DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I had an interesting childhood, abusive father, bullied in school etc. which really hammered my self esteem. I basically bottled everything up for years until it all exploded. Ended up spiraling into depression, had a passive suicide attempt about 3 years ago and hit rock bottom really. The good news, since then I’ve had 2 spells of counseling and my mental health is now much better. I’ve also worked quite a bit on myself, to the point where I’ve come from never having a date to having a couple of short relationships, couple of casual things and I’ve improved immensely in that part of my life. This is way more success than I ever thought I’d have.

The thing that’s inspired me to write in today is that even though I can see how far I’ve come and all I’ve achieved, I still find everything absolutely, painfully difficult. Socializing exhausts me in general, but especially in bars and clubs. I always seem to be on guard and frankly it’s all wearing me down. There is still this block I have mentally, where I’m so scared of getting hurt again or opening up that I can’t really just let myself go and make the moves I want to, or I shut down interactions/ relationships that could go somewhere due to fear basically. I’m also incredibly nervous about doing anything that would jeopardize my mental health. I left my last job because it was causing me to slide again and I don’t want to risk ever getting near to where I was 3 years ago.

Another thing that’s laying it on right now is that I’m currently traveling. A couple of my friends are absolutely amazing with women, they make it look ridiculously easy and go from one hot girl to the next like they get handed out with the cereal. They are great guys who absolutely deserve their success and I’m happy for them, but it just highlights to me that even after all this work I’ve done I’m still no better than bang average on a good day at all of this. This is what is getting me down. I’ve read all the articles you’ve written about staying internally validated and not comparing yourself to others and it’s all good advice, but I’m struggling to keep everything focused on the right things, which ends up with me taking nut shots to my self-esteem over the frustration.

I’m still young, mid 20s in decent health and everything, so I know I have the time, but it’s just so draining to actually realize how far I’ve still got to go after all this work. My motivation to keep going with the whole self improvement thing is waning, I’ve stopped approaching, don’t do speed dating or anything else that I had success with. I went on a couple of dates with this girl 2 months or so ago and just had no emotional energy left to give. I just see it all as a grind and I struggling to deal with it at the moment. I know you went through similar sorts of challenges back in your “bad old days”, so any advice you could give would be hugely appreciated. How would you recommend I get through this?

Thanks

Tired of The Grind

DEAR TIRED OF THE GRIND: First of all, ToTG: congratulations on all the work you’ve put into your mental and emotional health, and all the progress you’ve made. That takes a lot of grit and courage, and you should be proud of just how far you’ve come.

In fact… that’s part of what I want to talk to you about. See, you’re doing one of the things that I used to do back in my bad old days: you’re so focused like a laser on the end goal – being able to get women like your buddies – that you’re missing just how much progress you’ve made. The problem with what you’re doing is that you’re working under the assumption that you and your friends started at the same place and the fact that you’re not doing as well as them means something’s wrong with you. But that’s not it. That’s not it at all. You didn’t start at the starting line; you had to sneak your way past guards, climb over walls and through air ducts just to get into the goddamn arena, never mind into the race itself. 

But here’s the thing: you got there! You made it past all of those hurdles, things that would make most other people say “ this noise” and turn around, and got your ass into the game. Yeah, you’re not at the same point as people who had some advantages you didn’t… but they didn’t have to fight the way you did or as hard as you did. So you need to take a moment and recognize that you’ve fought long and hard to get where you are and that is goddamn amazing. You’re not some third-string bench-warmer, you’re Rudy, man.

Of course, all of this means that you’re going to have some scars. I mean, c’mon: you’ve been through the fires of hell and you’ve got the ashes to prove it. But that block you’re dealing with right now isn’t fear, it’s the anticipation of fear. You’re so worried about the feeling of “Oh god does this mean it’s going to happen again” that you’re trying to avoid anything that might trigger that fear… including the things that you long for. And that’s understandable. That part of what makes us human. But the fear is an illusion. It’s a phantom. It’s the exaggerated, funhouse mirror version of reality. The fear is honestly worse than the reality.

Right now, you’re spending a lot of your energy trying to avoid your fears – more energy than it would actually take to confront them, in fact. You just keep convincing yourself that you’re going to lose, that you are inevitably going to fail, so there’s no point in trying. Small wonder you’re drained; you’re letting that fear sap everything from you, without even taking the little victories that tell you that you’ve got far more going for you than you realize.

The sooner you learn how to grapple with that fear and push through it, the sooner you’ll realize you’re further along than you believe you are.

And the easiest way to deal with that fear? Plan for failure. Expect failure. Because you know what? Failure’s gonna happen. A lot. To everyone. Even your buddies, who attract women the way cheese attracts mice, fail. You just don’t notice it because you’re paying too much attention to their successes. But success doesn’t teach you anything. A lot of times success is just luck – or you end up taking the wrong lessons from those successes. When a plane comes back from a mission shot full of holes, you don’t patch those holes and assume you fixed the problem; those are clearly places where it could get shot up and still make it. You want to pay attention to the places where getting shot full of holes brought down the plane and work on those areas.

So it is with failure. Failure teaches you valuable lessons. You learn to recognize what went wrong and how to avoid it next time. You start to learn your real strengths and weaknesses, not the ones you think you have. And the most important lesson you learn is this: failure isn’t fatal. You can mess up – badly, even – and still survive. You may not get with that one woman… but you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again with someone else. 

Pain’s inevitable, my dude. Nobody can avoid getting hurt. But while pain may be inevitable, suffering is optional. And you suffer far more from trying to avoid pain than you do learning how to take the hits, roll with them and pop back up again because you’ve given up on even the chance of success.

These are choices you’re making, my dude. You’re choosing to believe that you will fail and it will break you. It won’t. You’re stronger than that. Yeah, you’ll fail. It’s part of the learning process. Everyone fails. But when you learn from those failures, when you dare to push yourself  back up to your feet again? That’s when you win.

You have to believe that you can survive. You hold that power in your hands.

You can win if you dare.

You’ve got this.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have an ethical question.

The short version: a decade ago I met someone, we talked online a lot, those chats got steamy, and I saved them. Now I’m debating if I should get rid of those saved chats.

Long version: when I met J, I was in a terrible place: 25-year-old virgin with body image issues and depression, under-employed, and self-harming. J (who is gender-neutral) essentially made helping me a short project, out of the goodness of their heart, and we had what I call a “two-month-long one-night stand”. Since we lived in different cities, we communicated online only, until J invited me to their city for a weekend of sex and sex ed. This did wonders for my confidence, and our friendship helped me stop cutting. (Nine years clean!) A critical step in the process came when J laid out for me, in considerable detail, what they would do in bed with me once we were in the same place. Until that moment I had not really believed I was physically attractive to anyone. I saved that chat so I could look at it again later and remind myself it actually happened, and I saved other (sometimes steamy, usually very personal) chats as well.

Ever since then, we have been supportive friends. We don’t talk all the time, but we always know the other person will always be there. We’ve watched each other go through all sorts of relationship ups and downs. When we’re both single (and only then) we flirt, though this hasn’t happened in a while and nothing comes of it.

J’s in a relationship “up” — getting married to a truly marvelous person — and I’m in a relationship “neutral” — single for a year. The wedding has made me think about those saved chats. I look at them maybe once or twice a year, if that, but while they aren’t the same level as nudes, they are they are personal and intimate, and critically I don’t think J knows I have them, so it feels a little non-consensual. So on the one hand, it seems like the ethical thing to delete them.

On the other hand, I’m a very history-oriented person, so deleting those chats would be like deleting all evidence of a key turning point in my life. Also, while my depression is much more under control, it’s never gone — so having evidence of J’s validation is sometimes very nice.

On the third hand, I know I’m still attracted to J, so I’m a little suspicious of my judgment on this.

What do you recommend? Delete the sexy chats, or preserve the historical artifacts?

Ethical Historian

DEAR ETHICAL HISTORIAN:  there’s a lot of debate about that to do about the artifacts of our past relationships. Almost all of us tend to have keepsakes of our happier relationships; letters, photos, little trinkets that remind us of the good times we had. Most of the time, these are fairly harmless bits of nostalgia that we can take out, enjoy that warm hit from times past, then put ’em back and call it good. Now there are often people who feel threatened by the evidence of past relationships – the story of the Jealous Girlfriend is a well-worn routine from the early days of the Pick Up Artist scene – but for the most part, these are just reminders of days gone by. Getting rid of them just because the relationship ended smacks of trying to pretend the relationship never happened, an emotional damnatio memoriae that ultimately denies how we became the people we are today.

But some of those mementos can be of a sexual nature, and that’s where things get tricky. We live in a culture and society that’s profoundly sex-negative, and sees sexual expression as something shameful and degrading, even when it’s in the context of a committed, monogamous relationship. And in the aftermath of a break-up, the question of “what should we do about with these mementos” gets thorny. On the one hand, there are those who insist that they should be destroyed; after all, you (so the theory goes) no longer have that person’s consent to see their naked bodies. But at the same time, if you take this argument to its logical extension, then you’re no longer allowed to remember them or the way their skin felt or their hair smelled because hey that relationship’s over. On the other hand, there are those who will say that these were given consensually between two partners and like all gifts, there’s no obligation to return them later. But then there’s the fact that they were given under a specific context; if the relationship ended badly, those relationship artifacts can go from being mementos to weapons that can be used against the giver.

And sometimes, those memories can be weaponized by a third party. In this day and age, securing those particular relics is difficult. Cloud storage sites get hacked, computer repair services regularly steal people’s nudes from their hard drives and sexy files of unsuspecting innocents get shared far and wide. One only need look at The Fappening or boards on Reddit, 4chan, 8chan and elsewhere that are dedicated to sharing “found” nude images. Even purely physical keepsakes can get out into the wild; the infamous Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton sex tapes were on physical media, not digital storage.

These are all issues that’ve become part of the modern dating landscape. If we share those sides of ourselves with our partners – as many, many people do – there’s the chance that they won’t just stay with our partners.

Now in your case, EH, the odds of some spicy chat logs getting out and causing problems is low. Not zero, but pretty darn low. So the bigger issue here is: why are you holding on to them? As you say: you still have some feelings for J. Is this a way of holding onto the relationship, instead of letting it be part of your past? There’s nothing wrong with the occasional naughty trip down memory lane, but if this is a way of keeping the hope alive, even as they’re getting married… well, that’s not healthy. It may be good to interrogate your feelings on this and see if your desire to keep that validation and evidence of your past is exactly that, or the fig-leaf you use to justify keeping them.

The other question involves the ethics of having them in the first place. While it’s generally a good rule of thumb to assume that anything you send to another person is likely stored and archived somewhere, a lot of folks tend to assume that hot chats and sexting conversations are lost to the ether; hell, that’s part of the whole point of services like Snapchat. As far as violations of trust go, it’s pretty far down the list, but some folks might still feel weird about knowing that those records exist.

So with all of this in mind, here’s my guiding principle when it comes to things like nudes and sexy pics from past relationships: if you’re on good terms with your ex, ask what they’d prefer you do. Of course, in your case, EH, first you’re going to have to explain that you have them in the first place. Which is gonna be awkward. But honestly? I suspect this will cause more amusement than consternation.

Some people are cool with their exes – especially ones they’re still friendly with – keeping the pics. After all, just because the relationship ended doesn’t mean that you now hate that person and want to retcon the relationship into having never happened. Others may prefer that you’d delete them, if only to keep them from ending up on dodgy blogs and subreddits.

So, you don’t need to explain about how they give you validation or that they’re an artifact of your past. Just say “Hey, turns out I have logs of some of the chat sessions we had, would you prefer I delete them or is it ok if I save them?” and let them have the final say.

And as a general rule: if you aren’t in contact with your ex – it was a bad break-up, you never want to hear from them again or vice-versa – go ahead and securely delete them. It’s better all around to err on the side of “get rid of them” than it is to have trouble down the line.

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 am a gay 27-year-old male and I was raised in a very conservative household: coming out when I first realised I was gay (15) was completely out of question. I kept it well hidden for about five years because, really, I had no choice. When I was in my early 20’s I fell head over heels for a boy. To me, he was perfect, and he also liked me. This happened only weeks after I came out for the first time to a friend. It seemed like a sign… except it wasn’t. Some time passed without seeing him after I first met him. We saw each other again a year later. We began seeing each other from time to time (nothing romantic), but I slowly began to get in my head… because I was a virgin (I have read everything you have written about being a virgin and all the troubles it brings, but I always find a way to see myself as an exception to all of it), and he, although he was younger than I was, wasn’t. He was your typical gay “slut”. I liked him (more on that later), but I thought I could never be enough for him. It was the first time I felt anything like this and I did not know what to do. I felt inferior to him: he had experience; I didn’t. He had lived his life and had no regrets; I had nothing but regrets. I could never be good for him because he had done all the things I wanted to do and he had done. The mistakes you can’t make are the ones that hurt the most.

It did not go well. I began to get in my head for two reasons: one, I liked him, I REALLY liked him and being what I was was keeping me away from him. Second, I began to realise that I was trailing behind virtually ALL OF HUMANITY -not just him- in a fundamental part of life: sex. Every younger person that I met knew what it was like, and I didn’t. I had been carrying a bad depression ever since I realised I was gay, but this took it to an extreme. Had I had the option not to hide as a teenager, like everyone else my age (and younger), I could have been living my life all those years, and I could have been with him, because I wouldn’t have gotten in my head the way I did. I could have said that I lived my life to the fullest. But I couldn’t. And I can’t. I will never know what it is like to be a teenager and it is something that haunts me every day and will do so all my life.

I eventually I did ask him, explicitly, if he could help me with my issue. He said “no”, that it was “too much responsibility”. He knew about it when we first met (I told him) and he didn’t seem to have a problem with it back then. I asked him two years later and, by then, I had gotten in my head for too long and it was obvious to him. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that I was the one who turned it into “too much responsibility”, but that would not have happened had I had my time to develop like a normal human being. There is a fundamental part of my life (some would say the MOST important part of my life) that was stolen from me. Without having tried it, I have developed a genuine fear towards sex. I can’t go a day without crying my eyes out. I feel trapped by the past I couldn’t have.

After many years, I realise that I was not (only) physically attracted to him: I felt admiration towards him. That admiration eventually turned into jealousy and obsession. Not a day goes by in which I don’t think of him and the perfect life he has: how he was able to be a teenager (he lost his virginity at 15), how he can have a normal, heathy sex life and how I can’t, how he doesn’t have to deal with a depression that is, quite literally, destroying every aspect of my life (I can barely write this). I WANT TO BE HIM. But I can’t: he was a teenager and I never will be, even if I suddenly started acting like him, which isn’t possible, because I’m too much responsibility at this point. He sleeps around with everyone and has no problem with it. I can’t do that after all that has happened: sex has gained such a negative meaning for me. I am disgusted that everyone else knows what it is like to be a teenager and I never will, I am disgusted that I could be too much responsibility for someone who is willing to sleep with everyone. No matter what I do, I will always be inferior, to him and to everyone else. No matter what I do, he will always be there being better than me in every way possible. I have lost too much time and I have missed too many moments and experiences life has to offer. Getting into a relationship won’t fix anything either: that’s for adults. I genuinely feel you can’t be an adult without being a teenager first; it’s like going from 1 to 3 without going through 2. Not possible. Also, I feel by this point I’m too tormented by the frustration and impotence to be with anyone. I would make them miserable.

I have been to therapy, I am on medication and I have read everything there is to read on similar subjects (many things by you). I’m fighting the fact that there’s no turning back time and I am losing it. Again, I can’t accept that a fundamental part of my life has been stolen from me while everyone else had a chance to live it. Any advice you can give me will be useful. I don’t know what to do anymore.

Thank you so much.

Man Without a Life

DEAR MAN WITHOUT A LIFE: OK MWaL, here’s what I want you to do: I want you to repeat to yourself “There is nothing wrong with me.” Make this your mantra. Repeat it every morning when you get up. Tattoo it backwards onto your forehead so you can see it in the mirror. Shave your head if you need the room.

Because – and stop me if you’ve heard this before: there is nothing wrong with you. You’re a virgin. You’re not broken. You’re not defective. You are not a failure. You’re not trailing behind anyone because you’re not in a race with anyone. 

Here’s a truth: you’re going through what a lot of young LGBTQ people have gone through: you’re wrestling with your social development now because, quite frankly, you weren’t able to go through it when straight kids did. You have been in a place in your life where you couldn’t be your true self because it was dangerous for you. Now that you’ve been in a decent place for a few years, you are in the position of having to go through the struggle and drama most of us go through in our teens. You couldn’t work this crap out then because you weren’t safe. Now you’re in a better place.

Here’s another truth: your journey is your journey. I know that there’s a lot of pressure for men – gay or straight – to be hypersexual, to lose your virginity as early as possible. But thing is? That’s bulls

t. It’s part and parcel of the same toxic ideas around male behavior that encourages us to treat sex like the end-all, be-all of life, regardless of what it may do to you.

Your crush lost his virginity at 15. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was – or you would have been – ready for it. A lot of guys I know who lost their virginity when they were younger will posture and brag about it in public… but in private, once they’ve had a few beers in them, the truth comes out: they weren’t ready, it was a confusing, complicated mess and it took them a long damn time to sort things out.

Here is a third truth: comparison is the thief of joy. Your life will never be like your crush because you are not him. The more that you try to measure yourself by somebody else’s metrics, the worse you will feel because you are not them. They didn’t have the life you did. You didn’t have the life they did. Beating yourself up because your life isn’t like theirs is like a dog beating itself up because it can’t fly like a condor.

Your life is uniquely your own. Your challenges are uniquely yours. Nobody else is going to have your story, just as nobody else will have your crush’s. Nor will anyone else have mine. Trying to live someone else’s story is only going to make things worse because you’re not them.

Here is a final truth: it is never too late. You haven’t missed “your time” because your time is NOW. These are your teenage years; you are just dealing with them now because you had to put your life on hold until it was safe to live it. Society may fetishize the life of teens, it may make being a teenager the pinnacle of your life… but that’s just marketing. They do this because it’s easier to sell high-school drama to the 12-19 year old set. You may be learning more about you, your life and your social mores now, but you’re doing so at a time when you have the age and maturity to handle things in ways that your peers, gay or straight, didn’t.

It is not too late for you. It will never be too late.

Now here’s what you need to do. You need to get yourself to a therapist. It’s good that you’re on medication, but as someone who deals with depression himself, medication alone doesn’t do the trick. Having a therapist, especially one who’s familiar with LGBTQ issues, is going to be incredibly important. They will be able to help hold your hand and guide you through these rough times. They will be better able than a loudmouth with a blog to remind you that there is nothing wrong with you.

Just as importantly: don’t forget that not all antidepressants  work for all people. It takes time to figure out the correct medication and to find the correct dosage. If one isn’t working after a period – could be weeks, could be months – then be willing to advocate for yourself and tell your doctor that they’re not helping.

And as important as the therapy, as important as the medication: find your community. Find your Team You. Not the people you want to sleep with, not the people you think have perfect lives (trust me: they don’t), but the people who love and care for you. You want the people who will help you up when you’ve fallen down, who will have your back and who will call you on your bulls

t when you need it. Because having your team in your corner is going to be important. You are strong. You had to be to survive until now. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use the love and support of your friends and family.

And most of all, as you work with your therapist, as you connect with your Team You, remember: there is nothing wrong with you.

You’re going to be ok. I promise.

All will be well.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m female, single, in my 30s, and I’ve never been romantically attracted to anyone. Ever.

Sure, I’ve dated, but I’ve never gotten beyond half-a-dozen or so dates before … well, I just don’t want to take it any further. I don’t want to hold hands, I don’t want to kiss, I don’t want to officially be their “girlfriend.” So I end up having to give the “let’s just be friends” talk and … that’s that.

I hate it because these men have done nothing wrong. Some of them were really great guys. And yet every time I have to be the “bad guy” and break it off for seemingly no reason. (And I know you don’t need any reason other than “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore” to end a relationship, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling pretty awful.)

(I’ve been asked if I’m gay before – mostly from friends or family with whom I’ve discussed this and they’ve tried to look at my situation with an objective eye – but I don’t think that’s it because I’ve never felt attracted – romantically or otherwise – to women, either. But at this point, can I even say I know what romantic attraction feels like?)

A glimpse into my mindset: I’ve always found it strange that people can jump into romantic or sexual relationships with people they’ve only known for a few weeks or months. I can’t imagine having that kind of closeness with someone without having been friends for literally years beforehand. But there’s no way I’m going to tell that to a guy – “hey, let’s be friends for a real long time, and then maybe, maaaybe I’ll be open to dating you in a few years, but no promises!” – because that’s just ridiculous and mean.

And yet every several months (the frequency has gotten lower as I’ve gotten older and this has happened more and more) my family or friends will set me up on a date with someone they think I’ll like, and I’ll acquiesce due to a combination of “everyone thinks I’m weird and need help, I better at least give it a try” and “… maybe this time will be different?”

But it never is.

Luckily, at this point in my life, I am quite happy being single. No, really – I promise you it’s not a case of “she doth protest too much” (like my mother suspects). But will I always feel this way? Will I regret not finding someone when I’m much older and alone? (And I’m allergic to cats, so I can’t even be a crazy cat lady!)

So, my question is: should I keep trying? Is it really just that I haven’t found “the one” yet (as so many of my older relatives keep telling me – “oh, you’ll feel differently when you find the right person!”)? Do I have intimacy issues I need to work through? Or is this really just who I am?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

Not Sure if Romantically Broken

DEAR NOT SURE IF ROMANTICALLY BROKEN: First of all, no, you’re not broken. Remember that. Nor are you alone in this. There’s actually a name for people like you: aromantic. It means that you – like many others – just don’t feel romantic attraction to others. It’s not common, but it’s also not unheard of; in fact, it’s often folded in under the asexual umbrella. It can be hard for people to realize that not everyone needs to be part of a couple or in a relationship to be fulfilled. A lot of our culture is based around the idea that coupling up is the end-goal of life and so it can be difficult to feel ok with being ok about being single and not wanting a partner.

Will you be like this all of your life? Hell if I know. You may be watching TV one day and realize that you’re fantasizing about your dream wedding to Rhianna. Or Zack Efron. Or both. Or you may never want a romantic partner in your life.

My question to you is: are you happy? Do you have friends, family (biological or by choice), a community? Do you feel connected to others? Do you have things in your life that bring you satisfaction?

If the answer is yes… well to hell with worrying about it. You’ve got a good thing going. Why stress about stuff that you clearly aren’t interested in?

Meanwhile, check out the Aromantic FAQ over at Asexuality.org and the associated forums. This may give you more insight into people like you and the vocabulary to describe it to others.

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 am a bisexual woman in a very happy relationship with my fiancé (a dude). Recently, we have been discussing the potential of having threesomes, as a way of exploring our sexuality further together.

I have had something of a long-standing crush on a mutual friend of ours. He’s a part of our main group of friends who we hang out with weekly to play D&D with. We’re all slightly awkward nerds. I’ve been getting a general vibe lately that the attraction might be mutual, especially after we spent the majority of the last party we had basically cuddling. But I feel I could also just be reading what I want to be into what may just be friendly interactions for him! I’ve been thinking lately that I might want to be straightforward about my attraction to him, and ask if he’d be up for a threesome. My fiancé is aware of all of this and is open to it as well.

I just really don’t want to make things uncomfortable between us. I really like him as a person and value his friendship more than anything. I think a threesome could be a lot of fun if he was interested, but I don’t want to be creepy, or make him feel like I’ve been his friend under false pretenses. If his answer was no I would be absolutely ok with that, and it wouldn’t change how I feel about him as a friend. I’ve only ever had sex with my fiancé before, so this is really a varsity level conversation that I don’t know how to even start, or if I should start at all. What should I do?

Thanks, 

Don’t Know If I Can Make This Diplomacy Check

DEAR DON’T KNOW IF I CAN MAKE THIS DIPLOMACY CHECK: short version: this is a bad idea, DC. There’re just too many unknowns involved here and too many ways that could end up with a critical fumble at the wrong moment. Then suddenly you’re stuck with a drama bomb that’s about to go off, messily and all over the place.

Now as a general rule, I’m all in favor of adding some adventure to your sex life. I’m very much pro threesomes, if that’s what you’re interested in. But finding the right person to bring into the game is important, because the stakes can be surprisingly high. The wrong addition can turn sexy fun and games into an unpleasant mess. Somebody who doesn’t respect the boundaries of your relationship can cause strife even when they’re not there. Plenty of people have had issues with special guest stars – or their partners – deciding that if it’s cool for all three of you to bang, then a little one-on-one time is just fine too. Then there’s the issue of handling the relationship with the third party afterwards.

One of the reasons why finding a third can be tricky is because so many couples treat their third like a toy; they only want that extra person for as long as the sexy times are going on and kick them out before the sweat has even cooled. And ideally, you want someone who will understand and respect the relationship between you and your fiancé and not cause a fuss in the middle of things.

The ideal partner for a threesome, especially if it’s your first ever, is either often someone you already have a good relationship with – an ex you’re on good terms with, for example – or a professional. In both cases, you’re far more likely to have someone who can communicate clearly, who will respect the rules you all lay out in advance and who won’t cause problems afterwards.

In this case, I think you’ve picked the wrong potential addition to your party.

Let’s start with the fact you don’t really know how much he’s into you… or how. I mean, yes, cuddling in general can be a sign someone’s interested. By the same token, some folks are cuddlers and have no problem being part of a puppy pile with their friends; that doesn’t mean that they have any sexual interest in the people they’re cuddling with. This is information that you might want to have before you try to making your move on them.

But even if he is interested, starting off with a threesome is a pretty big ask. I mean, sure it’s possible he’d be down for hooking up with you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be the meat man in your particular sexy sandwich. It’s one thing if it were just the two of you. It’s another entirely – if he’s down in the first place – to say “OK but it’s not just me, it’s me and my fiancé.” That adds all kinds of extra layers of difficulty that’s going to have you rolling with disadvantage.

To start with, there’s the immediate question of whether he likes threesomes in the first place. Yeah, porn tells us that threesomes are the top-tier prize, but sexy is in the eye of the beholder and not everybody is into it. Some folks don’t want the pressure of trying to please two people at once – or be pleased by them, for that matter. Others don’t do their best work with a crowd. And if he were into you and into having a threesome with you right off the bat, the fact it’s with your male fiancé may be a line. There’re a lot of folks out there who’re down for hooking up with two women but get vexed at the thought of another dude in the room.

And even if you rolled that particular natural 20: he was into you, and into a threesome off the bat and cool with it being with you and another guy… he may just not be cool with the idea of doing it with your fiancé, specifically, participating.

That’s a lot of stackable modifiers to that particular persuasion check. And it’s already a varsity level conversation to have with someone. The last thing you want to do is invite him over, wave in your fiancé and ask “So how do you want to do this?”

Now, if your fiancé is amenable to opening up the relationship somewhat to let you pursue things with this guy, then you might be able to work towards eventually having a threesome. But in general, I think this is a bad idea and a bad way to try to leap straight into advanced-level fooling around. This is something you might want to table and come back to once you’ve got a few more levels under your belts.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: First of all I’m sorry if you’ve been asked this before. I’ve been a long time lurker and you give some good advice and I hope you can help me.

I’m 24 and I never kissed or held hands with a girl, figure out the rest. I know it’s pathetic but I can’t stop thinking about everything I missed and I’ll never be able to experiment. Missing out teen love mortifies me and I think it fucked me up. I mean, in your teenage years you get your first relationships and you learn the basics about being with someone, what is like, how it works, what to do, what to don’t, how to behave, etc. And you do it with someone as inexperienced as you in that wonderful time of your life when you had no big worries at all. I know it may sound cheesy or maybe I have an idealized, but that’s what I observed from the shadows and now every time I see a young couple walking in the street I want to cry and it ruins my day. In fact, I can’t see pictures or tv shows where romance is involved without wanting to cry.

I know I’ll be single for the rest of my life. I know I can’t predict the future or know what will happen, but I look at the odds. To meet someone you need friends or acquaintances so they could introduce you to someone they know or just be in the right place at the right time. I don’t have friends or acquaintances. So the chances of meeting a girl are nearly impossible or have a low-probability, while dying alone and no one noticing it after several weeks because of the smell is more likely. Believing that out there is someone who can love me is like thinking that pink whales exist. It’s true I never approached a girl, but when I see a girl I find cute, I always think that she’s too pretty and I’m unlovable. That’s why avoid girls like the plague and I try to not be close to them, because is a constant reminder that I’ll be alone forever. I’m hideous, too weird, I don’t have social skills and I’ll never approach someone because that’s like telling them ‘hey, I think you have low standards, bad taste and poor eyesight. Wanna hang out?’ I know every girl will reject me so there is no point in trying. High school taught me girls are disgusted by my mere presence and that I should stay away from them and never dare to look at them. That’s what I do everyday and I try to not show any interest at all. No girl deserves me because they deserve someone better because it’s simple: there are millions of guys out there and I know I’m among the worst (excluding criminals). I can’t enhance their lives, because I have nothing to do it. They deserve someone normal, not me.

My question is, how can I accept this? I mean I KNOW I’ll end up alone and that I’ll never get a girlfriend or to love someone that loves me back, but it hurts me to the point I haven’t slept well in months. I stay up hours thinking and ruminating about this and sometimes I cry. A lot. I just want to be able to say “I’ll never experience love, so what?”. I don’t want to get sad knowing I’ll never get a girlfriend, get married, have kids and raise them together. I just want to accept my fate and stop worrying about something I can’t change. Or at least be able to sleep well and be somewhat happy being alone.

-Quasimodo’s Ugly Inexperienced Twin

DEAR QUASIMODO’S UGLY INEXPERIENCED TWIN: I think you came to the wrong place, QUIT, because you’re asking me to sign off on your decision to give up and that’s not what I do. If you want to give up, lay down and rot… well, that’s your decision. You don’t need my permission to do that. But I’m also not going to be the person to tell you that this is the right decision or to applaud you for doing so. My job is to help people fix things and find solutions and I’m NOT going to be the guy to tell you “nope, nothing you can do, time to die.”

And, straight talk: you don’t need to be talking to me, my dude. You need to be talking to a therapist, because the things you’re describing? They’re not reasonable. If you’re feeling this much emotional anguish over being a little to the right on the far-end of the virginity bell-curve, then the issue isn’t whether you’ll be forever alone, it’s the negative thought patterns and the pain they’re causing you. I mean, I hate to break up the pity party (no, that’s a lie; I really don’t) but you’re not that rare of a beast; nearly a third of men are still virgins between the ages of 20 – 24.

But to be perfectly blunt: you’re talking a lot of shit my dude. It’s like I’ve told folks before: you’re not a prophet. You can’t see the future and no, you DON’T know that you’re never going to have a girlfriend. What you have here is a metric ass-ton of self-imposed, self-limiting beliefs that are based on sweet fuck-all and a heaping dose of self-pity.

I mean, let’s start with the fact that you didn’t have a girlfriend when you were a teenager. Neither did a lot of people. You’re right: you have a completely idealized – and completely fantastical – idea of what dating and teen love was like. It sounds to me like a lot of your ideas about what dating would’ve been like in high-school came from TV and books because it sure as hell doesn’t look like anything most people have seen. You don’t come out of your first relationship as a teenager with a new knowledge of how everything works; half the time, you don’t know what the actual hell happened and you’re as confused as you were before… if not more so. Nor, for that matter, are you guaranteed that you’re going to be with someone who’s as equally clueless as you. The fact that you’re the same age doesn’t mean that you have commensurate levels of experience. Just as some people were late bloomers, others bloomed early and may have been sexually active at an earlier age.

And honestly: having had a relationship in high-school doesn’t automatically set you up for dating success later in life any more than not having had one dooms you. You may want to try talking to some of your LGBT peers; many of them lived in places where there were no other queer kids for them to date. Hell, there’re many who didn’t come out until long after high-school and didn’t start dating until they were in their 20s. All not having gone through the emotional roller-coaster that is dating in high-school means is that you’re just going to be going through that ride a little later than some folks. That’s neither a good or bad thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re at a permanent disadvantage or you’re doomed to failure. It just means that you didn’t start at the same time as other people did and that’s fine because you’re not actually in competition with them. There’s no prize for getting to any particular dating milestone first. You don’t get bonus points in life because you lost your virginity before the median age (17-18)

(And show me someone who had no major worries as a teenager and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t remember what being a teenager was like. Everything was a cause for stress; you just didn’t have the experience or perspective to know what things you were supposed to get stressed out over.)

But literally everything else you bring up is either self-inflicted, easily corrected or both. Your complaints are almost word-for-word the same as many of the other people who’ve written into me before, and the solutions are almost identical as well. Just about everything you describe is the sort of thing that you could change in the matter of weeks.

Let’s be real here: just about everything you’ve told me is based on pure speculation. You say it yourself: you’ve never approached anyone before. Cool so then you don’t know that you’re going to get rejected. You’re just assuming you will. Why are you assuming that you will? Because you believe nobody could possibly be interested. And you know this based on…. what, exactly?

Well, going by your letter, high-school. Except, as we’ve already covered: not only is high-school not like real life, but we’re already in a position where we can’t really trust you to be the honest assessor of your own life right now.

There isn’t a thing that you’ve mentioned that can’t be fixed and most of it is just a matter of an order of operations. You don’t have friends or acquaintances. OK… so it seems obvious to me that the first step would be to start working towards making some. You don’t have social skills? You can actually develop those. They’re called social SKILLS for a reason; you build them through conscious and deliberate practice. You think you’re hideous? Well, first of all, I would love it if I had a nickel for every single average-to-good-looking dude that told me he was so ugly he made blind people scream. So I’m already calling bulls

t. But second of all: that’s fixable too. Not with plastic surgery or some other actually-trying-to-dodge-the-topic answer but really simple grooming and style techniques. I mean, all you need to do is watch any given episode of Queer Eye to see just how transformative some decently fitting clothes and a haircut can be.

But before you do any of that? You need to be willing to actually let go of the f

ked up, bulls

t incel logic you’ve got going on. You need to get the hell away from the incel boards and subreddits I know that you’re visiting – trust me, I’ve heard all of this before – and quit pretending that the fact that something hurts means that it’s true. No, the fact that something hurts just means that it hurts. Truth can hurt, but there’s something that hurts because it’s true and then there’s what you’re doing: the emotional equivalent of self-harm.

You need to talk to an actual therapist, QUIT, and preferably one who specializes in sexual and emotional anxieties like you have. I would strongly suggest that you go to the website for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists; they have a referral directory that can help you find a professional in your area. Working with them will help you take the most important first step: they can help you learn to put down the pain that you’re inflicting on yourself so that you can finally heal and realize that you’re wrong. The world isn’t the cruel, cold and dark place you think it is. You’re not doomed, you’re not forgotten and you’re not destined to be forever alone. You’re just lonely and in pain.

Start by addressing that pain. Once you’re not hurting yourself as much, you’ll realize just how much potential you have and how much this world actually has to offer, once you stop viewing it through eyes clouded by self-hate.

This can and will get better. I promise.

All will be well.

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