DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been dating my good friend for six months now, things with him are going really well. Not only do we have many similar interests but we are also similar in personalities and wave length. And because we were friends first, he knows the real me.

My issue is that after being in so many failed relationships (where I felt like I’ve put in more effort than the guy), I have became rather insecure. Knowing this issue, he still wants to be with me and we are really happy together. We talk about the future often and I don’t feel insecure around him…. but only when I’m with him. The problem is that both our careers require traveling. He also travels for pleasure often (generally without me because scheduling doesn’t work). So for literally half of our relationship, we have been apart.

My insecurities only get to me when we are apart for too long (more than a week) because he is not good with online communication. Sometimes he forgets to respond. Sometimes he would message me but not in regards to what I just said. Sometimes I would mention a couple of things and he would only comment on one. This is actually not much of an issue when we are both in the same city or if it’s a short trip because we see each other often. I’ll just bring up unaddressed comments the next time I see him and he’s fine in person. But it is a problem when we are apart for too long because I feel like we aren’t having actual conversations… and when we are not in the same city, it’s really one of the few connections we have.

Currently I am out of the country for work and the plan is to be gone for half a year to a year. It’s been a month now and it’s been really hard on me. When he is busy with activities (which is often), he is not responsive at all, especially if he’s on a trip. It makes sense that he wants to be present. I understand that yet I still get insecure. I feel like I am secondary to what he’s currently doing and not important enough to even say hi. He said that statement is unfair and that I am important. We would also Skype when we can but with the time difference (15 hours), plus sleep and work, we have very little over lap time.

I’ve addressed it to him before and he admits that he’s no good at long distance/online dating. I can tell that after our talks though, he’s been trying to be more responsive to me… but since it continues to get brought up even though he tries, he feels that it isn’t something he can change much in the long run.

We have already fought twice within the month in regards to this (this is a lot for us). I can tell that if we continue to constantly fight like this, especially with the distance, it will break us.

Logically, I know he cares for me. Aside from everything else, he’s been making plans to move across the world to be with me even though he doesn’t want to move. But emotionally and irrationally, I still get insecure when he isn’t really responsive. I’m starting to feel like I could be over reacting and it really is a “it’s not you, it’s me” kind of thing.

What do you suggest I do to let go of my insecurities so that it won’t ruin our relationship?

Thank you for your time,

Insecurity Guard

DEAR INSECURITY GUARD: Forgive me for half a moment Insecurity Guard, because you’ve accidentally tripped up on one of my pet-peeves that I see all the time in people. You aren’t doing this, IG, but your situation is close enough that it’s worth mentioning.

I talk a lot about the importance of self-awareness when it comes to dating. Self-awareness is a vital skill; it’s part of what helps us recognize unhelpful patterns in our lives. It’s what makes us conscious about possible issues we may have that might be off-putting to others. It also makes us aware of our good qualities – something that a lot of people1 are very bad at.

But one of the key components of being self-aware of one’s flaws is the willingness to address them. Something I’ve run into frequently – and believe me, this is something that spans all genders and orientations -is the idea that being aware of an issue somehow excuses you from having it. I have heard people say verbatim “Yes, I’m a jerk, but I know I am, so it’s OK.”

Um… no. No it freaking isn’t. “Take me as I am” isn’t a license to be a complete jackass to others. You (generic you) don’t get a pass on awful behavior because you acknowledge that it’s awful. At best, you’re providing a warning to others before they get involved with you. At worst… well, you’re expecting people to forgive you and allow you your awfulness. That’s not how this works. If you’re going to own your behavior, then you have to do something with it… even if that’s dealing with the consequences.

(ahem)

OK, that rant aside, let’s turn back to you, IG. You’re different in this case: you’re saying “hey, I’m kind of an insecure bag of slop and I’d really like to stop being an insecure bag of slop.” And hey: all of us are insecure bags of slop. Everyone’s got their issues and insecurities. Right now, you’re staring yours in the face and looking for a way to make it quit being quite so bad.

The thing is, you don’t have an insecurity problem (well, you do, but that’s not the major component) so much as a long-distance problem. Long distance relationships are hard under the best of circumstances – it’s difficult enough to keep a relationship going when you’re living a couple hours’ drive away. When you’re trying to maintain a relationship with half the goddamn planet between you… well, you’ve chosen to play on Expert Mode without the benefit of a New Game + save.

So before we get started with any of this, the first thing you need to do is change your vocabulary. Words have power, and how we describe things affects how we think of them. So when you’re talking about this, change the verb. You aren’t insecure (active form of “to be”), you’re feeling insecure (active form of “to feel”). When you say “I’m insecure”, you’re saying that insecurity about relationships defines who you are. When you say “I’m feeling insecure”, you’re saying that this is an emotion you’re experiencing, not your permanent state of being.

A little woo-woo, new-agey? Yeah, a little. But trust me on this: it works.

Now to handle this properly, it requires a two-pronged approach. The first is dealing with your feelings of insecurity. The second is working on how to make your new LDR work between you and your sometimes incommunicative boyfriend.

In the first: well, I’m going to give you my standard disclaimer: Dr. NerdLove is not a doctor. And if these feelings of insecurity are really overpowering you and causing you serious distress, the best thing you can do is talk to a therapist. They’re going to be better positioned to help you deal with those issues over the long-term. Depending on where you are, there may be resources available to you (especially if you’re in a sane country that has national health-care… unlike the US) that you should see about taking advantage of. If there aren’t, there are still options you might be able to use. Over on my Tumblr, I’ve written up a list of affordable therapy alternatives, many of which are online or have heavy online components.

But one thing I will suggest is retraining your brain. Intellectually, you know you have nothing to worry about. Emotionally, however, your heart isn’t listening to your intellectual side and that’s leading you into these recurring thought-patterns that tell you something’s gone drastically wrong and everything’s about to go tits-up. So what you need to do is learn to break those patterns. When you get into one of those downward spirals of thought-maelstroms what you need to do is acknowledge that you’re feeling something (again, feeling, not are) and consciously reframe the situation. When you’re thinking “He’s not responding to me, he doesn’t think I’m important enough to respond to,” you consciously say “No, he’s busy and a little forgetful. I’m just feeling insecure. If he were in the same city, I’d just talk to him about it later.” Repeat this to yourself every time you start to spiral into feelings of insecurity; it’ll soon become automatic and help calm you down.

You may also want to look into mindfulness meditation; this can be a good way to be more aware of your thought-patterns and emotional triggers, which is the first step towards being able to break them.

Now for making the long-distance issue work, your boyfriend has to understand the facts of life here. When you’re doing an LDR, communication is more important than ever. When you don’t have things like body language and physical proximity to communicate feelings and emotions or reassurance, then you need to make what you say, when you say it and how you say it an even higher priority than it is when the two of you are in person.

First: learn to embrace asynchronous communication. Back in ye olden days before we had things like the Internet and cheap long-distance calling plans, most of us who did the LDR thing had to rely on writing letters. Like, physical, lick-the-envelope-stick-a-stamp-wait-by-the-mailbox letters. And in complete honesty… that could actually enhance things. Getting a letter from my LD girlfriend (who was in New Jersey, not Canada, thank you very much) would be the high point of my day; checking the mail was kind of exhilarating. But now that we can have nigh-instantaneous communication with anyone in the world at any time… we’ve got kind of spoiled.

So it’s time to use your words… and by that I mean write some emails. Letter writing is a fine-art and one that was celebrated between couples separated by distance and circumstance. It lets you have full conversations full of longing and emotion, even if you’re not having them in real-time. It also makes it easier to point out that hey, your honeybun didn’t respond to this particular part of your last missive, maybe he could get on that hmmm?

Texting is another way you can keep the lines of communication open, even when you’re literally on opposite sides of the world. If you have a smartphone, something like What’s App can save you the cost of sending texts internationally (which, incidentally, is a damn racket and I despise cellphone providers for milking us like this) and allow you to continue the conversation at your convenience. Plus: if he’s taking a bit to get back to you – longer, that is, than the 15 hour time difference might account for – then you can give him a gentle poke to respond to when he gets up.

Also: schedule Skype sessions to make sure there’s overlap. These are too important to just let them happen. Yeah, you’re on a 15-hour time difference and you have different responsibilities that can make this hard. This is why you want to schedule these dates and stick to ’em like glue. I’d recommend picking a time when you’re both going to be able to stay up late (or get up stupid early) – a weekend is ideal for this – and then alternate who gets up when. On even sessions, he stays up while you call him up at a reasonable hour in your locale. On odd sessions, you get the late night/early morning while he calls from a normal time. This helps keep the burden from being completely on one of you and leaving you feeling drained and cranky and more likely to resent his “can’t-be-bothered-to-skype-you-at-O-Christ-Hundred” ass.

And one more thing about your boyfriend: I want you to send him the link to this article and make him read it because it’s goddamn important to note that a relationship isn’t about one person doing the work. Remember what I said earlier about how self-awareness isn’t an excuse? That applies to him. Just because he “knows he’s not good at the LD thing” doesn’t mean he’s suddenly forgiven from having to put some goddamn effort in. He sounds like he doesn’t want to make any changes because he doesn’t want to be inconvenienced. To which I reply: “Cowboy the hell up already!”

Because let’s face it: you know you feel insecure about relationships, especially while you’re forcibly separated. You’ve let him know that this is an issue for you and you’re making a point of trying to handle your crap. If he cares about you and about making this relationship work, then he has to be willing to handle HIS crap too. Working on being more supportive, more communicative and more responsive is not that high of a bar to clear, especially when it’s for somebody he purports to care about and wants to have a future with. If he’s just not willing to put in the work – if his only response is to throw his hands up and say “Hey, I told you I’m not good at this LDR stuff, so you can’t expect more from me – then he’s telling you that he’s prioritizing his convenience over your relationship.

And if that’s the case… well, I hate to say it, but you’re better off without him.

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 have an odd situation at hand that definitely needs advice from an expert.

A bit of backstory, I’ve known “Se” since we were in college, and I fell hard for her. The only problem was that she’s a lesbian. Back in the day, I hadn’t had a girlfriend, but I worked up the courage to ask her out. She didn’t quite reject me, she just said that at that moment, she couldn’t. Since i’m an idiot, I burned bridges with her and moved on with my life. In the meantime, I feel that I’ve acquired experience with my past girlfriends, and I’m a bit better at the subject.

Since November, we reopened communication, and it’s been great. Turns out she just got out of a serious relationship and for whatever reason she thought of me. She told me that she misses me, since then we’ve been hanging out a lot, going to the cinema, eating and that sort of things.

But now we’re more touchy than ever, getting real close and personal. We’ve been cuddling for hours at my place, sending us texts about how much we like each other, and how much we miss each other, but I’m kinda scared about my next move. I’m dying to kiss her and roll the dice once more. Now that we have a trip to the beach in the horizon, I really don’t know what to do. I really, really like her, and it’s evident to me that she also likes me. I don’t know if she does it in a relationship kinda way, but she has feelings for me, that much I know.

I need help with this. The only question in my head (as Van Halen once said), “It’s got what it takes, so why can’t this be love?”

Thanks

So Confused

DEAR SO CONFUSED: let’s talk a bit about sexuality and sexual identities.

One of the (many) things that isn’t covered in sex ed these days is that sexuality is fluid. There’re gay people, straight people, bisexual people, pansexual people (that is: people who don’t believe in the gender binary and are attracted to individuals regardless of gender) and everything in between… and some people will slide around a little in their sexual identity. There are people, gay or straight, who may discover that they’re attracted to a specific person outside of their preferred gender. There are guys who like trans women because they are turned on by the idea of a woman who also has a penis. There’re straight people who will say “a mouth is a mouth” and accept a blow-job from a gay guy while they close their eyes and think of Christina Hendricks.  And there are gay men and women who’ve discovered to their surprise that they may be more bisexual than they previously thought.

So in the strictly hypothetical sense, it’s possible that your friend is bisexual or sexually fluid and open to a relationship with a man.

HOWEVER.

It’s equally as likely that she just feels comfortable with you as a friend. There are many forms of love; not just eros (love of the body) but agape (romantic contentment) and philia (platonic affection for friends).  You can love someone, enjoy your time with them and be open about missing them when you’re platonic friends, not just when you’re both in romantic love.

But what about the cuddles?

Well, women are socialized to be more touchy-feely in general, but especially with people they’re close to, and it’s entirely possible that she feels comfortable cuddling with you because she sees you as someone safe who respects her boundaries.

Or hey. It could mean she’s a little more fluid than she thought and you’re in a Chasing Amy situation. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

So how do you sort this out without ruining your friendship? By using your words. You just ask her. Say “Hey, I feel like I’m picking up on a vibe here and you can feel free to tell me I’m nuts, but I just want to make sure I’m not misreading things. I’m really enjoying our friendship, but at times it feels like maybe there’s more? It’s cool if I’m wrong, because I really appreciate what we have; I just want to make sure whether I’m just completely off base.”

You want to make sure that she understands a) that she’s free to tell you that you’re misreading things (if that’s what’s going on) and that b) you’re good with being friends in the event that you are wrong. After all: it was your freak-out at her rejection last time that lead to the two of you being out of touch with one another. So when/if she reminds you that she’s gay… be cool this time. Just say “OK, I just wanted to make sure,” and let it go. Don’t make your being friends contingent on your feelings for her; that’s not fair to her, and it’s a great way to actually ruin a friendship.

You’ve got a good thing going with your friend, even if it’s not necessarily the relationship you’d prefer. That’s something worth holding on to, even if you wish it could be different.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I recently had to block a guy on Facebook… 

We met at an event I was hosting and when he messaged me (after finding out I was single), I told him I wasn’t ready to date. He said he wasn’t either; he just wanted to be friends….

Over the last two months I’ve encountered the same situation with other guys, where I’d tell them I wasn’t ready to date, they asked to just be friends and we’d chat for a while only to find they kept pushing me to meet them or start dating. I would end up telling them flat out I wasn’t interested and then when they wouldn’t take “no” for an answer I’d end up blocking them because they obviously weren’t respecting my boundaries.

So now this guy comes along with the same song and dance, and naively I assumed maybe this guy would be different (Lesson learned! No more adding guys to my Facebook unless I’m willing to date them!).

On the first day he messaged me eight times in 4 hours without me even having responded. The next day was the same thing and I was having flashbacks to my previous Facebook encounters; so I told him to tone it down and back off a bit. I reiterated that I wasn’t ready to date. He listened and toned down on the amount of messages.

During this time I was working on self improvement and healing so I would be able to date again. I feel I’m almost ready to enter back into the dating world and this weekend I have an event where there is the potential to meet some single guys, but it felt like my new Facebook buddy was still trying to make a connection and I wanted to make it clear to him that I wasn’t interested in dating him. He’s a nice guy, but that initial contact screamed “I’m needy! Please pay attention to me!!” and that’s not what I’m looking for in a guy….

And it felt like he was still trying to flirt! He would send me pictures of his drawings; everyday! He would comment on a Facebook post I made, like the same Facebook post and then bring up the Facebook post again in a private message. There were several emotion icons in every email and  he would keep saying how appreciative he was that I was his friend….

Today I decided to be honest and tell him that I have no interest in actually dating him. I don’t want to drag that baggage into a new relationship and I don’t want this guy getting good hurt if in three months he sees I’ve changed my status to “in a relationship”; especially if this entire time he was hoping I would see the light and pick him.

I flat out told him that I wasn’t interested and was concerned that he was still hoping to more than friendship….

He was angry! How dare I accuse him of wanting to be more than friends? Why didn’t I believe him? He told me he was tired of my BS and I was being paranoid.

Once again, I blocked another guy on Facebook. Afterwards though I found myself wondering if I had actually misinterpreted his contact as flirting. Not that is really matters now; I’ll hopefully never hear from him again, but I feel like I’ve been out of the dating game for so long that maybe I’ve lost touch with what flirting is.

Was I right to assume he was still hinting at wanting more than friendship?

Thanks!

Dazed and Confused

DEAR DAZED AND CONFUSED: Honestly DaC, it’s a little hard for me to say definitively one way or the other without having been there to see the posts and the context. So I’m of two minds.

On the one hand, it’s entirely possible that you were a little hypersensitive – with good reason, to be sure – to the possibility that he was flirting with you. It’s entirely possible that he was a bit on the awkward side and more enthusiasm than grace – like the human equivalent of a golden retriever puppy stumbling over it’s oversized paws. If he was making a good-faith effort to tone things down after you asked him, I could see him feeling a bit put out when he was trying – in his awkward way – to be a friend.

That having been said, his reaction sounds over-the-top for the situation, and if he flips out that hard over being told “hey, it feels like you’re getting flirty again and that’s really not something I’m interested in…” then not only does it seem like a case of “he doth protest too much,” but weeding out someone who’s generally unpleasant and sets your Spidey-senses tingling.

In the future… honestly, like Private Number last week, I’d say let yourself be a little more on your guard and a little more hesitant to add people to Facebook if you don’t know them well. It’s possible that you’re a little hyper-vigilant, but that’s not a reason to ignore your instincts either. You can’t prevent dudes from pulling the Platonic Friend Back Door Gambit and trying to Nice Guy their way into your pants, but you can limit the access they have to you in your day to day life.

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 an asexual woman in her early twenties. As much as I sometimes detest it, I really feel no sexual attraction at all, and I don’t think I ever will. Before I became familiar with the idea of asexuality, I assumed I was heterosexual with a low sex drive… but even back then I hadn’t had much luck in the dating area. I either thought myself too young for a relationship or focused most of my attention on education and hobbies. (I also struggled – and still do – with many self-esteem issues, but back to that later.) Up to this point, I’ve only been in one relationship, in high school – which was long-distance and lasted whole two months. Nothing physical happened, really, except for cuddling and kisses on the cheek.

I suppose it also might be relevant that I struggle with depression, anxiety and a bit of social phobia. Self-esteem issues, originating from not very pleasant experiences from childhood, are also a big factor in my romantic life (or rather: the lack thereof).

The problem is that, well, I do want a relationship. I’m interested in men and want a long-term partner – maybe even marriage at some point. The problem is that, mental health aside, I don’t feel comfortable pursuing a relationship or even encouraging possible affection, because I feel a bit like a fraud. Explaining asexuality to people tends to be awkward, virtually nobody is familiar with the term, and the thought of, for instance, creating a profile on Tinder immediately causes the internal response of “Even if someone does like me, how am I going to explain the ‘no sex’ thing? And what man is going to pursue a relationship with me, knowing that it means no sex at all for as long as we’re together?”. I feel as if I’d be deceiving the guys involved – thinking they’re going to enter a normal relationship and instead being forced to get acquainted with a totally new concept of human sexuality, which means that they’re not gonna get laid.

Now, I do realise that some asexual people opt for a compromise and agree for their partners to fulfill their sexual urges with other people, but I don’t really feel comfortable with that idea. I’d really like to be exclusive with whomever I pursue a relationship with… but that seems like an unattainable thing to dream of.

Working on my mental health is, of course, a priority, but I would really appreciate some advice with how to handle dating while being asexual. Are my worries unfounded? Should I just be more confident with my value as a person and a possible romantic partner?

Thank you so much in advance,

Ace Girl

DEAR ACE GIRL: This is going to be a thorny one and there aren’t any easy or clear-cut answers AG so let me start with this truth: you are absolutely deserving of and worthy of finding love and a relationship that makes you happy.

The tricky aspects come about when you want to define “relationship that makes you happy” and then going about finding one. As much as I promote maintaining an abundance mentality (more on this later), it’s possible to have things in your emotional or romantic make-up that’re going to restrict the size of your dating pool. If you (general you, not you, AG) are exclusively homosexual, then you by definition have restricted yourself to a much smaller pool of potential partners, just by dint of demographics; there are simply fewer gay, bi or pansexual people out there. That’s going to make things tougher.

In your case, being ace is going to cut down the number of potential partners; most people’s definitions of relationships include a sexual component, in one form or another. Now it’s entirely possible to have a companionate marriage – where your sex is de-prioritized or completely unimportant but the other aspects of your connection with your partner take priority instead. However, if you want a sexually exclusive relationship without sex… well, you’re going to have a much harder time finding someone who’s going to be on the same page as you. This isn’t to say it’s impossible, but the number of partners you might be compatible with will be very small indeed.

Now let me be clear: being asexual doesn’t mean that you’re not worth dating or defective. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a lot to offer a potential partner or that there won’t be people who’d be lucky to be in a relationship with you. It just means that you’re not going to be compatible with a lot people… and to be honest, that’s for the best. Trying to make a relationship work with someone you’re fundamentally incompatible with is a recipe for heartbreak and sorrow, especially if you both really want to make things work.

So what about that abundance mentality I was mentioning before, when it’s pretty demonstrable that you’ve got a smaller pool of potential candidates than others? Well, abundance is about more than just playing the numbers, it’s about attitude. Maintaining an abundance mentality helps you develop and maintain your emotional resilience in the face of hard times and difficulties. It helps you not be destroyed by bad luck or dates that didn’t work out and encourages you to take risks that you might otherwise avoid if you believe that each rejection just means you’re one step closer to being forever alone. It means that you don’t get trapped in soul-crushingly toxic relationships simply because you think that’s this or nothing. So even when you can prove that your dating pool is more limited with charts and graphs, it’s still worth developing and maintaining that abundance mentality. Which actually brings us to the practical side of this ramble:

If you want a relationship, then you can and should look for one… just with a willingness to be creative and adapt to your circumstances. And a lot of that adaptiveness means deciding what compromises you are and aren’t willing to make in the name of finding a relationship.

To start with, you should do some deep thinking about just why you want an exclusive commitment. If sex is unimportant – or even repulsive – to you, then why would exclusivity be important? Is it because you worry that – even with an open relationship – your partner might want to leave you for someone who isn’t ace? Is it because you don’t know if you’re able to do the emotional balancing that open relationships frequently require? Is it because you’ve grown up with an expectation of exclusivity and you’ve gotten used to the idea versus what you actually want or care about? There’re no right or wrong answers here; you just want to make sure you understand yourself so that you can adjust your dating strategy accordingly. In terms of cold-blooded practicality, being open to a non-exclusive relationship will increase the potential number of candidates; however, in personal terms, this does you no good if non-exclusivity means you’d be carving out slivers of your heart every week.

You’ll have decide whether changing your standards is a compromise that’s worth making or if it’s a change too far.

The other thing I would suggest is that you adjust where and how you’re trying to find people. It may be in your best interest to find someone who is asexual, like yourself – it certainly simplifies the sexuality component of the relationship. I would also suggest that most online dating sites – particularly ones like Tinder – are not a good fit for you; most of the people there are looking for relationships where sex is going to figure in prominently. OKCupid isn’t going to do you much good if 99.999% of the people messaging you are looking for sex, after all. And while you can filter out the obvious bad candidates and search for people whose profiles de-prioritize sex, it’s still going to be looking for a needle in a haystack where the hay looks an awful lot like needles. Now there are ace dating sites or sites where people are looking for relationships where sex isn’t a priority, but you may have better luck simply building your social circle and finding your community. Cultivating a social network gives people a chance to get to know you and see all the wonderful things you have to offer instead of making a decision right off the bat like online dating does. This lets a potential relationship grow organically before they  have to decide whether they think a relationship with you is going to be worth the price of entry.

I’m not going to lie to you, AG: you’re going to have a harder time finding the sort of relationship you’re describing right now than most people will. It may well take you longer to find someone than you’d like. You may decide it’s easier to be single and find other things that fulfill you. It’s going to be up to you to decide whether or not you think the trials are worth it. But whether you do or you don’t: take care of yourself, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Find your Team You, who can provide you with support and encouragement when you need it. You should be your own first priority.

Good luck. And write back to let us know how things are going.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve just started dating a guy with some major sexist hang ups. He’s from another country so some of it’s cultural, but one of the big ones is that he kind of shames me for having slept with him so early (even though he did actually attempt to get me into bed even earlier). I’m not the sort of person who goes in for casual sex normally, so me sleeping with him so soon was unusual for me, but I don’t judge so-called sluts either, if you want to bang people you just met, have at, whether you’re male or female, you’re not hurting anybody. Because of my history he knows I’m not “a slut” but he’s completely blind to the double standard he has with regards to men vs. women in the matter of casual sex. He’s slept with about ten times as many people as I have, and some VERY recently before I showed up. Plus, he slept with me within the same timeframe, so how is that fair? He says that promiscuous people are more likely to cheat, which as well as being a generalization with no basis in fact, is twisted logic that if we were to follow to its conclusion, means he is more likely to cheat on me than me on him. How do I introduce him to the concept of equality in this area without completely bashing him over the head with a feminist tirade? You seem to be good at communicating these ideas. Language is an issue too as you might have guessed.

“Promiscuous” Girl

DEAR “PROMISCUOUS” GIRL: Gonna be honest, PG: I’m kind of wondering whether it’s worth sleeping with someone who’s carting around all of these sexual double-standards. To mis-quote John Waters: if you go home with someone and you find out that they’re carting around a lot of sex-negative, madonna-whore ideas about women and female sexuality, don’t f

k them. I’m also not terribly big on the “…but if you don’t teach me, how will I learn” argument that comes up a lot around matters like these, or the idea that women can or should be the emotional Sherpa to guide dudes out of their awful attitudes while putting up with their BS.

But hey, you know this guy and I don’t. Maybe he’s got qualities that otherwise make up for the fact that he’s kind of a chauvinist pig. Maybe I’m being unfair and there’s a legitimate chance to help this dude see the light. So how do you go about trying to change this guy’s mind without making him feel like going to get the Clockwork Orange treatment from Andrea Dworkin? Well, you challenge his beliefs… carefully.

One of the mistakes that a lot of people make when it comes to arguing with others is that it’s very hard to brow-beat someone into changing their minds; in fact, fighting with them is a great way to invoke the Backfire Effect, which means that they’ll just double-down on what they already believe, evidence be damned. On the other hand, one of the best ways to change somebody’s mind is to let them think it was their idea – to hide the fact that you’re Jedi mind-tricking them by leading them to a place where they start to question their beliefs themselves. It’s part of why the Socratic method is so effective; it feels more meaningful when it’s your own thought.

Challenging him head-on – telling him he’s wrong and a bad person (even though he is)  is a great way to make him get defensive and quit listening. It challenges his culture and world-view and that’s a hard thing to shake. Asking him leading questions, on the other hand, is a great way to start making him recognize the absurdity of what he’s saying – instead of your putting him on the defensive, you’re making him think about things he’s likely never examined critically in his life.

So the next time the matter comes up, talk about it… but from a questioning position, rather than a lecturing one. You want to emphasize that you respect his intelligence and see him as a partner instead of being ignorant. So taking up the point of “more promiscuous people are more likely to cheat,” then you point out to him the same logical fallacy you pointed out to me: doesn’t that mean he’s more likely to cheat on you? If he brings up the idea of women being sluts, then ask what makes the difference between a man with many partners and a woman with just as many. He’s slept with hordes of women, which puts him at far more risk for sexually transmitted diseases than you who’ve had far fewer partners. Why doesn’t this make him dirty? 

(For the record, I hate the idea that having an STI makes you “dirty” or “unclean” which is all kindsa crap. But using his language can sometimes get through in ways that using terms he’s not familiar with so…)

Make him explain the rationalization for it, then point out how it makes no sense. Ask what the magic number is for women – how many partners can she have before she’s a slut? Why is it that one time that makes a difference between a woman and a whore? What’s the evidence for why it’s ok for men to act this way but not women? Don’t accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer; ask why it’s that way. Make him explain it, in detail. Question each part – what evidence is there, why is it “just so”, who says this?

It’s also worth putting a face onto his ideas. Does he realize how insulting he’s being when he’s slut-shaming you for giving in “too quickly” when he’s the one who was pushing for sex. Point out that he was trying to have sex with you much earlier than you agreed to. Doesn’t that make him the asshole for wanting something from you then insulting you for providing it? Why should he want you if you’re “too easy”and – more importantly – why should you want him if he thinks that you’re not as “pure” as other girls? For that matter, isn’t it kind of insulting all around for him to assume that it’s just how guys are to want sex more than women? Are men just animals who can’t control themselves? Are men simply children who need to be reigned in by people more responsible than they are? If so, why should you want to date a child who’s ruled by his penis and needs someone to say “no” to him?

Another thing that’s worth considering is the “enlightened self-interest” angle – showing why his attitude makes things harder for him and why being more enlightened sexually helps create a world where sex is actually more available. I know a lot of people dislike this idea – it can feel like you’re telling dudes to collect feminist cookies in hopes of getting more sex – but studies have shown that demonstrating the material effects of an attitude or belief is one of the better ways to change someone’s mind. You’re not challenging their belief, you’re showing them a better way.

The other thing to do is that you want an alternative explanation to his just-so stories; leaving that informational hole without something else to take its place just means that he’ll fall back onto his original beliefs. It also helps to have a response for the usual tired old arguments. If he brings up the old “a key that opens a lot of locks is a special key, a lock that opens to any key is a bad lock”, then point out that a pencil that goes into many sharpeners gets smaller and more useless. If he goes into evo-psych about humans and primates and alpha males, you can point out that the only primates who have sex outside of estrus are bonobos, who don’t have male-dominated harems. You may want to look into getting copies of books like What Do Women Want and Sex At Dawn that help provide science-backed alternatives to the usual slut-shaming narrative and books like My Secret Garden that may help open his eyes to what women’s sexuality is really like.

It can also be useful to have a guy friend talk to him about it; not only do (sexist) men tend to listen to other men over women, but people in general tend to be more receptive to new information if it comes from someone who’s of the same “tribe”.

But again: that’s all assuming it’s worth making the effort instead of kicking the dude to the curb. Because quite frankly, someone insulting you for “giving it up too quickly” is a pretty good sign that they’re not worth sleeping with in the first place. Your call.

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