DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve got a conflict that’s not really about dating, but I could really use some advice on how to navigate this tricky situation.��So here’s the deal: my close friends, let’s call them Sam and Alex, were in a serious relationship for a few years. But things went south when it came to light that Alex cheated on Sam. It was a big mess, emotions were all over the place, and ultimately, they decided to break up. I don’t know the details that lead up to it, the third party isn’t in our friend group, I don’t know who’s “at fault” if anyone; I just know what I told you.

I say that because the problem is that this is causing all kinds of tension in our overall friend group. Everyone’s been feeling the pressure to take sides and decide who they can be friends with and who they can’t. Speaking just for myself, I’ve been friends with both of them for a long time, and I’m not sure how to handle things post-breakup. I can see why Sam is hurt and betrayed, and I can also understand that people make mistakes and maybe Alex is genuinely sorry. It’s a tough spot to be in, and I don’t want to take sides or choose one over the other.

On one hand, I feel like I should be there for Sam, supporting them through this tough time because they’re really hurting. But on the other hand, I don’t want to abandon Alex either, especially if they genuinely regret their actions and are trying to make amends.

I’ve considered trying to remain neutral and stay friends with both of them, but I’m worried that might not be practical or even possible. There’s a lot of tension between them, and hanging out together as a group seems awkward and uncomfortable now. And I’m going to be real, there’s a LOT of talk in the group chat about who is or isn’t siding with who and I feel like I’m going to be the asshole if I side with Alex or if I stay neutral.

I don’t want to be seen as betraying Sam’s trust by being friends with Alex, but I also don’t want to turn my back on a friend who might need support and a chance to grow from their mistakes.

What should I do, Doc? Is it possible to remain friends with both of them, or do I have to pick a side? I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here. Any advice on how to handle this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tired of Playing Referee

DEAR TIRED OF PLAYING REFEREE: Alright, I’m going to preface this by saying that I don’t think cheating is necessarily the worst thing that someone can do in a relationship, nor do I think that all cheating is equal. Other people obviously disagree, but my general philosophy on infidelity is going to color my advice on all of this.

This is a tricky knot to untangle, TPR. It’s not unusual for break ups to test the bounds of social circles in the aftermath. There are a lot of times when one person or the other “gets the friends” in the break up. These sorts of fissures tend to fall in fairly predictable lines; most of the time, the split occurs either along longevity (So-and-so was part of the group first), closeness (you’re tighter with one than the other) or fault (Such-and-such was a cheating piece of s--t).

But it’s also not unusual for folks to say “I’m not taking sides” or “I’m not choosing”. Though, to quote the sages, even choosing not to choose, you still have made a choice. Often, it’s more about trying to avoid confrontations or having to take responsibility for having to make a choice and letting others decide it for you. But there are times when it’s honestly about being close to both people and not wanting to have to end a relationship with one or the other.

Now, often there are times when the choice is fairly simple, clean cut or obvious. Sometimes one party is very firmly in the wrong and did something that would, understandably be a friendship-terminating event.

Other times though? Well… other times, what is one person’s FTE is another person’s grey area. And cheating, absent relevant information or context can be one of those. It’s also one where the politics of a social circle can become far more prevalent and way the f--k messier.

Here are my thoughts:

First and foremost, as a general rule, I tend to side-eye people who make demands about choosing sides in situations like this. Absent other information (Alex is a serial cheater! Sam has been an abusive partner!) or acts that go beyond the pale (Alex hit Sam, Sam sold Alex’s dog while Alex was out of town), a lot comes down to why you’re being told to choose. And it’s rare that it’s about right or wrong, but about human nature, and humans are messy bitches that live for the drama as a general rule. After all, it’s very easy for people not directly involved to say “how dare you not do X”; binary definitions of good and bad are easy to come by when it’s not your ox being gored. Demanding that others shun the wrong-doer can frequently be more about enforcing conformity or establishing oneself as the arbiter of morality than it is about actually addressing the issue. This is especially true of folks who insist that sides must be taken and there can be no middle ground.

Now, you don’t say if anyone’s actually making demands yet. It sounds like right now it’s mostly a lot of talk back and forth. Were I you, I’d suggest maybe bowing out of the chat for now and making a boundary of not talking about it until you’ve decided. If folks do start making solid demands of “you must side with X to stay in this friends group”… honestly, I’d be questioning how much I’d want to stick around people who make demands like that. Again, depending on circumstances of the actual offence.

But if they’re not? I’d say that you should either mute that particular discussion or turn off notifications for the group chat for a bit until things die down, so you can decide for yourself, without feeling like your choice was pressured one way or the other.

My next thought is, how much of your hesitancy is about being close to both and how much is about not wanting to risk confrontation with either Sam or Alex? This is an important one to consider. Is it possible that you’ve actually made your decision, but you’re worried about having to actually take responsibility for it if either Sam or Alex ask?

(As callous as it may sound, this is where flipping a coin may be helpful to sort out how you feel. Assign heads to Sam and tails to Alex and flip it. It doesn’t matter which actually comes up; as soon as the coin is in the air, you’ll know which you’re hoping to see. And that may well give you the answer in terms of whether this is legitimate indecision or not.)

The next thought after that: talk to them both. Talk to Sam and commiserate and be sympathetic. Talk to Alex and say “what the f--k, dude?” and hear what he has to say. Maybe you’re correct and this was a moment where he failed his wisdom save and there but for the grace of God go the rest of us. You may well be correct that he feels awful about it and wants to do better.

How does he talk about it? Does he dodge responsibility or accept it? Is he making excuses as to why this wasn’t so bad, or does he demonstrate that he knows what he did wrong and owns his choices? Does he know why he did it and can he explain how he ended up there? For that matter, does he play the “woe is me” card by being so remorseful that you almost feel like you’re being obligated to forgive him?

Just as importantly, since you know both people: are they both equally trustworthy? Are either of them prone to drama, tend to make themselves out to be the hero/victim regardless of circumstance? If Sam tells you one story and Alex tells you a different one, can you say with some degree of certainty that it’s a Rashomon situation where everyone is giving an honest retelling of the event as they saw it? Or is one of them likely to be telling you the version they think you want to hear? Or the one that puts them in the best light?

And, as cold-blooded as this may sound: if the group splits… are you going to be ok staying neutral or choosing one person or the other if that means the possibility of losing friends in the process? I don’t ask because there’s a “correct” answer here, I ask because it’s important to understand where your head is at with this and how the consequences of your choices may shake out. Just as with flipping the coin, you may well come to realize that you’ve already decided, but you worry your choice will come with costs that you are hesitant to pay.

Now, I can’t tell you which way to lean on this – towards Alex, towards Sam, towards not choosing. I’m not there, they’re not my friends and so on. Not choosing and trying to stay close to both is an option.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that, however you choose, you may still not see results you’d prefer. You could decide to stay close to both, but find that some of the people in your social circle fall away – either because you chose “wrong”, or simply because the fractures of this relationship revealed faut lines within the social circle.

You may also choose one or the other and find that they still drift out of your life. Or that the person you didn’t choose comes back into it eventually.

As I said: it’s a messy situation, and one that can end up being more complicated because of the aftershocks more than the initial event. The best advice I can give you is to make sure you know your own mind and why you make the decision you ultimately land on. The more you at least understand yourself and your choices, the more comfortable you likely are to be with what you finally decide.

Yeah, there may well be after effects that you can’t possibly account for. That’s life, unfortunately. None of us can thread the needle so well that everything remains, if not the same, at least tolerably similar. The best we can do at any time is make the best choice we can with the information we have in that moment and do our best with whatever happens next.

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’ve seen you talk about weird sex stuff in relationships before, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the issue I’m having right now.��Some backstory: I’ve been married for four years, together with my now wife for five. Early last year, we had a rough patch in our relationship, we weren’t having sex, fighting a lot, you know how it goes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t helping things. I was feeling especially low and I was convinced my wife was going to leave me and I was paranoid as hell, so as ashamed as I am to admit it I was keeping tabs on everything my wife did. This included snooping through her DMs and email one night when she left her laptop open before bed.��I’m not going to justify it, I was wrong, and the fact that I did it at all still eats at me. Like a lot. But I did it. I went through and found a recent email from a guy she used to date before me with some pictures attached. Ah ha! I WAS being cheated on, I thought. I clicked through and it turned out that while she was flirting with her ex a little and talking about our problems, she wasn’t actually sleeping with him. He, however, was trying to get back with her and had sent her pictures they’d taken (consensually) from times they’d had sex.

She turned him down, for the record. But she thanked him for the pictures.

You’d think this would hurt me, but it didn’t. Looking at those pictures I got more turned on than I had in years. It was like being twelve again.

My wife and I eventually went into couple’s counseling and we’re doing better than ever. But she doesn’t know I saw those pictures, doesn’t know I snooped and doesn’t know the effect it’s had on me. You see, since then, I’ve been consumed with fantasies of seeing my wife with other men. I feel weird about it. I know it’s a thing, I’ve seen enough porn about it (which I now watch regularly) but I also feel like I’m not supposed to like it? Like, it’s a sign that I’m not good enough for my wife or something? But at the same time, I still want to actually fulfill this fantasy.

Is there a way I can a) tell my wife about my fantasy b) convince her to try it with/for me and c) not have to tell her how I discovered this side of myself? Should I come clean first? Or is it ok to not tell her and just focus on the rest?

Sincerely,

Hot-Wife Guy  

DEAR HOT-WIFE GUY: So, before I get to your question, HWG, let’s talk a bit about what you did and what you learned. I’m a believer that snooping is, in general, a bad idea. It’s a violation of trust under the best of circumstances and it’s rarely justified… and when it is, it’s almost always only justified after the fact, if (and that’s a mighty big if) you discover something that you had an actual need to know. More often than not, you end up discovering things that you didn’t want to know and can never unknow.

Well, in your case, you seemed to have split the difference in a way that, honestly, I don’t see all that often. You weren’t, in fact, justified and you did discover things that you didn’t know and can’t unknow.

It’s just that in this case, you discovered that you have a kink you weren’t aware of before. So… congratulations on being a new one for me, I guess.

It’s still a violation of trust, and the fact that the consequences aren’t horrible knowledge but boner-fuel doesn’t change that. Having done it once before without eye-searing, heart-breaking pain does suggest that you might be able to rationalize doing it again, which is not a good thing. But I also don’t know if this is a case where telling your wife what you did is going to do anything but cause unnecessary strife or do anything other than damage the relationship retroactively. Especially if things have been on the upswing since then and you’ve addressed the problems you and she were having.

Coming clean, in this case, I think would be more for you and easing any sense of guilt than it would be towards making things right and the knowledge of it could well end up undoing the progress you’ve made.

Personally, I’m inclined to say that you stuff that aspect of it down the memory hole and let the guilt you feel be your penance. But I’d also suggest that maybe you should tell your wife to be more careful about leaving her laptop open and unprotected.

Now as for your newfound kink… that part gets tricky. Some kinks and fetishes are relatively easy to indulge; tickling or foot worship, for example, are often things a less or non-kinky partner may feel comfortable doing even if they don’t get anything out of it. But kinks that involve other people, like cuckolding, hot wife-ing or stag-and-doe can be a kink too far. So the odds are good that, unless your wife is already open to the possibility of some form of non-monogamy, this is going to be hard sell under the best of circumstances.

If you’re going to try to talk with her about this, then I’d suggest being direct, rather than any sort of “hey, I heard about this thing, weird isn’t it ha ha… unless…” attempts to float a trial balloon. You’re much more likely for your wife to at least think about it if you own your interest instead of trying to pretend that this is something you kinda sorta maybe heard about around the way and you’re not REALLY interested but.

If you’re not going to tell her the precise where’s and how’s you discovered your newfound fetish, then I’d recommend you lead with “I saw this in porn I was watching and I got turned on by it. Is this something you might ever be into?” It might help if you can explain things like the concept of erotic humiliation or sperm competition (the tendency of primates to have more intense ejaculations with higher volumes of semen in the ejaculate).

It might also help if, instead of proposing that you go straight to trying to find a bull to be a guest star, that you take a little time to experiment with it at home. Trying to get your wife to have sex with someone else is a hell of a big ask, especially if she’s not necessarily interested in non-monogamy. But asking her to watch cuckolding or hot-wife porn with you and/or to incorporate the fantasy into dirty talk during sex is not nearly as much of a lift, and it’s something she might be more willing to try.

However, you also have to be prepared to accept that watching porn or some dirty talk and role-play may be all you get… if that. This may well be a kink too far for her and if so, then that’s that. She can draw a line and say “nuh-uh”, and you’re going to have to be willing to honor that.

(Especially considering how you did her dirty, before.)

If that’s the case… well, unless you’re willing to blow up your marriage, then porn and your imagination are going to have to be how you fulfill this. Being resigned to running the movie through your head while you jerk it or have sex with your wife may have to be part of the price you pay for how you learned you had this fantasy in the first place.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: A phenomena I’d like some help untangling is why do so many folks (mostly women that look open and very liberal in my experience) specify that they are looking for casual dating/hookups/fwb/etc, but aren’t interested in exploring that with an ethically non-monogamous partner even if he is not interested in children, has a vasectomy, is knowledgeable and responsible with protection and STI screening, and would like to treat said casual partner like an actual human and not just an object?

It seems like that arrangement would be very attractive to lots of women but when I disclose my ENM status right from the start, they will say that they love my energy and personality but they just can’t do non-monogamy (which I am not looking for an additional full-time partner) even if they said themself they are looking for just no-strings fun? Is it mostly an internalized mono-normative thing? Are they themselves doing the “backdoor fwb turned committed relationship” maneuver without even realizing it?

Poly-NO-mial

DEAR POLY-NO-MIAL: First question, PNM: how, exactly, are women going to know about these aspects of yours? Are you listing these in your profile? Telling women about it when you message them? Hoping they can divine it through the air? The way you deliver that info might be part of the problem. Some of that – like “would treat said casual partner like an actual person” is very much a “show, don’t tell” sort of scenario.

But let’s actually dig in to your issue.

The problem here is that you’re asking the wrong question. You’re asking something that I can’t answer, and what answers you would get won’t actually address the issue.

I can’t tell you why women are bouncing off your being ethically non-monogamous for two reasons.

First: there’s not going to be ONE reason; it’s going to be a reason or reasons that are specific to that individual. Many folks may share similar reasons, but it’s still going to come down to that particular person, not some overarching, universally applicable cause.

There are any number of reasons why someone might not want to rock with an ethically non-monogamous partner, even if it’s just for no-strings fun and games with your pants off. They may have had negative experiences with non-mongogamous relationships before, or they may have been put off by the polyamorous communities they’ve seen or been part of. They may feel like hooking up with someone who has (or may eventually have) other partners means that the potential for drama is too high for their comfort. Still others may well be neck deep in mono-normativity and just don’t want anything to do ENM at all.

Some folks like casual relationships but prefer them if it at least feels like there’s the potential for more – and there’s a pretty healthy track record of FWBs and casual relationships that turned serious. Alternatively, they may feel as though getting involved with a poly person would create the vibe that they’re being auditioned as a potential addition to the polycule.

You may practice (or they expect) a form of non-monogamy they don’t rock with; if you’re a kitchen-table poly person, they may not want to have to meet the rest of your extended pod. There are also many, many people – mostly, but not exclusively men – who lie about being ethically non-monogamous and they just don’t feel like taking the risk that you’re one of them.

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that the issue is that they’re just not digging you, per se, and the ENM is an easy way out without saying that.

But the second – and more important reason is that it doesn’t matter. What you need to remember is that the reason why they’re not into ENM – even if you would theoretically be a good match – isn’t what’s important. The important thing is that this is a dealbreaker for them, and there’s not really anything else to be done about it.

The issue with trying to unpack the reasons for why someone who seems to be looking for a guy like you, but balks at the ENM issue is that knowing the reasons won’t actually make a difference. If they’re saying “thanks but no thanks”, trying to dig into the whys and wherefores aren’t going to change anything. It’s not as though there’s a way to tactfully say “I see what you’re worried about, but you’re wrong” in a way that’s not going to come off as intensely presumptive and condescending, nor is it going to change their mind. Reason and emotion can run parallel, but changing one isn’t automatically going to change the other. If they’ve decided that ENM is not for them, or if it’s just the convenient excuse, then that’s more or less the end of that.

I will note that you could, theoretically, leave off the part about your being non-monogamous if your partner or partners aren’t going to be an issue. If your Hinge match is just looking for an NSA hook-up and not expecting regular dates or hang-outs where your relationship status might be an issue, then an argument could be made that the existence or non-existence of other partners is less relevant. The same applies for folks who have a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell arrangement with their partners.

Do I think this the most ethical way of handling the issue? No.

While I do think that until two people have the exclusivity talk, folks shouldn’t assume or expect to be the one-and-only, I do think acknowledging the existence of other partners (even if they’re totally cool with your hooking up without their involvement and/or you have a legitimate DADT arrangement) is the better choice.

But leaving it out is an option. You’re going to deal with folks who have very strong options about lies-of-omission, but hey: you roll the dice and you take your chances.

However, my honest opinion is that your time would be better spent finding folks who are open to non-monogamy, or who are more open to you, specifically. For the former, finding the folks who opted in – either in their profiles, or on more specialized apps like Feeld or #Open. For the latter, you may be better off meeting people in person and letting them get to know you. Either way, you’re much more likely to get better results, better flings, happier FWBs and far fewer drinks thrown in your face when the truth comes out.

Good luck.

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