DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m one of those lucky guys who met their significant other pretty damn early in their life. In my case she is my second girlfriend and I met her even before college. I married her a few years ago and we still have a very affectionate and fulfilled relationship. But nevertheless, now being in my late twenties, I have to admit to myself that I’m probably not so much into life-long monogamy.

Fortunately, my wife feels the same and so we read your articles about non-monogamy and talked a lot about the pros and cons of opening the relationship. While neither of us is really comfortable with the idea of an actual open relationship, we both agreed that some extra-martial action is tolerable as long as we keep it secret and within reasonable limits (though keeping it secret from one another might make it hard to gauge and maintain a certain symmetry in our respective promiscuity). 

So I decided to keep my eyes open for a potential partner in crime, became more outgoing and more comfortable with flirting, but I soon noticed a problem which puzzled me: Is there any way I can tell a woman that I’m interested in a sexual adventure or even a little romance, but that she has to accept the fact that my wife is my number one and that there’s no chance I would dump a decade long relationship for a casual hook-up without sounding like a jerk?

Though I’m quite sure that there’s a tremendous number of women who are interested in that sort of no strings attached flings, directly approaching them and saying something along in the lines of “Hey, I think you’re hot and it’d be great if the two of us made your bed squeak this weekend, as long as you don’t tell my wife!” could be just a little too much for a girl you just met in a coffee shop.

On the other hand, asking a woman out, having a date or two and eventually telling her that “Yeah, I enjoyed your company (and your soft parts), but you know, there’s this girl I’m married to and you’d better not call me again. Sorry if you misunderstood my intentions” would make me a complete a

hole to say the least.

So, Doc, where do you see the golden mean between those extremes? Or do you recommend something entirely different?

Married My Second Girlfriend

DEAR MARRIED MY SECOND GIRLFRIEND: First of all, good for you for having the sort of relationship that you and your wife can communicate your desires openly and honestly!

As a general rule, I am a big believer in full disclosure when it comes to opening up the relationship, and I’m sure many of the poly and monogamish readers of the column are too. This is important if only so that both of you can provide a certain level of accountability to one another with regards to your limits, as well as to be able to touch base with how you both are feeling about the matter. I tend to believe that more communication is better in general, but even more so with open relationships. If nothing else, you may find that talking about what the two of you have been doing with your outside partners may bring new and unexpected sexual excitement to your own relationship.

But hey, everybody gets to make the rules for their own relationships and if being mutually discrete makes it work for you, go for it… with one caveat that I will get to in a moment.

Finding a new partner while you’re in an open relationship can be tricky. There will be plenty of people who just aren’t cool with banging a married man, no matter what permission slips his wife has given to him, which is why I generally recommend early disclosure… ideally before you go on that first date. It’s only fair that you let them know in advance what they’re signing on for. Yes, this means that there will be women who will refuse to date or sleep with you right off the bat; this is the price you pay for being ethically open rather than a cheating piece-of-s

t going behind his wife’s back.

Now, there ARE women out there who are interested in no-strings-attached sex and there are women who won’t mind playing around with a guy who already has a girlfriend or a wife. Some will get off on “seducing” a married man into cheating, while others won’t mind as long as she can actually confirm with your wife that you’re actually on the up and up about being in a semi-open relationship and not a cheating piece-of-s

t who’s just saying whatever it takes to get laid. And believe me, there are plenty of dudes out there who will say “Yeah, my wife’s totally cool with this, no need to ask her…” in order to get into somebody’s panties.

Thus the exception: while in an ideal world the two of you would have a complete DADT arrangement, if she wants to talk to your wife – or meet with her, without you – in order to make sure you have permission to be let off the leash, you make the arrangements. If you and the wife aren’t cool with this… well, you’re more or less going to have to accept that there will be people who would otherwise love to sleep with you that are now considered out of bounds. Sorry.

That having been said, you may have an easier time finding potential partners by looking for people who’ve already opted into ethical non-monogamy. You can start by creating accounts on various dating apps that have options for open relationships. OKCupid specifically allows people to indicate that they’re in an open relationship, while apps like Hinge and #Open are designed with polyamory and non-monogamy in mind. This helps smooth out the conversations surrounding whether or not your potential play partner is ok with dating a married man, and it helps ensure that everyone is on the same page about where that relationship is going.

Similarly, while this may not fall within your mutual secrecy pact, it may be worth your time to find the local poly community and make inroads there. Getting to know people within that community makes it much easier to find people who would not only be open to dating or sex but who are much more likely to respect the rules you two have established.

You may also be interested in checking out sex clubs or swingers events as well. While yes, this does mean that you’re not going to be able to maintain the illusion of ignorance as easily, it does put you in a locale where you can potentially find partner who what what you have to offer. And the fact that you met them at those parties or clubs doesn’t mean that you have to hook up with them there. You and your wife can just as easily make arrangements to meet up later and pretend that neither of you has any idea.

In the meantime, I’d recommend you do your due diligence and read up on ethical non-monogamy. I’d recommend starting with The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Harvey, then move to Opening Up by Tristain Taormino and Building Open Relationships: Your hands-on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond! by Dr. Liz Powell. These will help serve as a guide for navigating the tricky ethics of open relationships. It covers all of these issues and many that you and your wife may not have thought of.

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 24 year old gamer lady currently engaged to my very own gamer lad. We’ve been together for three years and decided about six months ago that marriage was in the cards.

He is the sweetest, most thoughtful man I have ever dated, and I look forward to spending the rest of my life with him. He’s funny and intelligent, protective, and an overall Good Person. I know he would do anything in his power for me. I aspire to be deserving of this and reciprocate it as best I can, but there is one thing that does bother me, and that is our sex life.

Prior to this relationship, I have had a number of boyfriends and lovers. Not a large number, but enough to realize that I am both a very private and very sensual person. Unfortunately, my fiancé doesn’t have the benefit of that experience- I am his first girlfriend and his first lover. And he’s come to realize he just… doesn’t have much of a sex drive. At all.

At first, I badgered him for sex rather frequently, but then I turned it around and realized that that was wildly inappropriate of me to do- after all, a guy harasses his girlfriend for sex, that’s horrible! So I stopped doing that. Unfortunately, without me aggressively pursuing it… we almost never have intercourse. We’re talking two or three times… a month. In previous relationships, it was at least once a day, and it would have been more if I’d had my way.

I used to feel rejected and like it was my fault, as I am overweight. But I tend to think he’s really just not that sexual of a person. It’s taken some getting used to, to realize that men can be so disinclined towards sex, and we’ve talked about it fairly extensively, but I still worry that it really is just me or that we have poor chemistry.

We’ve found ways to compromise - we snuggle all the time, he’s very affectionate, we have lots of physical contact; he ‘helps’ sometimes, when I masturbate and he’s not in the mood. My own sex drive has died off quite a bit since we started dating, because in spite of logic I *do* feel sort of rejected. He frequently has erections but his head isn’t in the right place, which is frustrating for me because it’s hard to tell when it’s ‘okay’ to pounce without it being unwanted. We’ve even talked about having an ‘open’ relationship and he’s said he’d be willing to try it, but I really hesitate to even go there - I’m a very private person and I don’t like to open up to people like that without a very high degree of trust, and it just seems selfish of me and risky to our relationship.

I worry that maybe marriage is a bad idea, since our sex drives just seem incompatible, but the fact is, I love this man and I value him more than I value sex… but it’s a daunting prospect, to spend the rest of my life - not getting any, when it has, in the past, been so important to me.

Do you have any ideas on compromises? Anything?

Thanks,

Defying Gender Norms

DEAR DEFYING GENDER NORMS: First things first: you have a right to have your sexual needs met in a relationship. Feeling frustrated and wanting to be desired and fulfilled isn’t selfish. It’s a critical part of maintaining a healthy relationship, and a lack of sexual satisfaction will kill a relationship faster than… well, damn near anything, really.

One issue I stress over and over again is how important sexual compatibility is to a couple. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that yes, New Relationship Energy fades and sexual desire tends to ebb and flow over the course of a long-term relationship – but that doesn’t mean that partners should feel as though that asking for their needs to be met is an unreasonable request.

Sexual compatibility is more than just making sure that all of the appropriate parts line up in a pleasing manner; it also has to do with being interested in the same activities – or at least willing to fake it for the sake of your partner’s pleasure – and, critically, having compatible sex drives. It’s very rare that you will find two people who’s libidos align perfectly; men on average tend to have higher sex drives earlier in life, usually peaking in their 20s and declining as testosterone production declines, while women’s drives are more variable and often depend on cultural factors as much as biological ones.

(Side note: the idea that women’s sex drives peak in their 30s has less to do with biology and more with sociology. It arose out of the Kinsey studies in the 40s and 50s and didn’t take into account that at the time, a more mature woman is much more likely to feel more comfortable and familiar in her sexuality in a way that a younger woman wouldn’t.)

As a rule of thumb, most relationships’ sexual frequency will tend to default to the level of the partner with the lower libido; it’s uncommon – not unheard of, but uncommon – for a partner with a lower libido to try to maintain the level of sexual activity desired by a partner with a higher sex drive.

It’s going to take some digging to get to the bottom of just what the issue is. Your fiancee may just have a low libido normally – possibly even asexual – or me may have outside factors like stress that are killing his sex drive. Or  – and I hate to say it, but I have to:  he may not be attracted to you sexually.

You say that your fiancee still gets erections; that eliminates the first and most obvious question of whether he’s having erectile dysfunction. My next question to you would be whether he masturbates  – that you are aware of – and how often; some asexuals will still masturbate as a way of keeping the prostate drained rather than out of a sense of sexual pleasure. Following that, I’d want to know whether your sex live has changed. Were things hot and heavy early on and then suddenly plunged off a cliff, or was it always as infrequent as you say? When you say his head isn’t in the right place, is it because he has other things on his mind – work stress, financial problems, random attacks of ennui  – or because he’s just really, really slow to warm up to the idea of wanting to bang?

It’s good that you have found some forms of compromise – being willing to give you a helping hand (or tongue) is good, assuming that he’s not doing it grudgingly. But yes, it’s going to be hard1 to feel desired and attractive when the person you want to desire you the most is so unresponsive and apparently uninterested. You are a sexual person and while you love your man, this is an area that’s going to become a bone of contention between the two of you (as it were)… and it may well drive you into the arms (and pants) of someone else. One partner doesn’t have the right to unilaterally decide that both parties are now done with sex; that’s a very good recipe for infidelity at best and the end of an otherwise great relationship at worst.

I’m going to be honest with you: until you’ve worked out a more successful compromise than snuggling and occasional masturbatory help, marriage is going to be a bad idea. If you’re having problems now, getting married isn’t going to magically solve them, no matter how much you may love each other. You and your fiancee need to have a very long, very honest and incredibly in-depth talk – possibly with the help of a sex-positive relationship councilor – about just what his issues are with sex. If the two of you are going to be getting married, you need to know right the fuck now whether it’s a case of he’s not attracted to you or whether he’s not attracted to anyone and how you’re going to work around this. This includes a very in depth and frank discussion about opening up the relationship, even if it’s one-sided. I know it can feel as though you’re betraying him, but you need understand: wanting sexual satisfaction is not selfish. You said it yourself: you’re a sexual person and this is an aspect of who you are that is extremely important to you. It’s unfair of him if he were to declare that because he’s not interested in having sex, you’re not allowed to be either.

Now I do want to say: companionate relationships – ones that are based on emotional intimacy and affection but without a sexual component – can and do work… but they usually entail one or both partners having their needs discretely met on the side. You have to ask yourself which is more likely to ruin a relationship: your being allowed off the leash on occasion with your hubby’s permission in order to get your itch scratched, or years of frustrated desire… which has a nasty tendency to turn into resentment and bitterness.

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 writing to you because I don’t think you’ll be judgmental, just straight forward.

I’m a 66 year old woman who was married for 43 years, then divorced. A year ago, I married a guy who treats me very well and we seem to get along, even tho he is 13 years my junior. I love him, but have never been IN love with him.

Here’s the catch. About 6 years ago, I went to a class reunion and got reacquainted with my first ”love”. He is now married, as am I, but we stay in constant contact daily. Our spouses don’t know this.

He recently agreed that after 50 years, the magic is still there between the two of us, and we probably should have been together all along. We live 200 miles apart. Recently he made a trip back to our home town, (about an hour away from me) without his wife, to visit relatives who still live there. He invited me to join him at his hotel just for drinks, and to catch up on the last 50 years. I was all ready to go, then chickened out at the last minute. Part of me wanted to go, but part of me also felt like this was already cheating and I didn’t know if I could handle the resulting guilt if something were to happen. 

I’m also insecure about it, because after all, even though I’m still considered attractive for my age, I’m not 16 anymore. But then again, neither is he. He said we will plan it again in the future. Should I go just out of curiosity to find out if he’s truly the one who got away? Or should I not go, and just be content with what I have, never knowing what could have been?

Your objective advice would be appreciated.

Torn Between Two Lovers

DEAR TORN BETWEEN TWO LOVERS: My objective advice is that this is a bad idea. A very VERY bad idea.

Now to be clear: I’m pretty on the record on the fact that my feelings about cheating and infidelity are nuanced. I don’t think cheating is automatically the worst thing you can do in a relationship or an immediate relationship extinction-level event. But there’s a world of difference between “oops, I had too much to drink and failed my wisdom saving throw in a situation that is likely never going to happen again” and deliberately putting yourself into the position where cheating is more or less inevitable. Because just between you, me and the rest of the Internet, TBTL: that’s exactly where this is going. Let’s be real here: it wasn’t a question of IF something was going to happen, it was just a question of “how quickly”.

It’s not just a wacky coincidence that your first love was near by and without his wife in tow; it was by design. This was as much of a perfect setup for the two of you cheating on your spouses as you could want and it was done so deliberately. I mean, hell, he’s more or less told you that this is exactly what he’s doing; he’s even told you he’s going to set it up again. That’s no longer “oh hey, what strange happenstance,” that’s premeditation. The only difference between this and just planning on meeting up it a hotel room somewhere is that this set up has the fig leaf of plausible deniability; you weren’t “planning” on anything (except you both were), it “just happened”.

But honestly I don’t think anyone is going to buy that. Least of all your husband and his wife. He may not be ASKING people to burgle his house, but he’s making a LOT of noise about being gone for the weekend, leaving the key in the lock and a whole lot of “LOOK AT ALL THE EXPENSIVE S

T I’VE GOT” signs in the front yard.

Here’s my advice: think in terms of orders of operation. You need to decide exactly what it is that you want and work outwards from there. Clearly, part of what you want is chemistry, that sense of desire and excitement… something that you’re not getting from your current husband. That means the first thing you need to do is sort things out with your current husband and the relationship you have and want to have with him going forward. That may mean ultimately deciding to end things. It may mean negotiating a companionate marriage, where your relationship is based around companionship and friendship but not necessarily sexual chemistry. That in turn, may mean negotiating a certain amount of openness, whether it’s permission to go see your first lover, for the two of you to both seek sex outside of the relationship or even a polyamorous situation.

At the same time, your first love needs to sort things out with his wife. Because right now, what he’s doing ain’t cool. Being in contact with an ex, even on the daily, is fine. The fact that she doesn’t know is also fine; relationships aren’t depositions and partners don’t need an accounting of every single thing you do. You’re allowed to have friends and contact with other people that your partner doesn’t know about. But what he’s doing isn’t just having friends outside of his relationship, it’s deliberately inviting trouble into it. If he sincerely believes that the two of you should take another swing at a relationship together, then he needs to be coming to this from a place of honesty and integrity. And that means squaring things with his wife. As with you and your husband, this may mean divorce, it may mean getting permission or it may mean renegotiating their relationship entirely. But going out of his way to set up circumstances where an affair “just happens” ain’t it. It’s disrespectful to you and it’s needlessly harmful to both of your spouses.

When and only when the two of you have resolved that part of the equation can things progress with your other guy. Otherwise you both risk blowing up three relationships in needlessly messy and painful ways.

I’m not saying that you can’t be with him, nor that you (or he or both) have to get divorced. But the way you’re both approaching this now is going to cause unnecessary harm to two people who don’t deserve it.

Think things through, decide what you want and find the best way for the two of you to make this happen… without causing more hurt than is absolutely necessary.

Good luck.

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