DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been dating my girlfriend for a year now and things are going great. My girlfriend doesn’t have a problem with watching pornography and vice versa. The problem is that recently when I was on a chat site, a random stranger started giving me compliments and it lead to us sexting (without webcams, just text). Now I have no plans on talking to this person ever again, so it was just a one off masturbation session in front of my pc, but is this worse than watching a porn, or even a form of cheating?

One Free Hand

DEAR ONE FREE HAND: It’s definitely not the same as watching porn. Porn is a one-sided event. You watch the video, maybe interact a little if it’s a video game, but ultimately it’s a solo endeavor. There’s you and a box of tissues, that’s it. Porn doesn’t care about getting YOU off specifically; it’s put out into the world for a general audience. Whomever gets off to it is ultimately irrelevant as long as the company that produced it gets the MSRP, clicks or subscription fees. Striking up a sexting session with a stranger from Snapchat, Chatrubate or some other app, on the other hand is interactive. There’s another person involved, even when it’s just text back and forth. It’s the difference between watching someone on a porn-site and paying for a one-on-one webcam show where the same porn star performs specifically for you. It’s not just masturbating, it’s interaction. Someone else is directly contributing to your resulting orgasm.

So no, this isn’t the same as a solo session with the Pornhub open with your mouse in one hand and you in the other.

But is this a form of cheating? Well that’s where you get into a questionable area. Some people – and you’ll be hearing from them in the comments – will tell you that yes, that is unequivocally cheating. Some would argue that it’s not that different from going to a strip-club and getting some high-contact lap-dances. Some will say that because there was no actual contact involved, it’s not quite the same; at the very least, it’s a lesser offense than actually going out and having massage with a happy ending.

Ultimately it comes down to the arrangement you have with your girlfriend. Some people have complete monogamy – no kissing anyone but your partner, no touching of breasts, butts or genitals, no outside help getting any orgasms at all. Some are more monogamish — hat tip to Dan Savage — where there is somewhat more leeway in what is or isn’t cheating. Maybe someone else masturbating you is ok but oral sex isn’t. Or oral’s cool but no penetration. Still other couples are have open relationships; sex outside the relationship is allowed, within the agreed-upon rules

But the key to all of these is that they were negotiated in advance. Going outside what everybody agreed to means that yes, you’re totally cheating.

Because of the way our culture tends to view relationships, in an exclusive relationship, traditional monogamy is the assumed default unless otherwise specified. I think that’s a mistake and people should make this part of their Defining The Relationship conversation… but most people are going to assume that outside contact isn’t permitted.

So was this sexting session cheating? Well, let’s put it this way: do you feel that if you were to tell your girlfriend about this, she’d be upset? If so, then it’s probably a safe bet that she’s going to consider it cheating and your ass is going to be in trouble.

And to be perfectly honest, she’s not wrong to be upset about it. I’ll freely admit that my views on cheating are nuanced and that not all affairs are equal, this was still a crappy thing to do. This isn’t what I would consider a relationship-destroying event, but it’s definitely something that would put you in the doghouse until your girlfriend decided to forgive you.

Now, it’s entirely possible that she might not consider it cheating. You don’t know until you’ve talked with her. And hey, this may be your impetuous to define terms and make sure that the two of you are on the same page with regards to what is and isn’t allowed in your relationship.

But if you want a definitive answer as to whether this was cheating? You’re going to have to ask your girlfriend.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a sophomore in college, wrapping up my second year. I’m fairly heavily introverted, and I tend to relegate my free time to online gaming, which is more socially manageable. At least that’s what I tell myself.

About three years ago, I was introduced to a female gamer, “Player X,” by a male online acquaintance of ours, “Player Y.” Unfortunately, it was at a time when I was headed out the door as far as online activity goes. I had just finished high school and gotten a crummy full time job until college. For all intents and purposes, I dropped off of Player X’s radar for two years. During that time, she developed a close friendship with Player Y, although they don’t call it more than that.

At the start of my sophomore year, I got back into the gaming scene with the release of a new MMORPG that caught my attention. I reconnected with Players X and Y, and we’ve been doing online activities together almost daily for the past nine months or so. I’ve really taken a liking to her, and I awkwardly let them both know, individually, in December. Player X didn’t confess a reciprocation or flat out reject me in the moment, and she seems to have taken it well. However, Player Y finally admitted to me that he also has feelings for her; he’s apparently been patiently waiting for her to turn to him in a romantic sense all this time. My relationship with Player Y has been strained since then.

In the past months, Player X and I have become somewhat closer at the expense of my friendship with Player Y. He’s somewhat jealous and controlling, which has led to a certain distance between the two of them. They recently “patched things up” after a lengthy ordeal that hasn’t fully resolved. I’m worried that their relationship is unhealthy, but I went out of my way to support her by letting her know that I was ok with him being around if that’s what she wants. It’s difficult because I can be passive aggressive about these things.

In June, Player X will graduate from college. I don’t know how available she will be for online activities, and I’m guessing that she probably doesn’t either. She’s got her whole life ahead of her, after all. Nevertheless, I feel like I’m approaching this unfathomable cliff as time rolls on. She’s shared a decent amount of her personal life with me up to this point, but she’s held onto her anonymity this entire time. Somewhere along the lines, it got into my head that I could blink and she’d be gone. I’ve asked about contact information previously on a similar matter (I was going to be away for work for a couple of weeks), and she gave me an email address associated with her online pseudonym, keeping her identity on the quiet side. Neither of which were comforting but accepted.

Lately, I’ve been wanting to talk to Player X about slowly moving our friendship from online to offline. I want to meet her someday for lunch, drinks, a concert, dancing, etc. I don’t know where to begin to communicate any of this with her without potentially pushing her away. I’ve been working on building trust and stability between the two of us, but it hasn’t been easy with her attention divided between Player Y and me. The whole thing seems like a mess when you get down to the details, and there’s days when I feel like walking away from it all. However, spending time with her has become an integral part of my life, and it I don’t want to give it up. Any advice you have would be welcome.

Thanks for your time,

Player Z

DEAR PLAYER Z: I hate to say it, Player Z but you’re not playing the game you think you are.  You think you’re on the road to romance with the mysterious Player X. You’re working under the idea that every time Player Y comes into the chat room with the two of you, somebody’s just stepped up, slapped down his quarters and he’s competing with you for the hand of Player X.

In reality… not so much.

You and Player Y aren’t in competition here because a) women aren’t a prize to be won and b) she doesn’t want to take things offline.

Sorry.

I hate to be the one to tell you this but if X was interested in getting in contact with you out in the real world, she wouldn’t still be holding off on giving you her real name or she wouldn’t have given you a burner email account that’s not connected to her real-world identity. You’ve been hanging out with her and your buddy/rival Y for the last 9 months – that’s more than enough time for her to get comfortable enough with you to at least give you her first name, which she hasn’t. This should be your big clue as to where this is all going. She has made the conscious decision to keep you at a few steps removed from her real life. You’re not Facebook friends, you don’t follow each other on Twitter or Instagram. You just have the game. And that’s where she wants to leave it.

Maybe she has reasons. Maybe this is her fantasy life and it doesn’t resemble her real one at all. Maybe she’s had a bad experience with stalkers. Or maybe she doesn’t want to encourage your crush but doesn’t want to hurt you by outright rejecting you either.

This has nothing to do with her relationship – platonic or otherwise – with Player Y and it has this has everything to do with the one she has with YOU. The fact is that you’re a gaming buddy, maybe a Guild-y but that’s it. Even if Player Y were to suddenly disappear in a cloud of logic and sulfur, Player X just isn’t into you. If she were even slightly interested in being more than a gaming bud – even just platonic friends –  you’d know more than her handle. But you don’t. And that, ultimately, is that.

(And as an aside: Player Y isn’t exactly covering himself in glory by waiting for her feelings to turn romantic. He’s likely going to be waiting a long, long time.)

The best thing you could do is accept this and move on. There will be other women – women who want to actually get to know you in real life and actually go do date-type things out in the real world instead of in the hub between end-game raids.

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 completely nuts for a girl and she seems to be completely nuts for me. She’s smart, funny, gets excited by the littlest things, is a complete geek, and is seriously beautiful. I think she is about the best woman I’ve ever had a relationship with and I’d totally consider her to be marriage worthy. However you knew there was a “but” coming and here it is: she is pretty religious and wants to be married prior to engaging in *any* sexual activity. That includes just about any form of physical contact beyond some heavy petting… that is any heavy petting is okay so long as it doesn’t directly bring a digital member in contact with a genital member. This in itself isn’t that scary… I’m fairly traditional in a lot of ways myself… and I appreciate that she doesn’t hold others to her standards, being accepting of people who don’t feel that way.  She’s also super liberal when it comes to social mores and doesn’t worry about gay marriage and all of that.. she’s just attempting to stay true to “her walk” and as such she doesn’t want to have sex until she is married.

My concern is, what if I marry her and there is no sex? What if she finds I’m not right for her in a pants-feel type of way? Before her I’ve only had one sexual partner, and that only lasted for a few months and wasn’t that great so I know that that can happen. My own libido is maybe middling on a scale of ravenous to frigid, but I’m just afraid her’s is going to be on the frigid end and it means that by marrying her I’ll gain an awesome friend-life-partner to do cool stuff with but I’ll never get the physical aspect of it except very rarely (as in she wants to conceive, or it’s my birthday, and then I have to worry about her just lying back and thinking of England as it were, the whole time) and that’s just it. I’d be fine with a couple of times a month; I’m not a crazed sex machine who is constantly rock hard and raring to go. I actually fully agree with her in fact that I want to be completely head over heels with any person I’m having sex with because otherwise I don’t feel like either of us would be getting the full experience that both of us have said we need. I’ve talked with her a bit about this and that’s how we know we both are on the same page about how we are feeling. I think what is scaring me is that I’ve expressed how much she turns me on, how sexually she excites me, (something she has commented on recognizing due to certain things popping up between us…) and her responses to that are always deflection or to tell me how smart she thinks I am, or how much fun I am to watch movies and do geeky stuff with. To me it feels as though she wants us to stay in the early stage dating experience forever, and I’m desperate for it to become more physical at least occasionally, beyond hand holding and cuddling on the sofa..

I just don’t know what to do Doc, she’s everything I could want in a partner but I’m afraid to commit because I’m afraid that means I’m resigning myself to being a celibate life partner, not a romantic and sexual partner… but at the same time i don’t want to throw away a good thing. I just can’t seem to balance if sex is more important to me than companionship and she seems reluctant to talk about it. 

Sex Or Love

DEAR SEX OR LOVE: The problem isn’t that she doesn’t want to talk about it, SoL, it’s that she’s told you how she feels and you keep pushing the subject. The reason why she’s continually deflecting you or trying to change the subject is because you keep talking about how much you want to sleep with her and she doesn’t want to sleep with YOU right now.

Now here’s the thing: sexual compatibility and sexual satisfaction is an integral part of a relationship.Personally, I think waiting until marriage is an incredibly bad idea for precisely that reason. If you and your honey aren’t compatible or able to find a working compromise, your relationship is going to fall apart. It’s completely understandable that you’re worried about your future sexual compatibility with your girlfriend. It’s a legitimate fear and you’re well within your rights to want to be physically intimate with the person you’re dating.

That having been said: people have a right to set their boundaries wherever they want, and one of hers is “no sex before marriage.” You and I can disagree with her choice, but it’s totally her prerogative and it’s as valid as your wanting to have sex before marriage. But right now you aren’t respecting her boundaries. You may be framing it as being afraid of what your sex life will be after you’re married but the fact of the matter is, you’re constantly pushing her to change her mind and give in and that is not goddamn cool. Concern trolling about whether this is going to lead to a sexless marriage doesn’t make your badgering her any more acceptable. The fact that she wants to wait has absolutely nothing to do with the state of her libido. Maybe she’s asexual. Maybe she’s a raging goddamn inferno of horniness and she keeps it under control through levels of willpower that would impress the Green Lantern Corps. Maybe she’s somewhere in between like most people are. But all that doesn’t matter. She’s told you how she feels and why.  That’s the price of entry. You can respect her boundaries and accept that dating her means no sex before marriage or you can break up with her.

I’ll be honest with you: breaking up with her because she won’t have sex with you is going to sound like a dick move to a lot of people. There will be a lot of people who give you crap for it… and they’ll be wrong. If you have mutually incompatible needs, then breaking up is the best thing you can do. You want to have sex now. She does not. That’s the state of play. Sticking around pushing her to change her mind is a dick thing to do to her. Sticking around in a relationship that ultimately leaves you frustrated and upset is a dick thing to do to yourself.

There are other women out there, women who are just as wonderful who also want to have sex without necessarily saying “I do” first. If you’re not willing to wait until marriage, then you’re better off finding one of those women who’re on the same page as you and letting your girlfriend find a guy who’s on the same page as her.

Good luck.

Oh, and one more thing: if you do move to break up with her and she offers to sleep with you in order to keep you from leaving? If you take her up on that offer you will be one of the biggest bastards possible and go to the Special Hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a female virgin in my late 20s and I need some advice. One of the biggest issues I’ve run into is men fetishizing my sex life. Men either run away, view it as a challenge and want to “plant their flag”/Conquer me, or view me as their Manic Pixie Virgin Girl (if you start using that, I want royalties). The majority of “advice” I’ve been given surrounding this is “don’t tell a guy until after you’ve had sex with him”

This is obviously awful awful advice for a whole host of reasons.

I think it’s important to note here, that I’m not a virgin for any reason other than lack of opportunities. It doesn’t come from religion, or some idea of “saving myself” or Mr.Right. I’m not looking for LTR necessarily. There’s nothing “wrong” with me, I’m not broken, or traumatized. I’m a sex-positive person. Kinda just laying out all the reasons I’ve had people tell me I must be a virgin because XYZ.

The issue isn’t the why, or why men react the way they do (Say it with me everyone: SOCIETY IS THE WORST) Quite frankly I think the idea of virginity is pretty antiquated, nothing about me is going to really change. A penis doesn’t have the power to change who I am.

Question is: how do I approach this with men to avoid the aforementioned reactions?

Sincerely,

Not Your Manic Pixie Nerd Girl

DEAR NOT YOUR MANIC PIXIE NERD GIRL: Honestly, NYMPNG? You lay it out the way you told me and my readers: “I haven’t had PIV sex, no biggie.” This tells people exactly one thing about you: that you haven’t had a particular experience. How they react to that information, on the other hand, tells you everything about them.

The thing is, you can’t control people’s reactions. You can lay the groundwork as best you can, lay things out in a “this is not a big deal” manner and generally show that you’re pretty chill about the whole virgin thing but they’ll still react however they’re going to because the problem ultimately lies within them.

We as a society are allllll kinds of screwed up over the concept of sex and virginity and the assorted double-standards and social traps that are associated with sex just make it worse. Men are shamed for being virgins and expected to be mindless satyrs that’ll bang everything that moves, while women are shamed for having too much sex, but also shamed for not being desirable enough to have sex with in the first place. And while things have improved, we’re in that weird transitional place where women are encouraged to own their sexuality and buy vibrators in bulk but not be too slutty because women aren’t supposed to have sex like men (see also: Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck). Meanwhile, women who are still virgins are both fetishized and to be feared because “bro, if you sleep with a virgin she’s gonna wanna, like marry you and stuff and you never get away from that,” because as we all know, when you’re a virgin’s first, they imprint on you like a baby gosling.

(Amusingly, but not really, I’ve seen some women worry about being a man’s first for the exact same reason. Yay, equally awful treatment for all genders!)

So getting back to your question: there’s only so much you can do to avoid people having weird issues around virginity. They’re still an unfortunate part of our cultural background radiation. You can do your best to mitigate it, but you can’t entirely eliminate the possibility. For the most part, people will take their lead from you.  The more chill you are, the more likely to get a chill reaction from the people you talk to, but there will still be people who get weird about it no matter what you say. Some folks will, given half a chance and an opportunity to talk things out a bit like the grown-ass adult they are, recognize they’re being ridiculous and get over it. Whether you are willing to be their emotional Sherpa on this particular issue is up to you; if they’re an otherwise cool guy you really dig, it may be worth your time to help smooth over that particular rough edge. Your call. Others will – as you have experienced – try to mansplain your own sexuality to you; these dudes can and should be kicked to the curb at your most immediate opportunity.

But on the whole: keep it simple, keep it chill. The less of a big deal it is to you, the less of a big deal it will be to anyone worth dating.

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’ve been following your blog for a couple months now, and I think you could really help out with something, or someone in this case. 

I’m a cosplayer, and I like being connected with the cosplay community in my area. However, there is this one cosplay photographer (let’s call him J) who has a history of being problematic and frankly, a creeper.

To sum him up, J is in his mid-30’s, single, and really looking for a girlfriend. He uses his photography as an excuse to meet younger cosplay girls (some of them underage). He often asks for private photoshoots (usually in a public area, but still alone with a girl), offers to buy them things, or takes them out, usually for meals or a movie. 

I will admit that I was one of J’s… “targets” for a while, when I was fairly new to the cosplay scene. He would constantly message me on Facebook, to the point where I would only check Facebook for a few minutes before he had the chance to start chatting. He also would hover when I was at cosplay meet-ups, and asked for photoshoots that separated me from the group. One time I did cave to an offer to hang out, and there was some photos taken that made me feel uncomfortable, which I asked him to delete later. All his attention stopped as soon as I got a boyfriend though, which I’m grateful about. Other girls however, have had to deal with a lot worse.

J’s behavior has been going on for a while; it’s happened to enough girls that there’s a Facebook group all about him and trying to prevent him from creeping on other girls. Some of his guy friends are in said group too, but more because he has other problematic qualities that make him difficult to deal with. He invites himself along to group hangouts when he’s unwanted, he owes some of them a fair amount of money, and he often complains and makes himself out to be a victim.

This past summer, there was an intervention for J where a few friends pointed out his behavior, and asked him to start changing. He said he would work on it, and for a few months there didn’t seem to be any major new developments; no bad news, but not a lot of good news either. However, he seems to be up to his old ways and unwilling to change. His few friends are at the end of their ropes and want to cut ties all together.

How can you help someone who’s unwilling to change? How can you make him see that he has to change, or else alienate everybody he knows? Personally, I would like to just sit him down at a laptop and make him read the entire Doctor NerdLove archives, but hopefully you have a better solution.

Thanks,

Concerned Cosplayer

DEAR CONCERNED COSPLAYER: How do you help someone who’s unwilling to change?

You don’t.

You can’t make someone change against their will, nor is it your responsibility to try.

Lots of social groups have someone who can be creepy; often it’s just a case of the individual not knowing any better and having a firm come-to-Jesus meeting with him can set him straight. It’s the ones who refuse to change even after they’ve had their behavior pointed out to them who are worrisome… especially since many geeks don’t like confrontations.

You, Concerned Cosplayer, are not responsible for J’s behavior. You’re not his mom, his doctor, his girlfriend or his manic pixie dream girl sent by Heaven to shake him out of his rut and magically turn him from a creepy caterpillar to the beautiful sexy butterfly that exists deep within his soul. The only person who is responsible for J’s behavior is J. You can’t force him to change; the only way he’s going to change is if he wants to.

Now that being said: you can provide plenty of incentive to change… by not putting up with his shit and making a point to exclude his creepy ass. Quite frankly, this isn’t just creeper behavior; a lot of what you describe is PREDATORY behavior. Trying to get girls alone, especially young girls- and underage ones, what the actual hell –  who don’t know better is a HUGE goddamn red flag.

He’s abusing a position of trust – that of a pro or semi-pro photographer – as a way to try to find impressionable and potentially vulnerable women and that is not cool.

It’s not surprising that J’s targeting younger women – the sort of crap he’s pulling as a photographer would get him shut out of working with the modeling community. I’ve done my share of photography and let me tell you, the modeling community is small and very connected and they love nothing better than to make sure everybody knows not to work with the creepy assh

es.

This is exactly what you need to do: make sure word gets out far and wide about J until such a time that he’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s reformed.

It can be difficult to make this stick. Lots of insular groups, especially ones composed of individuals who’ve been excluded or shunned, have a hard time with the idea of excluding someone even when they fucking deserve it. It’s a common geek social fallacy that ostracizers are inherently bad and this makes them prone to letting people get away with behavior other social groups would never put up with. Moreover, many people will insist that they don’t “do drama” – that is to say that they are hoping to involve the stress involved in confronting an uncomfortable situation. They may even turn against the people who bring it up because it’s their fault for “causing drama” and making people feel uncomfortable rather than the predator in their midst. It ends up silencing the people who are trying to help because they’re stirring s

t up and nobody wants to to handle the awkwardness of social confrontations.

This ultimately enables the predatory types; refusing to take a stand is de facto siding with them.

You’ve said that his friends have had discussions with him that went nowhere. Fine. Under different circumstances, I’d say having a second, much more pointed discussion – one with some very definite ultimatums – would be warranted but J is already showing signs that he refuses to man up and take responsibility for his actions. If his behavior has been as widespread as you say then it’s time to start limiting his ability to interact with people.

First and foremost, this means blocking him on your social networks – and encouraging others in the cosplay community to do so as well. Secondly: document EVERYTHING. Have people share their stories, with as much detail as possible, so that others understand what he’s like and why. Stick strictly to the facts – who said what, how they felt and why. The more people who share their stories, the harder it is for others to say that you’re exaggerating or overly sensitive, or that there was a simple misunderstanding. Remember, this isn’t just your imagination. you said it yourself – he pressured you into working outside of your comfort zone. Imagine some of the younger girls who may not have the strength that you had to say “Hey, I’m really uncomfortable with these photos, so please get rid of them.”

Third: you and your friends are going to have to be willing to be confrontational. I know it’s difficult – women are socialized to avoid confrontation and nerds are particularly conflict-averse – but you’re going to have to be willing to block the hell out of him. If you see him talking to a newbie to the scene, someone who doesn’t know better, move in and pull her aside to explain things – especially if you can share your experiences with her. Don’t let him separate people from the herd and make sure others know not to let him pull people away.

Don’t let him hover around you at cons or cosplay events. Go to security and tell them that he’s making you uncomfortable. Let them deal with him wherever possible. It’s also worth bringing him up to the head of con security and the event organizers.

Don’t let him force himself into being part of the group. You can’t just try to avoid him or hope he doesn’t find out – you have to be in his face and make sure he knows in no uncertain terms that he’s unwelcome and why. If he tries to come along or “just happens” to show up, tell him to leave – and have others back you up so he can’t appeal to the group by trying to make himself out to be the victim. Don’t debate him or argue with him or justify yourself – this only implies that you feel as though you’re doing something wrong, which he will take full advantage of. Stand your ground: he is not welcome and he needs to go away.

Frankly, his friends should cut ties; he’s proven that he’s not willing to listen to them and he’ll go back to the status-quo as soon as he sees the chance.

It says a lot about you that you want to help him and that you’re afraid that he’s going to alienate everyone he knows. You’re a good person at heart and your desire to help is admirable. In this case, it’s severely misplaced. It’s not your duty to fix him or to drag him kicking and screaming to the light. You’re afraid that he’s going to get shut out when that’s exactly what needs to happen.

If he’s not willing to change on his own, then you have to give him a reason – in this case, cutting him off from the social circle he’s trying to take advantage of.

He’s not misunderstood. He’s not being creepy by accident. And he refuses to change.

Cut him out.

Good luck.

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