Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
If someone is having sex with multiple people, on an ongoing basis, I always thought that was polyamory/ENM.
I myself automatically go exclusive after the first time I sleep with someone, and verbally ask for same returned by the second time I sleep with them. In the past, this hasn’t been an issue.
However, my last dating partner (never got a title) really chaffed against that exclusivity request, called it weirdly early, she thinks any sooner than the 6-month mark is unreasonable and misogynist of me. We also knew it was a short-term situation, because she was moving next year to follow her career, but my career is here in Portland, and she said there is no such thing as an exclusive short term relationship in Portland.
She felt that having sex with multiple people repeatedly was just being “single” and a normal part of dating. She swears she isn’t polyamorous, but rather identifies as monogamous with “real relationships” and she felt it’s takes several months of sex with the freedom to have sex with others in similar months-long situations before they should be exclusive with anyone. She also argued this is how everyone is and I was the weird one with my exclusivity default, not just with her but with myself.
That said, either though effort or lack of other opportunities at the time, we dated for two months of her trying to be exclusive with me, and it was an very intensely sexual relationship as we are both extremely high libido people (probably the reason we ended up together at all, as we would have marathons each weekend). Finally, after those two months, she expressed that I was trying to “possess” her by asking for exclusivity, that she was going to start dating other folks and I could stick around if I wanted but otherwise, we were done. My brain had the idea of our marathons happening alongside marathons with other partners and I couldn’t square it with myself and we broke up (or I guess we were never together?)
I asked a few of my friends, both men and women and both poly and monogamous, and the majority of them agreed with her. Not the misogynist possessing part, my friends don’t assume the worst possible things about me. But they did agree that sleeping with several people on an ongoing basis is just what normal dating is. I also asked my therapist and they also kind of agreed, albeit in that therapist way of still trying to validate me that my view is legitimate, but limiting. I did not feel validated. I felt like I’ve gone nuts.
Now, despite always thinking I was sex positive, and not having any issue with polyamory/NM other than its not for me, I’m finding myself feeling like some pearl clutching puritan for thinking that monogamy started as early as the first or second time you sleep together.
It’s actually made me stop dating all together. I’m not hung up on her, I’m hung up on this idea that I might be acting like some traditionalist, conservative Christian boy instead of the sex-positive leftist I see myself as being.
Please let me know your opinion on this. And not just “your way is valid too” but I mean in what the dating landscape actually is, am I being unreasonable? Playing into misogynist traditionalism? Limiting myself down to next to nothing? It’s driving me nuts!
-Perplexed in Portland
This isn’t an issue with labels, it’s an issue with compatibility and expectations.
Let’s start with the label issue and work outwards, because I think the focus on labels is part of what’s getting you hung up and it’s the simplest to clarify, since there’s some confusion going on here.
Sex positivity, for example, is frequently misunderstood. Sex positivity doesn’t mean “everyone needs to be fucking”, nor does it mean that if you don’t vibe with someone else’s sexuality or sexual expression, you’re a bad person. The point of sex positivity is, put simply, that people should be having the amount and kinds of sex and sexual relationships they want – presuming that everyone is freely consenting and happy with it – including things like monogamy or not having sex at all. The fact that you’re more inclined to monogamy and asked for monogamy earlier than your ex preferred doesn’t make you sex-negative. It would be a different matter if you were insisting that your way is the One True Way and your ex is a dirty stinking pirate whore for diverging from it. Or, y’know, their calling you a controlling misogynist for asking for it when they didn’t want it.
So no, saying “hey, here’s the type of relationship model I prefer, are you down” doesn’t make you sex-negative.
What about “being single” vs. “being non-monogamous”? Well, technically speaking, when you’re not exclusive with someone then by definition, you’re non-monogamous. That’s the whole deal with exclusivity; it’s an agreement that you’re not going to have sex with people outside your relationship. If you haven’t agreed to exclusivity, then you’re not. Any person may choose to be exclusive to someone, in as much as they choose not to have sex with other people despite it being an option, but that doesn’t bind the other person. That’s just a personal decision, not something that you both agreed to.
In terms of how your friends and therapist responded, I have to agree: if you haven’t had the exclusivity talk or defined the relationship with the other person, then you shouldn’t expect exclusivity from them. However, that’s different from wanting exclusivity from someone when you’ve started to have sex.
I disagree with “there’s no such thing as an exclusive short term relationship in Portland”. It may not be a thing in the social circles that your ex runs in, and there may be overlap between yours and hers, but that’s not the entire city. While different cities and locales have different social norms and what is socially permissible and what isn’t can vary wildly… that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Non-monogamous and poly relationships exist in deep red states just as strict monogamy exists in the most libertine of blue states. It may be harder to find, and the people who want it may eventually move to places where it’s more common or more openly available but humans are gonna human and that means that the diversity in sexuality is basically everywhere.
But this is where we move from the issue with labels and to that aforementioned issue with compatibility and expectations.
The problem with your ex wasn’t that you’re sex-negative, it’s that you and she wanted and expected very different things. That’s neither good nor bad; you’re not a bad person for being monogamous and she’s not a bad person for preferring to forgo exclusivity until she’s ready. You just weren’t sexually or romantically compatible.
Yes, I know that you were having marathon fuck sessions, but sexual compatibility isn’t just about matching libidos or how enthusiastic the sex is. It’s about the kinds of sex you want, the frequency and the rules and boundaries you place around it. Two people could be having great standard-issue sex, but if one ultimately needs a particular kind of sex act or kink to be satisfied long-term and the other is repulsed by it, that’s an incompatibility. So too would be someone who wants sex every day and twice on Sundays and the other person wants it once a month during the full moon and no other times. Or someone who sees masturbation and porn use as cheating while the other sees it as completely normal and harmless.
But this is also where the conflict in expectations comes in. There absolutely can be a sexually-exclusive short-term relationship; people do it all the time, both intentionally or otherwise. The duration of a relationship says nothing about how serious it is, how “real” it is or how meaningful it is. A six-month relationship can be more important and impactful between two people than a ten year relationship can between two people who checked out long ago but still haven’t broken up. It’s the people, their connection and their feelings that make it real or significant and what that relationship ultimately brings to them. I’ve had six-month relationships that changed my life in astounding ways and multi-year relationships that mostly drained the life and joy out of me; I would hardly call the former less “real” or serious just because of how long it lasted.
But that’s not what your ex wanted or expected from you, and it wasn’t what she had to offer. She knew that what you had was going to be limited by the time she had left in Portland. She didn’t want something more serious with you, preferring instead to date around and sleep with other people. That’s fine; it’s just not what you wanted.
What you wanted wasn’t unreasonable either; it’s how you roll, and that’s fine. Other folks aren’t going to vibe with it and that’s fine too. The key is that if this is something that you want and it’s going to be important for you, then bringing it up early is going to be important. Ideally, you’d want this to be a discussion to have before you have sex, so it doesn’t come screaming out of the clear blue sky or feel like you’ve been waiting to trap them into commitment, and you don’t want to feel like there’s been a bait-and-switch. If you feel like exclusivity should start when the sex does or soon thereafter, then I’d recommend following a “no sex before discussing commitment” rule, just to be sure that you’re both on the same page.
And incidentally, when I say “before you have sex”, I don’t mean “when the pants are coming off”, I mean “while you’re still fully clothed and haven’t started making out, but when you know sex is on the table.” As a general rule: never make promises when naked or to a naked person; things that seem entirely reasonable when you’re horny (or enjoying the afterglow) often look incredibly different when you’ve got more blood going to your brain than your junk.
As far as your ex goes… while I think her offer wasn’t unreasonable (“hey, here’s what I’m up for; are you in or out?”), the way she handled things wasn’t. You wanting different things from the relationship doesn’t make either of you the bad guy and ascribing ill-intent to your preferred relationship model is profoundly unhelpful and needlessly combative. Insisting that you’re weird for wanting exclusivity or not taking as long to decide you’re exclusive as she would is, likewise, not great. What works for her clearly didn’t work for you and vice versa; that doesn’t make either of you wrong. It just makes you wrong for each other.
And that’s ultimately where this shakes out. She dates casually until she decides to commit. You commit sooner, and choose exclusivity for yourself when you start having sex. There’s no universal “right” time for asking to define the relationship or asking for exclusivity; there’s just what works for those particular people, and it’s often a timeline that they came to through experience as much as cultural norms or expectations.
Going forward, I’d recommend taking time to check in and see if you two are in alignment in what you want from the relationship and if you’re on a similar trajectory and timeline. But if what you want and what they want conflict and there’s no reasonable compromise that would make you both happy? Well… the best choice is to shake hands and part, if not friends, then at least respectfully.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
It’s been a long year. I’ve sent a letter or two over the past few months and it seems I’m destined to experience more character development in six months than some people go through in 6 years. Like I said before, I’m autistic and had a rough upbringing. I unlearned most of the toxic patterns and reinvented (or more accurately rediscovered) myself.
I’ve been in therapy for the last couple of years but over the past three or so months I finally decided to go on medication and goddamn now I wonder how I functioned without it. I remember in another letter I sent, you mentioned that I might have an anxiety disorder which I dismissed as hogwash because at the time I thought anxiety was for weak beta cucks. I was a MAN, I could TOUGH it out.
Spoiler alert: toughing it out is a load of bullshit. No matter how much I wanted to Catholic guilt my ass into thinking it, suffering is not virtuous by nature and going through preventable pain does not make you a more virtuous person.
I got some medical leave from work and my psych made some interesting notes in my paperwork. We talked it over and came to a conclusion that I’m still grappling with.
Turns out, I have Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I always thought that it was reserved for soldiers, survivors of sexual assault and worse. But no, repeated exposure to trauma or abuse over a period of years can also inflict C-PTSD.
I was reluctant to believe it at first, thinking that my experience didn’t “count” enough to be considered PTSD let alone Complex. But then reading over the symptoms, reflecting on my own experience and grappling with the paperwork I realized “holy shit… this is me.”
I also had a weird moment of clarity and peace where I essentially felt “and now it all makes sense.” Most of the difficulties throughout life now make more sense and have context at last. Dating specifically which has been my number one struggle in life and has been the most difficult process I have ever worked through. I’ve jumped out of planes, narrowly avoided fights, almost been electrocuted and decapitated, gotten my Master’s degree, paid off my student loans, escaped an abusive household, traveled abroad and a litany of other achievements. Despite all that, dating remains the hardest and scariest thing I have ever attempted. And now, finally, I know why. It was never because I was somehow deficient as a human being or as a man, it was never because I wasn’t good enough and it was never because I used to be an incel.
It’s because of horrific acts committed against me, against my will, that sadly left their mark. I’m 30 years old now, those decades I am never getting back. At least not for dating. It gets a little frustrating to hear other people talk about dating and relationships with the same casual cavalier as ordering takeout or buying new clothes.
But, regardless of that, that brings me to my questions. I know that the dating landscape in 2026 is not great at the moment. Fascists are on the march and men have given women plenty of reasons to avoid us entirely. Coupled with app fatigue, precarious economic and political conditions and just a general sense of malaise with global affairs, NOBODY is doing well dating at the moment.
And for me specifically, I read that the best partners for those with C-PTSD are securely attached and can extend me the space and patience I need. For a start I feel that expecting a securely attached partner is a tall order to begin with, considering the world right now. Also, what rational woman would ever want to put up with a man who is suffering from PTSD? Obviously, I don’t plan on leading with “hi my name is such and such and I’m deeply traumatized!” But it feels like asking for that love and patience from a partner is almost unfair. Sometimes I feel like women don’t want human beings but rather manly playthings they can discard when they get bored. Obviously that thought isn’t rational but it does pop up occasionally.
I read that women don’t want “fixer-uppers” and I have no idea if that is me. I’m not looking for anyone to fix or “save me”, god forbid. All the work I’ve done has been on my own terms and for myself. But even with all that in mind, and all I’ve achieved, I’m afraid that if I open up about my struggles or ask during an intimate moment “hey, I might need a little more patience is that ok?” that I’ll be met with contempt or dismissal. I don’t exactly fit the masculine, manly man stereotype and I don’t care to. But I don’t know if I can offer the frictionless, sexy joyride that I feel is expected of me. I don’t know if I can perform that character. I can only be myself and hope that’s enough for someone.
Not Broken, Psychologically Complex
I’m proud of you for getting the help you needed, NBPC, and you should be proud of yourself for doing so. That’s never easy. Neither is being willing to reconsider your previously held beliefs, not when that new information runs so counter to what you were taught to believe.
You’re not alone in terms of not understanding PTSD or CPTSD for that matter, and those limiting beliefs about who could and does have PTSD and how they developed it has been a toxic masculinity signature for a long, long time. One of the ways that GamerGate would target victims would be to call them frauds for saying they had PTSD – as though sustained, continual abuse and terror couldn’t affect people deeply and emotionally.
In fact, that’s part of where the C in CPTSD came from – the understanding that the symptoms come not from one singular event, but from prolonged and often multilayered exposure to trauma and traumatic stressors. Reducing it to “you weren’t physically hurt or in a sufficiently dangerous situation to ‘earn’ PTSD” is part and parcel of the whole toxic masculinity package that equates things like “being hurt by hurtful things” as weakness and frailty that disqualifies you from being A Real Man.
It’s a little like depression; you can have chronic depression despite having no “reason” for it. It doesn’t require something “bad enough” for it to be real. Your life can be entirely fine from the outside, and yet you still are stuck in that grey numbing fog. The idea that you need to “earn” your trauma response is absurdly toxic and keeps more people from reaching out for help when they clearly need it.
Now, while I’m proud that you’ve sought out help, I feel like you should stay mindful of how it affects you. Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness are symptoms after all, as are struggles with forming relationships because of that trauma. Getting meta about it doesn’t change it; you’re still treating yourself as through you’re irreparably marked or damaged, even if the source you ascribe your supposed worthlessness to has changed.
The same goes for the idea that you need to excuse yourself for not being a manly stereotype or that you should be able to offer a frictionless experience. Those are still buying into old beliefs and hegemonic, restrictive ideas that you’re “supposed” to be. It’s the same song as before, just in a slightly different key; it’s still leading to the same place in the end.
(I will freely admit I spent the last 10 minutes trying to work a Hadestown reference into this and it just did not work.)
If you take a step back and look at what you’ve written, I think you’ll see that you’ve traded different reasons for why you can’t or aren’t “allowed” to date. While the state of the world is dire, that doesn’t mean that people don’t still have secure attachment styles or form successful relationships. People dated, fell in love and married under siege, during citywide or countrywide occupation by foreign armies, living under authoritarian dictatorships, during recessions and the Great Depression and in other times far more dire than now. Where there is life, there is love; the road may be rocky, but love is very much the weed that pushes through the stone. To say that finding someone who has a secure attachment style is impossible or even unlikely is just doomer thinking.
The same goes for what “rational” woman would have you. Again, you’re borrowing trouble from the future by presuming that this has already come to pass and behaving accordingly, not something that’s an actual problem. Nobody is expecting perfection, and everyone is a work in progress to one degree or another. The fact that you have learned this about yourself and you’re working on it is a mark in your favor, not against it.
Here’s the thing: while it’s true that someone who wants a healthy relationship isn’t looking for a fixer-upper, that doesn’t mean that you need to be “perfect” to date, that you can’t have flaws or scars or damage from previous experiences. The reason why people don’t want a fixer-upper is about who is expected to do the fixing. There’s a difference between offering support and care to someone who doing the work of healing from his trauma and taking on the role as the person who’s expected to fix him as part of the price of entry to the relationship. People are looking for a partner, not a project, and they don’t want to have the duty of managing your healing for you on top of everything else.
You know: the very thing you say that you don’t want. So hey, congratulations: you and they are all on the same page about how you want this to work.
Now, is it possible that if you open up to someone and say “hey, I struggle with this kind of intimacy and I need more time”, then someone will be cruel to you about it? Sure, it’s possible. Some people are assholes, and asshole knows no age, nationality or gender. But it’s by no means guaranteed, and you’re far more likely to filter someone like that out early than for them to spring it on you out of nowhere. Expecting that before you’ve even met someone is, again, just borrowing trouble from the future and a future that may never come to pass.
But if I could give you one piece of advice regarding dating and your diagnosis: give yourself some time. It hasn’t been long since you even learned this about yourself, and you’re still adjusting to this new understanding. I think you’re going to need more time to heal and to manage how that healing will affect you. Healing doesn’t mean it’s all smooth straight roads and rainbows; it’s frequently a lot of gritted teeth, swearing, frustration, weird turns and detours, even backsliding on occasion and that’s ok. It’s going to take time to come to grips with things, to get a handle on it and to fully wrap your head around it. You need to take some time to be gentle with yourself, to give yourself grace and patience. Your trauma didn’t come all at once, and neither will the healing.
You don’t need to be in perfect condition, just in good working order, and you’re making big, big steps towards getting there. Don’t let impatience get in the way of it. I know that the night seems blackest when your heart feels lost. I promise you: there is love waiting for you, and it is waiting patiently. It’s not going to leave without you. Love yourself enough to heal, and you’ll get there much sooner than if you rush.
You’ve got this.
All will be well.
