DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am a 24 year old gamer lady currently engaged to my very own gamer lad. We’ve been together for three years and decided about six months ago that marriage was in the cards.

He is the sweetest, most thoughtful man I have ever dated, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life with him. He’s funny and intelligent, protective, and an overall Good Person. I know he would do anything in his power for me. I aspire to be deserving of this and reciprocate it as best I can, but there is one thing that does bother me, and that is our sex life.

Prior to this relationship, I have had a number of boyfriends and lovers. Not a large number, but enough to realize that I am both a very private and very sensual person. Unfortunately, my fiancé doesn’t have the benefit of that experience- I am his first girlfriend and his first lover. And he’s come to realize he just… doesn’t have much of a sex drive. At all.

At first, I badgered him for sex rather frequently, but then I turned it around and realized that that was wildly inappropriate of me to do- after all, a guy harasses his girlfriend for sex, that’s horrible! So I stopped doing that. Unfortunately, without me aggressively pursuing it… we almost never have intercourse. We’re talking two or three times… a month. In previous relationships, it was at least once a day, and it would have been more if I’d had my way.

I used to feel rejected and like it was my fault, as I am overweight. But I tend to think he’s really just not that sexual of a person. It’s taken some getting used to, to realize that men can be so disinclined towards sex, and we’ve talked about it fairly extensively, but I still worry that it really is just me or that we have poor chemistry.

We’ve found ways to compromise- we snuggle all the time, he’s very affectionate, we have lots of physical contact; he ‘helps’ sometimes, when I masturbate and he’s not in the mood. My own sex drive has died off quite a bit since we started dating, because in spite of logic I do feel sort of rejected. He frequently has erections but his head isn’t in the right place, which is frustrating for me because it’s hard to tell when it’s ‘okay’ to pounce without it being unwanted. We’ve even talked about having an ‘open’ relationship and he’s said he’d be willing to try it, but I really hesitate to even go there- I’m a very private person and I don’t like to open up to people like that without a very high degree of trust, and it just seems selfish of me and risky to our relationship.

I worry that maybe marriage is a bad idea, since our sex drives just seem incompatible, but the fact is, I love this man and I value him more than I value sex… but it’s a daunting prospect, to spend the rest of my life not getting any, when it has, in the past, been so important to me.

Do you have any ideas on compromises? Anything?

Thanks,

Defying Gender Norms

DEAR DEFYING GENDER NORMS: First things first: you have a right to have your sexual needs met in a relationship. Feeling frustrated and wanting to be desired and fulfilled isn’t selfish. It’s a critical part of maintaining a healthy relationship.

One issue I stress over and over again is how important sexual compatibility is to a couple. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that yes, passion fades and sexual desire tends to ebb and flow over the course of a long-term relationship – but that doesn’t mean that partners should feel as though that asking for their needs to be met is an unreasonable request.

Sexual compatibility is more than just making sure that all of the appropriate parts line up in a pleasing manner; it also has to do with being interested in the same activities – or at least willing to indulge in it for the sake of your partner’s pleasure – and, critically, having compatible sex drives. It’s very rare that you will find two people who’s libidos align perfectly; a number of factors will affect an individual’s libido from medication, to diet, to comfort within the relationship, to stress levels, and even age.

(Side note: the idea that women’s sex drives peak in their 30s has less to do with biology and more with sociology. It arose out of the Kinsey studies in the 40s and 50s and didn’t take into account that at the time, a more mature woman is much more likely to feel more comfortable and familiar in her sexuality in a way that a younger woman wouldn’t.)

The common wisdom — which I don’t necessarily agree with — is that most relationships’ sexual frequency will tend to default to the level of the partner with the lower libido. While this makes things easier in some ways on the less active partner, it can also be a source of frustration, even resentment in the partner with the higher libido.

This is why it’s important for the couple to find some form of equilibrium, where everybody feels satisfied even if they’re not getting 100% of what they want.

It’s going to take some digging to get to the bottom of just what the issue is. Your fiancee may just have a low libido normally – possibly even asexual – or me may have outside factors that are killing his sex drive.

Or – and I hate to say it, but I have to put it out there for completeness’ sake —  he may not be attracted to you sexually.

You say that your fiancee still gets erections; that eliminates the first and most obvious question of whether he’s having erectile dysfunction. My next question to you would be whether he masturbates  – that you are aware of – and how often; some asexuals will still masturbate as a way of keeping the prostate drained rather than out of a sense of sexual pleasure.

Following that, I’d want to know whether your sex life has changed. Were things hot and heavy early on and then suddenly plunged off a cliff, or was it always as infrequent as you say? When you say his head isn’t in the right place, is it because he has other things on his mind – work stress, financial problems, random attacks of ennui  – or because he’s just really, really slow to warm up to the idea of wanting to bang?

It’s good that you have found some forms of compromise – being willing to give you a helping hand (or tongue) is good, assuming that he’s not doing it grudgingly. But yes, it’s going to be hard to feel desired and attractive when the person you want to desire you the most is so unresponsive and apparently uninterested. You are a sexual person and while you love your man, this is an area that’s going to become a bone of contention between the two of you… and it may well drive you into the arms of someone else. One partner doesn’t have the right to unilaterally decide that both parties are now done with sex; that’s a very good recipe for infidelity at best and the end of an otherwise great relationship at worst.

I’m going to be honest with you: until you’ve worked out a more successful compromise than snuggling and occasional masturbatory help, marriage is going to be a bad idea. If you’re having problems now, getting married isn’t going to magically solve them, no matter how much you may love each other.

You and your fiancee need to have a very long, very honest and incredibly in-depth talk – possibly with the help of a sex-positive relationship councilor – about just what his issues are with sex. If the two of you are going to be getting married, you need to know right the Hell now whether it’s a case of he’s not attracted to you or whether he’s not attracted to anyone and how you’re going to work around this. This includes a very in depth and frank discussion about opening up the relationship, even if it’s one-sided. I know it can feel as though you’re betraying him, but you need understand: wanting sexual satisfaction is not selfish. You said it yourself: you’re a sexual person and this is an aspect of who you are that is extremely important to you. It’s unfair of him if he were to declare that because he’s not interested in having sex, you’re not allowed to be either.

Now I do want to say: companionate relationships – ones that are based on emotional intimacy and affection but without a sexual component – can and do work, but they usually entail one or both partners having their needs discretely met on the side. You have to ask yourself which is more likely to ruin a relationship: your being allowed off the leash on occasion with your hubby’s permission in order to get your itch scratched, or years of frustrated desire… which has a nasty tendency to turn into resentment and bitterness.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a husband and father in my mid-thirties, and my wife has multiple sclerosis, which has left her with permanent muscle pain and fatigue such that she can’t work or do housework. However, what I’m writing to you about is, simply, the fact that my libido won’t shut up, to the point that I occasionally wish I was dead just so the craving for sex (or at least heavy petting and mutual oral) would stop. 

Even before she developed her disability, my wife’s libido had been on a serious downslope almost from the moment we got married. Within weeks of our wedding we were down to once or twice a week; within a year, once or twice a month; now, nearly 11 years on, it’s two or three painful, awkward, guilt-ridden times a year.

I have what was until very recently called Asperger’s Syndrome and is now just very high-functioning autism, but I wasn’t diagnosed until last year ( stupid Southern medical community) and was too terrified of conflict of any sort to stand up to my wife about anything, least of all sex. Now I’ve finally found a great psychiatrist, therapist and therapy group who help me a lot, but my wife is too mired in hopelessness to think about anything but how unhappy she is. I wish I could just stop wanting sex, but my therapist has gotten me to understand that if I don’t take care of myself, I become unable to care care of my wife and our son as well.

My therapist and psychiatrist have urged me to tell my wife that my needs are my needs, they’re not going away, and if I can’t meet them with her I need to get them met some other way. I mean, we do cuddle a lot, but she’s so miserable about her own body that she shies away from kissing or anything explicitly sexual, no matter how much I assure her that I am coming in with no expectations or preconceptions. She is very closed to any open discussion of emotional or sexual needs and pooh-poohs the very idea of talking about feelings (beyond telling me when she thinks I’m overreacting to something) and is very inclined toward giving up, hiding and escapism (we play Eve Online together, but I can’t fap to that, much less squeak a mattress with it).

So it’s very unlikely that I would ever be able to convince her to “open up” the marriage. But my gonads just won’t shut up no matter how much else I have going on, and porn and hand lotion just get me depressed and lonely these days. And it should go without saying that anything that would endanger the welfare of my family is right out. So while the process of elimination would seem to suggest that I *have* to go behind my wife’s back to keep my sanity, I’m just having a very hard time countenancing doing that – hiding things from the woman I love, lying, diverting more time and money from caring for my family… I mean, you’d think just about anything would beat “become a suicide risk” in a cost-benefit analysis but… I’m hoping like crazy there’s just an option I’m missing here.

I have no trouble socializing with people – I have pretty good (hard-won) social skills, am comfortable striking up conversations, and have asserted my need to at least go to jam sessions at bars a few nights a week, but hanging out playing music is one thing and illicit snu-snu is quite another.

(And I’m already overweight so no castration.)

Dirty Not-Old Man

DEAR DIRTY NOT-OLD MAN: Well here’s a letter that’s going to get me in trouble.

DNOM, I sympathize with both you and the wife. Having a chronic, debilitating condition, especially one that results in constant pain is hard on everybody involved and it’s going to take a psychic toll on the relationship no matter how committed and loving you both are.

That being said: being handicapped in this way isn’t license for being an a

hole.

But let me back up a little here.

Let’s start with the obvious: you’re not a dirty old man and your libido isn’t something to be ashamed of. You love your wife and find her attractive. It’s completely natural that you want to have sex with her. It’s good that you still find her attractive; all too often, people with chronic conditions or physical handicaps start to feel as though they’ve been branded as “nonsexual”, as though having MS rendered somebody as only half-human. So quit stressing over the fact that you want to bone.

But – and here’s the part you’re not going to like – right now you’re well on your way to getting a messy divorce. It’s easy to get a little torn up about this because of your wife’s condition, but you said something significant at the start: Your wife’s libido cratered BEFORE she developed her condition.

Now it’s natural for sex to slow down over the course of a long-term relationship – that’s the Coolidge Effect and it’s part and parcel of being a mammal – but it’s another entirely when it suddenly drops off a cliff. However, it would help if we had more info to work with here. I have several questions about whether she was feeling the symptoms of MS before she got diagnosed, or she’s always had a lower libido than yours and didn’t key you in until after you were married.

Some people – men and women both – will be willing to bang more frequently than they would normally like right up until they’re married. As soon as rings are exchanged, they decide that they’re done with sex for now… and unilaterally deciding that their spouse is too.

And because we live in a sex-negative culture, the person with the higher-libido is shamed for wanting sex; they’re told that they should be willing to sacrifice for their partner, that breaking up with or divorcing someone because they wouldn’t sleep with you as often as you’d like is selfish and that they should be willing to just suck it up and deal because love is so much more than just squishy noises and orgasms.

Of course, sex is unimportant right up until somebody decides to seek it elsewhere… at which point it’s justification for blowing up a relationship without a second glance. Even if the other person has been driven to it.

As I’ve said before: monogamy ain’t easy. All monogamy means is that you CHOOSE not to; it doesn’t say a damn thing about not WANTING too. And despite what culture and movies tell us, romantic love doesn’t turn your libido into single-target sexuality. Humans are novelty-seeking creatures, and that includes our sex lives. Being attracted to other people, even when we’re madly in love, is absolutely, perfectly normal.

So let’s look at your situation in particular, DNOM. You’re horny. Your wife isn’t, and hasn’t been for years. This alone is going to cause problems that will ultimately undermine your marriage.

Now, let’s be clear: this isn’t just someone saying “I’m going to withhold sex because SCREW YOU PENIS, THAT’S WHY.” There are very real, serious underlying causes to her lack of libido: loss of sexual desire, chronic fatigue and pain during intercourse are all symptoms of multiple-sclerosis. Throw depression on top of that – another notorious libido killer — and you’ve basically ensured that she’s not going to be DTF any time in the near future.

One of the keys to making a relationship work is for both partners to be willing to be giving in bed — and this means making some compromises, like I told Defying Gender Norms earlier. If for whatever reason they won’t or can’t, then the only ethical thing to do is have a conversation about the possibility of having one’s needs discretely met elsewhere.

In your case, DNOM, you have a couple of immediate problems. Your wife’s condition makes it difficult for her to participate in your sex-life at all and even harder to want to. That’s entirely understandable.

However, her condition doesn’t mean that she gets to abdicate her responsibilities to the relationship. Even setting the sexual component of your relationship aside, there is still the companionate and emotionally intimate side. And the truth is: she’s neglecting that too.

First of all: your wife desperately needs to get into therapy. I realize the T word gets tossed around here often, but she’s sinking deep into depression and it’s affecting not only her life but yours and your children’s. It’s only going to get worse for the both of you if she doesn’t seek psychological treatment to help with her emotional and body-image issues.  Hiding from it isn’t going to help.

Neither is avoiding talking about the giant erection in the living room.

Your therapist and psychiatrist are correct: you need to talk to your wife about this. You have emotional and physical needs that aren’t being met and it’s causing you pain too. She can’t just dismiss your emotions or your needs like they’re unimportant; if she loves you, then she needs to be willing to listen to you and work with you on this.

So you have some choices to make.

First of all: your sex drive isn’t going to go away and your wife doesn’t have the right to tell you that you’re just going to have to go without sex for the rest of your life. That’s not how relationships and partnerships work. She’s been unwilling to consider opening up your relationship or even discuss your need for intimacy. 

So you have your first choice to make – and one that’s going to get me into trouble for suggesting it. You can continue to try to make it work with porn and sex toys – I recommend either getting a Fleshlight or a Tenga Cup – or you can get your needs met elsewhere.

Frankly, it may be less risky to your relationship to go out and get your needs met discretely by a professional. Finding a sex-worker to help you get your rocks off periodically may be a better answer than trying to keep a relationship going on the down-low. A once-a-month appointment is less difficult to do discretely than an ongoing affair — and they’re far less likely to bring drama to your door, and by extension, your marriage.

This will help release your tension and it’s easier to fix your relationship when you’re not bubbling over with backed-up sexual frustration and resentment. It’s not the most romantic or socially “acceptable” solution, but it may be what you need to do if you want to actually stay married to your wife.

Which, incidentally, brings us to the next choice. This is the hard one: you have to decide whether you want to stay in this relationship.

I realize that there are huge issues that would come with getting a divorce: disrupting your children’s life, your wife’s need for physical care and the social stigma of being “the guy who divorced his crippled wife”, but frankly your wife has abdicated her ENTIRE role in your relationship and that ain’t cool. I have nothing but sympathy for her and her health issues. But at the same time, the fact remains that this is an untenable situation and it’s one that’s ultimately going to damage not just you but your children if it’s left unresolved.

I understand you have a hard time with confrontation. And it is important to reiterate that your wife has very real, very dire problems… but she would rather try to pretend that they don’t exist, and that’s a recipe for universal misery. You need to have a long, blunt and honest talk with her about all of this, especially getting her into therapy. She needs to get help and if she doesn’t, she’s going to be dragging you and the kids down with her.

And you have to decide whether you’re going to let this happen. I wish I had better advice for you, DNOM; sometimes there are no good choices, only ones that suck to different degrees. But sometimes you have to be willing to ask which is going to cause the most harm, not just to you, but to your family.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I keep getting to the same problem very quickly with every guy. As I fear it is kind of a circle I’m not sure where to begin.

I do not feel like I need much sex (but probably I’m mistaken, you’ll see later on). Penetration is “bearable” at the best times, but most times hurts like hell. I can enjoy lots of other sex related things a lot sometimes (but rarely and usually in special situations like first time with a guy or after a fight or other situations that add a “thrill” of some kind) but usually I hardly ever feel like I want it.

I usually am under the impression, that any guy I’m going out with wants more sex than me. So when we’re just lying in bed cuddling and kissing, I can feel myself stiffening, asking myself if he “again” wants to have sex (or something similar) and fearing that my body might not react like I want/should. First, probably my not enjoying sex is just because of these thoughts. Who could enjoy anything he/she fears he/she might hate before it begins? (But maybe there is a medical issue, I don’t know.) Second, it makes me incapable of enjoying cuddling and kissing with a guy I also have sex with, as I always fear it would go on and sometimes even do things like give him a blow-job just to get it done without really wanting to.

Plus, it usually ends up in causing emotional problems between me and the guy, me feeling bad because I’m keeping something from him he wants/needs and at the same time being angry at him for asking, him feeling bad because he feels like he’s asking something from me I can’t or don’t want to give and probably also being angry for me being so prude.

The most difficult situation was with one boyfriend who tried again and again, more often and more obnoxious the more I said no (as he felt it was sooo long ago we had sex and I really could accept this one time) but still feeling so horrible about it he’d had given up his sexual desire at all if he could to solve the dilemma. I for my part felt bad for him suffering but ended up hating to be touched by him.

So in general: What if one partner in a relationship doesn’t want sex or way less than the other partner?

Personally: Where can I find the point to break this circle? Whatever I try makes me overthink it more and start to fear my own rejection as soon as I’m getting touched, making me irritable at myself and the guy that “can’t leave me alone”.

Confused, Annoyed and Nervous

DEAR CONFUSED, ANNOYED AND NERVOUS: Something about your letter jumped out at me CAN and it makes me wonder about a few things. When you talk about the problems you’ve been having with penetration, you say maybe it’s a medical issue and that kind of concerns me. See, one of the many, many issues I have with the way that we tend to teach sex-ed these days is that 99% of the time, it’s a glorified anatomy lesson. Here’s how the female and male reproductive organs work, here’s how babies are formed, here’re what STIs are like, go forth and multiply. One of the things that almost never covered is the fact that sex is supposed to feel good. It’s easier for men because, well, society more or less caters to us and tells us that sex is the best thing ever and we’re more or less encouraged to get as familiar with our junk as possible; by the time we come to sexual relationships, we’ve gotten pretty used to the fact that orgasms feel freakin’ awesome. Women, on the other hand, are frequently taught that to be concerned about men’s sexuality at the expense of their own. Female sexuality – even in the 21st century – is still considered suspect in many ways, and comes secondary to men’s. Women are taught to be sexy but not sexual, not to advocate for their own pleasure, not to explore their sexuality or their own bodies.

All of which is a long-winded way of getting around to this: if a guy even imagines something’s wrong with his junk, he tends to run to the doctor so quickly he makes Barry Allen look like Yertle the Turtle. I’ve known more women than I care to think about who didn’t realize that something was wrong because, frankly, they didn’t know that sex wasn’t supposed to hurt! If penetration is consistently painful (and if  “bearable” is a best-case scenario, it sounds like it is) then that’s a pretty damn good sign that there may be a physical issue and you need to be talking to a medical professional about it (remember: Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor) . There are a number of conditions that can cause women to have difficulty with penetrative sex – or even external pressure to the vulva and vaginal area – and a doctor will be able to diagnose and treat it.

I suspect, going by your email, that this constant expectation of pain and discomfort could be the root cause of your aversion to sex; after all, it’s hardly surprising that you might be feeling terribly lusty if your experiences with sexual activity range from “something you can grit your teeth and ride out” too “excruciating pain”. I don’t blame you for freezing up when your boyfriends start making noises about wanting to get busy – it may be all well and good for them, but for you it’s goddamn torture!

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your libido is going to come roaring back should any lingering issue be identified and treated. It may well be that you just don’t have much of an interest in sex, completely unrelated to the pain you feel during penetration.  Sometimes a low libido can have external causes –  you can have a psychological aversion to sex, you may have a hormonal imbalance that kills your sex-drive, SSRIs and hormonal birth control, can throw your libido out of whack, as can stress and sleep disorders.  Other times, it’s just how you’re. Just as sexuality and gender comes on a spectrum, so to does sexual desire. Some people have raging libidos, others have no interest in sexual contact at all and others fall somewhere in between. You may want to check out AVEN – the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network; they have a number of resources relating to understanding asexuality and possibly help give you the information to figure out where you may fall in terms of your interest in sex or lack there-of.

One thing to keep in mind is that no two people are necessarily going to have 100% matching sex-drives, nor are they going to always be horny at the same time. Any relationship means finding a balance between two differing desires. But on occasion, you will find people in relationships whose libidos are imbalanced to the point of causing problems.

And that brings us to your questions.

The answer to your first question – what happens when two partners have mismatched libidos – is simple: either they find a way to balance things out or they break up. Sexual compatibility – including more-or-less-matching sex-drives – is a critical part of making a relationship work. When both partners are radically out of sync, you end up with two unbelievably frustrated and angry people. The partner with a higher sex drive feels deprived, neglected or even rejected, while the partner with the lower sex drive feels put-upon and constantly being asked to do something he or she doesn’t want to do. This is a recipe for a misery all around, and likely leading to an ugly break-up.

When there’s a mild mismatch, then it may be possible for the two to compromise – the partner with the higher libido accepts that they’re not going to have sex as often as they’d like, while the lower-libido’d partner gets the other partner off on occasion when they’re not necessarily feeling it. One important point: this doesn’t mean supplying blow-jobs on command because someone isn’t able or interested in penetrative sex. Similarly, it also doesn’t mean giving a half-hearted a oral session punctuated by wearying sighs of “Ok if I have to…” that only serves to make the receiver feel like sh*t. Neither does it mean having sex when the last thing you (general you, not you, CAN) want is to be touched.

We all do things for our partners, even when we’d rather not because it’s part of what makes relationships work. Sometimes it’s cleaning the bathroom, sometimes it’s going to a movie you don’t necessarily like. These are all forms of relationship maintenance, and sometimes sexual activity can be a form of relationship maintenance as well; you’re being generous and giving to your partner because it makes them happy. This doesn’t mean sexual servitude however, or being forced into doing something you don’t want or that leaves you crying in the shower afterwards; it’s about times when you (again, general you) may not be in the mood, but you’re willing to do to indulge your partner.

If there’s a drastic mismatch – she wants it every day and twice on Sundays, he tends to only want it once a month, for example – then it’s usually better just to end things. It’s simply too difficult to bridge that gap in a way that’s fair or pleasing to both partners; one person or the other is going to end up suffering for it. Occasionally, when other aspects of the relationship are especially strong or the couple doesn’t want to break up, they may agree to open up the relationship. This way, the partner with the higher sex drive is able to get his or her needs met but still maintain the emotional core of the relationship.

It’s worth noting that both parties have a right to expect that a romantic relationship will have a sexual component and to not be shamed for wanting to have sex with their partner. While platonic romantic relationships can and do exist, they’re the exception rather than the rule; if one partner is asexual or has an incredibly low sex-drive, it’s better to disclose this up front so that everyone is able to make an informed choice as to whether they want to enter into this relationship. I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve heard from who’ve had partners who’ve single-handedly decided that they were both done having sex once the relationship was more established.

(Hopefully it goes without saying that both partners also have the right to say “no” to sex at any time and to not be forced or coerced into sex they don’t want…)

Of course, none of this works if your partner’s an insensitive dickhead who doesn’t take “no” for an answer – as you’ve experienced, CAN- and just keeps pushing and pushing at you regardless of your feelings on the matter. As you said: it’s hard to want to so much as even cuddle with someone if you’re worried that they’ll take this as an invitation to start nagging at you to do something you don’t like or that hurts you.

And that brings us to your second question: how do you break this cycle you’re in? Well, as I suggested earlier, you should start by going to the doctor to try to find the cause of the pain you’re having during penetration.

In the meantime, take penetrative sex off the table and stick to other forms of sex you actually enjoy; perhaps not feeling pressured into doing something that causes you pain will help you feel like playing around more often. Part of what can help is to expand your definition of what “sex” means to more than just penis-in-vagina action. Oral sex, mutual masturbation, hand-jobs, sexy performances for your partner while they masturbate… all of these are ways of having sex besides simple penetration and should be part of a couple’s sexual repertoire.

You also should communicate clearly with your future boyfriends. Let them know about your limits and why you have them. Not only can this help avoid confusion and hurt feelings and allow for improved cuddling and make-out sessions, but it will also weed out the assholes. A guy worth dating will understand and respect your boundaries; someone who just keeps pressuring you should be dumped immediately.

Good luck, CAN.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My husband wants me to have sex with other people, I have problems with this because I don’t want to be shared and I don’t wan’t to share my husband with anyone. He keeps saying just try it once and if you don’t like it we won’t ever do it again. I don’t feel like if I just try it once he will want to stop. What do I do?

Not Into It

DEAR NOT INTO IT: Speaking of pressuring people into doing things they don’t want to do…

I’m a big believer in what NerdLove Celebrity Patronus Dan Savage calls “being GGG – good, giving and game”; that means good in bed, selflessly giving of pleasure and game for trying new things within reason. We all have little kinks, interests and desires that we’d like to fulfill with our partners. I’m of the belief that it’s good to indulge some of our partners’ kinks and fetishes on occasion even if we’re don’t necessarily share them, simply because it’s a way of making them happy.

That being said: there’s a difference between being willing to try, say, light bondage or licking your partners toes and being pressured into sleeping with other people for his or her pleasure.

Remember the “within reason” clause of GGG? There’re some things where “just try it once” is a reasonable request.

This ain’t one of them.

Partner-swapping and cuckold scenarios are varsity level sex and shouldn’t be entered into without serious consideration, an incredible amount of trust in your partner and your relationship and the full and enthusiastic consent on everybody’s part. Not only are you missing that enthusiastic consent part but when you say “I don’t feel like if I try it just once, he will want to stop,” that tells me that you’re missing the trust as well.

That is not a good foundation on which to explore high-end, potentially emotionally explosive kink. To be perfectly frank, I’m not entirely sure that this is the foundation for a decent relationship period.

Tell your husband “no”, NII. You can explain your reasons if you want, but frankly, the fact that you don’t want to is the only reason you need. If that’s not sufficient for your husband… well tough, you don’t want to, you don’t have to and you aren’t gonna.

If that’s not good enough for him, if your husband isn’t willing to take “no” for an answer and just leave it at that…

Well, I’m gonna be honest, NII:  you should probably be talking to a divorce lawyer at that point.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My husband and I have been married for almost 5 years. We connected immediately over Farscape and an epic scrabble game, and tied the knot 6 months from our first date, pregnant with our first child. He became stepdad to my older two kids, and we’ve since had two more babies together, though one was lost at birth to a cord accident. He’s my best friend, a good provider, a great father. (You should also know I’m 40, and he’s 33.) 

The problem is in the intimacy department. We started out so passionately, and then shortly after we wed all intimacy stopped. He admitted he’d always had libido issues, and was taking a lot of different pills for it, and now he was out of pills. I’d had no idea at all about any of it. After that sex happened every couple of months, and only if I asked for it. There was always a good reason why he may not be in the mood or something got in the way..work stress, kids, grief, depression, health. That’s life, I get that, but I struggled with it for a long time, and eventually suggested sarcastically that maybe his libido problems were a matter of orientation. 

I appreciate now that instead of reacting with anger he actually took it seriously, and researched….ever the scientist, always researching one thing or another.

Just before Valentine’s Day he came out to me as asexual. Hetero-leaning romantically, willing to fake it for me physically. But zero interest in actual sex, no real desire for me, or anyone, in that way. He fell in love with me because I am smart, literate, apparently have good genes, make him laugh, I can cook, and I’m a good mother. He’d rather build robots or plant a garden or watch Star Trek with me. He’s like some kind of Dwight Schrute/Sheldon Cooper hybrid. 

On Valentine’s Day itself he admitted even kissing doesn’t move him. Looking over the patterns of his life, asexuality answered a lot of questions, and clarified many things. Like the fact he’s never experienced blue balls–even when one of the babies woke up and sex got interrupted, he’d let his erection subside without worrying about it. He didn’t feel the need for release, ever.

His family is definitely unaware of this and he refuses to say anything. As far as he’s concerned it’s no one’s business at all. He doesn’t realize (or doesn’t care?) that without context it only looks like he’s not attracted to ME.

I’m MARRIED…not interested in ending this relationship, or stepping outside of it for sex. I do not believe polyamory is a workable option for us. I have a very very healthy hetero libido, am attracted to my husband and desire him physically. I love sex, and used to love the way we fit…it is hard knowing he loves me but doesn’t feel any desire for me that way. I feel guilty for wanting something from him he isn’t into giving. He says he’s willing to take his “vitamins” for me, but I can’t bring myself to ask. 

I want to respect his new understanding of himself, respect his bodily autonomy. Just because we’re married he doesn’t “owe” me sex. I’d expect the same in return. So how can I continue to respect his needs, and still adequately meet my own equally valid needs in this relationship? It’s about more than intercourse or orgasms…it’s the emotional connection, the oxytocin and all that. The flirting with him, and little wifely “bribes” and whatnot. He’s the one person in the world who is allowed to touch me that way, the only one I want that from. He thinks everything is the same as it ever was, just now he knows why it is. Everything is different for me. Now he doesn’t have to pretend. And now that I know he was pretending for so long I’m mourning the loss of a whole chunk of my marriage, what I thought we had, and what I thought I could look forward to. Even the anticipation of date night is gone.

I don’t know what to do. He won’t do couples counseling. He doesn’t want to divorce, neither do I. 

My ego has taken a huge hit, and my insecurities are affecting every aspect of our lives together. Illogically I’m jealous of his friendships with other women, even knowing he’s the perfect faithful hubby. Music and TV are no longer fun, since it’s all love and sex. I can’t bear to even touch myself intimately anymore, the body shame is too much and there is no relief to be found there. I was previously married, and ended that relationship because–among other problems–we had zero sex life…he was very sexual, but I was not the partner he sought. I have given my heart twice and been sexually rejected both times. I see a counsellor for my depression, I take meds for the anxiety. I am trying so hard to make this marriage work, to take what is good about us and make it enough.

Is it wrong to want to be seen as desirable by my husband? To want him to want to kiss me? I haven’t been properly kissed but once in the last several months. Our physical relationship has been reduced to chaste smooches and spooning in bed. I feel like I’m essentially single, but in love with my BFF/roommate. I can live without sex if I have to, but the lack of ANY physical connection is getting harder to bear. I feel so selfish.

I’ve done my best to communicate my feelings with him, tried different approaches. I’d like to find ways to compromise…I need to feel wanted and loved and like his wife. He seems perfectly content to wait it out, wait until I just forget about this or something. Talking about it, even rationally or humorously, only makes him feel “pressure”.

Faithful but Frustrated

DEAR FAITHFUL BUT FRUSTRATED:  hate getting questions like these, because these are the ones where there are no good answers, just ones with relatively different levels of suck.

You’re looking for a compromise, but there really isn’t one to be had. You want physical intimacy – not just sex, but wanting to be wanted. He does not. In fact, he doesn’t seem to care very much for physical intimacy at all. Chaste kisses and spooning in bed don’t exactly make up for the fact that you aren’t just looking for orgasms, you want passion. You want desire. You, like the rest of us, want people to know you’re not just a person, you’re also a piece of meat!

It would be one thing if he were willing to make an effort to make you happy – a “it’s not really my thing, but I like that you like it” can do attitude is at the core of the concept of being GGG – but when it’s laid out as “taking my vitamins” or “eating my spinach”, it loses even that last bit of connection that makes you feel like he at least cares enough to make an effort. Making a relationship work when there’s a mismatch in libidos means that when the partner with the lower libido helps out the one with the higher one, they do so enthusiastically instead of acting like they’re being forced into the worst thing in the world. When your partner is treating your needs as something inconvenient at best and horrific at worst… well that’s incredibly shredding to your self-esteem and ego, even more so than it is already.

Before we get to anything else, I want you to remember something: this isn’t about you, this is about him. You need to keep that at the forefront of your mind – the fact that he’s asexual has absolutely nothing to do with you being desirable, being attractive or being a good person. I’m sure you realize this intellectually, but emotionally, it’s still a gut-punch and it’s very easy to see this as not being good enough or sexy enough or not loving you enough. That’s why it’s so damn important to remember: it’s him, not you. Wanting your spouse to desire you, to want them to put their hands on you? Those are all unquestionably good things. Those are things you want in a relationship. You aren’t a bad person because you want to be lusted after by the person you love. It’s not about you. You have not done anything wrong. It’s about him.

But as you keep reminding yourself of this, it’s time to start addressing the elephant in the room: your relationship as you knew it is over. It’s time to decide what you’re going to do with the relationship you now have. And let’s be honest here: it’s not working.

Now I don’t want to dump on your husband for being asexual. That’s how he’s wired, and clearly this is something that he’s struggled with for most of his life. I am, however, going to call him out for being a dick about this. He’ll “take his vitamins”, but he won’t go to couples counseling and shuts down conversations about finding compromises because “he feels pressured”. Those, quite frankly, are the words of someone being a selfish dick, not a caring partner in a relationship. He’s ok with the status quo because his needs are being met; he’s got companionship, the kids, his hobbies. You on the other hand are suffering and he seems to be somewhat ambivalent (AT BEST) to this. That’s sh

ty behavior on his part.

The other problem is that you’ve basically painted yourself into a corner. You want a compromise, but you’ve ruled out the potential compromises to be had. He can’t provide you with the desire you want and that lack means he isn’t providing you with the reassurance you need. You could accept that this is a companionate marriage – that the core of love and affection for one another, the life you have together and the children you’re raising together are reason enough to stay together – except for the lack of physical intimacy that you need. You could find it elsewhere, but you’ve ruled out opening the relationship and finding someone who tend to your physical needs while your husband tends to your emotional ones. And you don’t want to get a divorce.

I hate to say this, but something’s going to have to give. This is an untenable situation and unless things change, it’s going to end and end badly. Unfortunately, it’s like I said: there are no good answers here; it’s just a question of which is going to suck the least.

The first thing you need to do is to find a relationship counselor. Maybe your therapist can recommend someone, otherwise you’ll want to check out the American Association of Sexual Educators, Counselors and Therapists and find someone in your area. You want to find a sex-positive counselor; unfortunately, in our culture, we tend to assume that in cases with a libido mismatch, the partner with the higher libido is in the wrong and needs to get over it. A sex-positive therapist will be more likely to understand that you’re not a bad person just because you need physical intimacy and can help you work on ways of getting that intimacy. If your husband refuses to go, then go by yourself. You need someone who’s been trained in these matters to help you work out your options and game out what will be best for you.

I wish I had a better answer for you, FbF. There isn’t really a way for things for this relationship to work as things currently stand – not without destroying your soul and shredding your self-esteem. I get that you want things to go back to the way that you thought they were, but that’s not going to happen. If you want this relationship to survive, you’re going to have to deal with it on the terms that now exist and that means having to give on one of the possible options. And to be perfectly frank: if your husband isn’t willing to work with you on this relationship? Then your marriage is over, regardless of whether you want a divorce or not.

You’re strong, FbF. You’ll find a path that works for you. It may not be the one you hoped for, but it’ll be the one you need.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have a question though about what you call ‘Oneitis’.

A little backstory – I’m 24 years old, I’ve had one steady girlfriend in my life (we dated for 7 months and ended on really good terms 2-3 months ago, still friends) and have had 3 or 4 severe cases of Oneitis before I dated my ex.

So I understand the importance of the abundance mentality and how you have to NOT invest yourself in another person’s opinion of you but I’m still having problems in the application of this concept. I find that whenever I meet someone new, my brain instantly starts making these leaps about how awesome she is and whether she’s interested or not, oh god why won’t she reply, why did she reply and other stupid sh*t like that. And of course, this probably ends up making me come off as a bit needy. 

So my question is how do you get yourself to NOT be so damn obsessed with one person? I know there are SO MANY incredible and gorgeous women out there but I STILL keep getting stuck in a rut over one girl and only that girl every now and then. 

Is this some kind of self esteem issue also? Because I’ve never been confident about my looks, which is why I can never honestly believe that anyone could be attracted to me (I was convinced my ex was just lying to be nice when she said she thought I was hot; seriously! A LOT of self esteem issues!)

– Mister Lonely

DEAR MR. LONELY: Before I get to your question, let me define some terms real quick for folks just joining us. Oneitis is the feeling that there is only one particular person who you in the world - someone who’s so special and amazing that nobody else could possibly measure up. And if you miss your chance with that person… well, that’s it, you’ll never find love like that again.

Needless to say: this is false. There’s no One; there’re people who range from .55 to .80 that we round up to One. The problem with Oneitis is that when we suffer from it, we tend to focus like a laser on getting that one person, despite the knowledge that it’s just never going to happen.

It’s like all the worst parts of puppy love when you’re a teenager with out the good bits. But the truth is, no matter how incredible that person is, there are other people out there who are just as amazing. To quote Tim Minchin:

“Your love is one in a million

You couldn't buy it at any price

But of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine-hundred-thousand other possible loves

Statistically, some of them would be equally nice”

The primary cure for Oneitis is time, experience and maturity. Part of this is simply dating around; the more women you’ve known and have gone out with – not necessarily have been in relationships with, just to have dated or slept with – the more you will come to realize that there are millions of amazing women out there and if it doesn’t work out with one… well, there will be others.

In your case yes, it does sound like the cause of your Oneitis is your low self-esteem. You get hung up on that one girl because you think she’s your last chance to find love and no other woman could possibly like you or find you attractive so you need to LOCK THIS ONE DOWN NOW NOW NOW NOW! You need to work on your self-esteem and start learning how to build your sense of internal validation. The better you feel about yourself, the more confidence you have, the easier it will be to cultivate an abundance mentality. As you do, you’ll find that you won’t be freaking out about little things like “why hasn’t she replied yet” because ultimately, you’ll realize it’s not something to freak out about. You’ll feel more assured of your own attractiveness and your own worth; if she’s into you, she’ll respond. If she isn’t… well, it blows, but you’re now free to not worry about her and instead go and find someone who wants what you have to offer.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)