DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a black woman and I have been dating a white man for 5 years. He is a Republican from a family of Democrats. When George Floyd hit, he marched in 3 BLM marches and helped to organize one in his hometown. Then he tried to read The New Jim Crow and How to be Anti-Racist.

He’s recently imploded with statements about inequity not being real, racism not being as common and systemic racism not existing. He also went from COVID vigilance to COVID = common cold. Having no empathy for any death or illness saying – People have to die of something.

He is Christian and although I am as well, I was raised with open minded critically thinking educated parents. Basically I am not a follower; even while I love God and the Bible I understand the human lens and the millions of enslaved, killed and marginalized victims of religion. He is not deep diving into Christianity, he is deep diving into YouTube right-wingers and Donald Trump. He calls Democrats “pedophiles” and “communists” and says that “BLM founders are violent socialist lesbians who hate all white people.”

He also has interrupted my phone calls to voice his opinion and every conversation about the weather ends with a comment about Trump being maligned and discriminated against and how Democrats have ruined the world and tricked black people into thinking in evil and unproductive ways. AND MOST OF ALL I AM A 35 YEAR LONG ADVOCATE FOR MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES! A LOBBYIST, TRAINER AND UPLIFTER OF VOICES. THIS IS HOW I GET PAID AND THIS IS WHO I AM TO MY CORE.

I have a 14 year old son – he now hates my boyfriend and I am making plans to leave. I just need 250.00 increase in monthly income which I know I do.

Please, explain why a white man dating a black woman who works to improve lives would suddenly shift to worshipping Trump, dismissing disparity and lack empathy for victims of COVID.

Because most of my work is within mental health – I am worried he is mentally ill.

Dating Mr. Hyde

DEAR DATING MR. HYDE: First and foremost: good for you for leaving. This is an increasingly untenable situation, and getting the f--k out is the right thing to do.

This is a thing that’s come up a lot in the last few years — and you can find these letters in my archives: people dating dudes — or dealing with family members — who seem to suddenly shift from being reasonable individuals to alt-right s--theads… or in your case, a QAnon and COVID denier. And unfortunately, it’s really not that hard to pinpoint a cause. Hell, you’ve actually put your finger square on at least part of what’s been causing people to lose their goddamn minds: they’re self-radicalizing because of YouTube. But it’s not just YouTube. It’s also Facebook, Twitter, and a s--tload of other social media sites, in no small part because of the way that these companies treat their audience and the material that they serve up.

(And as someone with a decent social media following and a YouTube channel, we will pause to appreciate the irony about complaining about social media)

The issue at hand is that on social media and sites on YouTube, the audience isn’t the customer; it’s the product. The sites themselves rely on keeping and growing their audience, in part to better serve ads, but also for user data. Sites like YouTube and Facebook don’t just want you to use their sites and then click away to something else; they want you to stay and linger there for as long as possible. One of the ways that they do that is by serving up media and posts that they feel you’ll want to see — continuing to refresh Facebook to see what people are posting or clicking through to the next recommended video. In theory, these are things that are related to what you’ve just watched or interacted with; watch some movie trailers and you’ll see film commentary videos come up as the next recommendation, for example. This is part of why it’s so easy to fall down a YouTube rabbit hole; the site is showing you more of what it thinks you should see.

But the problem is that part of what drives the algorithm is engagement — how long people watch the video and comment or hit the thumbs up, how many people like, comment or share that link or that post, and so on. And the content that generates the most engagement also tends to be more extreme and vitriolic. This makes a certain amount of sense; people post something stupid about Donald Trump or the Snyder Cut of Justice League or Steven Universe or about how the world is flat and trees aren’t real and folks engaging with the content. It doesn’t matter that half of them may be yelling in the comments about how goddamn dumb it is, or sharing that link or quote-tweeting that post so they can dunk on it. That post, link, tweet or video is still getting high-levels of engagement and so it is going to get a higher priority in the algorithm.

But — as pointed out in the Daily Beast article “How YouTube Built a Radicalization Machine for the Far-Right” — this has the effect of creating a filtered bubble. If, for example, you’re watching some Call of Duty streams, you may get recommended videos from streamers or Twitch personalities who fall on the more conservative side of things. Watch those and you’re not going to get more liberal videos to balance things out; you’re much more likely to have a video from (or about) Joe Rogan recommended to you. Watch that and you’re likely going to get Dave Rubin or Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson videos in your recommendations… and those lead to alt-right folks and folks like Stefan Molyneux, whose views tend to line up precisely with neo-nazis.

(Well, you would before Molyneux got kicked off YouTube, but my point remains).

These days, a lot of the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web” — entry points to the alt-right like Molyneux, Peterson, etc. — have fallen out of favor and become increasingly less relevant. Not, unfortunately, because their audiences wised up and moved on, but because the discourse changed. Not only did the far right become more open, more extreme and strident under Trump, but the far right and the grifters that latch onto them like remoras shifted focus to new outlets.

One of the bigger changes was Pizzagate — which already was being promoted by right wing figureheads like Charlie Kirk and Mike Cernovich evolving into QAnon, and QAnon making the leap from fringe sites like 8chan/8kun to increasingly mainstream platforms. QAnon’s chief advantage in the marketplace of ideas is that it’s a reskinned version of The Satanic Panic, just updated for the 21st century. Because the so-called “Q drops” are basically glossolalic word salad, with no real context or meaning, it’s possible to read anything into them. This has the added benefit of making QAnon a clearinghouse for every conspiracy theory out there. Adrenochrome? Sure, that tracks. Harvesting mole children who’ve been specially bred for Satanic pedophiles? Why not. Seth Rich? Yeah, there’s probably a way to squeeze that in there too. And of course, where there is right-wing nonsense, there are people who’re ready to profit off of it, whether trying to harness it to win elections or to just soak people for as much money as possible. Hence, QAnon “thought leaders” made concerted efforts on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other social media sites. And because Facebook — like YouTube — uses an algorithm that prioritizes engagement and, as a result, prioritizes far right discourse, people were increasingly directed to QAnon related pages, videos and groups.

The other significant change was COVID-19. Unlike a lot of other scandals or f--k-ups by the Trump administration, COVID wasn’t something that they could ignore or brush off. So instead, the right wing politicized it — making denial of basic reality part of membership of their club. And, of course, in the echo chambers created by algorithmic filters like the ones used by YouTube or Facebook, there is incentive to stand out by being more outrageous and more extreme than others — particularly if you’re trying to run a grift. Which then, of course, becomes the new accepted norm.

And since both of those parallel nicely with one another… well, you end up with a whole lot of people who think that wearing a mask to keep from spreading a virus is a form of slavery and that choosing to NOT go to super-spreader events is fascism.

(And this is before we get into the toxic masculinity aspects of COVID denialism or Trump’s Potemkin tough-guy displays)

Part of what makes this insidious is how much all of this triggers a specific blindspot in the human psyche; when we’re exposed to something enough times, we start to be more warmly inclined to it. This is why advertisers will blitz you with ads about a specific product until sheer familiarity leads to your giving it a try because it’s a brand you’ve seen over and over again. It’s why you may hate a particular song at first, but after the first… fifty times you’ve heard it on the radio or Spotify or on TV, you’ll decide it’s a real bop. And it’s why when someone says something often enough times, in an authoritative enough tone, people will tend to start to buy into it. Being exposed to the same ideas over and over again — the words may vary slightly but the sentiment is the same — means that it tends to sink into your psyche in ways that you aren’t even aware of. It’s part of why taking social media breaks often makes you feel so much better; you’re not being subjected to the same levels of panic, anger, fear and negativity over and over again.

But when you fall down a YouTube rabbit hole, or you open up YouTube the next day and more and more of your recommendations are about COVID or QAnon or alt-right entry points like Shapiro, it starts to dig in harder.

Cults like QAnon and COVID-deniers even take it to the next level, inviting you to “do the research” or “investigate it yourself”. This isn’t just a way of dodging inconvenient questions that they don’t have an answer to; it’s a way of getting you more invested, because you’re actively taking part in finding this information, rather than passively having it handed to you. Because you’ve been an active participant, you’re much more likely to get invested in the results… in short, taking part in your own radicalization and brainwashing.

But it’s not just brainwashing and radicalization that keeps people from recognizing that they’ve been gulled. Another reason why people double and triple down on their own radicalization is simple and banal: it’s pride and embarrassment. When people look around at the damage that their beliefs and actions have caused… they don’t want to accept that they were part of this. QAnon forums, incel communities, even Trump subreddits are full of people who’ve been shut out by friends and family or kicked out of their social circles because of how toxic their beliefs and behavior has been. However, when looking at the wreckage that they caused, they won’t recognize that this is the consequences of their actions. In fact, they will often double down instead, choosing to believe that this is because the rest of us are sheeple or weak or deluded. This is because it’s very hard to accept that you’ve f--ked up that hard. There’s a lot of embarrassment and humiliation that comes from admitting that you bought into somebody’s grift-cult, hook, line, sinker and copy of the Angler Times. Rather than face that they were wrong and do the hard work of trying to repair their lives, they opt to dig in harder and deeper instead. Yes, it means that they end up further isolated, lonely and miserable… but they’re too busy trying to avoid the short-term discomfort to recognize the long-term consequences.

Of course for the folks who profit from these beliefs, that’s a feature, not a bug. Lonely, isolated people are that much easier to control and manipulate after all.

Now, the obvious question is “but what do we do about people who buy into this?” And the answer is… it’s hard to know, honestly.

Well, not that hard in your case, DMH, you’re already leaving his ass which is the absolute right thing to do. But for a lot of folks, it’s complicated.

It’s understandable to want to believe that fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, lovers and friends could be redeemed or come back. It’s very hard to be willing to forgive and reach out to people who have been willing to cause that much destruction and pain in the lives of the people around them — more so when their beliefs lead to the spread of a deadly virus that’s killed more than 257,000 Americans and inflicted God-knows what kinds of long-term effects on survivors. I’ve seen people who’ve had their trust in their family irrevocably damaged by this, and with good reason.

While it’s easy to say “this holiday season, if you’re going to go to your parents’ house (but seriously, don’t, it’s a goddamn pandemic), get on their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts and quietly block all the right-winger groups that they’re part of”… that’s more glibness than an actual plan. While that actually CAN help start to bring them out of it, it doesn’t do the hard work of fixing what they broke. And honestly… that’s something they need to do, rather than for the people they hurt to “reach out” to them first.

In an ideal world, the answer would be layered. Social media sites like Facebook and YouTube would take actual responsibility for the harm they’ve done and not just give after-the-fact meaningless apologies and token solutions, knee-capping the ability for this to spread. On the individual level, the best practice would be reaching people before they’re in so deep that they feel like they can’t get out, gently making them aware of how they’re getting played.

But we don’t live in an ideal world, and that means we as individuals have fewer options. But when people start to snap out of it, it’s going to be on them to do the work of trying to repair the damage and rebuild their relationships, not on 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: I am 29, male, cis, of Indian descent although very much western (and was born in the US), and am trying to kickstart a romantic life that I left behind.

Now, context. When I was about 16, the first girl that I really fell for ended up rejecting me, and, while I know this sounds like a sob story (“it’s been 13 years, for f--k’s sake”, I hear you say), it’s relevant: she rejected me because I was “incompatible with her family’s beliefs”. After asking for clarification, it was exactly as bad as it sounds: her family was racist (she wasn’t, and was in tears telling me this), and I would never be accepted, no matter what existed between us. We tried to go separate ways, accidentally spent the next three years in each other’s social circles, tried addressing it a few times, she gaslit me about how she felt about me for a while, screamed at each other a lot, and then I sent a text that wasn’t meant for her when I was 20, and we went radio silence on each other. Saw her four years ago, and she spent a night getting drunk with her soon-to-be-husband, being snarky and mad at me while I bonded with her (very nice) husband over movies. 

I never really…”got over it” is what I’m saying. I just kind of stopped, romantically speaking. I spent, essentially, every year since kind of just meandering, never acting, finding people attractive and never saying anything, always assuming that people don’t find me attractive (according to some friends of mine from college, the amount of times I missed that someone was into was easily into the double digits). I never really felt “deserving” of affection and there was definitely a period of drinking based depression over my loneliness in the last ten years. I’ve talked with too many people about this, including actual therapists, and I think I came to a conclusion: my brain internalized the idea that, because of who I am, affection from people is limited, and that who I am is inherently going to give a glass ceiling on what people can/are willing to offer me in all relationships: professional, platonic, romantic.

Obviously, this is not true, completely irrational, and something that I have had to get over in setting after setting. I am currently on the path to becoming a teacher, having worked in education for, now, just under a decade (despite constant parental/sibling/familial bashing on my choices), whilst being actual award-winning levels of good (framed awards, on my desk, super proud of those), and looking at Master’s programs when *gestures wildly at current world* all of this at least calms down enough for me to stop stressing about that. I have amazing friends who care about me, all of whom are people who matter to me, and are all people I miss dearly given, again, present circumstances. I am constantly in contact, and have definitely been known to talk too much, but everyone either a) doesn’t seem to mind and actually loves hearing my conversations that spin into seemingly irrelevant tangents or b) get mad at me when I apologize for thinking that I dominate conversations because they’re sick of me apologizing for things. I’ve turned my “I talk too much in a language no one but me seems to understand” into some devastating rounds on JackBox is what I’m saying.

But the romantic side is just…something I can’t get over. And I know that that is irrational, and unreasonable. Healing is a process, and my other half-hearted attempts that ended in failure over the years in between have done me no favors (processing pain while still attempting to get people to care about you is both not fun or healthy). But I find myself again and again dwelling on just how alone I’ve felt and feel and it really bothers me.

However, I have really grown absolutely f--king sick of this side of things, have determined that my loneliness and apathy towards taking action to feel better is the root cause of a surprising amount of emotional pain in my life, and have decided to give this part of me another shot, I just…can’t help but feel absolutely paralyzed. I tried just pulling up the website for a dating service months ago, and I could FEEL my breathing, I ended up closing it and cleaning my apartment instead. One of my best friends SUGGESTED that they be the one to make a dating profile for me, and I dove at that, despite all the combined guilt that hit me like a punch to the soul after. Hell, I even feel bad writing this, and have had to FORCE myself to submit this question just because I feel guilt even asking for help.

I just can’t help but feel like I should be over this, ya know? I’m 29, I look the best I have legitimately ever looked, finally putting effort into working out daily and dressing better (online fashion services did away with a lot of my shopping anxieties). I am professionally fulfilled and damn good at it, with teachers in the school I work at giving me the chance to teach guest lessons, which I also knock out of the park. I don’t make a huge amount of cash, but enough to be comfortable while indulging my incredibly nerdy hobbies (I have a mostly painted army of 40K Necron to my right).

But every time I try to think about dating, my brain screams “You’re too inexperienced, you’re too old to learn, you’re too old for people to be forgiving about both of those, and you’ve lived too much of your life alone and could never adapt to anything else. To think someone could possibly care for you how you want them to is impossible. Just learn to be by yourself”. And then I calm down, meditate, go to sleep, only to wake up and think about this all over again. Quarantine has been hell.

It feels like the only thing I’ve ever wanted is to feel a sense of reciprocal attraction, and yet every time I try and do something about it, I seize up. I don’t know what to do, how to start, how to fix this mindset, or what steps I should be taking so, here I am. Emailing you on a Monday night where these emotions have flared up again.

So, yeah Doc. I know there’s a cure, I just don’t think I have it.

Any and all ideas are appreciated.

– Need a Battering Ram for this Emotional Wall

P.S. — And in classic fashion for my paranoid self, I read this back at least seven times.

DEAR NEED A BATTERING RAM FOR THIS EMOTIONAL WALL: This is a classic case of “the problem you have isn’t the problem you think you have”, NBRTEW. Your issue isn’t needing to get started or an emotional wall that you need to break through, it’s the sheer level of anxiety you’re feeling.

I don’t think it takes Freud to say that this goes beyond just having been dumped at sixteen. Don’t get me wrong: that absolutely sucked, especially considering why she dumped you. But while that certainly may have been a traumatic event at the time, I don’t think it’s the only thing that’s causing these feelings in you. And hell, while I think that the reinforcement from the way she treated you since — getting pissy at you for bonding with her fiancé, for example — certainly didn’t help, I don’t think that is the root cause either.

I think there’re two issues at play here. The first is that it seems like you’ve grown up in an environment where nothing you did was good enough. You drop a lot of hints in your letter that give a pretty strong indication that your family life was and is one of apparently heavy criticism. While I don’t think every family needs to be a recreation of the Brady Bunch or constantly affirming everyone’s worth and worthiness, if 99% of what you’re hearing is about how you don’t measure up, that’s gonna carve a groove in your brain. And when that feeling seems to be reinforced, repeatedly, by someone who supposedly cares about you… that’s going to leave some pretty hefty scars and make you incredibly gun-shy.

The second issue sounds very familiar to me. Again, there are a lot of things you mention in your letter — apologizing constantly, having panic attacks over mundane things like clothes shopping, even forcing yourself past an anxiety attack to write this letter (and proof-reading it seven times) — that set my Spidey-sense tingling. A lot of what you describe sounds an awful lot like what’s known as Rejection-Sensitive Dysphoria — something I’ve dealt with over my lifetime as part of having ADHD. Now, this doesn’t mean that I think you have ADHD; in fact, RSD tends to be co-morbid with a number of other conditions, including borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorders and depression.

Rejection sensitivity and RSD can manifest as anxiety and panic attacks, intrusive thoughts about being “unworthy” of love, friendship and relationships, constant fear that you’ve upset or angered someone or being so terrified of rejection that you end up just not doing… anything. It can make you constantly second-guess yourself or try to analyze everything you’ve done in hopes of either avoiding rejection or reassuring yourself that no, everything’s ok and your friends don’t hate you. And honestly: it’s not something you can just will yourself to get over. Trust me: I’ve tried. I found ways of pushing past it in the moment, but that low-grade hum in the back of your mind doesn’t go away.

Now the good news is that this is all treatable. There are, for example, medications that can help with the anxiety and the emotional symptoms. Meditation, therapy, even learning how to control your breathing can all help manage the panic and calm down the jerkbrain voices that all insist that you’re not good enough and that your friends don’t like you. But that’s a conversation to be having with your therapist, not with me; Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor, after all. Talk to your therapist about the possibility of RSD or an anxiety disorder and whether talking to a psychiatrist about medical options would be right for you; they’re in a better position to tell you what your options are and what’re most likely to work well for you.

But one thing I can tell you: let yourself off the hook, man. Yes, this feels like something you should have been able to “just get over”… but the truth is that it rarely works like that. Especially if other things in your life — whether your upbringing, your familial relationships, even your exes — are reinforcing those negative feelings. Your anxieties aren’t something to be embarrassed about, nor should you be kicking yourself for not being able to just “will” yourself out of it or just magically “get over it”. The truth is that you’ve been putting in a lot of work to grow and improve as a person, in your career and in your relationships. That’s all something to be proud of. The fact that you short-change it or hold it up as proof that you “should” be over this just devalues the work and progress you’ve made. All that you’ve mentioned about how far you’ve come? That’s a sign of just how strong and determined you are.

The fact that you have an issue that’s hung in there as long as it has doesn’t mean that you’re weak or defective; it just means that it may be something you can’t handle by yourself and that’s fine. It’s not failure to need help from others, nor is it a sign of weakness to reach out to ask for it. You wouldn’t blame someone for not being able to ‘will’ themselves cured of cancer; why are your emotional problems any less serious or deserving of less help from professionals who specialize in it?

The other thing I think that will help is to give yourself permission to not worry about relationships right now and to focus on your emotional health. The best thing you can do for yourself is make yourself and your well-being your priority. Dealing with these issues and finding treatments and ways of getting it under control are going to be much easier if you’re not kicking yourself for not having more relationships. As I said before: erase the word “should” from your vocabulary. You’re treating this as though you’ve fallen behind on a plan and path that everyone is expected to follow. Except you haven’t, and you aren’t. There’s no one path, no one set number of waypoints you’re supposed to hit within a certain time limit. There is only your path, your journey, and you will get where you need to go at your own pace and in your own time.

Don’t worry about love or relationships; those will still be waiting for you. Make yourself your top priority for now. When you’re ready, there will be time enough for love.

You’ve got this.

All will be well.

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 in a mess. I was supposed to get married this summer until we postponed for COVID; then two months ago my fiancé confessed to cheating on me. Not like once or twice, but probably twenty times with maybe a dozen different women, from one-night stands to hookups with a friend of his who I always distrusted to paying for oral sex at a strip club, happy endings and prostitutes, to more one night stands and bar make outs, to an acquaintance of his (I had seen him flirt with her which feels awful), and lastly with a friend of mine several times after he moved in with me!! Ha!! This was mainly in the first three years of our relationship though earlier this year, while in pre-marital counseling, he ditched me to hang with some poly friends of friends and made out with a woman, though he confessed after.

My last ex cheated on and gaslit me terribly, which fiancé knew. Meanwhile, I knew my (ex?) fiancé wanted to explore sleeping with other people and I did try to have the conversation about how to make it safe for me. Obviously it was never going to be because he was dishonest and had disrespected me and been unethical. Also he never responded to my many efforts to open up a conversation around it, the most serious of which all happened after most of the cheating. Now he says he still needs an open relationship, and he seems to not want reconsidering that to be open-ended. We are living separately and in couples counseling; I’ve told some friends and family but my parents still think I’m engaged. Also, I’m about to be 37, and we were off birth control when he told me and in theory moving on to being open to having kids. I certainly can’t see opening anything up unless I feel radically safe and heard and prioritized which I never have been, and what’s way more important to me is having a secure foundation for being parents. I in theory can be down with sexual exploration but in all honesty it’s just not a priority. (I should also say that in our relationship I had the higher sex drive for years before lowering my expectations, and I almost never said no and I believe when he tells me I gave him the best sex of his life).

Obviously I loved him and wanted to be with him before I knew; when I found out I could clearly see the behaviors I had been ignoring and looking past and could kick myself for tolerating it, and him for letting me go down this path with someone who was being dishonest. I honestly don’t know if I can forgive the laundry list of betrayals, which still make me mighty mad.

Can I forgive him and also deal with his sleeping with other people in future under some theoretical framework that I question he could honor? Even less unsure! I guess I’m just looking for an outside opinion on what to do. He confessed out of guilt and has been willing to apologize and work on things, though some projection and resentment have popped up from him along the way that haven’t helped. He fundamentally shuts down when I need support a lot of the time, so maybe I just can’t at all be with him despite the other times together he made me happy. It sucks and I kind of can’t believe I have to deal with something this egregious again (but like, more so).

Heart Needs a Second Chance?

DEAR HEART NEEDS A SECOND CHANCE: So let’s get this out right off the top: dump the dude. Dump this guy so hard his grandparents divorce retroactively. Dump him so hard that the break up echoes through the galaxy and tens of thousands of years from now, aliens in Alpha Centauri pick up on this and collectively go “daaaaaaaaaang”.

Now with that out of the way, let’s talk about the whys and wherefores about your situation.

As many long-time readers know, I’m pro open relationships and pro ethical non-monogamy. I’m also an advocate of the idea that cheating isn’t the worst thing that can happen in a relationship, nor is it always automatically a relationship extinction level event. But both of those come with fairly hefty caveats.

For example, I have long said that not all infidelities are equal. There’s a world of difference between a one-off, never-to-be-repeated mistake that the cheating partner sincerely regrets and, say, someone who thinks that monogamy is something that happens to other people, even after they’ve made a exclusive commitment. Your fiancé is rather clearly the latter. The fact he’d been cheating on you repeatedly, with many, many women is pretty much all that needs to be said on the subject.

While there are people whose chief mistake is that they keep making a monogamous commitment — especially if they know they are incapable of keeping it — there are also folks who just plain don’t give a s--t. For them, it’s not a case of someone who shouldn’t promise to be monogamous, they’re someone whose life philosophy can be summed up as “got mine, f--k you.” Sometimes they like the thrill of doing something “wrong”. Others like the feeling of being sneaky and clever and not getting caught. And of course there’re always the ones who just don’t give a s--t as long as they get their rocks off.

(And to head off the comments: no, I don’t think your fiancé is a sex addict… primarily because sex addiction isn’t a thing. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists, the Center for Positive Sexuality, the Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom have all released statements: from a medical and scientific perspective, there’s no such thing as sex addiction. And studies agree with them.)

Your fiancé’s behavior makes it fairly simple: dude’s an a--hole.

Similarly, open relationships can be wonderful… but not only are they not for everyone. Open relationships require trust, emotional security, strong boundaries, commitment and open communication… all of which your partner has very clearly failed at. Part of making an open relationship work means being able to maintain a relationship with your partner, especially if you have a primary partner rather than a “relationship anarchy” style form of openness. The fact that your fiancé shuts down when you need support, can’t seem to discuss things openly and clearly and has, y’know, been going behind your back for most of the time you’ve been together are all pretty good indicators that, monogamous or not, this is not a dude you should be marrying or considering scrambling your DNA with.

Also, just for the record: an open relationship is not a “get-out-of-cheating-free” card. You can be non-monogamous and still cheat on your partner… and I strongly suspect he would still have cheated on you, even if you had been open.

Now, I can have some forgiveness and understanding for someone coming to realize that they can’t make a monogamous commitment. That still would require them doing a lot of work to both earn forgiveness and trust back, as well as making things right… but I can see that happen. Similarly, there are plenty of folks who’ve realized that monogamy isn’t right for them (but haven’t cheated) and want to discuss the possibility of transitioning into an open relationship. There are many, many relationships that have made that switch and survived, even thrived.

However, if your fiancé knew from the jump that he can’t do monogamy, then that is a conversation you both should have been having from the jump. It wouldn’t mean that you had to start as non-monogamous; he should be willing to prove his commitment to you to help build that trust and security before having the series of discussions about when and how you’d open up. He didn’t do that, and I suspect he didn’t because he either didn’t respect you enough to try, or had a “better to beg forgiveness” philosophy which is some next-level bulls--t.

If this relationship were to have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving, it would require your fiancé to be going above and beyond to earn your forgiveness and to prove worthy of your trust. To be perfectly frank: it doesn’t sound like he’s doing that, nor does it sound like he’s even willing to try. He sounds like he’s trying to retroactively make his cheating ok by getting you to agree to an open relationship, as though that could be backdated and magically make his betrayal of your trust go away. It can’t, and it’s bulls--t for him to even try, especially knowing how your previous ex treated you.

So dump this dude with a quickness, call the Whole Man Disposal Unit and get him out of your life. Whether you’re ever willing to explore some form of non-monogamy in the future or not — and either of those options is perfectly fine — he has proven definitively that he is not the person you want to be spending your life with.

Break up with him and find someone who will treat you with respect. You’ll be much happier for it.

Good luck.

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