DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: The story I’m about to tell might be a little jumbled. I’m telling it to you as I learned about it, not necessarily in chronological order.

I’m a junior in college. Two and a half years ago, freshman year, I met a girl. We talked, occasionally hung out in groups, etc. We were pretty much just acquaintances. Fast forward to this past November: I figure out I want to go out with this same girl. Lucky me: she wants to go out with me too. We’re dating. We’re fine. I’m not writing you for advice about me and her. That might happen later is things start going south, but it’s a different email and I don’t want to think about it.

I’m writing you because what I didn’t know, before we started dating, is that one of my closest friends has had feelings for her. For the last two years. She didn’t reciprocate, but he never got over his feelings for her. She’s been dealing with that for two years. He doesn’t know we’re dating yet, but it’s only a matter of time before either he finds out or she just tells him so that he doesn’t hear about it second hand.

Now, I did something like what he’s doing now in high school (look at me, playing like I’m an expert because I was stupid and felt heartbroken in high school.) I know how shitty it felt. I really don’t want my friend to have to go through that, but I’m at a loss as far as what I can do to help the guy. He’s generally socially withdrawn and quiet to begin with, and I imagine I’ll be one of the last people he wants to talk to when he learns I’m dating the girl he’s had the hots for for the last two years. The situation with him seems to suck from every angle I can see. Can you help me out Doc? Is there anything I can do to help the guy, or am I just going to have to be resigned to the fact that we probably won’t be friends for a while and that he’s going to go through some shit for a while?

I probably should have worked these two things that I’m about to say into the email organically at some point, but it’s 1:30 in the morning as I write this part and my ability to revise has gone to shit.

1) I just want it said that there’s no way I’m breaking off things with her to save him the heartache. I feel bad that this’ll make him sad, but it’s also the direct result of me being really happy, and I’m not giving that up. The only thing that’ll happen then is that three people will be sad instead of just one.

2) I might be totally overreacting about how bad this will be. But two years without getting over her. I’m not an expert, but there’s no way that can possibly be good.

Anyways, thank you for reading and thank you for your time!

They Call Me The Seeker

DEAR THEY CALL ME THE SEEKER: I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: people don’t get to call “dibs” on other people. That’s not how relationships work, that’s not how people work and it’s incredibly naive and selfish for someone to declare somebody off-limits because somebody else dating them will give you a sad.

I’ve got a lot of sympathy for your friend, Seeker; I’ve been there more times than I care to count. But the fact remains that his liking your girlfriend doesn’t mean that nobody else is allowed to date her and this is just something that he’s going to have to learn on his own. He’s going to have to learn to get over her because the universe isn’t going to accede to his wishes that she be rendered eternally sexless until she gives in to him.

Is there anything you can do to help him? Well, you can talk with him about it and listen to him and support him in trying to get over her. You can hang out with him without her and go do things together to reaffirm that your friendship is completely independent of who you or she is dating. Hell, you can help him meet other women and help him realize that there are other amazing women out there, including women who would like him back if he would just pull his head out of his ass. It also wouldn’t be a bad thing if you dialed down the PDA in front of him for a bit, just so that you’re not rubbing things in his face.

At the same time however, you shouldn’t let his having a sad dictate how you behave around him. He’s perfectly welcome to feel the f

k out of his feels, but he’s not entitled to inflict them on everyone else. He doesn’t get to use his hurt feelings to manipulate how the two of you behave or to make your breaking up with her a condition of your friendship with him. He also doesn’t get to be a passive-aggressive s

t, making his hurt fee-fees the center of attention when the two (or three) of you are together. If he’s going to be sulking, sighing or making comments about the two of you, then all he’s done is prioritize his feeling entitled to your girlfriend over your friendship and none of you need this in your lives. If he can’t put on his big-boy pants and deal, then yeah, you’re going to have to resign to his not being your friend (even though you’d still be his friend) until he’s able to get the hell over things.

It’s a sucky situation to be in, but don’t let this ruin a happy relationship.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve managed to get myself into a difficult situation and could use some advice on how to deal with it. I recently found your site and have been impressed with the no-nonsense advice you give and your mission to make men better at dating. After all, what I’m after advice on is how to do the-right-thing.

So anyway, I split with my long term ex almost a year ago. It was a toxic relationship and had a large negative impact on my life, and frankly the breakup was a disaster with threats of suicide and all kinds of attacks on me and my personality. You can probably guess it left me with a few small hangups.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I’m in a new city without many friends in the area and decide I would like someone to share all the great new things going on around me with. I join Ok Cupid and set up my profile and seem to gain some interest pretty quickly. Day 1 I see a match I like so I message her and say I’d like to get to know her. She replies, we chat and all is well.

Fairly quickly I ask if she wants to meet and she says yes, we can meet in a week (just before New Year). We keep chatting and then just before we meet suddenly the flirting gets ramped all the way up to 11. A couple of nights before and we’re having weird text sex and she’s sending me semi-naked photos. Having been without any action, my hormones are on fire and I’m into it. In hindsight I should have backed off but got totally sucked in instead, and so our prospective date turned into spending New Year together.

I go to meet her at her place and she jumps me immediately. From that point it’s sex almost hourly for the next two days and by the end of it I’m totally worn out. Now on paper, this girl is amazing. She’s into all the same things as me and when we were first chatting it was obvious we were on the same wavelength with almost everything we talked about. It seemed that chemistry was inevitable, but halfway through day 2 and I was just totally over it. I couldn’t connect with her. It seemed that we could make it 30 minutes before she was rubbing on me and it just escalated from there.

A few days later and we’re still texting and chatting but she is really full on and I’m just not feeling it like that. I’ve told her I find it too much, that I would like to chat about something other than sex, but it always seems to come back to that. She says she’s very inexperienced (we’re in our 30s and I didn’t get that impression but you never know) and she thought I was the one who’s libido was too much, but her texts are still very intense. Now I’m really having a problem with this. We’re not close by so I won’t get to see her again for over a week. I don’t know how to respond to these messages that isn’t either faking the same thing back, or initiating a breakup. They don’t seem to be something I can just deflect. Ideally I would want to hit the reset and slowly get to know her better (I’m not sure my sudden turn-off isn’t down to a hangup from the past relationship and if it is I’d rather deal with it than let it make decisions for me), but these messages are just forcing my hand toward a breakup and I don’t want to just drop that into our text messages. I’d much rather wait until I next see her and talk to her and if it needs us to split then it can be face to face.

Sorry for the obligatory rambling, but any advice would be hugely appreciated

All the best

Out of His Depth

DEAR OUT OF HIS DEPTH: You know, there’s almost certainly going to be someone who’s accusing you of lying or humblebragging, OoHD.

I mean, on your first day on OKCupid, you find this wonderful girl who syncs up with you in all these incredible ways and she wants to do almost nothing but f

k every hour on the hour?

You can already hear the people declaring that this is clearly a fake letter.

But hey, I believe you man. There’re going to be people who’ll insist that they’d cheerfully murder a hobo for what you’re complaining about but I get what you’re talking about. You basically want one kind of relationship with this woman and she very clearly wants another and you’re not sure what to do about it.

Well, it’s like I tell people over and over again: you’ve got to establish and maintain your boundaries. Boundaries aren’t just for weeding out toxic people who play head games, they’re for making sure your partner doesn’t run roughshod all over you. And at the moment, that’s exactly what your paramour, for lack of a better term, is doing: she’s making you uncomfortable by constantly talking about sex, sending sexy texts, trying to f

k you as soon as you walk in the door, etc even when you’ve told her you’d rather not. That’s not cool, OoHD, even if it’s something that people will insist “isn’t really a problem” or is a problem they’d love to have. And hey: the fact that she’s inexperienced isn’t an excuse. It’s more than you want or can handle and it’s making you uncomfortable. You’ve told her so and it doesn’t seem to have made a difference. So now what?

Well, you have a choice. You can split up with her now, you can just roll with it and hope things get better… or you can enforce your boundaries. You’re not the only person who’s been made uncomfortable by a partner with a higher libido, and you’re certainly not the only man who’s had a hard time telling his partner to slow her roll. If this woman is as awesome on paper as you say and you want to give your relationship another shot, then you need to draw that line in the sand and make it stick. This means that if you tell her to stop and she doesn’t, you need to be willing to walk away. Letting her roll over you when you’ve told her to stop doing something just indicates that she doesn’t need to take your protests seriously because hey, she’s going to get what she wants in the end anyway, right?

I don’t recommend waiting until you see her face to face;  after all, her texts are making you as uncomfortable as her just rubbing up on you and poking your junk going “ready? ready?” Waiting until you see her again just means putting up with behavior that makes you tense and uneasy and gives the impression that you’re ok with it.

So the next time she sends you those sexts, straight-up tell her. Say “Hey, I really like you things are more intense, sexually, than I’m comfortable with and I really want to dial things back. I want to take things slowly and get to know you better and the sex and sexy talk is getting in the way of that for me. So I’d really prefer to talk with you and do things that don’t involve sex. Let’s slow down and let me get my bearings and we can find a pace that works for both of us, ok?”

And then you wait and see how she responds. As with many things in life, your motto should be “deeds, not words”. It doesn’t matter if she talks a good game if she goes right back to sexting you and trying to haul you into bed before you’re ready; that’s just a case of someone paying lip-service to your boundaries while running over them again. Hopefully she’s as awesome as you think she is and she’ll realize that this is overwhelming you and dial it back and the two of you can have a dialogue about what you want, what you’re comfortable with and how you can get there. Then this will become one of those shared memories that you’ll both laugh about in years to come when you look back on your relationship.

And if not… well, you know what you need to do. If worst comes to worse and you do need to break up, well, then you’ll be in a better position to establish and maintain your boundaries in your future relationships.

You’ve got this.

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: My experience with women is quite low. I had at the age of 24 my first time intercourse without an orgasm (and what was for me far more awkward) she also had none. Prior it I had just a few experiences which could be counted under “clothed lapdance” or “heavy petting”, no blowjob yet. Since I’m now already 30 I worry that I’m totally incompatible with women.

I see two or better three problems:

– my shyness. I can’t beat that silly shyness that keeps me from talking to girls that I like. Even alcohol won’t help. The really few attempts I sounded like an idiot, almost stuttered and left while the girls turned their backs to me.

– my remaining virginity. since I haven’t had much experience with girls (heck, I never kissed, nor did I learn how) 

– my handicap: broken kidneys and dialysis. Because of it my interest in girls started with 19 or 20 first. My self-confidence for my body suffered a bit by it since my arm has some scars and a bigger lump, doesn’t make sexy.

So, I could need some advise how I could attract women since at the moment I can visit bars or clubs… somehow I’m the one standing at the bar or in the corner without company, ignored by the females.

Can you give me a hint?

Kind regards!

NOOB

DEAR NOOB: You’re not incompatible with women.

I know our culture likes to emphasize the idea that a man is not a virgin, but there’s nothing wrong with being inexperienced at 30. At worst, you’re a little on the right hand side of the bell-curve. That’s it.

You had something of a late start due to medical issues and that’s perfectly fine. It’s the pressure you’re putting on yourself to make up for lost time and to match up to an imaginary and self-imposed standard that’s causing you stress.

Take your inability to orgasm during your first time at penetration; that’s actually incredibly common for guys, especially virgins. The idea that all virgin men pop their corks the instant penis meets vagina is a myth; some guys take incredibly long to reach orgasm and others don’t orgasm at all, for any number of reasons. The sensations are completely different from what they’re used to, they may be letting the stress of trying to impress their partner get to them or they may not be getting the type of sensation they need.

(And, I might add, women frequently don’t have orgasms the first time with a new partner. The first time with a new partner can often be a semi-awkward experience as everybody tries to sort out what this partner likes that their other partner didn’t, worrying about body issues, etc.)

Here’s the thing: your issues are mostly in your head. They’re phantasms that you’re letting psyche you out.

Let’s take your virginity issue: you’re relatively inexperienced. Big fat hairy deal. This is only as much of an issue as you let it be. Most women are going to follow your lead; if you roll it out as though it’s a huge problem, they’re going to respond as though it’s a huge problem. If you roll it out like it’s no big deal – or, better, a bonus – they’ll respond accordingly. You may or may not encounter the rare woman who freaks out at the idea of a virgin your age, but that’s her problem, not yours. She is the weird one and to be perfectly frank, you don’t want to be sticking your d

k in that anyway.

You want someone who will be willing to respect you for you, not for how many partners you may or may not have had. Someone who actually cares about you will be willing to guide you along, as long as you have a can-do attitude and a willingness to take direction and advice without letting your ego get in the way.

It’s the same with your physical issues. You don’t want to roll them out to someone as though you’re as fragile as a piece of glass and you could fall apart at any moment. It’s the opposite: you’re a strong son of a bitch who’s managed to survive the world’s best attempts to kill you.

Like the saying goes: when life gets tough, that’s because God’s afraid of your progress.

Scars can be disconcerting to some yes, but people will get used to them as they get to know you. Again, it’s all in your presentation. Hiding them and treating them like they’re shameful can make others react as though they should see them as something to be ashamed of. They’re not unsexy skin deformations, they’re proof that you’ve taken some of the worst that the world’s thrown at you and survived.

And hey, nobody says they have to stay the way they are. A friend of mine who’s undergone a significant number of surgeries in order to correct spinal defects has gotten his scars tattooed over and they look remarkably bad-ass.  You might find it useful to talk to a tattoo artist about the possibility of working them into a design.

Now the shyness can be a tough problem to crack. It can be difficult to overcome a lifetime of shyness, especially when it’s coupled with insecurities. If you have an honest-to-God panic attack at approaching women, you may want to talk to a therapist who specializes in social anxiety. If it’s an issue of approaching people that you’re attracted to, I recommend a process of systematic desensitization, where you get yourself used to approaching people by slowly building up the level of contact from “asking for the time” to “asking for a date”. 

And don’t limit yourself by sticking to trying to meet women at bars or clubs. While these can be great places to meet people, they may not be places that match your personality or where you’re going to find the women you’re interested in. I’ve written fairly extensively about where you can go to meet women that AREN’T bars or clubs — such as bookstores, MeetUps, classes, networking events and more. Choosing some lower-pressure venues – or online dating for that matter – might be more along the lines of what you’re looking for.

Good luck.

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