DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So this may not be your typical question. More or less I need to bounce some ideas.

I want to ask my girlfriend to marry me. We’ve been together for over four years and she’s helped me become a better person and reach for things I doubted I could do before. She’s smart, funny and attractive. I love her more every day and I’m looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together.

Thing is, I was planning on making a proposal in front our friends at a party I wanted to hold after I completed work on a big project of mine. But then the coronavirus hit and changed everything. We can’t have gatherings so I can’t invite a bunch of people over to look at this thing and then make the proposal in front of them all. I couldn’t have done it without her, so I want her to be a part of the whole thing.

If this was normal I’d probably just be like “well whatever, I’ll just do it in private” but it’s not exactly normal. You see, my girlfriend is trans. This is a non-issue for me and our friends, but one thing I know what she wants is for the engagement to be a big deal. She’s expressed that she feels she deserves a special proposal just as any woman would. I agree that she deserves to have a big deal be made about getting engaged, and I want to make that a reality.

But we’re all stuck at home and that makes it difficult to make my plan a reality.

Thing is, we have no idea how long this will last. Some estimates are over a year, and I don’t want to wait that long. Honestly I was hoping to have done it by now already.

My girlfriend’s needs and desires are important to me and I want to make her dreams come true, but I also want to be engaged to her and call her my fiancé, like, yesterday. I’ve already almost messed up and called her my fiancé a couple times. So what do I do? Do I just go for it and make this finally happen in as special a way as I can in isolation? Or do I wait to make the day as special as it can possibly be?

And just for the record, I have no doubt she’ll accept. We’ve talked about it before and she’s made it clear she expects me to propose eventually. This won’t be a surprise besides the day, time and way I plan to do it.

Thanks for the help.

-Isolated in Indecision

DEAR ISOLATED IN INDECISION: First of all, congratulations on your impending engagement, IOI; it’s great that you and your girlfriend are at a point where you’re ready to tie the knot. It’s a damn shame that you — like so many others — have had your lives and plans turned thoroughly upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So let’s talk proposals.

On a strictly personal level… I’m not the biggest fan of elaborate or showy proposals. I can understand the appeal to a certain extent, but I find that past a certain point, they’re less about a celebration of love and partnership and more about showing off. A lot of those viral proposals may make for great moments on TikTok or YouTube, but they always rub me the wrong way; it feels more like they’re for other people instead of the couple.

But that’s just me; I can also understand wanting to give your partner the proposal she wants, especially in a way that gives her the validation society often denies trans women. So f

k it, let’s showboat a little. The fact that we’re stuck in unusual circumstances doesn’t mean that you can’t propose, or that you can’t make it special for her. It just requires some creativity and out of the box thinking.

The key here is to think about just what would make her feel special and why. Would it be about including your mutual friends and family in the moment? Would it be about the effort it took to make it special? Maybe it would be something in the way that you did it — something that you can put together that speaks to the things she loves and enjoys.

There’re a number of potential options and ideas, depending on how elaborate you want to go and how much time, effort and money you’re willing to throw at the project. One of the fastest and easiest would be to enlist the help of others. If, for example, a favorite celebrity of hers is on Cameo, you could commission them to help you pop the question. Alternately, you could propose — while still maintaining social distancing — by delivering the ring via drone; fly the drone up to her window, while you stand below. Another way you could involve friends or family is to propose via an online game; many couples have proposed in World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, even Animal Crossing. All of these give you the chance to have your friends in virtual attendance, even allowing them to get dolled up in ways they might not be able to in the real world now. You could even arrange a Zoom happy hour… that just happens to be so you can propose. Hell, set things up so y’all serenade her

Other couples have gotten literally creative with their proposals. If you or your girlfriend have a favorite comic or artist or art style, commissioning a short comic might work. Others have used bespoke games to propose to great effect. But proposing — even a showy, special proposal — doesn’t need to be an incredibly elaborate or expensive affair. Even something as simple as a Twine game would feel special; the point is about the two of you, after all, not the amount of money or trouble you went through to make it happen.

So think about the things that are meaningful to your girlfriend or that are representative to your relationship. What has the most meaning, ties into something she loves or is reminiscent of the story of your lives together? Use that as the base and work outwards from there.

Just remember; at the end of the day, it’s not the proposal that matters, it’s the love behind it.

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 been married to a wonderful man for 5 years. I grew up in a strict religion and felt sexually repressed for most of my life. Then I met a man several years my junior who loved me and converted for me to marry me. We’ve gone through a lot together, a few health scares, deaths of family members. We have an autistic son with visual impairment. He’s been my rock and support.

Our sex life is ok. I’ve always had a high sex drive and for the past several months it’s been in overdrive. I think he realized that I’ve been holding back, and he found a safe judgement free app we can use to share our fantasies with each other. It turns out we both want threesomes with another woman. We discussed it further and I told him that I’m actually bi and am interested in swinging. He said that was awesome and he was down for it! What proceeded was 3 days of great sex and fantasies. Then he jokingly slut shamed me for being interested in swinging and then that night we had a bad sex session and then he told me he wasn’t actually interested in swinging. I now feel ashamed and raw. We reached out to a sex therapist who concluded that I was the problem. That when my husband said yes and looked up swinging clubs, that that meant he was thinking about it, not that he was interested. And that I have self esteem issues that are getting in the way of my getting over this.

I feel betrayed that he essentially lured me into a false sense of security to disclose my deepest darkest secret and then rejected me. I can’t leave him. We have a special needs son and I make 5 times as much as he does and he’d take me to the cleaners. Short of inventing a time machine, I don’t know what to do or how to proceed. I found the therapist judgements and hateful but realize that if my husband and the therapist both say I’m the problem, that they’re probably right. I don’t know what to do. I haven’t had sex with my husband since. I’ve always been socially awkward and am lucky I found my husband. Do you have a script I can use in my head before psyching myself up before sex that I can use? I’m not the biggest fan of  “get over yourself, you’re damaged one” that I can from our therapist.

Thanks

Lost and Bi in PA

DEAR LOST AND BI IN PA: This is an interesting letter, LaBiPA, not so much because of the content — this is actually a fairly common issue — but because the roles are reversed. Most of the time when I hear from someone in a hetero relationship whose desire for more adventurous sex caused problems, it’s usually the man who tripped over his dick. It’s less common — not unheard of, but less common — for the woman to be both the initiator and the one who moved faster than their partner may have been comfortable with.

Now, there’s a lot to untangle here, but let’s start with where things went wrong and why. The issue here is that it seems as though you jumped the gun and pushed things too far, too fast. This is actually a very common problem when someone starts to roll out a kink or a fantasy they’d like to try. Their partner is ok with it, maybe even finds it hot, and there’re a few days of talking it out that lead to all kinds of exciting sex. But when the kink-seeking partner tries to actually make the fantasy happen, the whole thing hits a giant brick wall at 30 miles per hour. The problem is that the would-be-kinkster took things a step too far. Their partner was warming up to the idea, even enjoying the erotic charge that came from fantasizing about it… but as anyone who’s ever thought about, say, jumping out of a plane can tell you, there’s a vast difference between fantasizing about it and the reality. Even people who are legitimately interested in trying this new thing, whether it may be swinging, threesomes or forms of non-monogamy, may suddenly discover they have second thoughts about trying it. In fact, this has tripped up many couples when it came to opening up the relationship; everyone was on board until one of them actually banged someone else and the other partner had a freak out over it.

That seems to be what happened here, LaBiPA: you and your hubby may have been getting charged up over talking about it, even looking up swingers clubs and talking about theoretical plans… but he still wasn’t ready to make that last leap. You took things farther than he was ready for and he balked. And honestly, it’s understandable. As much as society tells us that a MFF threesome is the ultimate male fantasy, it can be hard for some men to see someone — male, female or enbie — going to town on their partner. The same goes for any form of swapping; it can be fodder for fantasy, but a harder thing to do when you’re meeting the person who’s about to get down with someone you love.

Now that having been said: it REALLY wasn’t cool for your husband to make jokes about you being “slutty”. If he’s uncomfortable with the situation, actually saying “hey, y’know what, I’m not sure I’m as into this as you are,” would’ve been far better. Making jokes about you being hornier or just more into non-meat-and-potatoes sex than he is may have been a reaction to feeling weird about things, but it’s inappropriate, hurtful and profoundly unhelpful all the same.

In an ideal world — and what you should do next time, assuming there is a next time — is take baby steps. Talking about it, fantasizing about it together, even looking up clubs is one step. The next would be to talk things out: what would this look like? What would we want in an ideal guest-star? The following step would be to start considering potential options together; that might mean browsing dating apps or going to bars and just checking out people with no intent of actually talking to them or approaching them. The next step might be to visit a sex club, strictly as tourists; you both agree in advance that nothing is going to happen, you’re just going to check out the vibe and see how you feel, etc. Another step to a potential threesome would be possibly having you flirt or dance with someone else at a bar. If you get to the point of bringing someone home, then you have hard limits on what is and isn’t allowed for the first time, and so forth. Taking these steps makes it easier for everyone to gauge their comfort and to tap the brakes if it’s going beyond what they’re ready for. It also gives a more reluctant partner the chance to get acclimated to the idea and decide that this isn’t so bad and maybe the next step will be ok too.

Unfortunately, you didn’t do these things and as a result: your husband stomped the brakes (in a not-terribly great or understanding way) and you all ended up in couples counseling over this.

That’s also where I start to have questions about the way you present the fallout to the whole misadventure. It sounds a lot like you’re the frustration of coming close to fulfilling a fantasy — and your self-esteem issues — color your perception of  what went down afterwards. For example: while I get that you’re upset — you were so close to this awesome adventure! — I don’t think your husband betrayed you or cruelly manipulated you in order to… I dunno, go “PSYCHE!” because f

k you, that’s why. It sounds to me like this was an honest fantasy that he was willing to explore until it started feeling like it was going faster than he liked. Similarly, I think you need to take a step back and look at exactly what was said, rather than how you felt (and still feel) in the moment. Did your sex therapist actually say that “you’re at fault and you’re damaged,” or did it just feel this way? There’s a vast difference between “you could have done this in a different way,” and “you’re a freak and should be ashamed.”

It’s not impossible that the therapist did frame it that way; God knows there’re some truly awful and sex-negative sex therapists out there. But it sounds a lot like you’ve swung from excited for sexy fun times to “this just proves I’m an awful person” and that’s affecting how you interpreted things.

While you examine things as dispassionately as you can, I would suggest talking to a different therapist — first by yourself, then possibly with your husband. A sex-positive therapist — one who isn’t going to tell you that you’re “broken” —  can not only help you process your feelings about this misadventure, but can also help facilitate the conversation between you and your husband. They can also help develop a roadmap for future adventures, in a way that doesn’t end with one or the both of you getting your feelings hurt, or worse. The American Association of Sexual Educators, Counselors and Therapists has a referral directory on their site that can help you find the sex-positive therapist or couple’s counselor that can walk you through how to talk this through and ease the pain that this has inadvertently caused you.

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: About two years ago, I started the process of getting divorced from my partner of a decade that I have a kid with. Around that time I started reading your column and I want to say how helpful and insightful it is.

I’m a woman in my 30s and I have been enjoying dating, a lot! (Although also sometimes, not a lot – that’s how it goes, right?) I’ve known for a long time that I am not 100% straight, and I have had a lot of fantasies about threesomes but I don’t think I really expected it to happen.

Very recently I met a couple, a man and a woman, who are looking for a third, let’s call them Q and T (because they are adorable). They have been looking for a few years, sounds like they wanted a real true third but now they’re not sure if that’s going to happen. I think it’s hard to know hypothetically and these things need time to develop, but it’s potentially on the table.

I have been quite honestly taken by complete surprise, but in a great way.

It feels so natural. It’s obviously very new, but I really like both of them. Physically and more than physically. Also, I like their relationship that they have. So far, we are all very open with our communication. I feel genuinely excited but I want to know what questions I should be asking myself and what I should be asking them. I know I should read The Ethical Slut, but I wondered if you in particular have any insight. I initially had a conception that my relationship would just be with them as a couple, but I think I would also want relationships with both of them individually. Obviously this is something I have to talk to them about, but I was wondering if there is anything in particular I should ask myself before broaching that, or the situation in general.

Thanks!

Unexpected Unicorn 

DEAR UNEXPECTED UNICORN: There’s a lot to consider here UU. The first is whether you’re ready for this sort of relationship. Polyamory, in some ways, is dating squared. You’re not just managing one relationship, you’re managing multiple ones… and that can be a tricky balancing act, especially if you try treat each relationship as equal to one another. That’s one level of complication.

Another is the style of polyamory and relationships you want to have. There’re almost as many forms of non-monogamous relationships as there are people. Some folks prefer a v-shaped poly relationship, where two people are dating the same person, but don’t have much of a connection aside from that shared partner. Some prefer what folks call “kitchen table” polyamory, where the polycule is like one big happy family. And then there’re poly relationships like the one you’re considering, where you’re joining a pre-existing couple and dating both of them individually and together.

That last one? That can be difficult to manage. There can be a sense of hierarchy, where the pre-existing couple feels that they’re primary in the relationship. There’s the potential for jealousy, especially if folks get caught up in the rush of that New Relationship Energy and end up neglecting their original partner. It can be hard to balance the thrill of the new with the comfort and familiarity of the old, which creates the potential for imbalances in time and emotional connections.

And that’s even assuming they want that sort of relationship. The fact that they’re looking for a sexy guest star doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re ready for a long-term addition to their relationship. Similarly, the fact that they may be interested in some sexy adventures together doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re interested in — or ready for — playing separately. Something that works as a group activity doesn’t always translate into something that works on the individual level. What often makes a threesome works is that it involves the couple as a couple; as two individuals, it could lead to jealousy and insecurity.

(Hell, that could happen during the threesome. There’s always a point where a threesome ends up temporarily becoming a two-some, and that can often stir up unexpected and uncomfortable feelings in the person who’s not currently involved.)

So right now what I would suggest is that you start by doing your research. The Ethical Slut is a good starting point. I also suggest Opening Up by Tristan Taormino and Building Open Relationships by Dr. Liz Powell (Dr. Powell is, incidentally, a friend of mine) for more about the dynamics of various non-monogamous relationships. Just as importantly though, I suggest that you talk with Q and T about what they want and expect out of this encounter — and this encounter specifically. I think it’s probably a better idea to focus on the immediate future, rather than potential relationships. If you can stick the landing on the threesome, then maybe you can talk about future plans.

And speaking of the threesome: you’re going to want to discuss that in detail. Figure out what you’re ok with as well as what they’re ok with. It may be worth putting some limits on your first encounter together — leaving penetration off the table entirely, for example, or leaving it exclusively for Q and T. Even the swinging-est of swingers can find themselves having complicated and incredibly inconvenient emotions when they see their long-term partner going to town on someone else; keeping some things for the pre-existing couple can help avoid ruffling any feathers unnecessarily.

Similarly, if — and that’s a mighty big if — they are interested in exploring the possibility of seeing you separately, then that’s something that you may need to ease into. Again, taking things slowly and keeping certain activities off the table (at first) might be the wiser course of action; this way, everybody gets a chance to see how they feel without being tossed head-first into the deep end of the pool.

And also discovering that the pool is full of sharks.

That’re also on fire.

This is the sort of thing that requires a delicate hand, because one of them feeling uncomfortable, feeling neglected or otherwise not being cool with the situation could end your relationship with both or either of them. So if you’re considering dating them both individually, you should make sure whether you’re actually interested in both of them to the same degree. Not because you have to have perfectly equal feelings for them both, but because the potential for jealousy or hurt feelings is magnified and can have an outsized effect on everyone.

Now with that all being said: it sounds like all of you are putting serious thought into this, which is great. And as a general rule, I’m all in favor of new sexy adventures. Some best practices with the initial threesome can help make sure that it’s a positive experience for everyone involved. And if that ends up working out… well, who knows. You very well may be finding yourself on the verge of a new and exciting time in your life.

Good luck.

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