DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:

My partner (he/him) has a lot more sexual experience than I (they/them) have – I haven’t dated much, and don’t like one night stands. Regardless of what I do, I always feel perpetually behind – the things that are perfectly adequate for me are not necessarily adequate for him.

It’s not that I’m not willing to try thing xyz, but I’m not even sure where to begin – the extent of me getting frisky is cowgirl vs. missionary.

How do I expand my horizons such that he won’t get bored and leave?

Bed Springs Playbook

DEAR BED SPRINGS PLAYBOOK: Alright, BSP, let’s start with my standard first question for situations like this: have you actually talked to your partner about this? It sounds like you’re making a lot of assumptions based out of insecurity; “not necessarily adequate” are not words that make me feel like you’re dealing with a lot of certainty here. If he hasn’t told you “hey, I think we need to spice things up a little in the bedroom”, then it sounds to me like we’re talking about guesswork and assumptions, not actual knowledge.

As you take a moment on that, allow me to dispel a common misconception for you. When it comes to sex, numbers are just that: numbers. They don’t inherently convey skill, nor do they convey a continuous need for adventure and experimentation. Just as somebody could have enough partners to make Wilt Chamberlain look like a celibate monk and still suck in bed, having lots of partners or exes doesn’t automatically mean that they’ve gone through the Kama Sutra twice and wrote some extra chapters for funsies. People can have body counts in triple or quadruple digits but still be incredibly vanilla in their tastes and interests. For many folks, standard issue sex works great. They don’t need to be swinging from the chandeliers, dousing one another with hot wax or having threesomes, foursomes and moresomes in order to avoid getting bored.

Boredom tends to come when you’re in a rut, doing the exact same thing the exact same way every time. Not just missionary or cowgirl, but the same make out-oral-sex-oral-sex-PIV routine, only ever in the bedroom, every Friday night at 10:30, before turning out the lights and going to sleep. Different times and occasions, different rooms of the house and, yes, different positions can all bring novelty into the mix, without having to break out the Seymour Butts DVDs for inspiration.

But let’s go back to the “did you talk to your partner about this” question. If you haven’t, if you’ve been quietly sitting there, stewing in your worry that you’re not enough for him… well, that’s your problem, not your lack of experience. See, talking to your partner is the real solution here… on pretty much every level.

To start with, telling him that you’re a little worried that he’s bored or that the things that’re working for you aren’t working for him gets it all out in the open. He can’t reassure you that everything’s fine if he doesn’t know that you’re afraid that everything isn’t fine. Just as importantly, though, talking to him is how you two start trying thing XYZ or XXY or even YZZ.

Not YYZ though; Neil Peart’s the only person who could pull that off. The man’s not HUMAN.

Anyway.

Nobody is expecting you to manifest sexual experience out of nowhere, especially if you aren’t sure where and how to start. If it turns out that your partner does have things that he wants and/or needs in bed that you haven’t been doing, talking it through with him is the start of how you get that experience. Just as importantly though, you can turn that lack of experience into a bonus for the both of you. Telling your partner “hey, I want to expand my sexual repertoire, want to help?” is an invitation for the two of you to start doing some exploring together. Trading fantasies back and forth, reading smut out loud to each other for – ahem – “inspiration”, watching porn and seeing what tickles your mutual fancies, even getting wild and going to play parties as spectators can bring all kinds of spice to the relationship.

(Incidentally, watch porn for the fantasy, not to find specific things to try. Do not try the things you see in porn at home, those are trained professionals and editing is covering up a lot of sins)

It’s the “together” part that’s most important. One of the things that helps couples stay together is to realize that a relationship is a shared adventure. This includes sexual adventures, which often get cast aside as life and responsibilities pile up. Couples get to a certain point – marriage, kids, etc. – and assume that this is the end of exploration and adventure; the wild crazy sex days are over and they need to settle into plain ol’ vanilla… and that’s bulls--t. Keeping it hot, keeping it wild, even a little freak-nasty if you please, is part of how you keep a marriage going, no matter how old you are or where you are in life. Get a little Gomez and Morticia in your life and you and your partner will be very happy and very satisfied.

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: The issue I’m having does not necessarily pertain to dating, but it is about relationships nonetheless.

My boyfriend of three years and I broke up back at the end of October, and ever since then, I’ve been super f--king lonely. Not lonely in the sense that I need a boyfriend–for the time being, I’m perfectly content being single–but lonely in the sense that I’m sick and tired of spending all my free time either by myself or with my parents.

I have a few close friends but everyone seems to always have an excuse not to hang out with me. My best friend, who I’ve been friends with for almost 20 years and lives right down the street from me, is so crippled by fear of this pandemic that I’ve only seen her a handful of times in the past two years. One friend is super busy literally ALL the time. And my other friend I’ve all but given up on because she works 50+ hours a week (which I’m not holding against her) and it’s become clear to me over the past six months that the only people she makes time for anymore are her boyfriend and her family. Not to mention the fact that if I don’t reach out, I’ll never hear from her. Plus, when we do hang out–an occurrence that has become increasingly rare–she’s either constantly telling me how exhausted she is or she overpowers the conversation and it inevitably turns to some drama between her and her boyfriend–which is exhausting for me.

So, needless to say, when it comes to hanging out with people, it’s almost become an dialogue of “okay, well why the f--k do I even try?” Also, I find myself feeling a twinge of resentment towards my friends because no one ever reaches out to me to make plans or even just to check in.

Anyway, I started a new job just after my boyfriend and I broke up. My coworker, we’ll call him Mark, is also gay. What started out as a crush has subsided and has become just me wanting a friendship with this guy because I need gay friends in my life. I see him everyday and I want to ask if we could build some kind of friendship outside of work, but I have such a crippling fear of rejection that I just don’t. And I follow him on Snapchat, so I see him with all his friends outside of work and I almost get jealous. Not only because he’s hanging out with friends and having fun but also because I want to be his friend, because I want someone in my life that I can relate to on that level. (You know exactly what level I’m talking about.)

If you could offer your two cents about one or both of these situations, I’d deeply appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Mr. Lonely

DEAR MR. LONELY: I’m wondering if this isn’t an area where expectations are screwing with you more than reality, ML. When I first read your letter, I got to the part about your friends always having excuses to not hang out with you, and I was primed to see some classic examples of shallow or blatantly false excuses that were serving as polite social niceties to cover the awkwardness of not wanting to tell someone you didn’t want to see them any more.

But if I’m being honest… all of your friends sound like they’re stressed and overwhelmed in very real and legitimate ways. I mean, I can absolutely understand why someone might be so worried about COVID that they basically become hermits. I’ve got many friends who’ve been hit hard by Long COVID, including people who were careful, who were vaccinated and boosted and did their best to avoid exposure. I’ve got others who’ve been all but avoiding going anywhere because they have a toddler who couldn’t get vaccinated and the last thing they wanted was to risk their child getting infected and still others who are severely immunocompromised and will steadfastly avoid crowds or any place that’s exclusively indoors.

Similarly, your other friends are overwhelmed with work or other responsibilities, which has meant that they either have no time to socialize or have prioritized what little free time they do have to spend with family. That’s not entirely unreasonable for them. It sucks for you, don’t get me wrong. Your feeling lonely and left out is entirely understandable. But looking at it from their perspective with the information you’ve given, their choices make sense for them and the situations they’re in.

Unfortunately, that’s life; there will be times when people have very limited time or availability – if any – and they have to be choosy about when and how they spend it and with who. That blows, especially when you’re not the person they’re choosing. It’s not malicious, it’s not capricious and it’s not as though they’re deliberately avoiding you, it’s just that sometimes everything is f--king chaos and also on fire.

(And while it’s less than ideal, I feel like I should point out that the friend you do see may be venting to you because you’re the only person she feels like she can vent to. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say “hey, let’s talk about something else!” but it does suggest that she sees you as someone she feels close enough to and secure enough with that she can share these frustrations.)

The “having to reach out first” issue is also understandably sucky. But again, despite how it feels, that doesn’t mean that people don’t necessarily care. It’s easy to assume, if not malice then indifference at least, when you’re the one who always makes the plans or always is reaching out. But that isn’t always the case. Leaving aside friends who have issues that interfere with being social or even engaging with people – ranging from depression and ADHD, chronic pain or fatigue and so on – there’s also the issue of simply not having the bandwidth or spoons for it. When someone is under a lot of pressure or stress, as it seems your friends are, then a lot of things get set aside. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they’ve done the mental and emotional equivalent of diverting all power to life-support. They miss you and would love to see you but they’re so overwhelmed that the idea of doing something that isn’t mission-critical doesn’t stick long enough to go from “thought” to “action”.

And even in calmer, less “exciting” times, friend groups can have particular dynamics and roles, with different folks bringing different things to the table. Some friends are The Organizer – the ones whose gifts are making plans and handling logistics. That may well be the role you came to occupy, especially if you were better at it than others.

At the same time, it’s also a mistake to assume negligence or a lack of caring if it’s possible that they don’t know that you’re frustrated making the first move. Or, for that matter, it could be a case like it is with your co-worker: they’d love to reach out but they’re afraid to because they feel like they might be bothering or intruding on you. I mean, God knows I’ve got friends who I know like me and enjoy spending time with me, but I still worry about messaging them out of the blue for fear of bothering them and vice-versa.

So while this is very understandably frustrating, even maddening… I think it’s worth shifting your perspective and expectations a bit. It’s less that they don’t care, so much as life has been making s--t impossible for them, and if you want to see them, then everyone’s going to have to make accommodations. It may be easier to see your best friend if you can do so in ways that she’d feel safer from potential infection – hanging out outside or masked up if you’re inside, having a negative test before going to see her and so on. You may have to schedule things in advance with your friends who’re overworked, even weeks in advance. One of the annoying realities of getting older is having to plan around growing lists of responsibilities and obligations, ranging from work to family to just having the energy to do things.

But while that may help in the future, none of this helps the loneliness now. So let’s talk about what you can do in the here and now while you and your friends figure out ways that you all could see each other more and in more satisfying ways. And oh hey, we’ve got your new coworker as a perfect example of what to do. This is a prime opportunity to expand your social circle and make a new friend in the process.

However, doing so means making a leap and risking rejection. The risk isn’t nearly as high as you may think, but it is there… but unless you accept the risk, you can’t reap the reward. The good news is, there’re ways of minimizing the risk and improving the likelihood of a positive result when you shoot your friendship shot.

Now, I’m assuming that you’ve actually talked with Mark and have a cordial work relationship with him. If not… well, that’s where you need to start. If your crush-turned-squish has been entirely from afar, that makes things more difficult. Not impossible, just trickier; the difference between a normal charisma roll and rolling with disadvantage. So if you haven’t actually connected with Mark at work, I’d suggest you start there.

The good news is, if you’re having regular or semi-regular conversations at work – nothing too deep or personal, just something beyond anything needed for the job– then you’re half way through the first step already. If not, then this is where you want to learn to embrace small talk. I realize that there’re lots of folks who insist that they hate small talk, but the truth is that small talk is a vital part of the process of getting to know someone.

Small talk is the on-ramp to the freeway of those deeper conversations. You can’t just launch into “so, tell me about your deepest childhood dreams” with someone you just met, any more than you can just pull straight into a busy freeway. You need to match the speed and merge into the traffic, as it were. Small talk provides that on-ramp by creating the initial, surface level commonalities; you’re getting to know them and finding the low-stakes areas where you can build rapport with them.

This is one of the areas where streaming and binge-watching shows has disadvantaged us; appointment television or shows that were prominent in the zeitgeist – your Lost’s, your Mad Men, your Game of Thrones’, the shows that it seemed everyone was caught up on and needing to discuss – were the easiest ways to build shallow, early rapport with folks. The proverbial water cooler conversations about trying to parse Lost’s mysteries or who John Snow’s parents were served as easy on-ramps to casual conversation. But while we may not have those cultural touchstones the way we used to, there’re still enough Big Moments – shows that break through the noise and gain significance – that we can connect on those levels.

But hey, maybe Mark doesn’t want to talk about that bad-ass moment from Obi-Wan. Ok, so what about sports? Or significant local events? There’s undoubtedly something that you can use to strike up casual conversation with Mark that can lead to some basic “getting to know you” conversations that, in turn, let you build rapport and lead to the deeper, more significant conversations that people want.

The nice thing about these conversations: they’re low risk. The worst that’s likely to happen is that you encounter someone who didn’t/doesn’t watch The Thing. Or, I guess, has an opinion SO glaringly wrong that you no longer need to keep them on the “potential friends” list, anyway.

So, let’s say that you and Mark have a good water cooler-esque convo and it goes well. This is when you make your move. You say “Hey, I was planning on grabbing a beer at $NEARBY_BAR after work. Would you like to go?” This is a fairly low-key, low investment invite; if Mark’s been enjoying talking to you (and has free time) then the odds are good that he’d be down for a beer. Is asking him to join you for a beer too intimidating? OK, then you say “I like talking to you; can I send you a friend request/add you on Instagram/WhatsApp/whatever?” Connecting with co-workers and casual acquaintances on social media is so normalized these days that it’s highly unlikely he’d recoil at the concept.

Regardless, the point is to have opportunities to have non-work related conversations, and use those opportunities to get to know each other. Those help lead to the next step: inviting Mark (and other potential friends) to Do Stuff. In fact, inviting people to Do Stuff is a prime way to try to build your social circle with folks you’d like to hang out with but are too afraid to ask. Having an event to invite folks to – a barbecue, a regular poker night, whatever floats your boat – makes it less intimidating to ask, and gives them something to say “yes” to. If Mark, for example, would actually be interested in hanging out but worries that asking you would be awkward, having a thing to go to that other folks he knows are attending would be a perfect excuse to come hang out without feeling weird.

Plus, the invitation to Do Stuff tends to scale well, upwards and downwards. You can have small or large gatherings as circumstances (and likely available friends) as needed. And if need-be, you can always start with post-work drinks and hangouts to jumpstart friendships with other co-workers.

Incidentally, this also works well with meeting folks at activities you enjoy. If you’re a regular at game nights at your local tabletop store or pub trivia or whatnot, the same process applies. Talk with cool folks at the event and then invite them to hang – solo or to Do Stuff. Do this regularly and see the same people regularly and you start moving up the ladder from acquaintances to friends to good friends.

Now, does this tip into the “I’m always the planner/inviter”? Yeah, that’s a risk. But if that’s already a strength you have, then it makes sense to lean into it. Someone has to be the person to make the first move, and it may as well be you. Clearly, waiting and hoping that people will notice that you’re lonely isn’t doing the trick, so you may as well be proactive about it. But the good news is: you’re not doomed to be the planner and inviter; as you bring new friends in and make new connections, you also connect with other folks who’re more likely to reciprocate and invite you to stuff.

So, TL;DR: it doesn’t seem like your friends are avoiding you, they’re just neck deep in their own s--t and are fighting to stay afloat. And if you want to make new friends – starting with Mark – then you need to be willing to risk rejection and put yourself out there. But do it right, and not only is the risk of rejection minimal, but the rewards are much, much higher than the risk.

Good luck

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

DOCTOR’S NOTE: The letter writer apparently sent a similar letter to multiple advice columns, including Dear Prudence.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been with “Tom”* for 8 years, married for 6. We have an amazing 4-year-old daughter and I’m pregnant with our second child. I’m a painfully shy and ordinary-looking woman who never had a relationship of any kind before I developed a strong enough crush to spur me to pursue Tom. He is an equally shy man who would not appeal to most women, being short, slight, nerdy, intense, and almost entirely lacking a sense of humor, but to me he’s the most adorable and precious thing on the planet. Tom has had only one previous relationship, with “Summer,”* a gorgeous, outgoing woman who apparently swooped down out of nowhere, relieved him of his virginity when he was 27, and dated him for about 6 months before dumping him without warning and breaking his heart, approximately 3 years before we met. He still talks fondly about how superhumanly fun and sparkly and magical-seeming he was, and I grit my teeth and hide my feelings of jealousy—just as I hold and soothe him when he talks about how lonely he was before he met her, and how he contemplated suicide after their breakup. I have total confidence that Tom loves me, adores our daughter and our baby-to-be, and is committed to our life together— provided that Summer is no longer an option for him. But I can’t help feeling insecure when I compare myself to photos of her, and the fact I don’t have anyone comparable in my past bothers me more than it should.

Last week I was doing some work on our shared desktop computer (we mostly use individual tablets) while Tom’s personal email was still logged in—which I didn’t realize until an email notification popped up, and I caught sight of Summer’s name. Unable to control my curiosity, I skimmed the novella-length message she’d sent him. She apologized profusely for the way she treated him, rambled on about her acrimoniously divorced, unloving parents and abusive early relationships, and admitted to having substance abuse problems and untreated bipolar and borderline personality disorder throughout her 20’s, but detailed her journey through rehab/therapy/yoga and claimed to have become a better, more stable person, whom she hoped was now worthy of him. Now heading into her late 30’s, she said she was desperate to start a family, that Tom was the only truly good and caring man she’d ever known, and she wanted to give their relationship a second chance. She was fully aware he was married and a father already, but didn’t think that should stand in the way if they’re truly soulmates—as she reminded him he said when she broke up with him. (For the record, Tom has never called me his soulmate.)

With my heart racing, feeling on the verge of throwing up, and almost without thinking, I sent a brief reply, as Tom, telling Summer that I was very happy in my marriage, and to please never contact me again. Then I deleted the sent message and the original, and deleted them both from the trash. I haven’t breathed a word to Tom about this, and Summer, to my knowledge, has not emailed him again. Yet ever since I’ve been eaten up with guilt. I know I did terribly wrong just by snooping in my husband’s email, let alone impersonating him and withholding a message meant for him—but was it justifiable, to defend my marriage and my children’s home? I almost feel like some higher power meant for me to be at the computer to intercept that email—would I be throwing the universe’s intention in its face to tell Tom after all? Or do I owe it to him to come clean, and let him decide for himself whether or not to get back in touch with Summer, even if it ends up costing me everything?

Sincerely,

Shamefaced Snoop

DEAR SHAMEFACED SNOOP: Hoo boy.

Alright SS, you asked, but I don’t think you’re gonna like the answer.

No, it wasn’t justifiable. No, you weren’t saving anything. And no, this wasn’t “The Universe” sending you an opportunity. What you ended up costing yourself was your own sense of security in your relationship.

Let’s break this down for a second. Tom was with Summer for a grand total of six months, after which she broke his heart and left him to the point of being suicidal. So, ok, been there, done that myself, I can relate to Tom. That’s more or less my origin story. Tom, however, has been with you for eight years, with one daughter and another child on the way. Those are not the actions of a man who has a foot out the door on the off chance that a woman – someone he apparently has had no contact with in nearly twelve years – happened to wander back into his life.

I mean, let’s look at the tape here. There’s literally nothing you’ve described in your letter that sounds like Tom has been pining for Summer all this time or hoping that she might drop back into his life like a kamikaze angel. I could understand being worried if, say, Tom were still in contact with her. If Tom were deep in the creep on her Instagram, or he’d been sending plausibly deniable “get back together” pings every few months or years… yeah, sure, you might have cause for worry. Not a lot of cause, but it would at least be understandable.

Instead… well, we’ve got a family man who seems pretty happy with a loving wife and daughter. As a general rule, folks who’re really hung up on someone – the One Who Got Away, the One Who Was Their True Love – don’t get married or start families. If  we were to accept that Tom were hoping that somehow, some day, Summer might come back to him, it’s doubtful that he’d be willing to saddle himself with so much that he couldn’t just walk away from.

I mean, you know him better than I do. Even if we were to posit that Tom either doesn’t love you or doesn’t love you as much as he loves/loved Summer (and I don’t believe that to be true), do you really think that he’s someone who could leave his children too?

OK so maybe he hasn’t been actively pining all this time. But he talks about his past relationship with her in such glowing terms! Ok… and? This doesn’t mean that she’s the yardstick by which all other relationships are measured. What it means is that this was a formative relationship from his past and one that was so short and ended so quickly that he never had the time to get out of the honeymoon phase. And yeah, it’s going to be a pretty significant memory for him; a six month whirlwind romance where he lost his virginity, one that was likely full of drama (that he likely saw as “excitement”) and that ended as abruptly as it began. He never had a chance to see what Summer was like when he wasn’t f--kdrunk on oxytocin and dopamine, there was never a point where her undiagnosed was more than a manic phase or her BPD could kick in and he almost certainly hadn’t seen Summer at a point when her substance abuse problems were less “free spirited wild child” and more “on a bender, out of control and not nearly as charming as it was two months in when he didn’t realize what he had gotten himself into.”

So, yeah, part of why this is such a golden memory for him is because she was a shooting star in his life; bright and blazing and then gone just as fast, leaving only memories in its wake.

Oh and pain. Did we forget the pain and heartbreak? Because that was there too. And I can promise: Tom didn’t forget the pain and heartbreak part either. In fact, I kinda wonder if you didn’t hear the brittleness in his voice or the edge he’d take on when talking about it. Because – and I’m speaking from experience here – even if someone was a golden dream, the heartbreak and feeling of betrayal and just getting poleaxed by his sudden dumping is gonna be a part of that mix too.

But that mix is important, because we don’t exist in a vacuum. We don’t live a frictionless existence, where people slip in and out of our lives without leaving marks on us. If we did, then yeah, you might be at risk for Tom leaving you for Summer. But we don’t. We are all the sum of all the people we interact with, the people we invite into our lives and into our hearts. And that matters a lot, especially for your relationship.

If you were to ask Tom what that relationship means to him now, I suspect he’d probably tell you that it’s a lovely memory, but it’s his past. And if he’s half-way emotionally intelligent or has any self-awareness, he might tell you that the lessons he learned from that relationship are what put him on the road to you. If Summer had never existed, then Tom would never have become the man you met, the man you married and who married you. Summer’s taking his heart and his cherry is what ultimately lead him to you in the first place. In a very real way, if there were no Summer, there’d be no you.

Part of the problem is that you seem to be seeing his talking fondly of her as an indication that he wants to go back there, that his being suicidal after he left is something he still feels, as opposed to acknowledging that the break up left him in a dark place. I can talk about how bleak life felt after some of my break ups. That doesn’t mean I want to go back to those relationships or date those people again; it just means that sometimes life f--king sucks after you get dumped. It’s a thing that happened to him, a thing he experienced; it doesn’t magically transform into frolicking in meadows in the spring sunshine just because years have passed and he got over her.

Yeah he called her his soulmate and hasn’t called you his soulmate. Leaving aside that we all have many soulmates, he said it at the time because he was elbows-deep in the honeymoon period with the first women he ever slept with. Dude had never had a relationship, never had sex and then suddenly boom all of this is dropped in his lap. I’m not surprised he went a little over the top, like people in the throes of First Love do. Especially when they’re being dumped. He hasn’t said it to you because he’s older, more mature and more experienced. But what’s more important: word choice or actions?

Because his actions, again, say “this is a man who loves his wife, his life and his family.”

But speaking of actions, let’s talk about yours. You snooped. This wasn’t an accident. You didn’t stumble upon this. It’s one thing to be on the computer when it’s still logged into somebody else’s account. That’s not a big deal, especially if it’s a shared item. But once you saw the notification pop up, that was your cue to either close the app or to log him out. You didn’t. You chose to read it. And then you chose to respond.

This wasn’t just a violation of trust, it’s crossing a lot of lines. And let’s be honest here: you didn’t defend anything. This wasn’t you being a fierce protector of your family, this was you having an opportunity to slap back at an imaginary opponent. Instead, you made things worse. Why? Well, to start with, you’ve robbed yourself of your trust in your husband. If this were a test – I don’t believe that the universe tests people like this but let’s pretend – then it was a test of Tom’s love and devotion to you and your family. If Tom, had gotten that email, would he have just dropped everything and left? Profoundly doubtful. He might’ve wrote back, sure, maybe even talked to her. But I doubt he would’ve just up and left.

But guess what? Now you’ll never know. By snooping and impersonating Tom, you’ve now made it impossible to have an answer as to whether Tom would choose you over Summer. You could have had certainty. Now you don’t.

And you know what else you did? You robbed Tom of getting the apology he deserved from Summer. Tom got dumped by his first love, a dumping that left him feeling suicidal. Even if he were long, long over it, he’d processed that pain and moved on, Summer coming back and saying “You know what, I was wrong, I treated you badly and you didn’t deserve what I did to you” would be huge. That moment of “yes, I f--ked up and I’m sorry” may not have healed wounds long since scarred over, but it sure as s--t would’ve been appreciated. That would’ve nicely closed the book on a significant act in his life. And you took that from him. That is profoundly not cool.

Should you tell him? Well, at this point, I think that’s more likely to blow up your marriage than the email would have. But now you have to weigh the odds of whether Summer’s ever likely to write again, or direct message him or even call… and then Tom’s gonna have a lot of questions about why she’s talking about an email he never saw, never mind replied to. Is it likely? I don’t know. But that’s going to be a risk you have to accept if you decide it’s better to stuff this down the memory hole and let the guilt of it all be your penance for this.

Oh and one more thing. Tom’s 38 now. He’s grown, he’s matured, he’s gained experience and put down roots. Apologies and closure aside, Summer rolling back – again nearly 12 years later, with no contact – and saying “yes, I know you’re married and all but you should leave all that behind for me because of something you said when we were breaking up” isn’t likely to make him say “oh hell yes, let me blow up my whole-ass life”. If he had even two braincells to rub together, he would look at that second part of the email – “ok I know it’s been over a decade and I broke your heart and you have a life and a wife and kids but you should abandon them for me and stick a baby in me because I’m all better now” – and say “there is no way in hell I’m going to stick my junk in that beehive again, because what you’re asking for is bats--t and I want no part of it.”

Maybe next time trust your husband a little more.

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