DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 22 year old college student, and I’m in something of a conundrum. See, about a month back I finally mustered up the courage to talk to my semester-long crush in one of my classes. First we bantered a little in class, then we had long talks around campus, then we were out on a lunch date, and the next thing I knew we were having steamy rooftop makeout time. Since then, we’ve been spending tons of time together: 4 days a week, easy, and for many hours at a time. We get along like a house on fire, as you might say; we enjoy each other’s company and the sex is great.

If it sounds good, that’s because it has been, but here’s the catch: she has a boyfriend. She was cheating on him with a guy who apparently became extremely needy and got the brush before I met her, but her boyfriend has been with her for years now. Their relationship is, by her admission, in dire straits. She talks about seeing him like it’s an undesirable obligation, and says that when she has sex with him she’s either thinking about me or watching the clock. She’s been totally transparent about this with me from the start.

I was wary of this arrangement from the get-go, too, and I tried my best not to get emotionally invested in her. Unfortunately, a month of near constant contact has left me seeing this girl as someone who I want to get serious with, and the way she acts when she’s with me is giving me the same impression of her. We hold hands and kiss in public, we do stuff together (apart from sex), she’s met my parents… At this point, I just want to dispense with the secrecy and become a couple in name as well as action.

So I bit the bullet and asked her to dump him. She seemed amenable to the idea, but worried that he was depressed and relied on her to keep himself afloat and that she wasn’t really sure how to dump him, especially after such a long time. She agreed to think about it, in any case. My questions, then, are these: how strongly should I feel comfortable pushing her to dump her boyfriend, since she seems to be with him more out of inertia than actual love? And if she says yes and goes through with it, how do I build trust with someone who can so brazenly cheat, even when she’s been totally honest in all our interactions?

Thanks a bunch,

Replacement Goldfish

DEAR REPLACEMENT GOLDFISH: Before you go all in on your snugglebunny RG, I think you may want to take a few minutes and seriously think about your relationship with her. Right now, you’re in a secretive relationship with someone who has been repeatedly cheating on her boyfriend of many years – first with the dude before you and now with you. And these are the people you know of. All the while, she’s continuing to still be with her boyfriend, whom she professes she doesn’t like all that much.

Now to be sure, my views on monogamy are nuanced at best (and – in fairness – not necessarily always popular either) and I don’t think that cheating is the worst thing that could happen in a relationship. Sometimes it’s the least bad option in an awful situation. Sometimes, especially towards the end of a relationship in a downward spiral, it’s a person’s way of slamming their hand down on the self-destruct switch. I also don’t necessarily think that “once a cheater, always a cheater” is true or even necessarily fair.

But with all that being said: I think you’re heading into a bad situation. Thus far, she’s telling you that she’s afraid to hurt him by breaking up with him, but she’s been screwing other people behind his back (so we’re lead to believe) and she’s currently very publicly cheating on him with you. I’m a big believer in “deeds, not words,” and while her mouth is saying one thing, her actions are saying another entirely. Even if everything she’s saying is the god’s honest truth… that’s an awful thing to do to somebody. Especially if she’s already afraid to dump her boyfriend for fear that he might hurt himself.

So let’s just say that right now I’m not really that inclined to see her in the most favorable light right now.

But hey, I’ll be charitable and assume that she’s being sincere and honest with you about her and her boyfriend. Breaking up with someone you’ve been in a long-term relationship with can be difficult, even when you know it’s what needs to be done. But even if she’s being honest with you about all of this and isn’t just stringing you along like the latest in a line of side-pieces… her behavior suggests somebody who is either very self-centered or doesn’t stop to think about the unnecessary pain she’s causing to others. That, in and of itself, is a pretty strong sign that she is not someone you should be in a relationship with in the first place. She may be wonderful in all these other ways, but if she’s that blithely unaware of the consequences of her actions, then the odds are good that she’s going to hurt you in a similar manner, even if she doesn’t mean to.

I don’t think that entering a relationship with someone that started via infidelity means you can’t or shouldn’t trust them. Nuance exists, circumstances differ and not all infidelities are equal. But in your specific case, FG? I think it’s a bad, bad, HOLY CRAP NO bad idea no matter how you slice it. Either she’s a serial cheater, someone who isn’t good at monogamous relationships or she doesn’t think about how what she does affects other people. None of those are signs that continuing to date her is a good idea.

My advice? Save yourself the future heartache and pain that you’re currently setting yourself up for. Stop pressuring her to dump her boyfriend, dump her yourself, and find someone who isn’t coming with this much ethically questionable baggage. You can do much better than this.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have found myself stuck in a couple problems.

You see, I have a boyfriend, weve been together for about two years and he’s really, really sweet. We love each other a lot. There’s, however, one major issue: I’m asexual and he’s not. I ended up giving in to his desires because he was either too desperate or I pitied him for having an ace girlfriend like me. But I can’t really enjoy it, at all. I find myself panicking inside and praying for him to finish soon (and just so you know, I don’t really think he’s bad at it. I’ve tried masturbating before and the sensation is the about the same). We never really fought about it, and I tend to keep this issue to myself.

Given that, there is yet another problem. A bigger one, though it might sound stupid.

There’s this person I met on the internet four years ago (I’m pretty sure this person is a girl, so I’ll refer this person as a she to make things easier). She hides herself behind the image and name of a male fictional character. We’ve met online one day, started chatting and then we became friends. Although she really never told me anything about her “true identity”, I started searching for her in the web with some info she might “accidentally” have spilled (mostly her artworks). So I found some of her profiles in social networks, and I have some pretty solid evidence that those profiles belong to the person behind that character. And the more I found out about her, the more it piqued my interest. It’s really creepy what I’ve done, but I couldn’t help myself. So I kept silent about any info I’ve found about her. Anyways, there was a point where she started studying really hard for her masters, so for about a year and a half, we didn’t chat as often, but we never forgot each other, and kept sending messages every now and then.

About three months ago she was finally free from her masters and she came to me to let me know she was available again. One day about those three months ago I experienced an emotional crisis due to family issues. I was feeling really, really, really lame and cried a lot. I was desperate to talk to someone, but my boyfriend wouldn’t respond and my best friend was busy, studying for her exams. Then, like in a miracle that girl messaged me, and I responded right away, and I let out all of what I was going through. From that day on, we came back to chatting more than ever. And when I came to it, we were flirting each other.

At first, we both took that as a joke, but then I found myself getting really emotional about her, so let’s say I have slipped some hints about my feelings for her. Then she said “Don’t fall for me, we’re so far apart and I’m not fond distance relationships”, and I just played it off, saying “Nah, don’t worry”. And we kept chatting and “flirting” like always, and I couldn’t really erase my romantic feelings about her. So I kept those feelings for myself. But… as time passed we got closer and closer and closer… and flirtier… And I’ve always kept playing along. Until a couple days she said to me “I might as well fall for you, y’know. You better take responsibility if this ever happens”.

I squealed. My heart was beating like crazy.

My reply? I laughed and said “guilty as charged”.

And now she’s been talking about actual plans on meeting me in real life.

If you ever ask me, while all this stuff happened, my relationship with my boyfriend was just normal. And I didn’t really forget about him. And… she never really asked if I had a boyfriend… and I never really mentioned it.

And here’s my dilemma: I love both of them. Deeply. I don’t want to ruin my relationship with my boyfriend because of someone I’ve never met IRL before (plus never told me about their real name or face), but I also don’t want to give up on that girl. So I find myself unable to make a choice. And if ever comes a situation where I need to tell them the truth, I don’t want to hurt any of them, or damage our relationships.

It sounds really crazy, but… this was the best way I could explain this. Can you perhaps share me some advice?

One Crooked Lovebird.

DEAR ONE CROOKED LOVEBIRD: Hoo boy. This is gonna be a rough one.

First things first: stop having sex with your boyfriend, OCL. While I do believe in making arrangements when couples have mismatched libidos, there’s “providing your partner with a handjob/dirty talk/oral/what-have-you because you love them and want to make them happy” and then there’s “doing things that make you freak out and want to curl up and cry in the shower”. Forcing yourself to have sex which is clearly something you can’t stand is only going to make you miserable. That’s not fair to you and, I suspect if he knew how it was making you feel, it’d freak him out too. You and he need to have a long talk about all things sexual and asexual in your relationship because this is a bad scene. He deserves to know how you feel, you deserve to have the sex – or lack-thereof – that you want and if you want this relationship to continue, you’re going to have to find a very different compromise.

So that’s your first task. Stop having sex with him and have a long and honest talk with him and find some other way of making things work when sex with you is off the table, period the end. And if he can’t handle that… well, I know you love him, but that’s a sign that this relationship isn’t going to work.

Second things second… well, brace yourself because I’m going to be blunt and you’re not going to like this. And while I know there’s going to be an instinctual push to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I want to assure you: I have been dealing with people online for longer than you’ve been alive. I have seen and experienced just about every form of online relationship it is possible to have, romantic and platonic, both good and bad. So believe me, this is coming from personal, bitter and hard-won experience when I tell you this:

You’re not in love with this other person.

You are in love with the idea of them. They are not a person to you right now, they are a fantasy. You have a lot of assumptions and maybes built around things that may or may not be the person in question.  You have literally no idea who they really are. You don’t know their real name, what they look like or even their gender. You don’t know if this person even exists in the first place. You know nothing (Jon Snow…). It is extremely easy to keep and maintain a fake persona online, even for years. You don’t know that the evidence they “accidentally” shared was accidental or even theirs in the first place. There are plenty of folks who know all the tricks to create the impression of “oops, I didn’t mean to do that” in order to send people looking in the way they want.

And now the two of you are talking about meeting up? Um… no. Not just no but hell no. This is waving more red flags than a Chinese military parade.

Straight talk: even if this person is 100% who you think they are, that doesn’t mean that starting a relationship with them is a good idea. The fact that she hasn’t seen fit to share with you even little things like their name is a bad sign. Moreover, just because you click online doesn’t mean that you’re going to click in person. It’s great to say that you know somebody’s soul or their true self, but relationships have a physical component too, and that can’t be judged except in person. Even if you’re asexual, there are still issues ranging from “do you like how they smell” to “do you like how they feel when you cuddle together on the couch” that affect compatibility and attraction. You literally cannot judge these except in person and I have seen more online “relationships” than I can count founder on the rocks of things not working in person.

But again: that assumes that your online cuddlebug exists. Quite frankly, from everything you’ve told me, I’m going to say “no, no they don’t,” and if they do, they’re demonstrably not who you think.

So my second piece advice is that you need to take several steps back from your online friend until you have some very solid evidence that a) they exist and b) who they actually are. This means more than just names and pictures; those are absurdly easy to come by. I mean Skype chats where you can see them and test them by having a friend call them while you’re chatting with them as well as an extensively well documented online presence of long standing.

And even then, I’d be pretty damn skeptical. I’d certainly not say you’re in the clear to declare your everlasting love for them. They’re going to have to do a lot of work to prove that they’re legit before I’d say that meeting up platonically in a very public place with many people you know in close proximity is a reasonable idea

Don’t let yourself get caught up and hurt because of a fantasy.

I know I’ve just dumped a lot of harshness on you, OCL, and I know it sucks. Believe me, I wish I could give you happier, easier to digest advice. But right now, you’re in a bad, if not potentially dangerous place and you need to make a lot of changes to make it right. Take some time to work on the relationship you currently have before you worry about the one that you wish you had. Your online friend needs to take a distant place in your priorities until they can prove themselves to you beyond any doubts.

Trust me: I have been there, I have done that and I have a lovely line of t-shirts you can peruse from the experience.

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 need help.

I fell in love with a man three and a half years ago. He lived on another continent. It was hard. But we worked hard for it. We had miscommunications, he did things that hurt me, my mental health was hard to deal with at times, we both had hardships and life changes. But after over two years together and a few international moves on his part, he finally found a dream job in my city. I thought we’d done it. We fought and worked for our relationship, through all that we were the bright spot in each other’s lives, we were finally at the point where it would be all downhill from here. We lived together for about four months. Then it all collapsed when it came out that he’d been cheating on/with me since day one. I had forgiven him every time I caught him in lies about other partners, I’d believed him when he’d sworn he’d do better by me. But it was all a lie. Our relationship was a con job.

Two and a half years of lying, cheating, gaslighting, violating my most fundamental boundaries. Every scrap of love and support and affirmation was knowingly stolen from me. 

And here’s the problem:

I still love him.

I know the version of him I love doesn’t exist. The man who respected me, the man who worked to live up to my moral standards, the man who meant it when he looked me in the eyes and swore to be better, he was an act. I can never go back to not knowing, things can’t be what they were before. I would never be able to trust that he was engaging with the work to improve himself in good faith, so things can’t move forward. Our past was a lie and our future is non-existent.

But here I am, almost a full year later and I miss him so much I can’t breathe sometimes. I dream about him. I can’t see a picture of his face without crying (and I can’t avoid him completely because we have many mutual friends I won’t part with and social media blocking/muting systems are pathetic). Part of it is missing having a serious partner, part of it is the trauma of how it all ended, but a lot of it is HIM. I miss our banter, I miss his perspective on things, I miss his smile and his face and his voice. I still want to tell him weird facts and mundane crap about my day. I miss listening to him rant about things he was interested in and things he was mad about and things I would never have encountered on my own.

My mind knows that he was lying to me non-stop, and nothing was really real. But my heart found something that made it feel the best it ever had, that it would have fought for through anything, and I can’t get it to bow to reality.

How do I fall out of love with a dream?

Sincerely,

Longing to Wake Up

DEAR LONGING TO WAKE UP: What you’re feeling is very common, especially after a harsh break-up. One of the things we rarely think about with the end of a relationship is the way that they change our identity. We’re no longer just ourselves; we’re a collective, part of an entity that exists outside of us. It’s no longer just Longing to Wake Up, but Longing to Wake Up+Cheating Dickhead coming together to form a gestalt entity that is the relationship. You learn to incorporate the relationship into your every day life, to the point where so much becomes muscle memory. All the little accommodations and gestures you’ve had to learn and develop become something that you do almost without thinking. When the relationship ends, everything changes. In many ways, it’s like losing a limb; suddenly this significant part of who you were is gone and everything about your life now can’t help but remind you of that absence. You’ve lived so long with those gestures and accommodations that you never think about the fact that they serve no purpose now. They’ve become a phantom limb, the ghost of the relationship that you used to have. And yet they’ve been so much a part of your life that it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to go through the motions without thinking. Like someone who reaches with the hand that they lost, you will do some innocuous gesture, go through some automatic routine and suddenly you get reminded that this part of your life is gone.

And it will hit you like a hammer to the chest and reopen those wounds that you thought were closed and scarred over.

But you, LTWU, have a complication. The person you thought you were in love with never existed. They were an elaborate fiction, lies on top of lies, false promises and dreams that could never be. So not only are you faced with this challenge to your identity – the relationship’s phantom limb – but the fact that even the memory of your relationship has been stolen from you. It’s not just that you’ve lost a limb but you’ve discovered that you never had that limb in the first place. And so now you’re caught in this state of never knowing how to feel. How do you mourn a relationship when the person you thought you were in a relationship with never really existed? When he’s been lying to you all this time?

It’s made all the harder because it makes you question everything. Not just about them, but you. Like with people who’ve been catfished, you’re left with the question of “how could I not know?” Nobody likes to think that they’re the sort of person who is so overly trusting that they could be tricked by a conman. Nobody likes to think that they’re the sort of person who’s gullible enough to be taken in by somebody with practiced lies and empty promises. We like to think that we’re too smart to be fooled by a silver tongue and words that offer us exactly what we want to hear. So this loss is compounded – the loss of the limb and being forced to question everything about how you see yourself.

And it doesn’t help when other people ask: “how stupid were you?”. You are already asking yourself that question, but it’s always easy to pass judgement with an outsider’s perspective. They have the distance to see the manipulation and the deceptions. They’re far enough from the center to see everything; they aren’t in the center where you can only see what’s right in front of you. It’s easy to see the grift when you’re far enough away. It’s easy to see it hindsight, after all of the blanks have been filled in. It’s much, much harder to see it when you’re in the thick of it.

But short of being visited by a madwoman in a big blue box, there’s nothing you can do about having loved the wrong person. All you can do is figure out how to move forward from where you are.

But the first step in your moving forward, LTWU? It’s to change your perspective on your relationship. Don’t think about this as a break-up, because that’s not what happened. What happened is that your lover died. Those feelings you felt? Those were real. Those memories you have of the better times? Those were real. But in the moment that this man revealed his true self to you, the man you thought you were in a relationship with died – tragically, suddenly and without warning. Now all that’s left is for you to mourn his loss and process your grief. Yes, there’s this man who looks so much like your dead partner that it makes your teeth ache, but it’s not him. He’s not the person you gave your heart to. He’s not the person who you spent those years with, who shared your hopes and your dreams even as a continent separated the two of you. That man is dead and gone. So mourn him. Grieve his loss. Let yourself rage against the unfairness of it all, that this great man was taken from you. Feel that loss, knowing that he’s no longer in this world with you. Savor the memories you had with this man and regret that memories are all you have, even as his seeming doppelgänger continues to be around. But that’s not him.

The next step is to practice some radical forgiveness. Not of the man who deceived you; he doesn’t deserve another second of your time or your thoughts. Let him stew in your utter disregard of him. Let him face the damnatio memorae from your life. No, you need to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for being willing to believe someone who preyed on your trust. Forgive yourself for being willing to open your heart up to someone who wasn’t worthy of your time. Forgive yourself for loving not too wisely but too well. Forgive yourself for trusting somebody who wasn’t worthy of your trust.

And the next step is simple: give it time. Now that you realize you’re mourning a death, not a break-up, you’ll find that time will help this wound finally close and you’ll be free of all of this and ready to face life anew.

Because the sin here isn’t yours, it’s his. You aren’t to blame here, he is. All you did was love somebody and you lost him. Mourn that loss, grieve that death and you’ll find the strength to move forward.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 24 year old guy and I’ve had a crush on a girl for two years. Since I’m below average looking (at best) it’s normal for me to get crushes on girls out of my league and never have my feelings returned. However, even if I had a chance, I wouldn’t date her and I’m relieved that she doesn’t like me back. For me having feelings for her and thinking about her daily it’s enough and our casual nod makes my day. Everytime I see her my heart starts pounding, my legs shake and my mind goes blank. It’s an amazing feeling and nothing else makes me feel so alive.

I understand that I’ve put her on a pedestal and if I (miraculously) have the opportunity to get to know her that feeling will vanish because I’ll get used to talking to her and I’ll discover that she’s a human being just like me and everyone else. And if we became a couple, eventually we’ll have a fight and I don’t want to get mad a her or think negatively about her or just lose the way I feel right now. I just want to keep being infatuated with her and feeling that way as long as I can.

My question is: is it normal? I feel like I’m weird because it’s not only with her, I has been like this all my life. I’ve always been the guy with a hopeless crush on someone. My friends are not like this and they all have had relationships and I feel different. I like girls but I think kissing or sex is disgusting. I’m fine with hugs but anything else seems like too much for me. That’s weird too? There’s something wrong with me?

A Really Confused Guy

DEAR A REALLY CONFUSED GUY: First of all, ARCG, I’m gonna level with you: I’m not buying your “below average looking”. I’ve been doing this gig for eight years now and frankly, if I could have a dime for every self-proclaimed hideous troglodyte who was actually perfectly average, Elon Musk and I would be having giant mecha fights in San Jose. 90% of somebody’s looks have absolutely nothing with their facial structure or symmetry and everything to do with presentation, style and grooming. Almost every dude I’ve encountered who swears they’re Quasimodo needed a hair cut and beard trim, clothes that fit properly and a better skin-care regimen… that’s it.

Now let’s talk about your question instead. First of all: yes, I understand why you prefer never letting your crush go beyond being a crush. Crushes are exciting. They’re thrilling. They’re the pounding of your heart at the very mention of their name, the way adrenaline dumps into your blood when you think they’re looking your way, the same feeling of safe fear we get from thrill rides and horror movies. You, like a lot of folks, are in love with being in love.

But getting to know somebody doesn’t mean the end of a crush. Finding out that they’re human doesn’t mean the loss of those feelings. Sure, you’ll discover that she’s a person and not a goddess… but that makes her all the more thrilling and beautiful. Perfection is dull; those flaws we all have are part of what make us unique and exciting, deep and rich and fulfilling. She may come down off that pedestal, but you’d discover how much more there is to her than you could ever believe.

If you don’t want to find those hidden depths and reveal those secret sides and unique aspects to her, that’s your call man. You do you. I think you’re missing out, personally, but hey, I can’t live your life for you.

Your next question though, about physical affection? It’s not that common, but it ain’t that unusual either. What you’re describing sounds an awful lot like one of the many forms of asexuality. Some ace folks simply have no sex drive whatsoever; they like the intimacy of physical contact, of cuddling or hugs or occasional kisses but have no desire for sex. Others, like you, find sexual contact to be uncomfortable, undesirable or out and out disgusting and so they avoid it all.

Now if that’s something that bothers you – you want to be comfortable with sex and sexual acts – then it certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea to find a therapist who can help you unpack those feelings. The underlying causes could be anything from sensory processing issues to a disorder like misophonia. If that’s a path you want to go down, then you might want to go to the Association of American Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists’ website and visit their referral directory to find a sex-positive therapist in your area.

But I would also recommend you visit the Asexual Visibility and Education Network at asexuality.org and browse through their resources and forums. I think these would help you not only be more comfortable with you who are but recognize that you’re not alone, not broken or even all that unusual. There’s a community of people out there who are very much like you ARCG and many of them have faced the same issues you have.

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: Your column here and on Kotaku have helped me a lot in the past and I’m now in a situation where my friends are giving conflicting advice and I felt like this was the best place to turn for clarity.

There’s some context before I (she/her) get into this particular situation: I’m currently a graduate student in a program with a pretty small class size and that’s resulted in a somewhat toxic atmosphere where gossip reigns supreme. I’ve actually seen people lie to undermine one another in some bizarre popularity contest. I’ve managed to stay pretty under the radar with a fair amount of work, keeping my personal life totally private, deflecting questions, and making it clear I don’t tolerate BS when it comes to work. The worst my relationships with classmates gets is the level of distant but cordial coworkers.

I became close with only a few classmates and realized a few months ago that I have feelings for one of them. I was planning on talking to him about it and seeing if there was any chance he’d be interested, but recently things have happened that have made me question how well I know him. He and I are friends, but we’ve known each other for less than a year and recently he pulled some crap that prompted a lot of class gossip. I’ve heard about 5 different versions of events. Some have pretty clear, deliberate lies, some pretty obviously directed at his friends to see what our reaction would be.

A few of us were hurt by what happened, but we’ve talked to him about it. It was a really honest conversation and we’re all still close. I thought I had worked through it since the hurt was unintentional and what happened was all a collection of accidents and honest stupidity. The whole story was not even that bad it was just a series of stupid decisions in the worst possible circumstances.When we talked, he also seemed to realize that a lot of his actions came from the very typical guy thing where he didn’t unpack a lot of his reasoning before just diving into things. He seemed to be serious about trying to be better and to thank before he acts. However, I’m still hearing different accounts about what happened from different people, and some friends who don’t know everything have pretty negative opinions about him now.

My question is this: should I still have that conversation about dating with him? I still have kind of strong feelings for him, and I do trust that he told me the truth about what happened. But every time I hear a new story I have to question my evaluation of him as being just not the brightest with people versus actually manipulative. Plus I’m worried about what my friends would think if it works out. I don’t want to get sucked into this weird middle school drama my program has going. Is it selfish to be worried about my reputation? I really just want clarity but is that worth all the potential hassle?

Sincerely,

Risk Averse

DEAR RISK AVERSE: Ah, academia, where the infighting is the most vicious because the stakes are so very, very low.

Before I get to your specific question, RA, let’s work backwards. Yes, it’s totally reasonable to not want a relationship because of the drama-bomb it could set off in your life. There’re many people out there who may be the hottest thing since World War III, but they bring with them a load of complications and consequences that you would be justified in wanting to avoid. It could be that they are in the middle of a contentious and bitter divorce. They could have a career that puts them under the microscope, and your dating them might invite people to pry into your life too. Or they could be someone who lives their life by the “hold my beer” philosophy and doesn’t give a second’s thought to the potential consequences of their actions… especially if those are consequences that other people have to deal with.

But by the same token, I’ve seen plenty of awesome people who’ve been screwed over by circumstances outside of their control. They had orbiters and stalkers who tried to make life miserable for anyone who’d date them. They had bitter, even borderline sociopathic exes who wanted to destroy their lives or had attracted the attention of the Internet Hate Machine and were deluged by trolls and worse. A lot of times, the goal of these movements isn’t just to run over somebody for the LOLs but to utterly isolate them from anything resembling a support network – from friends to lovers to co-workers to employers. The end goal is to make them so radioactive that folks won’t associate with them for fear of being hit with the splash damage.

I’m not gonna lie: it takes a special kind of person who is willing to stand beside the target of that sort of potential s

tstorm, and those folks can be hard to find.

So in the abstract: yes, it’s understandable that you might choose to not date someone because of the potential drama. But by that same token, you’re allowed to not date someone for any reason you choose, from the drama llama in their lives to the way their nose whistles when they breathe. Folks get to decide what their personal deal-breakers are, no matter how absurd it may seem to an outside party.

Now with all that being said, let’s talk about your case, RA. You have a few things that you want to consider before you dive into this particular relationship.

The first is simple: how much do you trust this guy versus the people who have first-hand information? One of the issues when it comes to gossip – malicious or not – is that sometimes it can turn simple misunderstandings into deliberate malignant acts. But by the same token… sometimes that gossip isn’t malicious, it’s defense. There’re plenty of spaces where information is spread by whisper networks because the culture supports and defends the bad actors over their victims. Even the famous S

tty Media Men document was shared as a way to let women know who to be on the lookout for, not to slander innocent men because SCREW YOU PENIS, THAT’S WHY.

So you’re gonna have to make a gut-check about whether this guy is being straight with you – both about what happened and how he’s trying to do better.

The next question is: how much can this gossip actually affect your life? It’s one thing if you’re dealing with high-school bulls

t – snickers in the hallways, whispers and dirty looks and absurd rumors. It’s another if these are behaviors that could actually affect your life – both in the here and now and after you finish the program. Are these people who’ll try to isolate you from your friends by making associating with you toxic to their social health? Is the toxic atmosphere contained to the program, or do you run the risk of things like ginned up Twitter mobs or SEO bombs designed to destroy your personal and professional reputation?

If it’s just annoying high-school mean-girl crap: are you willing to ignore it or grit your teeth and power through it until you finish your graduate program? If it’s the latter… well, honestly, if things are that bad, I’d be more worried about getting the hell out of that program over dating somebody.

But the final question you have to ask is the most important: is this guy worth the potential headaches? This isn’t an idle question; any relationship is going to come with its own particular challenges and it’s own slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Some people are absolutely worth it; they’re reasonable people in unreasonable situations, and a relationship with them will be so enriching and amazing that it’s well worth the fight. Others aren’t; they may be a dirty good time, but the potential drawbacks outweigh what they bring to the table. After all – as Alanna Massey famously put it – d

k is abundant and of low value. Everybody has their flaws, so focus on the good and what draws you to him. If he’s a great guy who maybe needed to learn to think before he acts and shows that he’s actually willing to live up to his potential, then it may well be worth the potential gossip and drama. If this is a guy who’s a good time but not necessarily a love for the ages… well, there’re other Slab Squatthrust’s out there who don’t come with a side-order of tedious social politicking.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a lady in a long-term relationship with a man. We don’t have too many issues in our relationship and the ones we do have we’ve talked about and are actively addressing. There is one thing though, that’s kind of come up as an issue that we’ve talked about but don’t really know how to solve: stickin’ it in my butt.

He’s never done anal and really wants to try, I’ve tried it and enjoy it with a considerate partner (which he is). But the couple of times we’ve worked our way up to it, his anatomy hasn’t really cooperated. He’s hard while he lubes me up and I’m playing with his penis, but he goes soft when he tries to put it in. I suspect he’s psyching himself out – he places a lot of emphasis on how he sees this as a kind of gift that I’m honoring him with (I don’t see it that way, but I never saw any harm in that belief until now), and I wonder if he’s dealing with performance anxiety. We’ve talked about it and he puts it down more to lack of stimulation while managing the logistics of positioning and speed, but admits that he might also be putting too much weight on the act to be able to perform.

We’ve put an unspoken hold on things for now – I figure if he keeps trying and failing it’s going to become a Big Thing in his mind and it will get worse. We have a perfectly satisfying sex life without it, but I know he still wants to try (and I’m kinda excited about being his first in this particular arena).

Do you have any suggestions about how to get over the erection-softening mental block? I am more than happy to keep him physically stimulated during prep, but I’d love some ideas on how to keep his heads in the game too.

Thanks!

– Fifth Base

DEAR FIFTH BASE: I suspect part of the problem that your boyfriend is having is that he sees anal as this massive undertaking – the sort of thing that’s usually reserved for porn and not something that girlfriends do. The fact that he’s treating this as a “gift” you’re giving him, as opposed to a new and different sexual activity that you enjoy, leads me to believe that he thinks you’re not actually into this. If he’s holding on to this idea that you’re doing things under some sort of duress, or that you’re only doing this for him, then I’m not surprised he’s deflating a little. It’s sweet – he doesn’t want to do something he thinks you don’t want – but it’s also going to be an ongoing problem if he can’t bring himself to take “YES YES YES” for an answer.

Now there’re various options for the physical side of the equation. The two of you could, for example, head over to your local sex shop and get a cock ring for him. Many people use cockrings to maintain their erections; the rings help restrict the blood-flow in an erect penis so that the blood can’t leave the erectile tissue and leave him at half-mast. This would help mitigate the issue of trying to keep his hard-on during the prep and warm up.

But I suspect the better answer would be to dial back on penetration for now and instead, work anal play into your regular sexual routine. Whether it’s the (gentle) use of fingers, a butt-plug (make sure it has a flared base) or other forms of anal stimulation and play, the more he experiences you enjoying butt-stuff, the less he’ll see it as this sacrifice you’re making on his behalf. By demystifying it and taking it from being this profound event and more just one more way the two of you please one another, he’ll be able to get out of his head and put his attention where it belongs: on the two of you.

It may also help for him to check out Erika Moen’s excellent webseries Oh Joy Sex Toy. She and her partner Matt have a number of great educational comics about anal sex and anal play, which may help him get over any hang-ups he’s feeling about getting up in there.

Good luck.

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