DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My apologies as I’m new here but I do need some advice. Recently I had a cyst near my vaginal area and had it drained and due to this I wasn’t able to have sexual intercourse for a short amount of time, as it was suggested by my OBGYN. During that time my boyfriend started watching porn, (he informed me) and I was ok at first as I wasn’t able to have sex at the time. During this stage our sexual relationship has decreased drastically.

When I first tried to have intercourse after my wait time was up, it’s like he didn’t want to as there was little to no effort to even try, but he was complaining prior that he wanted to.

Time passes by and we finally start having sex again but over and over again he is unable to ejaculate. I notice he closes the door to “use the bathroom” for a long period of time. And obviously I can tell it’s to watch porn. I can feel the relationship deteriorating.. what should I do..?

Feeling Left Out

DEAR FEELING LEFT OUT: I get a lot of letters from folks who worry about their partners’ porn habits and who want to draw a line between watching porn to changes in their sex lives, and… well, honestly, more often than not, the problem isn’t porn. A lot of times, it’s not even a symptom, so much as just being the most visible and obvious thing, and one that’s easy to latch onto as the cause.

But more often than not, the issues lie elsewhere, and it’s hard to say for sure without digging into the problem.

There’re a lot of possible causes here that could explain the changes in your sex life and your boyfriend’s behavior, and they may not all be entirely obvious.

Before we get into it, I want to be clear: none of this means that this is your “fault” or that you’re somehow to blame. A lot of these possibilities are more about his issues, not something that you’ve done wrong. So don’t take any of this as me assigning blame as much as just trying to run down potential causes or contributing factors.

One potential cause – something that comes up fairly often with new parents, in fact – is that some guys get squicked out about issues surrounding their partners vaginas or vulvas. A lot of men, for example, find it hard to be sexual with their partners for a period of time after witnessing them give birth. It doesn’t matter that hey, that’s all part of the mammalian-sex-having aspect of the human experience – in their minds, making the switch from “mostly used for mutual sexual pleasure” to “place my child came from” does a whammy on their heads and they find it hard to switch back.

This could well be an issue for him. Having a cyst – and the medical intervention required to treat it – could have messed with his mental image of your body and of sex with you and now he can’t quite make the image of having to drain the cyst out of his head.

Another possibility is that the timing of your having the cyst and having to abstain from sex was coincidental and unrelated. It’s possible that his feelings or sexual attraction to you have been changing and the period of abstinence from sex was an opportunity for him to not have to wrestle with it. Now that you’re back in action, he’s forced to deal with the lack of interest but without wanting to talk to you about it.

It could be that right now what he wants isn’t sex ­– that is, the holistic sexual experience of intimacy, arousal, foreplay, etc. – but just orgasm. Depending on how long you two had to avoid sexual contact, he may have decided that the simplicity of “wham, bam, thank you glans” is what he wants and he doesn’t think about how this affects you.

Or it may be that the kinds of sex you’re having wasn’t or isn’t the kind of sex he prefers, and the time off made that gulf much more evident.

Now, I’d have a lot of questions about what happened during that period of enforced abstinence and what’s going on now, especially regarding his behavior. Is sex the only change, or has the level of all forms of intimacy between you changed? Are you not having other forms of affectionate contact, other forms of intimacy and expression of love or connection with each other?

While you were having to take a break from sex, were you still cuddling, engaging in non-sexual forms of touch (like massage, hugging, curling up together on the couch, and so on)? Did you, or he, or both of you decide to pull back on physical intimacy so as to not create a situation where either he felt “lead on” with no “payoff”? Or perhaps you felt like any sort of physical intimacy would lead to his making a fuss about how he couldn’t get off and that made you (rather understandably) feel like s--t?

Knowing the answer to these could help provide insight and context to what’s been happening and why.

I’m also curious if you’ve talked with him about this and asked about where his head’s at. Has it come up at all? Has he avoided the topic all together, given you ambivalent answers or doesn’t seem to know why? Has he been acting like this is something that bothers him too? Has he been at all empathetic and understanding about how this is making you feel? What, if anything, has he done to try to change things?

The only person who can really know what’s up is your boyfriend and if he’s not telling… well, that’s an issue.

At the end of the day, this isn’t a sex issue so much as a communication issue; you’re feeling hurt and like you’re being abandoned and he’s feeling… however he’s feeling. If you two aren’t able to communicate things and work towards a mutually satisfactory resolution, that’s going to create more stress points and fractures in your relationship – even more than it’s creating now.

I think there are two things you should do right now. The first is to carve out time with your boyfriend and have an Awkward Conversation about this. Talk about how this is making you feel, about how this is affecting your feelings of connection and intimacy with your boyfriend and how, in an ideal situation, you could see this being fixed and why this would make things better. Then, after you’ve finished, let him have his turn to express how he’s been feeling and what’s been going on with him. If he has some idea of how things could be resolved or addressed, how does he see those happening and how would they change things for the better?

It’s entirely possible that he may not know, or he may not feel like he can be honest about it with you. If you two can’t make the Awkward Conversation work or it’s not helping the situation, it could be worth your time to see a sex-positive couple’s counselor. Having a third party to help mediate and facilitate the conversation can be helpful, especially if you or he can’t find the words to express how either of you are feeling. It may also be useful if you have separate sessions as well, if he feels like there’re things he can’t say to your face or with you in the room.

Getting to the bottom of the issue ­– especially from his perspective – is going to be important. Once you two can at least understand where the other is coming from, you can either work towards fixing this and repairing your connection… or you can decide if this relationship no longer meets your needs.

Hopefully this is going to be the former, and this will just be a speed-bump on an otherwise fulfilling and satisfying relationship. But if it’s something that you and he can’t (or won’t) fix? Then it’s better for the both of you to wind things down and move on to partners who are a better fit for your needs.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My girlfriend lives in Russia and I live in Bangladesh. She always tells me that she want to help people in need. Recently her English teacher and she were studying about school bullies and then her teacher talked about a boy in her school who faced bullying, and nobody talked with him .. hearing this, my girlfriend said she wanted to make friends and help him mentally by going walking, cafe and talking.

But I can’t accept it mentally I seen in Instagram reel and many other platform and words from person similar with Andrew Tate and he himself. They said that a woman having a male friend will lead relationship to danger, and obviously in long distance relationship where girl can cheat and do anything but they’ll hide it. I said so to her and by explaining my feelings and that that I’ll feel so much bad both mentally and physically. But now she says that she can’t she can’t accept it, because she wants to help people and without helping people, she wanna die!

But I feel bad even if she just goes to the cafe and talk, as the boy didn’t had any friends, because his cravings of sexual would be high and he can kiss her or do anything with her. But when I say these to her she says that : she never will cheat, leave, or ignore me for a friend but somehow I can’t trust it because she lives so far away. Although she’s always truthful with me and I know it by myself I also take replying of other messages by keeping my message for some moment, she also can do with him and she might fall in love with him and leave me. Plus she’s so kind that when someone cries she wants to help then so much, and I think because of her over kindness behavior, people could take advantage! What should I do now??

Long Distance Dilemma

DEAR LONG DISTANCE DILEMMA: This one’s easy. What you do is very simple: stop paying attention to literally anything Andrew Tate says. Seriously.

There is exactly two things that you need to know about Tate and his “advice”.

First: Tate is a violent misogynist and accused sex-trafficker, whose entire ‘game’ is based around targeting vulnerable women, using emotional abuse and fear to keep them “in line” and manipulating them into sex work. This isn’t speculation or reading between the lines; these are things he’s specifically said in the courses that people pay for.

Second: Tate is a liar. Again, he talks proudly about lying to the cops, to people, to the government and advocates using lies and manipulation to get what you want, economically, socially and sexually. He lies to the people who “work” for him, he lies to the people in order to perpetuate his image and he unquestionably lies to his fans and followers.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t trust his opinion on cheese, never mind relationships. If I saw a video where he talked about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, I’d have to double check for myself first.

Now, leaving Tate aside – as all people should – the issue here is very simple: you can’t “control” people, nor should you try. You can’t dictate who your girlfriend is friends with – especially when she lives thousands of miles away – and attempting to do so is an incredibly s--tty thing to do. Trying to control who your girlfriend does or doesn’t talk to is the sort of things abusers do, in order to keep their victims away from people who would try to help them and might pose a threat to the abuser’s control.

The idea that men and women being friends leads to cheating or whatever is rank nonsense. Believing in this sort of thing is ultimately about a) believing the worst about men and b) believing that women are somehow incapable of NOT f--king someone else if the opportunity presents itself. It’s a belief that says more about the person who thinks this – that they’re untrusting at best and dealing with absurdly toxic ideas about male and female relationships and sexuality at worst.

But most importantly, it really comes down to a very simple question: do you trust your girlfriend or not? You say that she’s never lied to you, that you and she are always in communication. Do you honestly think that your girlfriend – someone who’s clearly very compassionate and caring – is going to either be taken advantage of by somebody’s sob story, or is going to go from trying to help a bullied kid to cheating on you with him? Especially when you weigh the likelihood of that against what you know about her already?

Here’s the thing: I can understand that you have anxieties and that the stress of a very long-distance relationship can make things difficult. But if this is something you’re sincerely worried about, I think it says more about something going on with you than the impossibility for men and women to be friends. I think it’s worth asking what’s really bothering you, here. Is there some nagging feeling that something’s wrong with the relationship? Or is it that this is more about how you feel about yourself?

This isn’t an idle question; a lot of times, guys who have serious fears or anxieties surrounding their partners cheating or leaving have issues about their own feelings of self-worth – that they’re not “good enough” or don’t feel confident in their relationship with their partner, and often try to handle those unpleasant feelings by trying to control things to ensure that this worst-case scenario doesn’t happen. Ironically enough, this sort of behavior tends to be precisely what pushes their partners away; nobody likes being called a liar constantly, especially when they’re being accused of lying when they say “I love you” or “I’m not leaving”, “I’m not interested in anyone else” or that “You’re the only person I want”.

If the only reason you have to be mistrustful are your own worries and the bulls--t from conmen and liars like Tate, then it’s important to look inside yourself and ask what’s actually bothering you.

Are you worried about your connection with her, or about the depth and sincerity of how she feels about you? Are you worried that you aren’t “enough” for her and that someone else is going to “steal” her away? Why are you more willing to believe a stranger – someone who doesn’t know her or you – over your girlfriend telling you that everything’s ok? Especially when you already know that she likes helping people in bad situations… such as this student her teacher knows?

If you don’t trust your girlfriend, or the stress of being thousands of miles apart is just too much for you, then it’s better for you to just end the relationship. It won’t make you or her happy, and the conflict will just make you both miserable and destroy the relationship anyway.

If you do trust her – to be honest with you, to tell you the truth and to not violate her commitment to you – then you need to focus on why you are feeling the way you do. The more you can zero in on what’s actually bothering you, the more you can work on fixing it, so that these anxieties and baseless worries don’t end up causing the very outcome you’re worried about.

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 have read your column for years, loved the podcast (could listen as I was doing kitchen stuff) and wish questioners would ‘read back’ a few columns. I even print some of your stuff out, to ‘re-read” Yeah, I consider myself a ‘nerd’ in some ways, but, not fully. I don’t play computer/phone games at all, and am ,what I consider to be, an “extroverted introvert” or vice versa. I am 66 (yes), get out, hike, bike, kayak, all with friends, and have several circles of friends. Hell, I can even cook a meal or 2  and eat salad and veggies. I am a high school science teacher in a small, rural town in Deep Southeast IL, the opposite end of the state from Chicago. You can imagine the signs that are still ‘up’, and the churchism/conservatism of the area. I like to say “I may not live at the end of the earth, but, give me 45 minutes & I can get you much closer”, and out of cell coverage  I am also well-educated with 2 degrees at 2 different times of my life. I Can be “an independent cuss”, but Work Not to be an ass or even curmudgeon.

My question to you is this: How the ‘heck” do I word my dating profile that I am still highly interested in sex? That I am sex positive, interested in still exploring & learning, without seeming to be an idiot/ass/complete horn dog?? Especially when I ‘go back” to OKCupid, and maybe another site or 2.  I am currently on Feeld. I have a wide search range (150+ miles), but it is geared toward people who are about half my age. I am Not a PUA, much less a “Bull” or “Dom”. Aaaand, it has a Lot of Bots & Fakes…’phishers”…they have pics that are professionally taken….and Many seem to have jobs such as “accounting analyst” or something vague. One, I had to ask 3 times “where” she lived… and she still has not answered it. (hmmm, hehe..”here’s your sign”).

On the ‘regular” sites, (Match, POF, etc) many women close to my age are a) “my grandkids/church” is my life b) couldn’t walk ‘hard’ a quarter of a mile w/o getting winded.  Yes, I know I have to expand my search range. No, I do not expect to jump into bed on the first, or even second date.

I still have a lot to learn. I have to ‘push’ myself to try harder and to try different things. I know that if I don’t do some ‘things” different, I will be in the same situation that I have been in for the past several years. And I am tired of that.

Thanks Doc, keep up the good work.

Looking In All The Wrong Places

DEAR LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES: I’m curious LAWP: is the issue here that you’re meeting people who aren’t interested in a sexual relationship or who don’t prioritize a sexual connection? Are you worried about – or are currently meeting – people who don’t think you are a terribly sexual person? Or are you hoping to meet folks who are more likely to be interested in a very sexual relationship? Are you meeting the wrong people, or not meeting anyone?

It sounds like part of the problem is that you’ve chosen the wrong apps. Different apps have different target markets and cater to different audiences. Feeld, for example, is aimed primarily at folks who don’t prioritize monogamy – most of the people who sign up for Feeld tend to be ethically non-monogamous and are looking for others who want that sort of relationship. Despite not going in for traditional definitions of monogamy, it’s not purely for folks looking for sex, which may mean that the people you’re most interested in aren’t going to be on there.

Similarly, if you’re looking at apps where people are looking for doms, subs or bulls… those are folks with specific kinks and fetishes (BDSM and cuckoldry, specifically), which doesn’t sound like what you want. That’s just a pure mismatch between what you want and what other people are looking for. It’s worth remembering that just because someone’s kinky or into non-normative sex like BDSM, hotwifing, cuckolding etc., that doesn’t mean they’re more sexed-up than the average bear (except on Scruff, anyway). A lot of folks look at FetLife and other apps and think it’s going to be a sex ATM full of freaky people who aren’t going to be as picky or more open to banging randos – and they tend to go away very disappointed.

If what you’re looking for is someone age appropriate but also is very interested in a sexual – but socially conventional – relationship… well, you’re much more likely to find that on OKCupid, Tinder or Hinge than on Feeld or #Open. Part of what’s going to make a difference is being clear about what you want and choosing the apps where you’re likely to find those people.

This includes the kind of relationship you want. Are you looking for a committed, long-term relationship where a sexual connection will be important? Something more casual? Are you looking for people younger than you? Your age? Are you hoping to start a family? The better you can answer these questions, the easier it is to fine tune your profile so that the people who are looking for what you’re offering can find you.

One thing that helps is to be clear about what you want. If you’re a very sexual person or sex is an important part of your relationships, mentioning that you value chemistry or that a physical connection is important to you can be useful. It’s also good to talk about what you want – “I’m looking for a person who’s into X, Y and Z” or “I’m looking for a $RELATIONSHIP_TYPE and want someone who’s looking for that too”.

Beyond that, some of what you’re running into is simply a matter of demographics. If you’re living in a very rural, socially conservative area, the odds that you’re going to be meeting more people who are likely to be conservative is high, regardless of which app you’re using. At the same time, if you’re looking up to 150 miles away… well, you’re basically setting yourself up for sketchier profiles.

And while there are some indicators as to whether a person is a bot or a scammer, a lot is going to be about whether someone seems ‘too good to be true’ or is radically outside your requirements. If you’re getting 20-somethings messaging or matching with you who have blank or mostly empty profiles or whose profiles are very generic with either very polished pics or overtly sexual ones, the odds are good that those aren’t real. But people can and do take professional or just high-quality pics for their accounts. You can get incredibly good pictures – ones that look professional – simply by using portrait mode on a smartphone camera these days. A good picture for someone who’s fairly age appropriate and isn’t necessarily model-levels of hot is likely just someone who put extra care into their profile. If you’re suspicious, reverse-image searches are your friend.

However, something to keep in mind is that profiles don’t offer a complete view of someone. As I’m often saying: a dating app is a poor way to judge compatibility, and what looks good on paper doesn’t automatically work when you meet them in person. A lot of times, we pass on people we might otherwise be a good match with simply because we get tunnel vision based on our profile preferences. If someone is interesting or attractive to you, but isn’t a perfect match on paper, it may still be worth a brief meet-up in person to see if there’s more there than you suspect. After all, still waters run deep… some of those “my grandkids are my life” folks may surprise you. Especially someone whose kids have married and moved on and they’re old enough to have more confidence in what they want…

Good luck.

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