DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been in the US for a study abroad for nearly 5 months now and I have a friend-who-is-a-boy (as opposed to a boyfriend). He’s very cute, friendly and I’m quite interested in him, but the problem is that he has a girlfriend. Making matters more complicated is that my friends just told me that his girlfriend is cheating on him. Everyone knows that now, except him.

My friends told me not to tell him but I can’t help wondering. He’s very nice guy. I don’t know why she is cheating on him. Sometimes I think I’m gonna tell him the truth soon but I’m not sure that’s a right decision. I don’t know if we would be friends anymore if I told him and what he would think about me afterwards.  Besides, he’s my crush so I think that I am trying to kick her out of their relationship and it makes me so confused.

Can you tell what I should do in this situation? I really like him, though. On one hand, I really want him but on the other, I don’t wanna be a person who destroys that relationship. If you could give me some advice, I’d appreciate it!

Thank you so much

Love Is The Universal Language

DEAR LOVE IS THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: Right, this is one of those times where my opinion makes people angry.

My general position on “do I tell someone that their partner is cheating on them” is fairly simple: stay out of it. It’s advice that a lot of my readers don’t necessarily agree with, but the fact of the matter is that there really is no way that telling him is the winning play.

Let’s start with the obvious: you don’t have any proof that there’s any cheating going on. The only reason why you know about this is because “everybody knows”; you’ve been handed third-hand information at best. This is literally “My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night” but with illicit smoochies instead.

You have no idea whether his girlfriend is actually cheating on him or not. For all you know, he and his girlfriend have an arrangement. Maybe they’re in an open relationship. Maybe he gets off on cuckolding scenarios. A lot of couples are socially monogamous and keep the true nature of their relationship under the radar. If someone happens to stumble across one partner on a date or making out with someone else… well, to folks not in the know, that can look an awful lot like infidelity.

But for argument’s sake, let’s say she is. You don’t know whether he knows and they’ve already worked things out. In this case, then he probably doesn’t want someone else coming along and re-opening old wound. Alternately, it’s possible that he already knows and is too humiliated to say anything. In that case, he almost certainly doesn’t want someone coming up and rubbing his face in the fact that everyone knows his embarrassing situation. And if he DOESN’T know… how happy do you think he’s going to be when he finds out from you that everybody else knew about this?

How do you expect him to react? Is he going to thank you? Or is he going to get angry and freak the hell out instead and blame you, even when it turns out that you were telling him the truth? No, it’s not logical for him to get mad at you… but emotions don’t follow logic.

And let’s be honest: you’re not a neutral third-party here. Your motives may be as pure as the driven snow, but you do have a vested interest in this rumor being true; after all, it does mean that a break-up is imminent and you’ll have a chance.

But what if it’s not true, and you go tell him? Now not only do you feel foolish but you look like you’re trying to create trouble between the two of them. Again, even if your motives are perfectly good and true, it’s STILL going to make you look bad.

There’re no good endings to telling him. The only way to win this particular game is not to play.

Sorry, LITUL. The best thing you can do right now is sit back and let their relationship take it’s natural course. If the rumor mill is right and his girlfriend is cheating on him, then it’s GOING to suck when he finds out. But your getting involved is only going to make things worse - for him and for you.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I started writing to an older married man on the internet–he read some of my writing & left intelligent comments. We basically became pen-pals, then started talking on the phone and then…I was in a tight spot financially and he gave me 10 K, unsolicited, no strings attached. I knew there would be strings (at least, I would feel guilty about taking the money), but it was hard to say no to. And I did not say no.

I’m in a long-term, 10 year relationship with my boyfriend. We’re happy with each other and have been talking about getting married. 

Last fall, my internet friend convinced me to come with him to Las Vegas. I knew that meeting him in person would be a bad idea – Long story short, I made it until the end of the trip, then drunkenly had sex with him. I’m not even sure why. I wasn’t attracted and it wasn’t enjoyable. He gifted me another 10 K, afterwards, just because (which made me feel whorish, because it was, well, whorish–but as a grad student, it was hard to decline & it was after the fact anyway).

I came home and just wanted to not feel guilty and forget. However, I felt… emotionally responsible for my internet friend because he’d opened up to me about being abused as a child / other stuff. Part of it was also that I felt like a user for taking the money and desiring to end contact afterwards. I finally cut off contact with my internet friend via text. 

He voiced understanding and I optimistically thought this would go away. However, yesterday (a month later) I received a whole string of texts from him. He wants closure, but I don’t really think there is anything I can say which will give that to him or make him feel better. My honest inclination is just to ignore the texts, but I feel like doing so might intensify his attempts to contact me (and/or piss him off enough that he tells my boyfriend what I did). I want to handle this in a way which sends a clear message I cannot continue to be in contact, without being unnecessarily hurtful.

One Bad Decision

DEAR ONE BAD DECISION: Before I get to this, I’m going to address the obvious, because people are going to call it out in the comments: this is a fantastical story. A lot of the elements are so over the top that it seems too dramatic to be real.

And hey, maybe it IS completely made up. It wouldn’t be the first time. But whether it is or not, the scenario is common enough (if not quite as extravigant) that there’s still plenty to talk about, even if it’s completely fictional.

And honestly? I’ve seen some things go down that would make giving a relative stranger 10k look like a drop in a bucket.

So for all intents and purposes, we’re going to work under the assumption that OBD is telling the truth and work from there, ‘k?

So with all that in mind:

OBD, you have two problems right now. The first is your “friend”, who doesn’t seem to be taking “go away” for an answer. The second is the guilt you’re feeling about the fact that you cheated on your boyfriend. Let’s deal with the latter first.

Here’s my take on the cheating issue: it sucks that it happened. But it DID happen, so now you need to process things. Part of that processing means forgiving yourself for sleeping with this guy. The fact that you slept with him doesn’t make you bad or evil, to be followed around by crowd ringing a bell and calling out your shame.

One of the things I always want people to understand is that monogamy is not easy or effortless. Humans are a novelty-seeking species, and that includes in our sex lives. Even in our fantasies, we look for the new and different. People, for example, don’t watch one porn star exclusively…

When we make a monogamous commitment, we’re fighting against the fact that we still want to sleep with other people; we’ve just promised not to. This doesn’t mean that monogamy is bad, wrong or to be avoided, mind you… it’s just very difficult to perform perfectly.

And to be quite frank: not all infidelities are the same. There’s a difference between, say, a regretful moment of weakness and someone who casually betrays the trust of someone who loves them.

You had a one-time slip up, under circumstances that are incredibly unlikely to ever crop up again. This doesn’t say anything about your goodness as a person, about the strength of your relationship with your boyfriend or anything else. What it says is that you’re a human being, with the same flaws and weaknesses as the rest of us. The best of us make mistakes, and none of us can predict with perfect accuracy how we’d react in the exact same circumstances.

Now complicating this already unpleasant situation is your “friend”. I put “friend” in scare-quotes because, quite frankly, I question whether he was ever a legitimate friend to you because quite frankly the whole thing feels like somebody manipulating the hell out of you. Let’s be honest: there may be angels out there who are both so generous and so flush with liquid capital that they’ll spontaneously give someone they never met in person $10,000 dollars with the purest of intentions, but they’re rarer than hen’s teeth.

(And usually they’re falling victim to online dating scams…)

Robert Caldini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion talks about what he calls the pillars of persuasion. The first of those is reciprocity: the idea that someone doing something for you makes you more likely feel obligated to do something back. Doing things like, say, giving you $10,000 out of the “goodness of his heart” is going to set up a hell of a lot of reciprocity. So, yeah, I’m willing to bet that there were always strings on that donation, even if he insisted there weren’t. He knew damn good and well that you were going to feel a sense of obligation and he was willing to let that percolate in your brain until he was ready to use it.

The manipulative aspect of this continues with his convincing –key word – you to go to Vegas to meet him. It’s not impossible that he just wanted to meet up with a friend he’d never met in person, but the cynic in me says he was planning to make a move. And you knew too – you said it yourself that you thought meeting him was a bad idea. And then once alcohol was involved… well, yeah. Wouldn’t be the first time that very bad things happened in Vegas because of the intersection of booze and a manipulative guy.

(And to be perfectly blunt: once alcohol was involved, things go from sketchy to potentially illegal. That’s a detail that sets my Spidey-sense tingling like crazy.)

Now you’re wracked with guilt on multiple levels. You’re feeling like you shouldn’t have taken that money in the first place, especially not the second time. You’re wishing that you hadn’t slept with the dude. And now he’s refusing to go the hell away because he wants “closure”. There’re a lot of people who’ll be happy to verbally smack you around and tell you that this is a hell of your own making and that you deserve to suffer for what you’ve done.

I’m not one of them. It’s a f

ked up situation and you made some bad decisions, but they’re understandable ones. Yeah, taking the money was a stupid decision but seriously: if a potential $10,000 windfall with (nominally) no strings was waved in Joe or Jane Random’s face, they’re going to be thinking long and hard about how much that would help them pay down their school loans. They’ll be thinking about the car payments, the rent, the electricity bill… and I’m willing to bet many if not most would take it.

Principled stands are great as long as they’re theoretical; when real life gets in the way, suddenly those lines get awfully blurry. Show me somebody who says they’d never ever ever consider taking the money and I’ll show you a lying liar who lies.

The second time… well, that line is less blurry, but it’s also understandable. It’s the first step principle; once you’ve taken the first step, it’s harder to resist the second. It’s the sort of thinking that says “I ate that pizza/ smoked that cigarette/ took that drink, and since everything’s ruined, I may as well just keep going.” It was a stupid decision, but it’s coming after a series of bad decisions and weapons-grade levels of guilt and shame. In a way, it’s almost like punishing yourself after the fact; yeah, that’s a lot of money, but it’s money that comes with guilt. No matter what you do with it or how it may benefit you, it’s still going to be a reminder that you f

ked up and that’s going to haunt you.

To be clear: this was a bad situation. One that you admittedly walked straight into. But what’s done is done and unless you’re hiding a flux capacitor somewhere, there’s nothing you can do to undo it. So the only way to go is forward.

Which raises the question: what do you do?

And the answer is simple: tell him to go the hell away.

Lots of people who want “closure” actually want validation. They want confirmation of the rightness of their cause, that they were wronged and they want the other person to admit it. And honestly, that’s never going to happen. You can’t “give” someone closure. Somebody gets closure when they decide they’ve had closure.

But I don’t think this guy wants closure. I think he wants to keep things going. I’m willing to bet that second 10k that what this guy ACTUALLY wants is another toe-hold into your life. If you still have the second 10k still sitting in your bank account, then the best thing you can do is send him a check for the full amount with “closure” written in the memo section.

But whether you do or don’t have the money, send him one text: “I told you I don’t want to talk to you any more. Please do not contact me again.” And then leave it. Block his number if necessary. If things get bad enough then it may be time to consider a restraining order. Hopefully it won’t come to that.

I can’t make any guarantees that he won’t try to spill the beans to your boyfriend. I have no idea whether he’s the kind of person who would try to blow things up if he can’t get his way. Considering that he was willing to blow an obscene amount of money over this, he certainly seems like someone who thinks that he can get what he wants, when he wants and damn the cost.

But until he does… I don’t really think there’s any value to confessing to your boyfriend and a lot of reasons why it would make things worse. Telling your boyfriend about it advance isn’t likely to defuse the potential bomb. All it will do is detonate it early.

This ain’t going to be a popular suggestion - in fact, I’m sure a lot of folks will get upset over it - but I think the best thing you can do is stuff this down the memory hole.

I know a lot of people think radical honesty is key in a relationship, but all confessing in advance is likely to do is to cause a lot of hurt feelings and needlessly damage the relationship. Everybody says they’d want to know… right up until they find out. And in the aftermath, they almost always wish they didn’t. It’s the sort of thing that a lot of folks would rather be ignorant of, especially if it’s a one off, a freak event that never happened again. And in this case, the odds of your making those decisions ever again is so astronomically low that I don’t think scientists have numbers that can quantify it. Blowing up a 10 year relationship - or your boyfriend’s feelings - on the basis of something that is so far out of the ordinary that it may as well have been a lightning strike isn’t going to make things better.

Look: you made a string of bad decisions, prompted by someone who took advantage of your being in financial distress. I know you want to forget it; you can’t, and you shouldn’t. You were manipulated into a bad spot, but you still took part. If you let yourself forget, then you can’t learn from this, grow from this and - most importantly - not f

k up like this again.

But while you shouldn’t forget, you CAN forgive yourself. You made mistakes. That happened. But you can move forward from there and be a better person. The past is in the past. Best to leave it there if you can and work to a better future.

Good luck.

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 think I have a problem that quite a few people also experience–dealing with kink, especially one that’s rare, particularly strange by “normal” standards, or one that many people find outright disgusting. In my case, I’m a vorarephiliac. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, and I don’t think any amount of sex-positivity or rationalizing is going to change that, because my kink is, to speak perfectly frankly, more than a bit disturbing.

In my case, though, it’s contributing to my already-poor self esteem, and it’s become something of a barrier to my efforts – not because I’ve told anyone and they’ve rejected me in disgust, but because a potential relationship, as you’ve articulated, requires both partners to be, at least comfortable with each others’ needs and desires. My problem is, I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of women wouldn’t react positively to the revelation. I suppose my question isn’t “How do I hide my kink?” but, “How do I make it clear that this doesn’t define me, and that it wouldn’t be an obstacle in a sexual relationship?”

Thanks,

Wishing for a Different Kink

DEAR WISHING FOR A DIFFERENT KINK: Before I get into answering your question, let’s define some terms here. Vorarephilia – usually shortened to “vore” – is a sexual paraphilia or fetish where a person is aroused by the concept of being consumed by or absorbed into someone. Some folks want to be eaten, some people want to watch others be consumed and still others want to be the one doing the eating. As far as paraphilias go, it’s actually not that uncommon; a quick browse of DeviantArt, YouTube and other galleries will find you no end of vore fetish art. Needless to say, vore tends to fall along the lines of “fetishes that are impossible to fulfill”, along with folks who’re into giants (not just amazonian women, actual giants) or mythological creatures. Vore isn’t about cannibalism; the paraphilia rarely involves killing or being killed, although vorarephiles will differentiate between soft-vore (just consumption, alive and whole) and hard-vore (being chewed/killed and eaten).

So no, it’s not your garden-variety kink and – in fairness – it’s going to weird some people out. And in fairness: I don’t really grok vore as a fetish and there’s a lot of folks out there who poke fun at how unusual or outré vore is. But the fact that you have an unusual kink doesn’t make you a bad or disgusting person, it just means that the things that get you off are different than what get other people off. Your paraphilia doesn’t define you as a person, any more than someone with a rape fantasy is secretly hoping to assault someone or be assaulted. It’s that self-shame that’s messing you up more than anything else.

Before you get too concerned about explaining your kink to future partners, you need to work on accepting yourself. You’re not bad, you’re not disgusting, you’re just different. And in a world where pretend to be infants or dress up in mascot outfits, different is pretty damn relative.

You need to start working on redefining how you see yourself; treating it as a deep dark secret that will repulse any partner is only going to make you miserable in the long run and cut you off from people who might be into you.

As for how you explain it to other people and avoid a disgusting reaction, it’s pretty simple: don’t start none, won’t be none. What this means is that it’s all in how you roll things out. Our partners will tend to take our lead about the things we reveal about ourselves. If you want someone to believe that your kinks don’t define you, then you have to model the behavior you want to see in them. If we present something with the same hesitancy and self-loathing as though we’re having to hand them a glass of cockroach milk and tumor fricassee, then they’re going to respond in a similar manner.

On the other hand, if you just present it as matter-of-fact, a “hey, just FYI, some of the things that turn me on are weird, it’s no big deal”, then they’ll treat it as no big deal. Notice very carefully how I used the word “some”. When it’s clear that your kink is just one aspect of who you are and not your sum totality – presumably you’re able to be aroused and have sex without needing vore porn – then it’s just part of what makes you unique. And that’s assuming the topic ever comes up in the first place. Relationships aren’t depositions; you are allowed to keep things to yourself, especially if it’s only something you masturbate to on occasion.

If your vore fantasies are just a movie you play in your head when you’re on your own, or even something you’re thinking about in order to get off during partnered sex, then you don’t need to go into any more detail than absolutely necessary. You may want to make sure you’re doing your porn browsing in Incognito mode just so that the YouTube recommendation algorithm doesn’t throw a surprise to your sweetie, but otherwise, you can feel fairly justified in giving the broadest and vaguest brushstrokes.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if and when you bring up your kink, you’re sharing one aspect of yourself; someone who freaks out and rejects you because they’re making these judgements, on the other hand, is sharing everything about them.

So, TL;DR version: work on accepting yourself, kinks and all. Model the response you want from your partner when you roll things out – don’t treat it like the mark of Caine or a plate of french-fried baby toes.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have an issue that I haven’t really seen addressed anywhere else so I was hoping you could weigh in.

I’m just a regular guy in my own estimation apart from a few interests that kinda stand out. To get to the point, I study history and languages for fun. I’m fluent in three of them and I’m currently trying to get to a working understanding of four more. These are my hobbies (well, a couple of them anyway). I also hang out with a lot of people in the tech industry and from what I’ve seen in my social circle, I’ve decided that I don’t want to become the tech-dick guy about my hobbies. I don’t want to be the guy who talks over people’s heads, turns his nose up at people who aren’t as in the know as he is and sees no problem leaving those people out of the conversation entirely. I understand that my interests are uncommon and that many people find them inaccessible. The problem is, I don’t know how much to reveal to people about them without coming off as intimidating or snobbish. As a result, it’s kinda become an unintentional secret.

The thing is, I enjoy talking about more normal everyday things just fine. If I never found anyone else to discuss random grammar or pore over dialects with, I’d be fine with it and it wouldn’t stop me from pursuing these things anyway. I enjoy them that much. The only time it ever usually comes up is when I break into a different language with friends around, say, to help a recent immigrant find things in the city or if some other random thing makes this knowledge immediately relevant. Reactions have been mixed. A couple of former girlfriends couldn’t seem to bear the intimidation. I broke up with one of them specifically because after I became comfortable enough to share a little more about what I do, she sporadically began to call me arrogant and “an intellectual” but as an insult. So…just as I’d feared. Most other people seem genuinely impressed but I can’t help but wonder if by letting this slip, they now view me entirely differently which is not what I want.

So my question is, moving forward particularly in the dating world, how much of this is too much to talk about? If I set up a dating profile and mention these in my list of interests, is this a plus? Or am I only going to scare them off and make them think that only women with advanced degrees in linguistics should bother talking to me?

Sincerely,

Clumsy Clark Kent

DEAR CLUMSY CLARK KENT: Here’s the thing you’re doing wrong, CCK: you’re assuming that there’s something wrong with being passionate about something, even academic matters. Passion in and of itself is incredibly attractive; people who have passion in their lives are actually very magnetic and interesting.

Consider Doctor Sweet1in the third season of Penny Dreadful – when we meet him, he launches into his love of not just taxidermy but the reason why the minutia of various animals are fascinating and amazing. Even if scorpions give you the screaming ab-dabs, it’s kind of hard not to be picked up and carried along by the strength and intensity of his fascination with them.

Being interested in languages isn’t inherently snobbish; in fact, it can be profoundly useful, especially in this increasingly cosmopolitan era. Personally, I wish I was better at speaking foreign languages; as it is, I speak English and bad English.

The trick to talking about the things you’re passionate about without either a) boring people or b) coming off as being snobby or elitist is to talk about WHY you love them. People may not be able to connect with the specific thing you’re into, but everyone can connect with emotions and excitement… so meet them on that level. Go and re-watch that scene from Mission Impossible 3 where Tom Cruise talks about traffic engineering. He’s not ashamed of his interest; instead, he explains what it is about traffic patterns that fascinate him. As a result: he’s that much more interesting and compelling to the people around him.

What is it about language that fascinates you? Is it the way that language literally controls the way we perceive the world? Is it because of how language interacts with the brain or what it tells us about the culture of the people that language comes from? Is it being able to connect with new people you might otherwise never get to know? Is it the musicality of the words, the logic of the grammar, the simplicity or complexity of the structure?

(And if you really want to blow somebody’s mind: point out how for the longest time, human cultures never had a word for “blue”. This is why Homer talks about the bronze skies of Troy and the wine-dark sea. If you put on blue-blocker sunglasses, that’s exactly how the sky and sea look…)

The thing that will turn off others – at least, people who don’t see education or intellectual curiosity as a negative – is wielding those interests like a club. If you’re coming off as talking down to somebody because they’re not a polyglot or they don’t get the intricacies of language the way you do, that is going to piss them off. But if it’s simply “this is a thing that fascinates and excites me and isn’t it amazing?” Then people will respond to your passion, even if they don’t get it to the same level you do.

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’m a 32 year old man and my fiancé is a 30 year old woman. She has an 11 year old daughter from a previous relationship. We have been together for 5 years (on and off) but are really happy in every part of our relationship, except for our sex life.

We broke up for about 6 months about a year and a half ago and we both saw other people in that time. We both realized that we really wanted to be with each other and got back together.

I think the time apart changed us for the better and the worse. We both knew that we didn’t want to be in a relationship with anyone else but we came back kind of determined to live our lives how we wanted as we’d seen another side.

I really find her very attractive but after the first few months of being back together and having that honeymoon period again, we went through a rough sexual patch. I was hiding my true sexual needs from her and I was getting frustrated at the vanilla sex. I eventually opened up to her and funnily enough she opened up to me too. We both had similar fantasies so I presumed that we would then go on to act them out together.

The fantasies are; stag and vixen (Hotwife), threesome MMF, foursome MMFM, “cheating” etc etc. You get the idea. I was pleased!!!!

We spoke about it and I got excited. Then it turned out she didn’t want to make it a reality, she didn’t even want to compromise by pretending. She won’t role play, talk dirty, even pretend by text message that she’s into it… just to give me something. She will happily think about it to herself, watch porn about it to herself…. but any involvement with me is being “fake” or setting it up. She wants spontaneity, but not in that way. For instance, if I started talking about while we have sex she’ll get angry and tell me it’s a turn off.

I feel like I’d meet her kinky needs but she won’t try to meet mine, although she actually secretly likes what I’m into.

She wants to have sex to get orgasms. That’s it. Not to have fun. Not to grow closer. She wants me to be “a man” and get on with it. Take her to bed, have sex, explosive orgasms, then go to sleep. There’s no room for play. Experimentation.

Don’t forget we are engaged and I very much love this woman. I just don’t want have to have “boring” sex that doesn’t turn me on, when I feel like we could be having so much more fun.

We’ve gone down to sex a couple of times a month because I just can’t get excited about it. I lose my erection because to be honest it’s just so predictable that I switch off.

I read your article on sexual compatibility and it says you should compromise, but she’s not willing to do it. She said if I want that in my sex life then I should find someone else because she’s not like that. Which means I just put up with it…. but then I’m made to feel like I’m not into sex because I don’t get aroused just because she’s naked. She thinks that’s enough. I should be gagging for it.

What do I do? Is it me? Is it her? Is it both of us?? It’s very confusing because this is my entire life. I don’t want to throw away my relationship because of miscommunication or misunderstanding, or even social pressure to be normal!!

Thank you in advance.

Frustrated Fantasist

DEAR FRUSTRATED FANTASIST: I hate to say this FF, but your fiancé is right. If you want more than vanilla sex, then you’re going to need to be with someone else. Your fiancé has made it pretty clear where she stands: she doesn’t want to have sex the way that you do. And frankly… that’s going to be a problem.

Let’s start with what’s, ultimately, a surface issue.

There’s a pretty big disconnect between how you think of fantasies and how your fiancé thinks of fantasies. For you, your fantasies are literally what you want to do. They’re the side of you that you’ve been holding back from telling her about, lest she freak out at the idea and shame you.

Your fiancé, on the other hand, seems to see fantasies as strictly being the movie that’s running in her head in order to make her orgasm. She may get aroused by the idea of hotwifing or being part of an MMF threesome… but only by the idea, not the actuality. That’s fair; some people have fantasies that may set them off like firecrackers on the 4th of July but they would never want to (or can’t) pursue them in real life. That’s perfectly normal.

But like I said: this is ultimately a surface issue, a symptom of the bigger problem over all. And that’s that, frankly, the two of you are not sexually compatible at all. Your fiancé has a very specific relationship to sex – orgasms and pleasure, period. That’s fine. You, on the other hand, have a different relationship with sex and your sexuality. You clearly enjoy sexual activities that play around with ideas of cuckolding, infidelity and the like. That’s also fine.

However, while these are both perfectly fine relationships to sex, they mean that you two are not suited for one another. The fact of the matter is that you simply aren’t going to have the kind of sex you want with her, and the sex she wants leaves you feeling somewhat dehumanized and used and bored. There really isn’t much of a middle ground to be had, especially considering that she refuses to consider any form of compromise.

The problem is that she’s set up conditions that are impossible to meet. Threesomes, foursomes and moresomes like you and she are imagining don’t happen “spontaneously” outside of porn or people’s imaginations. The gulf between that fantasy and reality means that the odds of this ever actually happening are so remote that you’d have better odds investing your retirement funds on scratch-off tickets.

Unfortunately, you two just don’t work on a sexual level. You may be compatible emotionally and intellectually, but you simply aren’t on the same page, sexually. And that’s one hell of a big but. Missing that sexual component is going to blow up your relationship like Vesuvius on a bad day. Either one of you ends up cheating because their needs aren’t being met, or you break up again because neither of you are happy.

Sex almost always wins in the end, my dude.

Now, you could ask for an open relationship in order to get the kind of sex you require outside of the marriage, if it meant you could keep having straight vanilla sex with your wife. However, not only do I suspect your fiancé wouldn’t be down for that but let’s be honest: you’re going to have to work pretty hard to find someone who a) you’re attracted to, b) who’s down for that kind of sex and c) isn’t going to see the open marriage as a deal breaker. It’s not impossible, but you’re going to be looking for a very rare bird indeed. And to be honest, that sort of sex play tends to require a lot of trust and commitment between partners; that’s a little hard to build with someone who’s just a casual play partner.

If you’re ok with a relationship where sex and sexual compatibility just isn’t a part of your relationship, and your fiancé is willing to sign off on your finding a third… well, that is an option. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. You’re in your early 30s. That’s pretty damn young to be signing on for what is ultimately a companionate marriage.

There isn’t a miscommunication here. There’s no real misunderstanding. You two want very different things from your sex life and she isn’t willing to budge on this.

I wish I had better news for you man, but in the long run, you aren’t going to be happy with her. The best thing you can do is find someone who does want the kind of sex you want. You – and your fiancé – will be happier in the end.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 23 year old man and I seem to be getting stuck with my dating life. After a few disastrous experiences I’ve turned to Tinder. I’ve met maybe 15 girls so far off this app over 4-5 months. However, none of these girls have ever been interested in meeting again after a first date, especially the 10 or so I’ve genuinely been interested in.

I’m finding it difficult to determine the problem. I don’t seem to be making any obvious or overt date mistakes – the kind that might frequently occur in Tinder date ‘horror stories’. At first I may have been nervous but that’s faded and now I’ve managed to just genuinely be myself and see what happens. It seems that rather being the subject of a ‘horror story date’ I may simply just be ‘unmemorable’.

I often simply hear “You’re a good looking guy but not my type” and “You are a really nice guy but I don’t feel any chemistry”. I know that these may just be generic rejections but it’s even come from girls I’ve thought must surely be interested based on positive body language etc. My own-self reflection on my experiences has me musing that I may be boring and not charming, not flirting enough or good at flirting, not escalating or unconsciously giving off the wrong vibes such as seeming unconfident or desperate. For example, I’ve never attempted a “first date kiss” at the end but conventional advice seems to suggest that it SHOULD be okay to wait to kiss until the 2nd or even 3rd date.

What could I be doing wrong, Dr. NerdLove? It’s hard seeing how easily people around me seem to get into relationships or have genuine interest from girls while a consistent streak of no second dates must surely signify an issue.

Stuck On First

DEAR STUCK ON FIRST: You said it yourself, SOF: you’re not flirting and you’re not making any attempts at building any chemistry or interest. It’s one thing to want to take things slowly and make sure that you’re not about to subject your date to some OKCupid nightmare, but there’s also such a thing as being SO safe that you give the wrong impression. The fact is, you’re giving off signs that you just aren’t interested in them; I imagine that they may be a little surprised that you asked for a second date at all.

Now this doesn’t mean that you need to start being Handsy McGrabsALot or trying to perform an amateur tonsillectomy with your tongue as soon as you meet your date, but you do need to give some indications that you actually want to date these women. Some of this is going to be in flirting and showing that you like them as a potential lover. You want to build that chemistry and sexual tension after all. And some of it will be showing that you want to kiss them, even if she would rather wait for a 2nd date.

But I’m gonna be honest with you dude: while there are women who don’t kiss on the first date, the majority do – at least, if the date was enjoyable. When in doubt, you can always at least make the offer and let her decide how to play things.

Now having said all that, I want you to keep in mind: despite how it may feel right now, you’re doing really well. You’ve gotten a metric ton of dates lately. That says a lot about you and your desirability. You’re at a plateau now, that’s all. You just need to work a little harder – make some mistakes and learn from them – and you’ll get break through to the next level of your dating life.

Good luck.

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