cheating Archives

Help, I’m In Love With A Married Man

June 30, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr NerdLove,

About 12 months ago I met a man. I instantly had a crush on him but I didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense. Whenever he was in the office, I was excited to see him. I would express this, thinking that this was just a friendship thing.

About 6 months ago we were walking away from the office together. He pointed at the hiking shoes I was wearing, and asked me to go hiking with him. I thought that it was a little odd, given that he was married. But I was pretty depressed at the time. I was just happy to have a day not thinking about how alone I felt. So I said yes.

And then all of a sudden we were inseparable. We found any excuse to spend time together. I told myself this was innocent and we were just friends. I told myself it was only me that had feelings. Then one evening, as he was driving me home, his wife called. This was a real wake-up call. She sounded hurt. She asked him when he was coming home. So I decided to confront him. I told him we were crossing a line. I asked him why he had the emotional space to do so. He asked me to come for a walk with him the next day and we would talk about it.

The next day we sat down under a tree together, admiring the view. He opened up about his wife. He said that around 10 years ago she got depression. He supported her through it but she had become a completely different person. They didn’t really have a relationship to speak of. He didn’t enjoy her company anymore. Being around me made him feel like he was alive again. I asked him why, if the relationship was so bad, he didn’t just leave her. He was afraid of being alone. He said that we should just enjoy each others company. Have a nice time together. That we both needed some light in our lives, and that we could give that to each other. It felt wrong at the time but it felt like just what I needed. Nothing happened that day. When I went home, I realised how crazy this was and broke it off.

But then he asked me for one last dinner. Before I left. I was moving interstate the next week so one last dinner couldn’t hurt. I figured I was leaving anyway, so that would be ok. One last dinner to say goodbye. He picked me up, I got nice and dressed up, and we went to a really nice restaurant. He lavished me with attention. He spent the whole evening looking me in the eye. It felt like he was looking inside of me. He listened to all of my stories and told some of his own. It was the nicest “date” I’d had in years. Or ever, really. That night we kissed for the first time. I was instantly drawn to him. The sexual energy was amazing.

The next few days before I left, we were inseparable again. We had the most amazing sexual chemistry, and that was just the beginning. We spent the next 6 weeks on the phone daily. He even visited me once. I’d asked him to not talk about his wife too much. But one thing he did say was that he hadn’t seen his family more than one day a year since he was married to her. Because the fallout from him seeing them was too much to handle. She didn’t like it. So I encouraged him to visit them. I taught him to be selfish in bed. He didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted, and wanted to make it all about me. I taught him to speak up for what he wanted outside of the bedroom as well. I taught him that his feelings mattered.

I would often ask him how he could have an affair. Why he didn’t feel bad about it. He said he needed to be sure about me before leaving her. I made the point that he couldn’t be sure it was over with her, because he hadn’t left her. And if he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave her, he shouldn’t be with me. His thoughts should be about whether he wanted to leave her, rather than whether he wanted to leave her for me. And then he finally made the decision to leave her. He was coming to be with me. It was a glorious morning. I was so relieved it was over. And then it wasn’t.

He had told her about the affair, he had told her about leaving her, and he had left her. But then she’d realised what she was missing and promised she would change. I spent the next 6 weeks having half a relationship with him. He was attentive, kind, exciting and interesting when he was with me. But then he would go back to stay with his parents, and nothing. He said he needed some time to figure things out. I spent 2 hours every morning trying to drag myself out of bed. Trying to stop crying. Trying to do some work. I got at most 4 hours of work done every day. This was a really critical part of my career too. And it really really didn’t go well. I tried breaking it off with him around once a week. I tried explaining how much my work was suffering. I had to break it off to save my job. And every time. He would wait, and then ask me if I was sure. Or he’d text me, or call me, and just chat with me. And I wasn’t. It was impossible for me to get away from him.

And then I lost my job. And he left me. He went back to his wife. But wait. There’s more. We still kept talking. We were communicating daily. For hours. And then one day he went cold. He told me that day he was driving with his wife. I wasn’t sure for how long, but around 8pm I called him. I thought he would have finished driving by then. But apparently he hadn’t. His wife got angry (understandably) and told him he wasn’t allowed to be friends with me. So we had minimal contact for 2 weeks, and then all of a sudden we were back on. Talking. Every day during the week.

By now I’ve given up trying to break it off with him. I know it’s impossible. I’ve tried so many times. He’s tried. We’re in separate states, so nothing physical can happen. But I’m just so devastated. I’m still depressed all the time. He’s been so selfish. He’s only thought about himself. He’s hurt us both. He’s just kept on being selfish about this. Not considered my feelings. How much he’s hurting me. Or her. I feel like I’m in some kind of jail that keeps shrinking down outside of me. And I don’t know how to get out.

I’ve given him another month. If he hasn’t left her in a month, we’re over for good. But I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I have it in me to leave him. I need help.

The icing on the cake is this. I’ve had some sexual desires that have gone unexpressed for my entire life. So has he. We’ve discovered that we have the same desires. It feels like I’ve finally discovered my sexual preference. I’ve finally made a sexual connection with someone. I’ve spent my whole life wondering whether I was straight, gay, bisexual, because I would just get so bored with men. I liked women, but not their genitals. I didn’t know what was going on. But with him, I finally discovered that I like being a sub, and he likes being a dom. And this is not just vanilla “we can play with this for a bit”. This is full blown I need to completely submit my body to him. I have so many needs that I thought were just fantasy. I can’t go back to what my sex life used to be. It’s so hard finding someone who is both highly intelligent, sexually compatible, and who I can laugh and be silly with. We talk for hours. We love arguing about the world and life and politics. And we love telling each other our stories. I’ve never found anything that comes close to this. So I feel like it’s my fate to love a man who may or may not be with me. Who may or may not leave his wife. He talks about it as if it’s inevitable. As if we will be together soon. As if he’s leaving his wife. But if it was inevitable, and if he was so sure, he would have already left her. So obviously, there’s some doubt.

I’ve always found it easy to break up with people. To the point where I actually enjoy it. I enjoy how free I feel after breaking up. This has never happened to me. I just don’t know how to get out of this. Or whether I want to. But I’m depressed.

The Other Woman

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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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How Do I Become More Attractive to Women?

March 29, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc,

For the last month and a half or so, I went on some dates with a girl (who we’ll call L, for the purposes of this letter) who I met through Bumble. I really liked her, as we have similar tastes in music (which is uncommon among people my age), and it was really easy for me to be myself and remain laid back, light-hearted, and relatively jokey around her. However, earlier today, L let me know that while she liked me as a person, she thought that we should just be friends, as she didn’t she us as being more than friends. I’m open to that, though we both agreed that it would be best to take some time apart, so I can fully process my emotions and come to grips with this. Of course, this is partially because it just happened, but it really hit me hard, as I felt a strong connection with her, mostly in relation to our similar interests. (I tend to become a lot more interested in someone if they have one or more of the same obscure interests that I do.) I also got the “let’s just be friends” speech with a girl (who we’ll call K) who I went on a few dates with a few months ago, though looking back, I didn’t have as strong of a connection with her as I felt I did with L.

It should be noted that I really have only started dating in the past year or so, despite being 29 years old (I’ll turn 30 next month) and I’ve never been in an officially defined “relationship.” My longest time spent dating a girl has been for a few months. I never asked girls out before that, partially because of a fear of rejection, unrealistic expectations about what I wanted in a romantic partner, and having the idea that if a girl liked me, she would automatically ask me out. I also didn’t use touch with girls I was interested in, in part because I didn’t want to be seen as a creeper. After reading your website, I now know the error of my previous ways. However, I sensed a lack of experience with L as well. She never mentioned any previous boyfriends, she mentioned how her parents are very protective of her (compared with other girls, from what I’ve noticed), and she explicitly mentioned that I’m the first person who she went on a date with through a dating app. (She’s in her mid-late 20s) I didn’t ask about her prior dating history, though. Since I don’t have much of a prior dating history, either, I’m thinking that maybe she noticed some hesitation in my actions, as opposed to being confident and truly certain of myself. Obviously, I can’t confirm that this played a role, but I do want to display certain things that will make women romantically attracted to me, like being more confident.

In your articles, you often mention the importance of touch. Before the pandemic, I was able to incorporate touch with some of the girls I went on dates with, though not really since then. With L, we would hug each other when meeting and saying good bye, and occasionally holding hands when we walked together. I made sure to ask her beforehand, but again, I didn’t want to do anything she was uncomfortable with, and when we walked outdoors, for example, we both wore masks. I would have liked to use touch to convey interest with her more, but with us being in a pandemic, I was hesitant towards some things, like kissing her. With K before that, however, I didn’t touch her, as she was much more cautious towards the pandemic, as to name one example, she wasn’t comfortable with eating in restaurants.

Obviously, this makes it harder for a girl to see me as more than a friend, though. While I plan on moving on to messaging other girls online, it stands to reason that there are more than a few women who have a cautious attitude towards the pandemic, and with that, I would have to find other ways to create romantic attraction. I do plan on getting the vaccine as soon as humanly possible, though it’s uncertain as to when that’ll actually be able to take place.

Additionally, in those articles, you mention the idea of bringing up your past sex life to girls in order to create attraction. The problem with that is, that I’m a virgin, so I obviously have nothing to go with that doesn’t involve my right hand. Along with the fact that I’m relatively inexperienced with things like sexual flirting, how can I make up for this? (This created complications with L, as while I did my best to be a little more flirty with her compared to how I was with K, and playfully bantered with her as well, it may not have been enough, and because I sensed some inexperience with her, along with the fact that she generally didn’t talk about more risqué things, made me more hesitant to bring up more sexual-themed flirting with her.)

So, in summary, my main questions are, what are some of the main ways to create romantic attraction with a girl without touch, and how can I create sexual attraction despite my inexperience when it comes to sex?

Always a Friend, Never a Lover

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Our Relationship Had An Unhealthy Start. Can We Ever Move On?

January 15, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I really need your help. I’m going through mental anguish over the past and I’m at my breaking point. Here is my story:

One day, all of my longtime friends deserted me out of the blue. They told me they didn’t want to be friends anymore and that was it. To this day, I have not fully regained trust of women nor have I had a new female friend since this. I believe that if this event had not occurred, I would be a happy, functioning adult. But it sent me on a path of depression, contempt, and attachment issues. (These final two statements were only recently realized).

The next year I transferred schools due to the unbearable effects of being ostracized by my entire peer group.

I was the new girl: lonely, shy, and depressed. The first day, I was put into a group project with my current boyfriend. He was smart, artistic, funny, and a gamer (something that I had recently gotten into). It didn’t take long for me to develop a crush and then a full blown love/obsession with him. Despite only having one class with him 2-3 times a week, I thought about him constantly. I would spectate him playing games, text, and discord call. He was my best friend, in my mind. I didn’t care about befriending anyone else.

Anyone can see that the attachment I formed to him is unhealthy. I was so hurt from what happened with my friend group, I avoided girls. I was also worried he would leave me like they did. I relied on him for all happiness. I put him on a pedestal where he was perfect. I made constant hints at my feelings, even a few times outright discussing it. But he asserted his (valid) feelings that he didn’t want to risk things changing. Instead of taking obvious signs of disinterest, I never gave up. And most of all, when he hurt me the most, I ignored it.

We were friends for about 3 years before I asked him out on a date after realizing he probably never would. We went to a movie and then after that he still wasn’t sure. I remember finally breaking down on my bathroom floor in the new dress I bought for our date. Even writing this now, my chest feels tight.

After hesitation he agreed we were dating, and stupidly, I accepted that. I accepted the constant hesitation (as inexperience), the ignoring (as being busy with school), and disinterest (as my own inadequacy). My codependence was so powerful I was willing to accept anything. It’s all me. I carried the entire relationship. If any point I had stopped talking to him, I doubt he would ever reach out. In fact there was a 6 month gap of time over the summer in which there was no communication. I saw him in class, but he didn’t acknowledge my existence. I reluctantly was the first to text him and we started to talk again. But, if I hadn’t we never would have talked again. I feel like I deserve so much more. Anyone deserves so much more.

However, we started dating anyway and it was perfect happiness. What I was after all those years was finally realized. He introduced me to his friends. I was never popular nor did I make any friends of my own. But it was so much better than before. He met my parents, and I met his (after a few fights). Nothing could go wrong.

Then one day I unearthed my old diaries filled with pages of pain to recount what happened. I started fights occasionally and caused problems in our relationship (bringing up the past, insecurity, blame) when I remember those things. My most intrusive thought is: If I hadn’t asked him out he wouldn’t have asked me out.

You might think, what’s wrong with that? For someone like me who needs to know they are loved and wanted, that prospect hurts me deeply. Not to mention the fact that he must not have found me very attractive. He didn’t love me until I forced him to. I mean, that’s extremely problematic on my part. I want him to date a girl he loves, not a freak like me.

He loves me now. It’s been almost two years and a major life transition. But if he loves me because I manipulated and changed fate I can’t stand it.

As long as I forget the past, I feel content. There are other minor things he does, that annoy me. I end up seeing the connection between these current behaviors and the past. It sends me into a deep spiral. For example: “Why don’t you ever ask me out? I’m always the one who does it. I’m always doing all of the work. If you really cared you would enthusiastically ask me to go out without prompting. Just be honest and tell me if you even care.”

Sometimes I think, why am I so dramatic? Aren’t we the perfect love story? So what if the genders are flipped, that doesn’t make you any less of a woman. It’s the 21st century. Be happy now with what you have. But I know now that the initial attachment to him was one out of desperation, and some of it still lingers. Is it possible for me to move past such a stressful and heartbreaking past?

My boyfriend has truly grown into a much more dependable, loving person. I’m no longer codependent to him and slowly learning to make friends after therapy. We have talked about marriage and living together after college. We visit each other every week. My parents love him. We’re both each other’s firsts. We’ve had good discussions on the future and he’s incredibly talented, smart, and still nerdy. I love him, but the past hurts me so much. I’m worried that we will keep progressing and get married and there’s still going to be these feelings of inadequacy. That’s completely unfair to him. At this point, he has done everything to prove he loves me and finds me attractive and apologized for the past. There might not be a word or action that will ever disconfirm my thoughts. I really need your voice of reason.

– She Will Always Be A Broken Girl

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Can Not Having Sex Drive Me Crazy?

November 30, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi DNL! How do I stop feeling bad about lack of sex and not being able to get it? This has been an issue for me pre- and post-COVID. I’m a thirty-something heterosexual male who’s never identified as traditionally masculine, was a late bloomer in dating and never really found fulfillment in my twenties. I’ve learned a lot about myself since then and now know the types of people I click with the best, but the pandemic has put a huge wrench in my ability to seek what I look for even with all the education and “tools” for growth that people like you teach.

I’ve done my best to educate myself about toxic masculinity, I don’t give a shit about status or admiration from male peers (I’m just not interested in associating with heteronormative men, and my “male” friends are on the queer spectrum and don’t encourage unhealthy conversations about sex), I don’t watch porn, I make sure my masturbation habits are healthy and have a toy that I use for “maintenance”, and yet I’m still feeling miserable without being to share the experience with another human being. It’s the collection of emotions, senses, smell, touch, noises, and everything about it that I just can’t find from solo sex, VR, toys, porn, etc. Am I a sex addict or something? I feel broken about suffering from so much angst and depression about this, and my therapist isn’t really helpful in talking about this issue. I want to change therapists but there’s a severe lack of resources I can access and don’t even know where to begin with finding a therapist that understands male sexuality without shaming or giving platitudes.

My “love language” is physical and before the pandemic I had several people I could call cuddle buddies to help with skin hunger, but we are not sexual and the ones I am attracted to aren’t available or are not interested in me sexually. Due to the serious restrictions in my area, I can’t even find a person to create a “bubble” with until there’s a vaccine (which will be delayed in my area due to government fuck ups). Online apps have not been helpful for me either and I’ve done everything I can to take personal responsibility to improve my experience but it’s just an exercise in rejection and constant disappointment.

Things are really not looking well for economic recovery in my area and it feels like it will be years before things are back to “normal” with opportunities and etc. How can I survive a few more years of this?

Impending Basket Case

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