituality (pagan), and her life. When I ask her about her childhood, she gives a message detailing her life story: her father was a deadbeat who abandoned her and her mother when she was young, she dealt with bullying and depression all throughout middle and high school because of her weight, and she and her mother had to live with their meth-head uncle for several years after her mother lost her job. Now, this set off some alarm bells for me. I’ve had a relatively blessed, middle-class life and, besides some bullying in middle school and generalized anxiety disorder in college, it’s been pretty happy. I started to wonder if we could relate to each other, having had such different lives. I’ve also had bad experiences with girls with difficult pasts, which I’ll talk more about later on. Ultimately I decided to ignore these warning bells and keep messaging her, I couldn’t know how we’d work out in the long run, so there was no reason to give up yet.

We kept messaging, but eventually, her replies started to become shorter and less detailed. I thought maybe it was because she was growing tired of using OkCupid’s messenger and was unsure if I wanted to progress things beyond just talking on a dating site. I decide to message her my cellphone number in case she wants to text, but she says she’d feel more comfortable using snapchat, so we do. We continue messaging and out of nowhere, she asks me if I have any major health problems. I say no and ask why she asked. She replied that she just wanted to know for future children. When I joke about her thinking too far ahead, she says she was just wondering and that she wants to have a child “sooner rather than later”.

Then, she asks me the big question: exactly how sexually experienced was I? I know some girls don’t want to date virgins, and I was hoping to get into this topic later after we’d been on a few dates. However, I decided to be honest and told her I was a virgin. She said she was fine with it and that it was pretty obvious since I was reluctant to flirt, and told me that she feared my conservative parents were to blame for my lack of sexual experience. She was worried that I wasn’t interested or sex or would object to her more taboo sexual interests, so she asked me what the dirtiest sex act I’ve ever wanted to do was.

Now, here was where I made a mistake. On one hand, it was pretty obvious to me at this point that, based on this question and other things she had said while we were messaging, that she wanted to be sexual with me sooner than I’m comfortable. I want to get to know someone and be comfortable with them before I have sex, when I’ve gotten sexual in the past with girls I had just met I left the experience feeling deeply uncomfortable and guilty. I feel I need at least three dates before I’m ready to do sexual acts with a woman. On the other hand, as a virgin with a high sex drive, I’m getting pretty impatient about losing my virginity and sometimes when I feel like a girl might be willing to have sex with me I throw out my doubts, previous experiences, and rationality and immediately try to pursue sex. Unfortunately, my rising sense of discomfort that things were going way too fast, my lust won out and I decided to answer her question.

After telling her all my sexual fantasies, I asked her what hers was. She mentioned that one of her sexual fantasies was “breeding” (being full of cum, as she put it) and this again set off some alarm bells since she mentioned wanting a child so much. I told her I was fine with her fantasy so long as she used birth control when we were having sex until we married and were ready to have a child. She replied that she didn’t use birth control, and finally I realized what was happening: she didn’t want to get married and have a child in a few years, she wanted to do that now. This was not something I wanted: I wanted a date a girl, see if we were compatible, be boyfriend and girlfriend for a few years and THEN get married and have children. Ultimately I decided to end things there, saying that it was nice to talk to her and that, while she was a cool person, I didn’t feel we were compatible. I then proceeded to block her on Snapchat & OKCupid, feeling guilty that I had led her on and then rejected her so suddenly and feeling dirty since I had was stupid and shared my sexual fantasies way before I had even met a girl physically.

This was a deeply uncomfortable experience and unfortunately its emblematic of several similar experiences I’ve had since I started dating four years ago. Many of the women who’ve been attracted to me over the years have wanted to move way too fast, wanting me to have sex with them and become their boyfriend or husband before we’ve had more than one date (or, in some cases, before we’ve even met in-person). Most of them a similar to C, having had rough childhoods and trauma. I seem to attract these kinds of people and I don’t know why. Is it because I get too personal in messages? Is it because I have a babyface and am not experienced, so people see me as innocent? Are these just the kinds of people that use OkCupid and other OLD sites?

So that’s my first question: How do I stop attracting people like this? How do I identify these types of people so I can avoid this in the future? What do I need to change about my behavior so I don’t lead on people and make the desire a relationship too quickly?

My second question is about what C said about it being obvious that I was a virgin since I was reluctant to flirt. This is not the first time I’ve been told this from people I’ve messaged on OLD sites. Now, I try to be playful and fun in my messages, and I try to compliment the people I message so that they know I’m attracted to them. Is this not flirting? I try to avoid sexual compliments and discussion when messaging on OkCupid to avoid being creepy, is this wrong? How do I message women without sounding like a virgin?

Thank you,
Mr.Slow-and-Steady

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Why Do I Keep Wanting My Toxic Ex?

May 3, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi there Doc,

First time writing. I like the way you think, so I’d like your take on a really annoying problem.

To make a long story short, I met this guy online about 11-12 years ago in a chatroom. I was in the middle of a relationship with someone else at the time, it wasn’t going well, and I guess I was looking for a way out. This guy (I’ll call him Mitten) and I lived very far away from each other (he was at the top of the country, I was at the bottom) but we fell very predictably for each other in a way that only two over-emotional assholes can. My feelings grew for this person to the point where I actually got the balls to break up with my boyfriend and settle into a LDR with Mitten, who had been trying to move down to my state for awhile, even before we had met. It was a ‘relationship’ of high highs and low lows, and I was living back with my parents at the time. He was so flaky with his feelings — one minute he was blowing up my IM and the next he wouldn’t talk to me for days. Well, he finally came down, and we met. It was awesome — I’ve never felt as comfortable with someone as I did with him. Here’s the kicker though: we only met once. He couldn’t find a job and had to go back home. Once there, we decided that there was really no point in trying to go any further, but our feelings kept us close. The same old pattern took shape. I was insane over this guy. The quality of my entire day hung on the possibility of his IM or phone call. He started ‘dating’ other people. This broke my 22 year old heart because he would tell me about it. This behavior went on for about a year and a half, maybe more, until we got into a massive fight over something I don’t even remember. He didn’t talk to me for months, but he would stalk my myspace blog every day.

(That’s how long ago this was…)

Finally, he started talking to me again, but only so that he could rub his dates in my face. I said, Bye Felicia.

Eleven years passes.

At this point I’m in a relationship with another guy (LEO), and have been with him for almost that long. We were having severe intimacy issues and though I loved him, I felt rejected and alone. Guess who bursts back into the scene, divorced and ready to cause some trouble? Mitten.

And cause trouble, he did. Just like my previous relationship, I began to rely on Mitten for all the validation and affection that I wasn’t getting from LEO, who knew I was having some sort of an emotional affair with Mitten, but didn’t say boo because he was having one of his own. I should have known better, because Mitten was repeating the same exact behaviors from ten years before: yanking me back and forth and up and down, telling me about his conquests, ghosting me for days and then popping right back up, flirting with my best friend. I was sick. It was like a sickness. Couldn’t get him out of my head, everything I saw reminded me of him.

As time wore on, I began to realize that we had nothing in common except the fact that we wanted each other (in varying degrees) and couldn’t have each other. He sucked at conversation, was immature as hell, and didn’t get me the way LEO did, but my heart wasn’t with LEO anymore. Unfortunately, I still wanted Mitten, but I hated myself for wanting him. A guy friend of mine who I’ve known since childhood (who had feelings for me) let me lean on him during this hard time. He would tell me I was worth more than this back and forth bullshit and urge me to cut ties with Mitten forever. I balked. It was one thing for me to be emotionally jerked around, it was quite another to let Mitten go and have to face the end of my relationship with LEO. My priorities were so backwards.

Sooner or later, it all came to a head. I finally had the balls to just delete Mitten. I never even told him I was doing it, but at that time his head was up some other girl’s ass and hadn’t talked to me for weeks. It felt like someone had socked me in the heart, but I didn’t falter.

Now it’s two years later, LEO and I have broken up (still friends) and Mitten and I haven’t spoken. He’s had a kid since then, which is a relief to me because if anything is a dealbreaker for me, it’s kids (I don’t hate them, they’re just not for me) but no matter what I do, and no matter what I tell myself about him, I can’t get him off of my mind. It’s ridiculous. I’ve met the guy once twelve years ago, we’re not good for each other. My conscious brain knows this. Apart from learning he has a kid, I don’t visit his profile. I don’t have pictures of him and I have given myself every talk in the book, but I know he doesn’t look me up (I can’t be 100% sure, but I was always the one who cared more out of the two of us) and that hurts me on the dumbest level ever. I don’t know why my brain insists on feeling this attachment to him and I hate him living rent free in my head. I am at a loss as to what to do. I know you might say to just give it time, but it feels like I’ve given it twelve or so years, and that’s freaking enough. What is going to make my silly brain realize that I need to let this guy go?

Just When I Thought I was Out

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We Haven’t Had Sex in Months. Is My Husband Cheating On Me?

April 30, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

My husband and I (he’s a straight man and I’m a bi woman) have been together for 25 years, and most of the time I see him as the best partner possible. Loving, kind, thoughtful, funny, and a wonderful father. Where things aren’t so great is our sex life.

Up until last year my sex drive was at an all time low. I was dealing with a misdiagnosed mental health disorder, and the medication I was taking meant my desire completely tanked. So having sex once every month or even less was fine by me. I wasn’t even masturbating, which I’ve always enjoyed, so it wasn’t like my lack of interest had anything to do with him. But things have changed and it’s becoming a big problem.

Now that I have a proper diagnosis and am taking the right medication, my sex drive has skyrocketed. Sex once a month isn’t enough. I masturbate every day, sometimes more than once, but I miss having sex with my husband. And it’s not just the physical act, but also the closeness and emotional connection that I’m looking for. But he doesn’t seem interested. At all.

I’ve tried everything I can think of. I initiate sex regularly, but the majority of the time he says he’s too tired. I’ve bought sexy lingerie, suggested we watch porn together (what kind is his choice), bought books, offered to do a strip tease, role play etc etc and nothing seems to work. At this point I’m not sure if it’s that he’s no longer attracted to me, that he really is too tired, that he’s getting it somewhere else, or that he’s unable to keep an erection (more on that shortly).

We’ve talked about this outside the bedroom when we’re both calm and he swears it isn’t a lack of desire or attraction to me. He says he’s especially tired at night, which makes sense because he works a physically demanding job. But I’ve tried initiating sex in the morning or on the weekend and that doesn’t work either. So I’m left with the last two possibilities …cheating or ED.

The last few times we’ve had sex he’s had trouble staying hard. I’ve given him oral, tried manual, stimulated everywhere I could think of, dirty talk, dirty movies, and no dice. The last time it happened I asked if everything was OK and he said that having trouble staying hard is just what happens to 50 year old men. But from everything I’ve read that just isn’t true.

He doesn’t want to see a doctor, which I find frustrating. I know that vaginal penetration isn’t the be all and end all of good sex, but not being able to get him off at all is driving me crazy. And yes, I miss good old fashioned screwing. But most importantly of all, there’s no cuddling, no physical connection, and now he’s sleeping on the couch.

I’m starting to think it really is me, or that he’s getting it elsewhere. He’s been working in a woman’s house over the last month and he’s been talking about her a lot…how nice she is, how smart, how much he admires that she’s raising her daughter alone after being widowed. Ok, so he also said he thought I’d like her, but the repetition of her virtues made me uncomfortable. When I flat out asked if there was anything going on he snapped and said just asking him that was insulting. When I pushed for an answer he said there was nothing going on, that he wasn’t cheating, nor would he ever. I’m almost sure that’s true, but there is a small part of me that wonders.

So what do I do? No matter why this is happening, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a sexless marriage. Leaving or cheating are not options…I love and respect him too much for that. Please help, because I’m –

Hot, Bothered and Missing my Husband

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Am I An Asshole If I Don’t Want to Settle for Someone In My “League”?

April 26, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

My entire family is dead, and I’ve been living with my only close and reasonably well-off friend and her husband since losing my job and housing in the summer of 2020. I have severe anxiety and a number of physical health issues that all together mean I am not capable of working more than part-time for the foreseeable future. (Yes, I’ve applied for disability; apparently I’m not disabled enough.)

For the last couple months my friend and her husband have been increasingly hinting that I need to move out — they want to have a baby before she’s too old, but my stuff and I are taking up both their spare bedrooms. For my part, I can’t stand babies, and my anxiety is exacerbated by being around anyone under 18 (from 0-9, it’s the loud noises and sudden movements; from 10-18 it’s the triggered memories of bullying). But if they accept that I’m unable to work enough to support myself, then my only other option is to find an SO to support me.

My friend thinks the only reason I’m reluctant to do this is that I’m a 38-year-old virgin, I grew up in a conservative Christian home and town (where I continued to live with my parents until their deaths), and while I came out as pansexual several years ago, I still have hang ups about actually expressing it. So she’s been trying to talk me through that. And while those are factors, I’m ashamed to talk about the most major factor. Which is simply that I don’t think I could stand to kiss or have sex with anyone as ugly as I am.

This is not just low self-esteem: I’m morbidly obese, with about the least attractive weight distribution possible; I have a gigantic double chin; adult acne; short, thinning head hair; gnarly body hair; and between my face fat and the thickness of my glasses, my eyes are so minuscule you can’t even tell that they’re blue. The only person I can imagine going for me is someone equally fat and/or ugly who is desperate for sex, but can’t get anyone better — and I feel like I’d rather die than touch someone like that, no matter how smart or nice or rich they are. I seriously don’t think I’m the kind of person who could ever become attracted to someone I wasn’t attracted to before just because of their personality. (And that’s only fair — I’m really smart, funny, kind, loyal, progressive, etc., but no one has ever been attracted by that, even people who liked me as a friend.)

But is it right to choose to continue to be supported by my friend instead? My part-time job covers my groceries, meds, car expenses, etc., so all she really has to do is provide a roof. We’ve been close since grade school and I’m confident she would never throw me out in the street, even if she couldn’t have a baby and her husband (who I can tell pretty much hates me) left her. But I’d really hate for it to come to that.

So please tell me: is there any possibility of someone like me getting an at least average-looking, non-overweight partner? Would I be better off focusing on women, since women (as a whole, I know I’m an anomaly) seem more open to dating people less attractive than themselves? (E.g., you see attractive women with unattractive men a lot more than vice versa.) The problem there is that I’m more attracted to men, so I’m not sure even that would be good enough — I’ve had crushes on fairly average men, but only on really beautiful women.

Finally, there’s no escaping the fact that if I could just get paid what I make now plus the cost of a one-bedroom apartment, utilities, TV, and internet, without working any more hours, I would never even consider trying to date, but continue to satisfy myself with crushes and fantasies of people light-years out of my league. Is this unhealthy, and might my friend be right, and dating actually be good for me? How can I get over feeling like a whore if I go into dating primarily because I need support? Is it morally better to be a leech, because at least you’re not selling yourself, or a whore, because at least you’re providing something in return?

Sincerely,
Leech Or Whore? (she/her)

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