DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: About three years ago, I had a close knit friend group that I had a falling out with. I was close with all of those girls but one in particular, and she was the main cause of why I don’t speak to that group to this day.

Now I won’t bore you with the details of why I don’t speak or acknowledge her but essentially her choices, words and actions could be summated into bullying, purposeful ostracizing of me from the group and horrid gossip. I can’t pinpoint how this all started, but I cut my losses after a year of the harassment and stopped talking to them (even the ones who acknowledged her abuse). It took me about a year with therapy to get over the loss of that friend group and the anger I felt for her turning them against me, but I picked myself up and started making new friends.

My friends now are beautiful and supportive; however, recently I have noticed that this “old friend” has begun hanging around my group. This is fine because for the last 3 years, if we are at the same party, she and I are free to enjoy but I’m not going to converse with her. So here’s the issue. I noticed that one of our mutual friends said something along the lines of “don’t worry about Friends of Foe, she won’t do anything that would bother you” to her at one of these parties. I know this sounds like I’m jumping to conclusions (entirely possible), but this is the similar attack method she used last time. She made me out to be a bully and rallied our friends around her cause of taking me down…

Am I wrong to feel like she is up to her old tricks? Am I wrong for setting high boundaries and not letting her in my life even though its been 3 year and she and I have mutual friends? Should I just ignore her and continue on my way?

All in all, I’m worried that she is bomb about to explode in my friend group. And if this concern is warranted, I’m unsure on what to do. I’m firmly against speaking to my friends about her because I don’t want to preach to my friends that she destroyed my reputation, while simultaneously doing that to hers. Her presence doesn’t give me anxiety the way it used to but I still have one line, I’m fine with having mutual friends but I can’t tolerate that kind of behavior again. Unsure what to do…

Best,

Friends of Foe

DEAR FRIENDS OF FOE: Um, FoF, I’m not entirely sure why you don’t want to talk to your friends about this person’s awful behavior. If you don’t want to have a repeat of what happened to your previous social circles, you’re going to have to do things differently… and that means actually speaking up before she burrows in like a tick and starts playing whatever weird games she did last time. I mean, I guess there’s some perverse nobility to be had in not wanting to “stoop to her level” but honestly, moral victories only really count when people give a damn about morals. The people who do the most concern trolling about maintaining moral standards are the ones who want to cut of your ability to defend yourself effectively. If there’s anything we’ve learned in this, the year of our Lord 2018, it’s that when they go low, you kick them in the face.

Because honestly? If you don’t say anything, then you’re just going to watch history repeat itself. Again.   You have a right to set boundaries and keep her from being a toxic drain on your life. If you want different results, then you have to do things differently. That means speaking up and getting proactive before she’s able to dig in and her lies can start getting traction.

Now this doesn’t mean that you need to start a whisper campaign against her and, I dunno, tell your friends that she burned down an orphanage stuffed with golden retriever puppies and greenlit the Adam Sandler/Netflix deal. You don’t need to sit all your friends down and say that it’s you or her and they have to decide right the hell now. But you should talk with your friends about what she did last time. The more that you give the download of her behavior and tactics, the more you insulate yourself against her gossip and bulls

t – especially if you can connect them with your other ex-friends who actually acknowledged what she did. It’s harder for her to divide and conquer if they already know that she’s so full of crap her eyes are brown.

So start with the friend you overheard at the party. Ask her about what this frenemy of your said and give her the lowdown about what happened last time, what it did to you and your friends and how much it hurt you. And then start working outward from there. Cultivate your allies. Make sure they know the truth before they’re given the gossipy, distorted version.

This isn’t destroying her reputation. It’s sharing what happened to you and – importantly – letting your friends know about a walking drama bomb who’s looking for a place to explode, messily and all over the place. If this is a person who, for whatever benighted reason, likes to roll into your social circles and cause drama, this is information your friends have a right to know. Especially if your Spidey-sense is right and she is just looking to start some s

t again.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So I have an interesting story. It started two years ago when I first met this girl. I was hosting a weekly game night at a store when a new player came. As soon as she smiled I was hooked. I don’t know why but I have never felt something so strong just like that. I have been in serious relationships before and this was crazy to know there is a connection without even getting her name.

Throughout the night we talked and connected further but I discovered she was seeing someone at the time so I backed off. She started coming to the games I was hosting weekly and even informed me that she was breaking off the relationship she was having with the person she was seeing. I got really excited and was trying to think of the best way to tell her that I had feelings for her. I still didn’t know her very well but something was there that I just couldn’t deny. A couple of days later I bumped into her at the university I was attending. We ended up hanging out and talking for a little between classes. I really was close to asking her out when I discovered she was 11 years younger then me. I was a little embarrassed about the age difference and didn’t say anything to her about my feelings.

A few days later I had resolved myself to tell her how I felt and see if she felt the same way and to see if the age difference would bother her. When I saw her again at my weekly game night my close friend swooped in and asked her out on a date right in front of me. I was crushed! He is a good guy and friend and I didn’t want to interfere so I let it go. They began to date and get serious. With time I saw problems with their relationship (especially with intimacy) and tried to help them through it even though it meant I was not getting anything out of it. They were my friends so I wanted to see them both happy.

Fast forward to today and those two are engaged. I have tried to bury those feelings but it is hard when I am close to both of them. A few months ago she was attacked and raped. She turned to me for comfort and I encouraged her to tell her fiancé and get help. She did, but seeing her go through all that brought my feelings to the forefront and I was really struggling with it. She eventually wanted to know what was bothering me. I refused to tell her and even tried to play it off as If nothing was wrong but she knew that I was keeping something from her. In a moment of weakness I broke and told her everything, my feelings for her, how I had fought them off for so long, and how I was ashamed to love her while she was engaged to my friend.

After I told her all this I figured she would want nothing to do with me but instead she told me she felt the same for me and that she had the same feelings from the beginning. When her fiancé first asked her out instead of me those two years ago, she believed that I wasn’t interested in her. With all this out in the open we agreed it would be best, given the situation, to stay just friends. However, that quickly failed and a few days later, we had sex. I am ashamed that I betrayed my friend but I could no longer ignore my feelings. A few days later she told me that she didn’t regret what had happened between us but that she was with her fiancé and that we couldn’t do that again.

I again was crushed and now felt shame. It has been a couple of months since all this has happened, and she has pulled away from me and really doesn’t talk to me anymore. When I asked why, she said she knows it hurts me that we can’t be together and she doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore. I have to put on a face now every time I see her fiancé who is still my friend and oblivious to what happened. I don’t know what to do.

I feel I have lost a friend and my heart is broken.

Help.

Not Better To Have Loved and Lost

DEAR NOT BETTER TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST: I hate to say this, NBTHLL but the thing to have done was to ask her out on a date two years ago, back when you were dealing with that initial rush of attraction. Not “confessed your feelings” but actually asked her out on an honest-to-God-actually-use-the-word date. This has several benefits over just confessing. First: it means that you won’t spend weeks or months investing in her, only to have your heart broken because somebody decided make their move while you were busy waiting for the right time. Second: it means that you’re actually being proactive about your attraction instead of dropping your feelings into her lap and telling her to do something with them. Third: she might have said “yes”.

And if she hadn’t… well, it would’ve given you a chance to actually process your feelings and stop seeing her as this lost chance at love. Then you might’ve been able to maintain your friendship with her without holding onto this hope that maybe someday she’ll come to her senses and ditch your buddy for you instead. You could have had a sad about it, felt the hell out of your feels and then gotten to a point where hey you could say “well that sucked but it didn’t kill me. Time to move on.”

But you didn’t. You tried to bury everything and pretend everything was fine. And it wasn’t. Burying emotions doesn’t make them go away. It just squeezes them down into a can that’s marked “contents under pressure”. Then you went and poked a hole in it and things went off, messily and all over the place and at the worst possible time.

Because, honestly, chief? Telling her all of this at a time when she was incredibly vulnerable was an unbelievably awful thing to do. I don’t doubt that you didn’t intend for it to happen that way and you didn’t mean for it to blow up the way that they did. But intentions aren’t magic and they don’t undo the mistakes that you made. And hoo boy you made a lot of them.

But here’s the thing: the biggest mistake wasn’t sleeping with her, though that was a pretty GODDAMN big one. The biggest was thinking that the fact that she cheated on her fiancé with you was going to change things. If you’d been smart, the two of you would’ve separated after that. You’d have given each other a lot of goddamn space. She’d need space so that she can get her head on straight, decide what she was going to do about the fact that she cheated and try to repair any potential damage to her relationship. You, on the other hand, would’ve had time to finally confront your feelings, give them the proper airing out they needed and finally be able to put things behind you. Then, over time, you might have been able to pick up a friendship again. A different one, one that would by necessity not be the same as the one you had when you started, but a friendship none the less.

You didn’t. You got moody and broody. You got that sad puppy look every time you saw the two of them together. You made it clear, through a thousand little (and likely not so little) gestures, sighs, moans and looks and comments that you were all kinds of messed up over her. So not only is it hurting her to see you, her friend, so upset and in pain, but it also ran the risk of blowing up her relationship with her fiancé. You know, the one that she was choosing to prioritize. So she had to make a choice and now here we are.

So yeah… you lost a friend, dude. And it sucks. And the thing you may need to dial back your friendship with her fiancé if you don’t want to lose a second one and risk ruining her relationship in the process. And that would be a rotten little cherry on top of a crap sundae.

It’s time to do what you should’ve done a while ago: get some distance. Take ownership of what happened. Accept the responsibility for this. Then go and mourn the loss, not just of the dream of her but the friendship as well. Quit trying to bury those feels, feel them, let them flow through you finally. Lance that particular emotional boil and let the infection drain out so you can finally heal. Then, once you’ve started to come to terms with all of this: let it go. Don’t stick around hoping to find a path back to her. Don’t hang around in hopes that you can maybe rekindle that old friendship (because let’s be real here, that won’t be about the friendship, it’ll be about the hope of finally making things happen with her). Give her up. Accept that it’s not going to happen. Put that dream in the past and wake up to your new future. It won’t be the one you hoped for, but this one will be better because it will be one that has actual potential in it. Not your sitting around in the crumbling ruins of your infatuation on someone who made her choice and she chose someone else.

It’ll suck. It’ll suck a lot. But in the end, you’ll be better for it. And maybe – MAYBE – you’ll be able to find a new friendship with them. One that isn’t predicated on your pain or the hope of a relationship that won’t happen.

But that won’t be for a while, if at all. You’ve got a lot of healing and learning to do in the meantime.

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 have a question which is a bit different from your usual fare, but I hope you can help me with.

I’m a gay man in my 20s and I like to go out with my friends. Many of these friends are single women, who are interested in finding – if not the man of their dreams, then at least the man of their immediate needs.

But – here I profess to have no clue how you heteros operate – when I’m out with my friends, especially if it’s just me and one woman, every guy will assume I am her boyfriend. This is good for weeding out creeps, like the ones who will apologise to me for talking to her (she gets to choose who she talks to, even if we were dating). But isn’t so good for my friends, or for more awkward guys who wouldn’t even try to join our conversation or when we’re having a dance. My friends like awkward guys.

I’m about as camp as you can get away with in a straight bar, but I know a lot of guys have no gaydar at all, so short of wearing my ‘Too gay to function’ t-shirt everywhere – how can I project that my friend and I aren’t a couple?

We already do things like not touching overly when we dance, sitting in a way that’s open to the room, don’t flirt at all, we take turns buying drinks. How can I make sure I’m only cock-blocking the guys I know my friends don’t want anything to do with?

Yours sincerely,

Talk To Me, Goose

DEAR TALK TO ME, GOOSE: Welcome to the world of messed up gender dynamics, where seeing a man and a woman together socially means they have to be a couple.

The biggest issue you and your friends have isn’t you, it’s what’s going on in those awkward dudes’ heads. Making a cold approach to a woman who’s with her friends can be incredibly intimidating. The approach anxiety they’re feeling is bad enough, but now it feels like they have to run the gauntlet of judgement full of people who’re just itching for a chance to shoot him down and humiliate him. And if there’s a guy there? Now they’re worried that she’s got a boyfriend who’s going to beat the snot out of him for talking to “his” girl. The more confident or socially experienced guys know better, but they’re also better at reading signals. They’re more likely to take the initiative, to read the social cues and to simply ask how everybody knows everybody else if they’re unsure.

Sadly, that doesn’t help you or your friend. Unless you have the ability to magically shut up the cute awkward guy’s jerkbrain or edit out these anxieties, there’s really not much you can do to keep these people from jumping to conclusions about your presence. It can be hard to read behavioral cues you mention from across a crowded bar, especially if they don’t know to look for them. Unless they’ve studying you, it’s unlikely that those awkward guys have noticed that you’re alternating buying drinks (honestly, even I would be hard pressed to notice that). Playing up the camp side of your personality only travels so far; if they’re not close enough to hear you (and in a loud venue, that’s gonna be pretty damn close) then they may not pick up on it. Many of these awkward shy guys tend to assume “talking together” is the same as “flirting”. Remember: these are usually guys who’re looking for reasons that justify why they shouldn’t approach. Everything becomes fodder for the worst-case-scenario running in their heads.

And even if they do realize that you’re gay and thus no competition (ugh, I hate that mindset) , you’re still part of the audience that they feel will be judging them.

Honestly, I think the best thing you and your friend can do is to be exceedingly obvious about signaling interest to the guys they’re interested in. If your friend catches that cute awkward guy’s eye and gives the “come over here” gesture or head nod, they’re much more likely to suck it up and approach and you’re better able to give off the “gay best friend” (hooray for stereotypes!) vibe rather than “get away from my woman”.

The other possibility is to go up to likely prospects yourself and bring them over for your friend. If there’s a cute awkward guy your friend has her eye on, it may well be worth your going over to him and telling him “My friend over there thinks you’re really cute and she’s too shy to tell you that she wants you to come talk to her.” It removes the ambiguity of “is she really sending signals or am I imagining things” and helps establish that you’re not a “threat” to them.

You may have to have an excuse to pull your friend away if the guy turns out to be a creep – can’t really do the “emergency boyfriend” card when you’ve brought her a flirting partner – but this will help keep you from freezing out the guys she wants to meet by accident.

Good luck!

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been married for 10 years. My husband is a good companion, but our sex life has been tricky. Basically, I feel like the default settings of marriage (monogamy, a focus on intercourse, vanilla or male dominant sex, an expectation to communicate sexual needs nonverbally) are designed to meet his needs and not mine. I thought we were working toward an acceptable compromise, but then a terrible thing happened.

I got his permission to have my ex send me sexy photos. I asked her to send me a sexy audio recording, which I assumed was in the same spirit. (This was utterly stupid of me, I realize. I should have asked specifically about each file format.) Both the ex and I had a much stronger emotional response to the audio recording than I expected, so we agreed to stop flirting online at least until I’d got it sorted with my husband, and possibly forever.

I told my husband that things had gotten a little intense with the ex, so we’d decided to cool it with the flirting, and he freaked out. He said he didn’t want to hear any more and demanded that I stop speaking to my ex block her on all social media. I did what he told me to do. The ex was understandably hurt and upset, and I feel terrible about the way I treated her. If I pretend that none of it happened, my husband acts like his usual nice self, but if I mention her (or start crying about her), he gets angry and accuses me of being selfish. I can’t apologize to her, because he has said that I can’t contact her, and I’m not going to go behind his back.

I know I destroyed the friendship with my ex permanently, and that’s really sad, but survivable. But there are also repercussions for my marriage. I am afraid of trying the poly thing again. It’s not ethical to make people vulnerable and then cut them off like that. My husband says he’s OK with exploring polyamory, but I don’t trust him not to freak out and issue an ultimatum. I’m fine being monogamous for now while we build trust and communication, but I am going to feel miserable and stifled if we have to be monogamous forever. Also, I feel really hurt about the fact that he forced me to choose between our marriage and my friendship in such a harsh way, and that he refuses to talk to me about it.

Is my marriage over? Are there things I can do to make it not over (that do not require a time machine)? Help!

-No Clever Name

DEAR NO CLEVER NAME: Your husband’s behavior has torpedoed any chance of an ethically non-monogamous relationship, NCN. He can talk about “being ok with exploring polyamory” all he wants, but his behavior says this is a bad idea. Jealousy and envy happen in every relationship, but the way he handled his feelings was immature as hell.

Opening up a relationship – even if it’s only to some sexy flirting with no real potential for follow-through – requires open, clear and honest communication from both parties. You both have to be able to say “Hey, I’m feeling X right now, can we talk about this?” and find ways of working through things together. That’s part of how you build the trust and security needed for being monogamish. Emotional explosions, ultimatums, tantrums and threats are the opposite of open communication.

Let’s look at the specifics in your case: you realized that your activities were starting to cross a line and made a mutual agreement to take a few steps back. This is unquestionably a good thing; it speaks volumes to the relationship you and your ex have and the respect you have for your relationship with your husband. Then you, in the spirit of openness and honesty, explained to your husband that things were getting to be too much and you decided to stop flirting with your ex for a while. Again: totally reasonable. You’re literally telling your husband that you recognized that things were going beyond what you’d agreed to and you were putting your relationship with him first.

Apparently your husband stopped listening before you got to the “…so we decided to stop, possibly for good,” and promptly freaked out. By refusing to hear any more and forbidding you from seeing them, he’s effectively shut down any possible communication between the two of you on this issue and any  issue regarding open relationships – including if he’s actually OK with them. This makes it impossible to discuss anything; how can you be open about how you’re feeling if he’s just going to start hurling accusations and guilting you into obedience?

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying he was bad for getting envious, or that he’s bad because being monogamish may not be for him or for feeling insecure. Hearing your significant other tell you that they started having an intense emotional surge for an ex is understandably upsetting even in the most secure of relationships. The problem is how he handled it and is continuing to handle it.

It would be one thing if, after his freak-out, he was able to say “OK, I had a bad reaction and the things you said about your ex made me feel insecure. Let’s talk about this.” Instead, he continues to throw tantrums if you even hint at the fact that losing a good friend hurts. I certainly don’t expect people, especially people who may not have had any experience with open relationships, to be perfect communicators right off the bat, but if he can’t recognize that you’re saying to him “I chose you over my ex” or to express his feelings in ways other than “NOOOOOOO”, then that doesn’t speak well for their relationship skills in general.

So my question for you is: how much do you want this relationship to work? Do you feel that there’s enough good left in it that this can be repaired? If so, then I strongly suggest that you hie yourselves to a sex-positive relationship counselor – you can find one at The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists – and work on communicating and dealing with issues envy and insecurity. And I’m going to be blunt with you: It’s going to take a lot of work to repair what happened. And it still may not work out.

If you don’t feel that this is something that you can repair or that is worth repairing, or that your husband will work to repair… well, then you’ve got a decision to make.

But I want to re-emphasize: you did everything right here. This is on your husband, not you.

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

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Since I graduated high school I came into my looks and as a result during college. I was quite popular with women even though I was really shy, however after college I started to bald severely nearly losing all the hair on the top of my head, gained some weight from 145-175 at 5’10 which gave me a gut and also started receiving wrinkles on my forehead and under my eyes. During this time period of about 2 years I went from getting constant attention to being practically invisible.

I can understand this because people have standards and what they define as attractive, however a lot of the time if I so much as made eye contact with a woman even on accident I would get nothing but the coldest stares back at me.

Sometimes I would even overhear them talk to their friends about that ‘creepy guy’ referring to me as there was no one else there that it could be. Now however I have been working out and getting in good shape, have had a lot of my hair restored through medication and have gotten rid of the wrinkles through a skin care regiment. As a result I seem to have gotten a lot of attention and just treated better overall from people. If I make eye contact now for example I get nothing but smiles so it is a bit embittering.

I would like advice on how to not let that get to me as I feel a tad bitter over the fact that I was treated so harshly and now that I have improved myself I am all of the sudden good enough for them. It definitely has created trust issues for me and not wanting to truly put myself out there seeing how shallow individuals can be.

– Second Time Around

DEAR SECOND TIME AROUND: There’s a phrase from Hamlet that I like: “There is nothing either good or bad but that thinking makes it so”.  Your circumstances haven’t changed so much as your perception of them have.

There’s a tendency for people who come into their own later than others to feel as though they’ve finally gotten their due. After years or even decades of being awkward/ignored/ugly/whatever, they’ve finally gotten what they feel they deserve. The problem is that in a lot of ways it’s not that they’ve actually changed so much as gotten their hands on Dumbo’s magic feather. It’s less that they’ve been changed so much as they’ve changed the way they feel about themselves. That change in their self-perception affects how they act and – importantly – how they choose to see the world. As cliche as it was, the power was in them the whole time.

That’s in no small part what happened to you. You came into your looks later and celebrated it… but then this one thing changed and suddenly your whole life did too. This was in no small part because how you saw yourself changed.

Bald guys, after all, do get dates and girlfriends. So do chubby guys. So too do guys with wrinkles. But you felt as though you’d become ugly and undesirable and so… you had.

Now don’t get me wrong: the frustration and emotional pain you felt was real. But what you perceivedfrom others… was less so. The thing you have to remember is that we are all unreliable narrators in our own lives. We filter our reality through the lens of our attitude and our expectations. When we think we’re too bald, too fat, too wrinkly for anyone to love us or find us attractive, we look for evidence that we’re right. And of course, we find it… whether it’s actually there or not. What we’re doing, more often than not, is a lot of mental story telling. We’re telling ourselves the story of what the other person is thinking when they look at us, even when we have no basis for it. Are they giving you cold stares because how dare Quasimodo think he has a chance with Esmerelda? Or are they dealing with things that has absolutely nothing to do with you and you just happen to be there?

The same with the whispered “what a creep” conversations. Did you actually hear your name or a description of you? Or did you hear them talking about a creepy guy and assume that they had to be talking about you because who else could it possibly be?

You went in expecting a negative response and you got one. And to be fair: there likely isn’t anything that people could say that you, in the mindset you had at that time, wouldn’t see as a negative response. Even someone being polite and positive would almost certainly have been interpreted as being pitying or a trick.

The thing to remember is: this filter works both ways. 

When you were feeling your best – then and now – you expected a more positive response from women and you were getting them. You paid attention to the responses you expected to see and disregarded the ones you didn’t. You were able to ignore negative responses from women because you were able to de-personalize it. Yeah, she may have looked right through you or rolled her eyes, but that had nothing to do with you…

The more you recognize how much our cognitive biases and our attitudes shape our lives, the more you can consciously use it. Choosing to be positive means that you’ll see more of what you hope for from others. Focusing on the things that make you feel good about yourself makes it easier to project that same good feeling onto others, which makes you feel more confident. Even when you don’t have the face of a model and the body of a Greek god, feeling like you’re the sexiest bastard and people dig you changes how you behave and how you see the world. So even when you don’t look the picture of perfection: treat yourself like you are. Dress sharp. Carry yourself with confidence. Pay attention to your grooming and your presentation.

These will all help maintain that “I’m sexy and I know it” attitude that in turn, will change how you see the world.

To be sure: there are shallow people in the world. There always will be. And I’m sure there were people who saw you and wondered how you had the balls to drag yourself out from under your bridge to inflict yourself on others. But not only are those people far less common than you’d think, those people are assholes. The last thing you need is to let the opinion of assholes define your worth or sense of self. The best thing you can do is simply disregard them. Let their glares and judgement slide off of you and resign them to the dustbin of irrelevancy.

There are amazing, caring and trustworthy people out there. You just have to let yourself see them.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a polyamorous hetero man. I have one partner that I’ve been with for a few years. We have a fantastic relationship.

I’ve also been trying to meet someone else in about that many years, but I’ve not been fruitful at all so far. “Date within your kind” they say, and so I agree that dating only poly people makes for less complications, but the community in my city (just like in almost all cities I bet) is still nascent, and so does not make for a very large pool of people. You can add that to the dozen poly people on OkCupid – not very good for an abundance mentality.

I’m quite open myself to date outside that circle, but that presents some issues: many people being closed to having anything to do with someone poly (especially someone with a partner – and that’s their choice even though it’s unfortunate); and the others, well, are harder to deal with. It’s kind of hard to come out to someone as poly, given that there’s no clear line when I should tell someone that I am (saying that out of the blue just after hi to anyone would be pretty weird and takes a lot of energy), and often it’s not something that comes up on the topic.

Emotionally it can be hard too as I’ve had the standard non-mono disclaimer on my Tinder profile, and it felt like girls were avoiding me like the pest. Add that to the remaining others who mostly treated me like garbage, and… yeah I’ve deleted the app.

That said, I’ve had a few short liaisons where I kept it to myself and it made me a little… uneasy, so I don’t necessarily like hiding things either. I don’t want the person to be losing their time if it’s a deal breaker either and since my partner and I are going to live together soon, that makes the logistics awkward.

My question is two-fold: how do I meet people who are compatible with me (either on the short or longer term), and how/when/to whom should I say I’m polyamorous? For instance, if I meet someone who’s down for something casual, how do I make that viable? What information do I owe the people that I meet? How do I make it easy on both myself and the person?

When Poly Means One

DEAR WHEN POLY MEANS ONE: Dating when you’re poly or even in an open relationship comes with its challenges, WPMO. Well… for men, anyway. Poly women have very different challenges, but they rarely involve the issue of potential suitors.

As you said: you’re limiting your dating pool. You’re filtering out all the people who prefer more common relationship styles. And while yes, it’s best to date within your tribe or species (i.e. people who’re already open to or familiar with polyamory) that can be a smaller pool of potential candidates.

(This, incidentally, is similar to a lot of the issues that comes with dating while being LGBTQ – the people who you’re compatible with is going to be a small percentage of the overall population.)

So what do you do?

Well, there’re a number of options. The first is to start looking towards partners who are already outside of the mainstream. Within the kink community, for example, people are more likely to have an understanding of how poly relationships work, which may mean they’re more open to dating someone who’s poly. This doesn’t mean treating Fetlife like OKCupid per-se, but getting to know people in your area can open up possibilities.

You’re also more likely to meet people who are up for non-traditional relationships in nerd settings. I can’t count the number of people I’ve met at cons who are either open, poly or cool with non-monongamous relationships. Geekery tends to go hand in hand with kink and non-traditional relationships.

When it comes to disclosure… well, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I’m a big believer in informed consent and letting people opt-in. However, this comes at a cost. Online dating, for example tends to make people a little less flexible; because we can pre-screen potential candidates (as it were) we tend to stick to what we think we want. We are less open to serendipity or discovering that maybe we’d be willing to give someone a shot even if they don’t line up perfectly to our checklists.

As a result, an argument can be made that not mentioning being poly in your dating profile is an allowable lie as long as disclosure comes sooner (i.e. before sex or commitment) rather than later. This lets a potential partner get to know you as you, not as the stereotype of WPMO-The-Polyamorous they may have in their head. And if you’re just meeting someone off Tinder for NSA sex… well, a lot of people may choose not ask or want to know in the first place.

But this approach comes with its own risks; many people will feel tricked and that’s going to really upset them. So you have to weigh the risk/reward ratio to this.

As a general rule, I’d disclose earlier rather than later; if not during the heavy flirting stage then definitely before pants start coming off.

Unfortunately there aren’t any easy answers, WPMO. The challenges in finding compatible partners is part of the price of entry when it comes to an open/polyamorous relationship, especially when it’s still in the early stages of cultural acceptance. There will have to be compromises to necessity; you may have to look further afield than normal and be open to something long-distance if you don’t have much luck in your area.

Regardless of the approach you take, you’re going to have to spend some time finding what best practices work for you, in your community.

Good luck.

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