DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve found myself in a bit of a spot.

Through these trying times, I was able to connect with someone and the chemistry is definitely there. We have even talked about how we can’t wait to jump each others pants once this whole COVID thing blows over. We communicate fairly regularly and I am definitely excited, as she appears to be. However, there’s the ‘issue’ of distance, seeing as she lives like 8 hours away.

I say ‘issue’ because we kind of have agreed to meet halfway and getting there won’t really be a problem. The problem is the ‘when’. My fear is that the longer this progresses, the more likely it is that the intensity will fade and by the time it’s over, or at least safe enough to take a two hour flight for some hanky panky, well, there just won’t be as much incentive. This girl is not going to have any problem getting someone to scratch that itch and I’m wary that she may just decide, well, dick is dick and this just happens to be closer. While I can also get somebody to get me off, well, at this point, it’s clear that for me it’s more about having sex with her in particular.

So, any advice, Doc? Am I looking at this all wrong because we’re quarantined and oh-so-horny? Is there another way to approach this?

I appreciate it, Doc! Stay safe.

Horny in Quarantine

DEAR HORNY IN QUARANTINE: This is a case of “the problem you think you have isn’t the problem that you think you have”, HIQ.

Let’s start with a truth: it is difficult to have a long-distance relationship and have a perfectly monogamous one — especially when there’s no end point and few opportunities to meet in person. It’s not impossible by any stretch of the imagination, but the physical separation can make it harder to perform monogamy — already something people tend to struggle with — perfectly. People have needs for physical contact and want to be physically intimate with the person they’re dating or in a relationship with. Not having that physical connection can make things difficult, and pretending that’s not the case doesn’t make it any easier — especially when it’s a relationship where you haven’t even met in person yet.

Here’s another truth: you’re not exclusive with this person yet, nor should you be. You’re both hornt up and excited and everything is new and thrilling… but it’s also strictly online. One of the things people often forget is that emotional chemistry isn’t the same thing as physical chemistry. You can get all kinds of turned on by someone’s picture or when you’re on video chats with one another only to discover that in person you have all the sexual connection of a brick. A very unsexy brick. Keeping your expectations reasonable is going to be a core part of not over-investing in someone that you haven’t even met yet.

Here is a third truth: it’s entirely possible that she might hook up with someone before the two of you get together. After all, you’re both free agents, as it were. Neither of you are exclusive and — again — you shouldn’t be. The odds that she will are relatively low; social distancing and quarantining is still a thing after all. However, if she does, that says a lot about her and calls to question whether you should be hooking up with her. Not because of her banging someone else, but because of acceptable levels of risk. Despite states trying to reopen their economies and easing shelter-in-place rules, COVID-19 is still running rampant through the population. We still don’t have effective treatments, never mind vaccines or cures and we simply aren’t testing enough people to make it safe enough to start getting back to something approximating normal again. If she’s hooking up with someone she’s not currently quarantined with… well, that’s a level of risk that I think most people would be willing to accept right now and says a lot about her.

But all that having been said: you’re worrying about the wrong thing and you’re definitely approaching things from the wrong angle. The first is the assumption that dick is dick and that the fact that she’s attractive means that she can get laid any time she wants. This is an incredibly common and, frankly, kinda ignorant thing that guys say about women a lot. This idea about women tends to be revealing more about the men who hold it and their relationship to others than the reality of who has the power in dating. While it’s true that some, even many, women get offers of dick more frequently from men than men get offers of sex from random women… that doesn’t mean that every woman does. Nor, for that matter does it mean that the dick they’re getting offered is of desirable quality. Even people who just want to get their rocks off infinitely prefer having at least some interest in the person they’re planning on having sex with. Folks who’re content to use other people like a breathing dildo or a living Fleshlight exist… but they’re people you never want to actually have sex with.

And again: the fact that lots of people may be offering someone sex doesn’t mean that the sex on offer is sex they’d actually want to have. Saying that women are spoiled for choice is often like saying that nobody should be starving when there’s perfectly good garbage behind restaurants. As Alana Massey once said: dick is abundant and of low value.

That part you said about it being about sex with a particular partner right now? That’s true for her, too.

(And being attractive doesn’t guarantee you’re getting attention at all; Netflix’s Too Hot to Handle is a great example of how being physically attractive doesn’t mean that you’re automatically going to be getting unending offers of sex from guys around you. Poor Nicole; you’re like the third Schuyler sister…)

The fact that dick may be abundant in this woman’s life doesn’t mean that she’s going to take anyone up on their offer just because it’s there, any more than you’re going to grab a sandwich off the ground just because you’re feeling peckish. While plenty of folks, regardless of gender, have hooked up because they had an itch that needed scratching, the fact is that she’s expressing interest in you. The guy who’s eight hours away. If the only thing she was looking for was a quick lay, she wouldn’t be excited about having connected with you, spending time chatting with you or making plans for the two of you to bang like a screen door in a hurricane. Nobody invests that much time, effort or energy in someone who they see as good for a one-off, never to be seen again.

By that same token: if the only reason why she was interested in hooking up with you in however many weeks or months down the line before it’s safe to travel again is because she’s just THAT hornt up, and her banging someone else would end her attraction to you… well, then that relationship was never one that was going to make it past that first hook-up, if you even made it to that point in the first place. You’d be justified in thanking whatever gods you believe in that you dodged that bullet.

But more to the point: there comes a point where you have to either trust your connection with her or give up. It’s possible that yes, she could find a guy for a quick maintenance f

k… but that doesn’t mean that she’d lose interest in you. Like I said: she isn’t investing this kind of time and energy because you’re the only available guy in a 500 mile radius, she’s doing this because she’s interested in you, specifically. Not because you scored highest on a point system, not because you’re the last single man in the county, but because she is attracted to you, has fun talking to you and wants to climb you like a tree. Even if she did bang someone else, that doesn’t change the fact she loves talking to you and wants to see you… any more than it would if you found someone to give you a helping hand and take the edge off things.

In the meantime, the two of you should keep things exciting. Flirting and teasing is a great way to keep the spark going, even when you have to be apart from one another. Think of it like feeding fuel to a fire; you’re giving it enough to keep things going, not to let it rage out of control. Flirty texts, suggestive pictures, talking out fantasies of what you’d like to do... these are all ways of keeping a sexual charge going when you can’t be there in person. You can even let things build with video chats, whether it’s watching porn together, games like strip liars poker or having mutual masturbation sessions via Skype or Facetime. 

The key is to be creative and proactive; the more effort you both put in, the more likely you are going to be able to keep the spark going until you are able to meet in person.

There’s a non-zero chance that she could decide to not wait, or decide to date someone else, yes. But that’s true for you too. It’s also as true even if you were both in the same city and able to meet more often. You can either worry about other people, or you can focus on your connection with her. Getting prickly about whether there’re other guys in her life will kill her attraction to you far faster than the distance will.

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’m a 20-year-old student in an interracial relationship. In the days pre-lockdown, my girlfriend flew into NYC from Paris while I flew into Connecticut from SoFl. Because we hadn’t seen each other in three weeks, I told my father I would take the train into NYC to visit her. He said that was, “okay.”

My girlfriend advocated for LGBT rights throughout high school and college, so we went to the Gay Pride Parade with her two friends. She took a picture of her friends and I with a Rainbow Flag in the background. She posted it to Instragram, and Facebook. All was good.

Next thing I know, I received a message from my sister, “Dad is pissed you went to the Gay Pride Parade.” I shrugged it off. Despite my father’s brother being one of the thousands of homosexuals who died from AIDS, he’s a homophobe. Not wanting to fight with him on his settled ways, I ignored it.

The next day, I received a phone call from my mother (she and my father are divorced). She demanded I take the photo down from Facebook because I pushed one of my father’s buttons (there had been a little bit of tension between my father and I on something else). I told her I couldn’t ask my girlfriend and her friends to take their photos down. Although I could untag myself, I thought it would be silly to comply with such a request.

My sister picked me up from the train station when I returned to Connecticut. She told me, “Dad went off on your girlfriend yesterday. He called her a ‘slut,’ a slew of Asian racial slurs, a bad influence, and insulted her political stances. He threatened to not help you pay for school.'” This took me by surprise because my girlfriend has had dinner with him, and she spent a weekend with me at his place.

My father’s said terrible things. He’s one of those, “If black people can say the n-word, then anyone can say the n-word (except he says the word)”, “Bisexual people don’t exist” (he doesn’t know I’m bisexual), “You can’t rape your SO,” pieces of s

t. But, he’s helped pay for my living expenses (I attend a school in NYC. Apartments can be cheaper than dorms, and work won’t be enough to pay for it on my own). Given that, I’ve put up with his s

tty comments. This crosses line several times over. Even if this is resolved, I would be very uncomfortable with my father seeing my girlfriend again, or my girlfriend’s parents (who are wonderful) meeting my father.

Should I tell my girlfriend about this? If I should (and I’m inclined to think I should), how should I do it? Even though she’s one of the most kind and intelligent people I know, she was extremely nervous before she met my father. When she spent the weekend at his house with me, she was nervous. She wants him to like her.

Thanks,

A Conflicted Boyfriend

DEAR A CONFLICTED BOYFRIEND: The problem isn’t what to tell your girlfriend, it’s how to manage your father.

You’re stuck in a s

tty position, Conflicted. It’d be one thing if he weren’t a dominant presence in your life; you could treat his bigoted piece-of-s

t dinosaur ass like an embarrassing inconvenience that crops up on occasion. Unfortunately, you’re forced to put up with him for now because he’s got you by the financial balls and the leverage this gives him over your life is going to put some serious strain on your relationship with your girlfriend. This is especially true if he’s going to use his financial hold over you to bludgeon you into toeing his line. As a result, you’re stuck in a situation where you basically have the s

tty option on one side and maybe less s

tty option on the other.

There’re really aren’t any easy answers. If you tell your girlfriend about the things your Dad has said, she’s probably going to be incredibly hurt. On the other hand, if you don’t, the odds of his doing or saying something horrible in front of her (or her family) or worse, to her are likely going to go up exponentially. There’s nothing to stress out a relationship when you feel like you’re constantly having to defuse bombs every goddamn day.

So what do you do about all of this?

Well… unfortunately in this situation, just about the only thing you can do is try to thread the needle as best you can. There’s going to be a natural conflict in the desire to confront him, to try to educate him, to try to avoid things entirely or to just grit your teeth and hope you can get out of the interaction without his saying something horrific. There’re going to be consequences to any of these actions, which will inform just what you might be willing to do. And frankly, a lot of it depends on whether your father is the sort of person who’s full of bluster and hot air or if he really would try to use your financial dependence on him to control you.

The first thing I’d suggest is that you give your girlfriend and her parents an edited picture about your father. You don’t need to tell her about the things he said about her – there are things that our partners have a right to NOT know, especially when knowing is going to hurt her needlessly – but you should tell her that your father is bigoted as hell. The more she understands what he’s like, the less of an incredible surprise it will be if and when he does blow up at her. It will also help her understand why you don’t want to bring her to events where he’s involved; the last thing you want to do is to paint a target on her forehead. The odds that he’ll like her are low; the odds that he’ll say something that’ll hurt her are very goddamn high. 

Next: you’re going to want to take a two-pronged strategy of saving up as much money as you possibly can in order to remove his leverage over you, while also trying to keep the peace… for now. It absolutely sucks to have to knuckle under to somebody who’s acting like a bigoted s

t-head, but if he is likely to make good with his threats, then the only real option is to go along to get along until you can make your escape. That might entail cutting your expenses to the bone. It might mean having to dial back on courses while you take on work to start saving up enough that you won’t have to rely on him. You might look into getting roommates to make living on your own more affordable. Or it might mean biting your tongue, keeping your head down and white-knuckling it until you can get your degree and get the hell out… while also keeping your girlfriend and her family at a distance from him.

It can feel like you’re selling out your soul for the cost of your education. At the same time however, this may be the price you have to pay to get your degree and not be dragged under financially by impossible student loan debts. Like I said: it’s a s

tty option and the other options are just different degrees of s

tty.

In the meantime, you can take steps to keep your sanity and minimize his ability to directly affect your life. The first is to lock down your social media accounts. Now, if you block him or unfriend him, he may well notice and this could end up making things worse. Therefore, you need to get very familiar with Facebook’s privacy settings. The current set-up gives you options that allow you to control who can see what you post with a fine level of granularity. Use them. Set up a filter that includes everybody but your father and set it so that he doesn’t see anything. No shared posts, no comments from mutual friends, no tagged photos, nothing. This is where you will want to spend the majority of your activity, especially if it’s things that’ll set your father off. If you have friends or family members who may provide that information – telling him that you checked in to an LGBTQ advocacy meeting, f’rex – then they need to get filtered as well; it doesn’t do you any good to lock him out if other people are just going to give your secrets away anyway. You’re going to have to be very on top of any changes to those privacy settings. Facebook has a tendency to change them without warning, and that can leave you unexpectedly vulnerable.

If you absolutely need to, you can also consider setting up a new Facebook profile entirely and migrating as many friends over to that one, while keeping your old one as a dummy to pacify your father.

Next: consider doubling down on your education. His hold on you is contingent on paying for school; getting done as quickly as possible cuts one of the ways he has of controlling you. If you can manage some summer courses and a higher course-load, you’ll be out of his reach that much quicker. You should also look into other possible sources of funding for school. You may be able to apply for scholarships or aid programs that will make it easier for you to afford your classes – hopefully without saddling you with mountains of debt after you graduate. The more you can minimize the power he has in your life, the less of an obstacle he’ll be.

Once you’ve got your degree and you’re out from under his thumb… well, that’s up to you. At that point, as long as he doesn’t have that financial hold over you, you are the one who has the leverage. You can use the threat of your presence (or lack thereof) in his life as the stick to make him shape up his act; if he’s going to be a bigot, he can do so without you being there. Leave him with a copy of “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo and tell him that if he wants to be part of your life, then he needs to f

king evolve already.

It’s an incredibly s

tty situation, Conflicted and you have my sympathies. I hope you can get through this with your sanity and relationship intact.

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: 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