DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been dating an awesome guy for five months now, and things between us are genuinely great. I’m 33 and I haven’t had a whole lot of relationships in my life – I’m quite content in my own company, and if I don’t feel like someone could make me happier than I would be alone, I don’t bother pursuing them. As such, I’ve had a few serious relationships that have broken off amicably when we realise that we want different things or are no longer compatible. I don’t talk to my exes much, but I’m pretty sure none of them look back on me badly. My partner is separated from his wife of seven years while the mandatory waiting period for divorce ticks down (it’s just about up now, and I’ve helped him with some of the divorce paperwork and overheard convos with his lawyer, so no doubts that it’s happening).

My issue is that, never having married myself, it’s really hard for me to comprehend loving someone so much that you promise to be with them forever, and then… a few years down the track, deciding that you can’t actually stand being in their company anymore. Their split is not a kind one, and I can’t help but be frightened of the idea that as much as he and I like each other now, what if that situation is us down the track? What if things change and we hate each other enough to take it to court and fight over every scrap of our life together? I’ve never dated a divorcee before, so this realisation is new and uncomfortable, that you can love someone enough to marry them and end up dreading the moments you must spend with them.

I know this line of thought is unhelpful, but it’s there every time I’m reminded of it, and especially when I hear about people getting divorces after just a year or two. How do I get over this irrational fear that, just because he split up with an ex badly, I might be next? I want to be happy with the time I have with him, not wondering if his (or other possible divorced partners I may have in future) feelings for me are going to flip as easily as switching off a light.

Love,

-Divorced from Reality

DEAR DIVORCED FROM REALITY: First rule of dating, DfR: All relationships end. Until you get to the one that doesn’t. If you go into every relationship worried that this one won’t end with one of you dying in the saddle, you’ll never get anywhere. You’re just going to continually what-if yourself to death. Which, in fact, you’re doing right now. What if things change? What if you hate each other? Well… what if you step outside and get hit by a meteorite? What if the caldera under Yellowstone finally blows and kills us all?

Second rule of dating: a relationship that ended isn’t a relationship that failed. As I’ve said before: not every love story is meant to be an epic poem. Some of them are short stories. Some of them are just dirty limericks. And that’s fine. We all grow and change over time. You obviously aren’t the same person you were at 23. Your boyfriend isn’t the same man he was at the start of his marriage. But relationships grow and change over time too, and some come to a natural end. This doesn’t mean that the relationship failed; it just meant that it was right for you in a specific place and time in your life. If the two of you can have a cordial relationship – even a friendly one, if you can continue to respect one another and still carry that kernel of affection and understand yeah this is why we were together, even if we aren’t now… well that’s actually a pretty damn successful relationship.

And here’s something else you need to consider: your boyfriend’s feelings didn’t just change for his soon-to-be ex. It isn’t that he flipped a switch and suddenly love became hate. Just as people change over time, so too do emotions. What happened between them was a process, not a bolt of lightning. Maybe it was something that could have been nipped in the bud if they’d been paying attention. Maybe it was a case of them not being right for one another and they tried to ignore it. Hell, they may have tried to push their relationship past its natural life span and the shambling corpse eventually turned on them. But it certainly wasn’t instantly.

But here’s what you need to remember: the third rule of dating is that proper preparation at the beginning of a relationship makes everything better. Taking time at the beginning to drama-proof your relationship – having some necessary conversations, learning how to have your own space as well as time together – can make your relationship last longer and run smoother than just going at it with no plan. Fortunately, I’ve written a book – It’s Dangerous To Go Alone, A Relationship Survival Handbook – that covers this in some detail. I’d suggest you check it out as you start your path with your snugglebunny.

Because the fourth rule of dating is that a relationship can’t succeed if you don’t give it a chance in the first place.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: It’s Ace Girl here, from the 1st January 2019 letter. Thought I’d send you an update of what’s happened so far, bc honestly it’s been a wild ride.

I’m still struggling with my mental health – I’m in a far better place, I’d say, but it’s still not easy. Despite that, I’ve managed to get my bachelor, am starting a job next week, and plan to return to uni for a master’s in October.

Most of all, though, I’m not single anymore! Believe me, no one’s more shocked than I am.

My girlfriend is honestly amazing. She’s my best friend and we get along splendidly. We’ve been living together since November and it’s been great so far.

We’re not in what you’d call a “traditional” relationship, even by queer standards: I’m still as ace and sex-repulsed as ever, and she’s aromantic and pansexual. You could describe our relationship as queerplatonic, a word coined by the aromantic community: there’s no romance involved, and, in our case, no sex either. We’ve also been exploring our gender together and currently both identify as nonbinary. We still call each other our “girlfriend”, though, both because we’re mostly in the closet and because it’s easier than explaining what is a datemate or a zucchini.

The biggest problem so far is that neither of us is out to our parents, and we’re anxious about telling them. Our families are Catholic and pretty traditional, and with recent aura of homophobia around Poland, I’d say our worries are not unfounded. But that’s your standard queer experience, I guess.

There’s no shortage of issues we’re facing, but they’re nearly all external, like the one above. We do our best to communicate clearly, spend a lot of quality time together, help each other with their issues, and (tentatively) plan for the future. Also, raise our two cats.

I wouldn’t call my case a happy ending – mostly because it’s far from the end. There’s still a lot going on, and I guess there’ll always be. We’re happy, though, and working at both getting to a better place and enjoying what we have right now.

Thanks for your advice and wishing you all the best.

Love,

Ace (not a girl anymore)

DEAR ACE: Thanks so much for writing back and letting us know how you’re doing Ace! Glad to hear things are going so much better for you!

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 reading this blog for a long time and have had nothing but good results from it: I managed to get myself out of a rather nasty downward spiral of negative thoughts and poor self esteem by taking what you’ve written and applying it to my everyday life.

Still no girlfriend but that doesn’t worry me any, I’m happy being single at the moment!

The reason why I made this post was because I’ve been having some issues with time, making plans and it’s effects on me.

For context, I’m in higher education (university) and as such that requires a HUGE amount of planning, scheming and plotting for getting to every class, performing all of the reading beforehand, making study plans for exams (even the ones that are months away), working on assignments and finding time to eat, sleep and keep hydrated in the process. I’m also a computing student, for additional context.

Now I have done a good job of that so far, if anything I like scheming! The problem is that I always carry the feeling of there never being enough time for work/revision/sleeping/ with me, and it never shifts no matter how much I do in that one field.

Heck, even when I take breaks there’s the jackassbrain part saying “you shouldn’t be doing this, you got X1, X2, X3 and Zero to do” despite the fact that I know that I’m still human and as such do need to take breaks occasionally.

Compounding the error is that in my plans I set informal deadlines for myself and get panicky/worried/mad when they aren’t met, reducing my capability to do effective work even further until I calm down and remember that I’m still human.

Essentially I’m trying to make plans that are metaphorically and literally five steps ahead then growing frustrated or downright furious when they don’t work out as I planned, this being a continuous cycle.

Ever since I went back to uni a few weeks ago, I’ve been going through a cycle of frantically planning anything I can, panicking at the plans changing, growing angry at myself for not completing informal deadlines on time or growing paranoid if I completed them before time and overall spending too much time in my own head space.

I’ve suffered not-quite-regular panic attacks followed by panicked bursts of work before, all while jackassbrain is intoning “if you planned better, you wouldn’t be in this position” over and over and over, only ceasing once either it’s completed or I’m in no physical state to do any more, at which point it starts to intone “That isn’t good enough, how dare you need a break”, or some variation on that.

I am looking into practicing mindfulness at the moment and that appears to be going well, but changing a longstanding mental process mixed with intense emotional reactions is never easy.

I know uni isn’t gonna be candyland (cause if so it’d all go to hell once things started to go off) but I don’t want it to be a complete mind-bending worryfest and ragefest for the whole couple years I got remaining here.

What I’m asking here, Doctor, is for anything I can do to calm myself down, relax with my planning and stop thinking as if one minor change or a couple big changes spells the end of my higher education career.

Thank you,

Clock King

DEAR CLOCK KING: Here’s my question for you, Clock King: how much imposter syndrome are you dealing with right now?

I ask because it sounds to me like you’re doing something that a lot of people I know do: you’re trying to control for everything. It’s a way of trying to justify things and overcome that nagging voice in your head that says that if you screw up even slightly, people’ll twig to the fact that you don’t know what you’re doing. And once that first domino falls, it’s only a matter of time before everyone realizes you’re a fake, a fraud, a mistake and then everything will go away.

If you can just get everything to work exactly like you want it to, where everything goes perfectly… then you’ll be fine. You’ll convince people that you’re where you’re supposed to be, that you know what you’re doing and that you deserve to be at this university and in this program.

At least for today. By tomorrow they may start to suspect, so now you have to repeat the whole cycle over again.

To make matters worse, this “MUST! BE! PERFECT!!” drive starts to filter into everything. If you let yourself be alone with your thoughts for just a moment, that jerkbrain kicks in and starts telling you “shouldn’t you be working? Shouldn’t you be studying? Don’t you realize that if you’re not studying right now then you’re probably going to lose everything?!? GET BACK TO WORK, SLACKER!” You’re doing the Red Queen’s race: running as fast as you can in order to stay in the same place. Small wonder you’re goddamn exhausted.

The problem is: people aren’t machines, Sherlock isn’t real and nobody can plan everything down to the smallest detail. Even in the finest clocks, chaos gets into the system and things come apart eventually. And when humans are involved… well there’s a reason for the old aphorism “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

So here’s what I suggest. First: you need to make peace with your imposter syndrome. You need to realize something important: people who don’t deserve to be where they are never question themselves. The most qualified tend to also be the ones who’re most convinced that they’re not. They’re the ones who are painfully aware of how much they don’t know. But the fact is: everyone with half a brain goes through this. It only looks easy to everyone to the outside. Think of it like a swan: above the water, they’re majestic and serene.

Below the water, they’re paddling like a motherf

ker.

So realize that you aren’t the only imperfect person there. But just as importantly: learn to accept “good enough”. Consider the piano. Pianos are finely tuned instruments and one tiny thing going wrong ruins everything. You, however aren’t a piano. You’re a man. And what is a man? A miserable pile of secr… wait no. A sack of meat and bone; that’s what you are. We’re giant messes and things rarely work the way they’re supposed to… but they still work out anyway.

There is so very little that can go so wrong that you can’t recover from it. And honestly? 99% of your career isn’t going to have anything to do with your grades, but your knowledge… which isn’t the same thing. And to be honest: you’re not going to have a higher education career if you kill yourself in the process. Remember:  Imperfect and finished is always going to beat perfect and dead.

The other thing I suggest you do is start learning how to control your brain. Things like yoga and mindfulness meditation are great ways to force your brain to actually listen to you for once instead of just running off in its usual patterns. Get an app like Headspace and learn about focusing on your breathing and observing your emotions. The more you can center yourself and calm the screaming in your head, the happier you’ll be.

And failing that, there’s always weed.

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 wonder if you can write on the topic of getting over women’s sexual histories, especially when they’ve gone through long hook-up/casual dating periods and a man has not. Or maybe about guys who’re plagued by feelings of not measuring up in experience, number of partners, degrees of wildness, etc. I think many of your readers will be going through this as well, dealing with feelings of insecurity and perhaps craving some of the wild things or numbers of partners they hear of friends doing, hear of their dates or girlfriends doing, but none of which has ever been extended to them.

Obviously this is largely a personal request–I had a potential partner I was interested in tell me she’s been through a hook-up phase, had threesomes with previous boyfriends, but wouldn’t be doing any of that again. I didn’t press her on it, but it killed me to hear that, immediately and irrationally made me feel it’s about me. It made me feel like I’m not interesting or cool enough or exciting enough for her to be a bit wild with me, now that she’s had here YOLO moments. I think I’m really, maybe obsessively, struggling with thoughts of the ease with which many women can go wild if they so choose (I know that’s not the case for every or even most women, but it seems the case for those I’m attracted to). I am craving some wild experiences myself, if only so I no longer feel threatened by women who have had them and can graduate from feeling upset when I hear or suspect a woman I am interested in partook of orgies or something. For what it’s worth, I live in a major city where this kind of stuff is anecdotally not uncommon. Maybe I should be reading guides to make it happen for myself rather than tell myself I need to suppress these desires, though they are probably born of YOLO/FOMO, New York Times articles about orgies in NYC, porn, and a desire to make up for my entire 20s spent in depression despite having everything seemingly going for me.

Whatever thoughts you might share or write would be greatly appreciated.

Missing Out

DEAR MISSING OUT: As it happens, I have written quite a bit about getting over people’s sexual histories, and you can find them via my archives. This is an incredibly common issue that comes up a lot, especially for men who date women. This tends to come in two flavors: the guys who feel disgusted that their girlfriends and wives have had such an extensive sexual history, and guys like you, who feel like they’re somehow being “left out” when they find out that their partner isn’t as wild or sexually active as she used to be.

As tempting as it is to just say “get over it”, it’s useful to examine just why these scenarios tend to cause such anxiety, particularly in men. At their core, the chief issue is one of anxiety and insecurity, particularly in the less-experienced partner. In the former, men get obsessed with the idea of their partner’s “purity”, equating women’s value with how much sex she doesn’t have. When it turns out that the woman in question has a sexual past, guys get hit with waves of anger or revulsion… not because there’s anything wrong with the women, but because of how it strikes at men’s own sense of value and importance. For a lot of men, especially ones of a more conservative bent, the idea that women don’t like sex or that it’s difficult to get women to sleep with you is important; it means that you’re just that special or virile. You’re somehow demonstrating your superior value by doing what other men couldn’t: seducing this woman into being sexual with you. If, as it turns out, she likes sex and is confident in her own sexuality… well, now you’re not as special, are you? Worse, now you’re functionally “competing” with others. If she was inexperienced — or better yet, a virgin — then (in theory) you are by default the best lover she’s ever had. After all, she has no basis for comparison, does she?

(This, of course, ignores things like the fact that bad sex doesn’t magically become good just because you’ve never had anything to compare it to. Someone who eats a sh

ty sandwich isn’t going to decide it’s delicious just because they’ve never had a sandwich before; they’re just going to avoid eating sandwiches in the future.)

But rather than examine those feelings and recognize the insecurity for what it is, those guys put the blame on their partners.

On the other hand, we have the folks who, like you, feel left out when they find out that their partners have had sexual experiences that they themselves haven’t. For a lot of guys, this leaves them feeling unworthy or lesser; why would those other guys get to share these experiences with her while they don’t get to? What do those men who came before have that makes them so much more deserving of wild sexy adventures while the less-experienced are left behind?

The problem in this case is that more often than not, these guys are asking the wrong question. As I’m often saying: women aren’t Mjolnir; whether they have sex with someone or not (or what kind of sex they have with them) isn’t a measure about whether that person is worthy or not. Instead, the better question to ask is how their partners felt about those sexual experiences… and, more importantly, why they’ve chosen to stop having them. If you were to ask, you might find out that the reason why women had those particular experiences had less to do with them and more about their former partners. They may have been dating people who insisted that they take part in sexual activity that they may or may not have been interested in themselves and felt like they had no choice but to participate. Lots of women have had partners who made demands of them, coercing or pressuring them into doing things that they wouldn’t have chosen to do on their own. Other times, they may do something they weren’t into just because their partner was and they wanted to make them happy, and they felt that this particular activity wasn’t so far outside of their comfort zone that they couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

Alternately, they may have decided to stop because they had a bad experience, or enough bad experiences that made them decide that it continuing just wasn’t worth it, even if they dug most of their adventures.

Still other times, women — like many men do — may go through periods of having wild crazy sex because they feel like it’s something they’re supposed to want. Or they may do it because they’re curious and discover that they didn’t like it that much after all. And of course, there’re plenty of people out there who will have a particular type of sex or sexual expression because of other issues in their lives. A good friend of mine was a submissive, not because that was her natural orientation but because of emotional issues that she had been facing; bad experiences left her feeling as though submissive behavior was how she “earned” or “deserved” people’s love and attention. Once she started confronting those issues, she began to realize just how different her actual sexual orientation was.

And like I said: women aren’t the only people who go through this. Plenty of men will adopt a performative sense of sexuality because they feel like it’s something they’re supposed to do. I’ve coached plenty of clients who thought they were supposed to want one-night stands and casual sex and couldn’t understand why it left them feeling empty and unfulfilled. Others couldn’t understand why they struggled with monogamy when society had taught them that desiring someone besides your partner meant that there was something wrong with you.

Now in your case, Missing Out, there’re few things at play. The first is that you need to decouple how your sexual experience — or lack thereof — from your sense of worth. Whether you’ve had the kind of sexy escapades that would make Caligula blush or you’ve mostly had fairly standard meat-and-potatoes sex is completely and utterly irrelevant to your worth or value as a man. The fact that other people may have had experiences you haven’t doesn’t make them better or more admirable than you; it just means that they’re different people who’ve had different experiences. Some people will go their entire lives without having caviar or a cronut or bibimbap. That doesn’t make them less than folks who have had it, it’s just food they’ve never eaten. Their lives are no less rich or fulfilling for the lack.

You also need to recognize that the craziness you think you’re missing isn’t as common as you think it is. Part of the reason why you’ll occasionally see stories in newspapers and why they stand out on blogs or Twitter or what-have-you is because they’re outré. They stand out because they’re not common; we don’t devote column inches to things that are daily experiences for folks. It’s not as though there’re tons of articles being written about people, say, tailgating before football games. And porn is to real sex as the Fast and the Furious movies are to driving; it’s over-the-top fantasy, not reality. Being upset that you’re not f

king like Ron Jeremy is like being upset that you don’t drive like Dominic Toretto.

But just as importantly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting those experiences. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to have threesomes or have public sex or sex in group situations. This isn’t something you need to suppress, it’s something you should understand and accept as just being part of who you are. But in doing so, you have to recognize these desires as part of what will make someone sexually compatible or incompatible with you. This means that when you’re considering a potential partner, you’ll want to consider their sexual interests too. If they’re someone who isn’t interested in the kinds of sex you are — or who are at least open to trying it, within reason — then the two of you simply aren’t right for one another, and you’d be happier in the long run to find someone who is compatible with you.

However, one of the things you need to keep in mind is that very few couples have that kind of wild crazy sex right from the jump. Sex requires trust and communication, and the more outre the experience, the more trust and communication you need to have. Couples very rarely go looking for special guest stars or hitting swingers parties without having a strong foundation first… and that foundation is built over time. So while you can get there, it may take time, even with a partner who’s down to get wild.

And part of that process is finding out how your partner feels about things, especially if she already has a history of sexual adventure. If we go back to the potential partner who decided that she was done having wild sex, you would want to recognize that her decision that she was done having those sexual experiences almost certainly had nothing to do with you and everything to do with her. It would’ve been better to ask her about why she was done. If you can listen — really listen, without making her feel judged — then you might have found out more about her and where she is in her life. She might have been up for trying some of those things again with the right partner. Or you might have learned that she was absolutely, totally done, period, the end… in which case, it would be better for both of you to find people who want the same things.

And one more thing to keep in mind: there’s really no such thing as “making up for lost time”. You may have been dealing with depression in your 20s, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve somehow missed your window for sexy adventures. There’s a reason why, if you go to swingers events or sex clubs, you’ll see that most of the people there are in their 30s and 40s. We may romanticize the young, but sex doesn’t end once the clock ticks to midnight on your 30th birthday. People have wild, awesome sex at all ages. You don’t need to “make up for lost time”, you just have to live your life now, in the present, instead of getting lost in a past that might have been.

Good luck.

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