DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 23 years old, a guy, and I still haven’t lost my virginity yet, and while I’ve seen some of your stuff on that matter, I still feel like time is “running out” for me, and I’m worried about how others see me, and moreover how I see myself for it.

In summary, I haven’t lost my virginity partially because I’m not a big partier and haven’t sought out hooking up in the past, and also because I turned down two other opportunities.

First, an acquaintance offered to be FWB when I was 20. I had no reservations there, but at the time I was on the verge of a relationship with someone else. That relationship ended fairly quickly, as my ex figured out she was aromantic soon after. I lost touch with the acquaintance for about a year.

About two years later, I had found a girlfriend again. Not long after we started seeing each other, she threw herself at me while she was drunk. I felt that I couldn’t in good conscience have sex with her when she was that drunk, and so I said that we should wait until she was more sober. The next time we talked, she admitted that she may have gotten an STD from a previous partner, and she needed to be tested before we did the deed. She tested negative, but through a cartoonish series of bad luck, things ended before we could.

I usually hear that she wouldn’t be worth my time anyway if she’d reject me for being a virgin, but considering that people like Elliot Roger and Alek Minnassian exist, I have to wonder how much being rejected for being a virgin would be a matter of a woman thinking I was dangerous or a bad person because of it.

The irony I see in this is that I remained a virgin because I felt I needed to do the right thing in those scenarios, and in a weird way, I feel like it has doomed me, even if I know that plenty of people stay virgins beyond my age and lose it then. I guess a big part of it for me is knowing that there are a lot of people who can’t find a willing person, and living in fear that I’ll be mistaken for or worse somehow am one of them.

I guess what I’m asking for here is advice on how to approach it with others, if getting it “out of the way” is a good idea, and if explaining it (in an otherwise contextually appropriate situation with future partners) is a good or bad idea with regard to all of this. Thank you.

-Volcanic Sacrifice

DEAR VOLCANIC SACRIFICE: Y’know, there’s a weird thing about anxieties and negative fantasies, VS: they make no logical sense. They feel true and real and valid… but that’s only because they’re happening to you. Your brain is making all the leaps over the various steps to get to the worst case scenario and leaping to conclusions that are so absurd on their face that nobody else would ever understand what the hell you’re going on about. In fact, if someone else were to explain those same things to you, you would almost certainly tell them that they were being absurd. However, because it’s happening in your head, you’ve been sitting with the fantasies and emotions for so long that it feels like this is the only way that it could possibly turn out.

I mean, my dude. Seriously. Your own letter contradicts those fears. The fact that you’re still a virgin isn’t some weird catch-22 where you’re unable to lose your virginity because you’re a virgin, it’s by choice. You were propositioned twice, by women that you were attracted to, who knew you were a virgin and still wanted to jump your bones. You chose not to in both cases, and that’s legit. In fact, you unequivocally made the right choice with your girlfriend. But those were both choices you made.

That alone should tell you what you what I’m always telling guys in your situation:  you’re being a virgin is just one part of who you are, not all of it. It’s not even the most important part of who you are. It has as much relevance to who you are as a person as whether or not you’ve ever been skydiving or ridden a jet-ski; it’s just an experience you haven’t had yet. That’s it.

Incels — even killers and terrorists like Elliot Roger and Alek Minassian — are irrelevant, especially to your circumstances. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together think that their status as virgins marked them as potential killers. Even the most casual observer could tell that the problem was that they were consumed with hate, resentment and misogyny. The only people who claim to think that their virginity was the problem are would-be pick-up artists and grifters who want to use them to sell bulls

t and snake-oil.

And to be perfectly frank: I’ve known people who happened to be older virgins, and I’ve known incels. Incels radiate anger and hate; nobody is going to going to mistake the former for the latter and anyone who thinks you’re weird or a freak for being a virgin has very definitively self-selected out of your dating pool. The last thing you need is to be in a relationship with someone who’s going to judge you for something as ultimately unimportant as whether or not you had sex and how old you were when you had it. Life’s too short to worry about the opinions of assholes and there’re far too many awesome people out there to waste time trying to date them.

Should you “just get it out of the way?” I mean… sure? If that’s what you want. I’m not a big believer that your first time needs to be “special” in that After School Special sort of way; the significance of the act is purely in your head. It can be just as valid and affirming to lose it with someone you met on Tinder as it is to lose it to your high-school sweet-heart on prom night surrounded by candles on a bed strewn with rose petals.

What I would suggest that if you do decide to “get it done”, that you pick a partner who is caring and considerate. That could be a girlfriend, someone you meet off Hinge, a friend who’s up for it or even a sex worker who caters to virgins. You’ll have a much better time with someone who will take your virginity into consideration than a random hook-up who knows next to nothing about you.

By that same token, you don’t need to justify why you’re still a virgin. It’s really easy to go from “explaining” to “justifying” or “excusing” your virginity as though it were it were something to be ashamed of, and it’s not. All you need to say is “never met the right person” or “circumstances weren’t right”; both of these have the benefit of being 100% true without defining your lack of virginity as a flaw that you have to explain away.

And when you do meet someone who’s worth sleeping with and circumstances line up for you? All you ultimately need is a willingness to take direction without your ego getting in the way and the ability to communicate your own needs clearly and succinctly.

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 hope you can help me on this and I’ll start with some backstory: I’ve known this girl since…always. Her sister and I went to kindergarten, elementary and high school together and we’re close friends. I guess I began having feelings for her when I was 11-12, mostly because she was three years older than me and seemed like a woman, not just a girl. Time went on and over the years we became close friends and I discovered how amazing, funny, smart, laid back and friendly she was and I became more attached to her. She eventually graduated and moved out of to college. This really devastated me and I awkwardly confessed my feelings hoping that she would stay and marry me (I was 15, don’t get mad at me). As expected she told me she didn’t feel that way and that she liked me as a friend and a little brother.

She was great enough to give me some advice and told me to focus on girls my age. Of course, I didn’t follow her advice and kept liking her and every time she came home to visit her family and friends and we would spend some time together I was the happiest man alive. My crush on her continued even after I finished college. A year ago I got my first job in the same city as her, so we hang out more often. Everything was great until she got a job offer in Europe. I’m sincerely very happy for her, because she’s not only good at her job, she also loves it and living there was always her dream.

I know I’m being selfish, but I’m very sad knowing that she’s leaving and I won’t be able to see her for months. I highly value our friendship and losing it hurts.

How can I stop liking her? I know I should go out and meet other women, but in my 24 years on this planet I’ve never been interested in anyone but her, never kissed or been on a date and I’m not sure if I know how to flirt or ask someone out at this point and every time I met someone is like ‘yeah, she’s cool, but she’s not HER’.

I know I’m just not right and good enough for her and we’ll never be more than friends, but I can’t see myself with anyone else. What can I do?

Hooked On A Feeling

DEAR HOOKED ON A FEELING: You’re coming at this from the wrong angle, HOAF. In fact, part of the reason why you’re having such a hard time getting over your crush on your friend’s sister is that you’re looking at all of this — your sense of “deservedness”, her supposed perfection, your resignation to never being with her — the wrong way.

The first mistake that you’re making is that you’re treating your emotions as something that you need to shut off or otherwise put away. You can’t force yourself to not feel something for somebody. At best you can try to suppress those emotions which isn’t actually helpful. All you’ll end up doing is bottling them up and letting the pressure build until they blow up messily and all over the place.

But more to the point, it doesn’t sound like you’ve ever so much as tried to get over her. From the sound of things, all that you did was nod and smile and then continue to nurture your crush on her without ever giving anyone else a chance. And to be perfectly blunt, that’s pretty much a recipe for Oneitis. You’ve built this crush on your friend’s sister so much that she’s not really a person to you any more; she’s an ideal, a dream, an aspiration instead of someone who’s flesh and blood, with the same faults and flaws that the flesh is heir to. And to be honest? That’s not good for you and your personal development, but it’s also a little insulting to her. Putting someone on a pedestal can seem like a compliment, but ultimately you’re taking away their humanity.

So obviously the important thing is to learn to how to get over her. So what you need to do is get to the root of why you still are hanging onto this crush.  The key to this is to deal with the reality of the situation: you’re not trying to get over someone so much as you’re trying to get over a concept, a fantasy. That means that you need to stop treating this like having a crush on a person;  instead, you need to examine what she represents to you.  That’s part of why it can be so hard to let go of her; it’s not about the person, but what that person symbolizes. Letting go of that is hard because it means letting go of whatever it is that she stands for in your life.

Part of it, I suspect, is that you latched onto her seemingly greater sophistication and maturity. She represented a bigger, more exciting world than the one you lived in, a world that had more freedoms without being circumscribed by the seemingly arbitrary rules that dictate the lives of 11 year olds. She was that perfect balance between being a grown-up but young enough that you could still relate to one degree or another. So in a very real sense, she was an entry-point to a larger world without the tedious need to wait until you’re older. And while things will have changed — you’re in your mid-20s, you’re out in the world as a grown-ass man now — I suspect that those emotional associations  are still there. She may not be someone living on the border of a mysterious existence you can’t wait to explore, but she still represents that excitement and mystery and exoticness that defined her in your eyes.

The other key to this problem is here: “I know I’m not just right and good enough for her”. So it’s not just that she represents this mysterious “other”, but also the standard that you’re measuring yourself against. So part of why you cling to this is the idea that she’s the pot of gold at the end of your self-development rainbow; if you can just live the “right” life, turn yourself into the “right” guy, then you’ll finally be “worthy” of her.

But like I’m often saying: that’s not how this works. Women aren’t Mjolnir and they don’t measure whether someone is worthy or not. They’re people, same as everyone else.

The third key is simply time; you’ve been infatuated with her for so long that it’s become part of your identity. It’s the sunk cost fallacy as applied to relationships: you’ve spent so much time nursing your crush on her that you can’t really bring yourself to let it go. After all, if you did, then that would mean admitting that you spent all that time obsessing about her for nothing and nobody wants to do that.

Once you start to grasp what she represents and why you’ve hung on for so long, then you’ve got your path towards learning to let her go.

To start with: you have to learn to stop using her as your measuring stick. Part of why you say “Yeah but she’s not HER” is because you don’t want to let yourself give them a chance. It’s another way that you’re being “true” to her; you’re demonstrating your devotion by refusing to even consider the possibility of being interested in someone else. But this is just willful blindness; you know at some level that there are millions of amazing women out there, all of whom are as amazing as her, if not moreso. Your denying the possibility of being attracted to other people isn’t going to win her over; you’re never going to woo someone by showing just how much you “care”. So you need to start to stop comparing the people you meet. Rather than saying “Well, she’s not HER”, lean into it: “Of course she’s not HER, but let’s see who she is instead.” Accept who she isn’t and see who she actually is. When you aren’t seeing her as a replacement but as someone entirely different and unique, you open yourself up to the possibility that this person has qualities that you also desire.

Similarly, you need to start living your life for yourself. Instead of being someone who’s “worthy” of her, start focusing on being the person you would want to date. The things that your crush represents are qualities that you feel are lacking in your life… so start cultivating them for yourself. Start to live the life you feel like you’d live if you were with your ideal partner… but do it now, for yourself, instead of waiting for them. The more you fulfill those needs and fill in those missing pieces, the less you’ll be looking to someone else to complete you. And — as a bonus — you’ll be making your life more interesting and desirable to people who’ll want to date you.

But just as importantly, you need to forgive yourself. You need to forgive yourself for holding on for so long when you know — and let’s be real, you’ve always known — that there was no point. You need to forgive yourself for “betraying” your feelings for her by letting her go. Letting go of a dream is hard, because it feels like admitting that you didn’t have enough faith or that you didn’t try hard enough. But the problem isn’t that you weren’t doing enough, it’s that it was never real in the first place. You were striving for something that you ultimately knew was impossible, but admitting that is painful. It feels like failure. It feels like giving up. But it’s not. It’s letting go of the stone that’s been holding you back. It’s putting aside the burden you’ve been carrying that you never needed to bear in the first place. It’s not about not being good enough, it’s about recognizing that you’ve been looking in the wrong direction all this time. You’ve loved not too wisely but too well and it’s time to give yourself a break from it.

Trust me: it’s tough at first. It’s understandable to want to cling to it with both hands. But once you let go of this particular tether, you’ll be able to fly.

It’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I wanted to give you an update about my situation from when I wrote in the other month (in “Is He Shy or Uninterested in Me?”)

About a day after I wrote you, he asked for my number, and then to dinner all in the same day. Apparently he also didn’t know I was interested, because I tend to be very social at work, and low ball subtle options to hang out, he didn’t know if I was just being friendly or into him. We both fail at flirting.

He was going on vacation and was determined to figure things out before he left (I didn’t mention that we talked all day through work messengers for over three months) and I am so glad he did. We’ve been together ever since, tooth brushes at each other houses, and haven’t stopped talking since.

Thank you for your advice of using words more. If he hadn’t asked for my number, I would have had the hail mary talk and then left it, reading the tea leaves and all.

Best!

No Longer Reading The Tea Leaves

DEAR NO LONGER READING THE TEA LEAVES: Congratulations, NLRTL! Glad it’s worked out for the two of you! Thanks for writing in to let us know how you’re doing!

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My question is easy, but needs context, obviously. I’m not a native speaker so hopefully this makes sense. I was with a foreign girl who was living in my city and, more specifically, at my place for some months. We were starting something. We did not get to talk about it, but all the signs were there: confidence, sex, some kind of compromise…

Then suddenly, on a trip with more people, she had sex with someone else. I told her that it hurt me, because I thought we were into something. She did not think we were in a relationship or exclusive and, despite seeing me in pain, decided to go with this boy a second time… and a third one… She was lying me about it, but I caught them. I felt disrespected and hurt as she keep doing it after having told her the situation.

After that trip, I told her to leave my home but, somehow, she stayed after talking a lot and using the proper words. We talked about us and she wanted me only as a friend. But despite what happened, I was still hooked and so into her that I was unable to just say “goodbye” at that time. I did not want to be his friend, despite that I accepted her option, just to be with her.

Somehow, we became again to be like a couple. We started to live like before the trip, despite having agreed that we were only friends. I thought something was going on and that maybe, sometime, somehow, this could work (I even laugh about it now). But I started to detect some abusive tactics on her side, thanks to my intuition, to my friends and thanks to reading some good sites like yours, which was very helpful. I just ignored them, because I wanted to be with her. But some signs were so red that they even burnt.

After two months, she had to leave to her country for summer, promising to be back at autumn. We kept talking by chat and I decided to visit her. Some time later, I arrived there and found she had a boyfriend, and she hadn’t told me… So I was angry again. We talked a lot and she told me that she loved him and wanted to be with him. Also, she told me that she wanted to live in my country, not hers, and his new boyfriend didn’t. She’d decided that she was going to move, despite her boyfriend’s not willing to move with her. So I went back home again with the hopes that she would come alone, and that our history could possibly work.

We kept talking. I just tried to be her friend, don’t know why really. And one day she wrote me if I could help her to find a place for her and her boyfriend in my city, because they were coming. So, my hopes shattered.

At that time, I felt bad and shocked but, fortunately, that day I started to heal and forget about her. But… and there’s always some “but”… I agreed to help them.

So she arrived first and we were together two weeks, helping her find a place. Of course, she lived with me, which was awful. These were, obviously, the worst two weeks. Lots of arguments, cryings and all this stuff. Finally he came and they moved, but I let her keep some things at my place (in case I haven’t had enough). I went for a long trip to get away from everything. I even got to knew a very interesting girl in that trip. So, when I got back, I felt like I’d gotten some closure. So I thought I could just back to talk to her / them and being just friends. So we kept seeing each other but… I felt bad, I could not handle it. And I give it a fourth or fifth try. I was basically the one who was not respecting myself at this point.

One good day, they moved back to their country again and we said goodbye as “friends”, not forever. They planned to come next year, at some point, so she and I kept connected through chat, but our conversations were very few and she started arguments with me for stupid things that I even laughed about. Ah! This one is good also: some of her things were still at my place. I accepted to have them at home until they came back.

So one clear day, so far away from this bulls

t and after lots of thinking, I decided to apply “the nuclear solution” and blocked her in all forms. I only sent her a message telling her where her things are now (in a safe place, I moved them there) and that she can send for them at any time. Of course, she’s trying to reach me but I’ve blocked all.

My question is a little strange, maybe: I feel bad because I haven’t explained her why I’m leaving. So I feel the need to send a small explanation (small) without resentment, because I think every person in this world deserves an explanation of what happens. So, my question is: do you think that I need to send her this accurate farewell note? Does she deserve it? I feel the need to send it, but also think that it is not needed and that, at some point, maybe may be worse.

Thanks!

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

DEAR ONCE BITTEN, TWICE SHY: There’s an old joke that feels relevant here.

A man walks into the doctor’s office and says “Doc, it hurts when I go like this.”

The doctor says “So stop doing that.”

You’re going like this. You need to stop going like that.

This woman has proven that she’s fundamentally bad for you. Whether she’s malicious, self-involved or just so out of tune with society that she doesn’t understand, every time you get in contact with her, you get hurt.

While God knows I’ve certainly had women in my life I went back to knowing damn good and well it was a stupid idea, this is starting to reach the level of self-flagellation with you. Even now, after you’ve done what you very decidedly should have done long ago, you’re looking for an excuse to get back in contact with her.

There comes a point where you have to start recognizing that the stove is hot and you need to stop putting your hand on it. And you’re well past that point, OBTS.

But let’s put that aside for a second. Let me just ask you: in an idea world, what would you hope would be the result of you explaining to her why you’ve cut her off? Are you hoping that she’ll realize she was wrong and your cutting her off will lead her to mend her ways and be a better person? Or – and be honest with me here – are you hoping that maybe this will be what finally brings her back to you?

I ask this because, realistically? Her behavior gives every indication that she won’t give a s

t. She’s hurt you repeatedly. She’s lied to you repeatedly. She’s ignored your wishes and your boundaries. While it’s very noble that you’ve forgiven her, compromised with her and tried to help her over and over again, all that you’re doing is throwing yourself into the buzzsaw that is this woman over and over again.

So no. She doesn’t need an explanation. She doesn’t really deserve one. You’ve got to do what’s healthiest for you and that means keeping her out of your life. You chose the nuclear option for a reason.

Stop going like that and it’ll stop hurting.

Good luck.

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