DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have a girlfriend whom I’m not sure if I’m in love with but I really like her. One of our mutual friends told her I am in love with her and she likes me but she is not ready for that commitment. Neither am I. I don’t know how to take this back because we’ve only been dating for a month. How do I talk to her about it or take the ‘I love you’ back?

– Very Confused and Anxious

DEAR VERY CONFUSED AND ANXIOUS: You need better friends. ��Honestly, VCA, I want to commend you for knowing how you feel and also recognizing that it’s too early for you to make any declarations of love. That’s some pretty solid self-awareness and emotional intelligence. At one month in, you don’t know each other well enough to say if this is love or just the rush and excitement of a new relationship. Even when you’re dealing with someone you’ve known for a while, there’s a difference between knowing them as a friend and knowing them in the context of a romantic relationship. So hey, good on you for being aware of this.

But here’s the thing: there’s nothing for you to take back here, VCA, because you didn’t say anything. Your friend – for whatever reason – took it upon themselves to say it in your name. You didn’t ask them to do this, and it sounds like you didn’t express that you were in love with your girlfriend to them.

Quite frankly, it sounds to me like your friend was out of line for doing so, inserting themselves in your relationship where they had no business being. I don’t know if they thought they were being helpful and trying to facilitate something, if they’re just a busybody or they’re a habitual line-stepper but this was not cool of them and you should say so.

But first, you’d better to clear things up with your girlfriend. I’d recommend that you get together with her (in person, preferably) and clear the air. Tell her “Hey, I understand $MUTUAL went and told you I said I was in love with you. I really like you, I love what we have right now and I could see myself getting there eventually, but I’m not there yet. I don’t know why $MUTUAL did that, but I think you and I are both on the same page about it being too soon for that… how are you feeling about this?”

Meanwhile, I’d also say it’s a good time to take your friend aside and read them the riot act. Whether they had good intentions or not, they didn’t have the right to act on your behalf like that or to get involved in your relationship the way they did – especially since it wasn’t true and had the potential of messing things up by giving your girlfriend the wrong idea.

If they want to keep being your friend, they need to back off and chill the f--k out and not be so “helpful” without your direct and specific request for their assistance. They definitely shouldn’t take it upon themselves to get involved without running it by you first, especially with a relationship as new as this one.

If they apologize, then they can also go to your girlfriend and apologize to her for sticking their nose in. If they don’t… well, that’s a problem, and it may be time to reconsider how much you want them in your life.

Because at the end of the day? This isn’t on you, this is on them, and if they’re going to go f--king around in other people’s relationships, then they no longer get the privilege of having access to you or your friendship.

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 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