DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been really struggling as of lately with this issue.

My last ex of 5 months was long distance and he broke up with me 15 days ago. Because we were long distance, obviously, there was no physical touch or sex in the relationship. At first this was hard for me because, if I am being honest, I was a bit of a sex addict but then after a little while I was actually okay with it and didn’t mind that we couldn’t be physical. It was the first time I felt like the sex was not important, but the important thing being our love for each other. I really did love him and still think about him to this day, but he lost interest in me.

After we broke up a few of my guy friends tried to slide in and started heavily flirting with me, but it really felt like all of them, or at least most of them, just wanted me for sex.

The first guy, we’ll call him Matt, says he would date me, but he’s always very horny and sexual towards me. I’ve also never seen him date anyone, so I think he just wants me for sex.

The second guy, we’ll call Dave, likes me and thinks I’m very attractive, but does not want any relationship. So again, just wants to have sex.

The third guy, we’ll call Damien, says he really likes me and wants to be with me and that he “hopes we work out”, but every time we hang out he wants to have sex with me. I try saying stuff like “I’m tired right now” or “I’m not really in the mood”, but he just questions me as to why, keeps asking for it and pushing it until I give in. And because of that we have had sex quite a few times even though not once I went into his house wanting to have sex. When I asked him why he likes me he said “because I’m comfortable with you and we have great sex”. It doesn’t seem he likes me for me.

And the last guy, we’ll call sal, is one of my exes. We only dated for a few months but we were very serious in those few months. Already talking about marriage and our future etc. I broke up with him because I didn’t think our interests, personalities, or future goals aligned or clicked, but he has always loved me from the beginning and never stopped loving me even after I moved on. He’d do anything for me and cares about me more than anything or anyone, but he is also very horny and sexual and whenever we’re together he’s always very touchy.

I don’t think I’m ready for a relationship just yet and I’ve said this to all of them, but Damien and sal seem to believe that as soon as I am ready that I’ll get with them.

Honestly, right now I just want them to go back to being my friends, and I’ve tried to say that to them but it’s like it goes in through one ear and out the other and then they continue flirting and being sexual and I just give up and give in. Which in a way I do feel guilty about because I feel like i’m leading them on.

I do like Matt and Dave a little bit, but I don’t want someone who just wants me for sex. I don’t think I like Damien because he’s really cocky and so honest he comes across mean. And I don’t think I like sal for the same reasons I broke up with him in the first place.

I haven’t gotten that crush feeling. I haven’t gotten excited over texts from any of them and I haven’t been constantly thinking about any of them as if I did like them, which is weird for me because it’s been a long time since I haven’t liked anyone.

I just want someone who will love me for me without constantly wanting to have sex with me. I want to feel what I felt, in my last long distance relationship, again.

Please help me I don’t know what to do and it’s been stressing me out so much. Thank you.

More Than A Toy

DEAR MORE THAN A TOY: Um… I hate to tell you this MTAT, but you need a better class of friend. Or friends at all.

What you have are a bunch of dudes who, going by what you’ve written, have been sitting around waiting for you to break up so that they’d have a chance to get into your panties. And more to the point: you need to kick every single one of them to the curb with the trash because what the pluperfect f--k??

I mean, none of them seem to actually be concerned about your feelings or the fact that you and your boyfriend just broke up two weeks ago. The fact that they didn’t even wait for the metaphorical body to go cold is kind of telling. If anything it’s more akin to vultures circling and waiting for an animal to stop moving before they move in.

But then there’s the fact that you’ve told them this isn’t what you want and you’d rather go back to being friends and they ignore your clearly stated wishes? That’s honestly the single biggest sign that these are not your friends. They’re treating you like an ambulatory Fleshlight, not a person and certainly not a friend. A friend would actually, y’know, listen when you say “hey, I’m not up for this” or “It’s bothering me when you act like this please stop.”

The fact that they also don’t take “please stop, I’m not in the mood” or “I’m tired and not interested” as a red light is… really f--king concerning, actually. Constantly asking “why” or pushing and pushing and pushing until you give in? That’s incredibly s--tty of them and honestly, that’s a very good reason to throw the whole man out. That’s not you “leading them on”, that’s them ignoring your boundaries and stated wishes, making it clear that their desire to stick their dicks in something supersedes your interest in… well, literally anything else.

And yes, this includes Sal. I’m not gonna speak for him and say he doesn’t love you, but I will point out that “do anything for you” doesn’t seem to include “keep it in his pants and not constantly bother you for sex that you don’t seem that interested in having”.

Your problem here isn’t that you aren’t feeling crush-y feelings for them (it’s been two weeks since you broke up, give yourself some time here), its’ that you’ve got a bunch of guys who said that they were your friend but clearly weren’t. They all seem to think you exist to be a consumable object for them and don’t give a six-legged rat’s ass about how you feel about it. They’re treating you with serious disrespect at best.

I’m not surprised you’re stressed and upset. You’ve got people you thought were your friends suddenly showing that they were nothing of the sort. I’m just a little surprised that you’re considering dating any of them in any way, shape or form instead of grabbing the nearest blunt object and swinging like you’re trying to win a home run derby with their junk as the ball.

To be perfectly blunt, none of these guys should be in your life. Not Sal-the-ex, not any of them. You need to take this opportunity to take out the trash and tell all of them in no uncertain terms to f--k off. No, f--k off further. Further than that. F--k off as far as they can and then as soon as they reach their outer reaches of f--king off, hop the Nope Train to F--k This S--tville because Jesus tapdancing frogs you need better friends.

Then do yourself a favor and be single for a while. Reconnect with yourself and figure out your relationship with your own sexuality… without a dude in your life trying to exploit it. Once you decide how sex and sexuality fits in your life – not someone else’s desires, but your life – then it’s time to work on some boundaries and enforcing those boundaries. That includes adopting the mantra that “I’m not interested” is the only answer you need to “why” and “no” is a complete sentence. Your telling someone “I’m not in the mood” isn’t the start of a negotiation, it’s you telling them that Sex Is Not Happening, And If You Keep Pushing It’s NEVER Happening. If they’re inclined to take “no” or “not tonight” as a sign to keep asking, then it’s time to either kick them out or grab your s--t and go home because they’ve told you everything you need to know – that they’re not interested in you as a person.

Get rid of all of them. Rebuild your social circle from scratch if you need to.

For now though? Practice being your own best friend and advocate by standing up for yourself. Kick these s--tbirds out and then enjoy being single and solitary for a bit while you work on your boundary issues. Strong boundaries make for stronger relationships.

There’re guys out there who you can date, who will make you feel special and awesome without constantly hounding you for sex when you’re not up for it. But you’re not gonna find them when you’ve got a flock of horny vultures circling in hopes of watching your next relationship die.

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: One of my best friends is going through a lot right now. A tornado wrecked her house earlier this year and the�amount of paperwork is seemingly endless. Not long before that she discovered she has new food allergies that basically prevent her from eating out or eating anyone else’s cooking.��While this won’t apply until she’s out of survival mode (and to be clear, she says dating is paused until then!), I know that she is interested in having a romantic life.��She’s into ballroom dance, and we’re both into nerdy sci-fi and anime conventions, but she hasn’t connected with any guys at either of those.��She wants marriage and kids eventually, but it starts with a date. I’m not particularly skilled at dating either, but being asexual it’s far less of a priority in my life.��My own hobbies mean that I do know some single guys that she does not. Is there some way to get a group of people together to have a good time and see what happens?��I lack practice at initiating social events, so where would I even start?

Thanks,�Getting People Together

DEAR GETTING PEOPLE TOGETHER: I’m sorry your friend’s having one of the worst years possible, GPT, and I hope she sorts out her insurance and living situation quickly.

Now, I have a quick preliminary question: has your friend asked for help meeting guys? Yeah, you may know she wants to date or find a relationship, but has she actually, specifically, asked for your assistance? Not in a vague or abstract way (“god I wish someone would just throw some guys in my path”) but “Hey, GPT, do you know any single guys I might be a good match with?”

Don’t get me wrong: I know you want to help and it’s a noble goal. But it’s also the sort of thing that can, good intentions or not, can go sideways and feel pushy or intrusive if the person doesn’t actually ask for your assistance. That goes double when someone’s entire life just got turned upside down. It sounds to me like she’s got enough on her plate right now and wanting to date is likely going to be on the backburner until not only have things stabilized but she’s actually adjusted to her new status quo.

I mean, I have several friends who’ve dealt with severe food allergies, and these can be insanely disruptive to even just basic day to day life. Getting to a place where she has a handle on how to manage her situation and navigate the world without accidental anaphylaxis is hard enough. Doing this while also dealing with a potential partner who may not know, understand or respect how serious her condition is, is a whole different ball of wax.

(And as someone who’s dated women with complex allergies that ran from “mildly inconvenient” to “If you kiss me after having come in contact with this allergen hours ago, it will kill me dead and you won’t have time to inject me with an EpiPen before I die”, I can tell you that navigating how that will affect your day to day life is a skill in and of itself.)

So the first thing I would suggest is to not play matchmaker until either she’s asked for help or you’ve asked if she’d like your assistance in meeting some guys. Maybe she would… but maybe she wouldn’t. Inserting yourself into the mix without being asked first can feel pretty invasive, even when you’re coming to this with the purest of intentions. So ask her, specifically: would she like you to introduce her to some of the folks you know? If so, you want to make sure that the guys you know are guys she might want to date.

Now, if and when you’ve gotten the go-ahead, there a few things you could do. The first is just old-fashioned introductions; put your friend in touch with some of the folks you know and let them take it from there. This may feel a little awkward or contrived – you want to make sure that they’re both interested in meeting other people and are open to being matched up – but at the very least it means that everyone knows what the score is.

If you want things to feel a bit more organic (even if it isn’t), then the easiest thing would be to just throw some sort of get together. My personal favorite is to throw a cookout or a potluck; it’s a quick and easy excuse to get lots of people together in a low-stress, highly social evening, where mixing and mingling is expected. Make sure folks who are coming know about food restrictions (especially if your friend has the sort of allergies where cross-contamination or even just airborne contact are problems) and why and then put your host hat on and introduce your separate social circles to one another.

When you’re acting as host, it’s entirely normal and expected to say “hey, I have someone you should meet!” and facilitate the meet-cute between your friend and one of your single guy friends who might be down to meet somebody cool. Make the initial intro “Hey, this is X, this is Y, congratulations, you’ve both met someone awesome” and then step back and let things take their own course.

But, again: this starts with making sure that this is the sort of help your friend wants. It doesn’t do much good to throw guys in her path if she’d rather do it her way or wants to meet folks from different walks of life than where your other friends come from. So double check with her first… when her life is far less chaotic.

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: Years ago after both I and several gal friends failed to find me a senior prom date, I confided to a close friend and mentor about being pretty down over not being able to date at all before graduating high school. He told me that I was “the type of person to find someone in college” and that I shouldn’t worry. About 5 years later, many rejections, and zero approaches towards me, it’s looking like that won’t be the case.

I’m studying abroad and halfway through my last semester of college and still find myself with no dating experience to speak of. I’ve tried my best so far, unsuccessfully asking out 4 people this semester I met through friend groups and a service-oriented club I joined. I always used something along the old “Hey X, I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you and I was wondering if you’d like to go to Y as a date?”- trying to thread the needle between politeness and directness while making sure they can feel safe saying no. Now, I fear that I’ve missed the cuffing period for this last semester and that I’ll be graduating yet again with nothing to show. It’d be one thing if romance just wasn’t my priority for these years, but it’s something I never gave up on and always tried to take steps towards. It feels like a massive failure to get past this stage of my life with my efforts never having borne fruit.

Despite these troubles I’ve made a lot of friends so far abroad and people always seem genuinely happy to have me around.

I’ve done a few check-ins with close guy and gal friends back home to get an outside perspective and they always seem to think I’d make a great partner. From the feedback they say that I have a good deal of emotional intelligence, kindness, and non-judgmental understanding towards others, and that the genuine interest I take in other people should be a boon for me in getting to know a date. To me, though, it feels like the positive qualities I do have are just the bare minimum of how people deserve to be treated.

As for the things that I can see limiting my options, I’m pretty subby and wholly disinterested in playing the standard male role- protector, provider, dominant, assertive, “”””alpha””””, etc. I’d much more prefer to be approached, especially in a romantic context, but as a guy I guess it’s still my boulder to roll up the hill. And it also takes me a bit to open up with my sense of humor and more strong opinions and values.

There’s also the obesity. At the start of the year, I was just shy of the medical cutoff for morbid obesity and realized I needed to make some changes- I have no one to blame for it but myself. After getting back into my more active hobbies and making sustainable food habits, I’m getting close to halfway from where I want to be. However, I still am obese and realize it severely limits my chances. I’ve even heard back through mutual friends that several of the people I’ve asked out rejected me mainly on the grounds of my weight. It’s pretty clear to me that even though I’ve been improving, I’m still not good enough yet.

The dating frustration has intruded a little bit into other areas of my life, as I sometimes just get extremely horny out of nowhere, making it hard to pay attention to classes and studying. I’d wanted to save myself for someone I’d dated for at least a little bit, but I’ve been considering just trying for hookups with the time I have left to try and stave my sex drive off – though even that just feels like wishful thinking at the moment.

So getting to the point of the letter, with the context and history above is there hope for me in these last couple of months or should I just give up for now and try to bury all of this inside? It’s just really hard at this point to weigh the pain of constant rejection against the dejection of giving up. As it is, I can be proud in the moment for putting myself out there when I’m rejected, but by the time I arrive back at my empty dorm room at night it still becomes a weight of disappointment on my chest. I just don’t know if it would make me feel better or worse to attempt to “focus on friends” and treat dating as a closed off door for now.

Time Out

DEAR TIME OUT: OK, TO, let’s start with the surface question and then we’ll dig a little into your specific circumstances.

First: you can take a break from dating whenever you want. If it’s becoming a headache or causing you more stress than joy right now? Take some time off. If dating or trying to meet people to date is making you feel worse about yourself, then by all means, take a break from it and let yourself focus on something else.

Not only is this better for your mental health, but it makes things less difficult.

Think of it this way: you’ve undoubtedly played games where you just get stuck. Maybe that particular Elden Ring boss just keeps bodying you no matter what you do. Or that giant fight in the goblin temple in Baldur’s Gate 3 just keeps raging out of control and you get smoked every time. Or maybe you’re an old head like me and remember the controller-tossing rage that the OG Ninja Gaiden games would inspire. You reload, you try again, you fail, reload, try again and then fail even harder.

The problem is that the frustration is getting to you – you’re so upset, tense and just pissed at a collection of 1s and 0s (and every dev who touched the game) that everything else is suffering. The combination of stress, frustration and laser-like focus means that you’re burning through all your available resources and bandwidth to the point that you’re tapping into reserves that were dedicated to other important tasks. So now your coordination, your ability to think clearly or even just anticipate and recognize patterns are all hindered… which then means you fail again and get more pissed and then fail again… it becomes a self-reinforcing system.

But if you put the controller down, step away from the console from the day and then come back the next day you just blaze through like it was nothing. Why? Because you gave yourself a break, you cleared your bandwidth, replenished your resources and were relaxed and ready to try again. This time, you were coming to it from a place of, if not serenity, at least of readiness.

So it is with dating. Sometimes if it feels like you’re doing nothing but beating your head against a wall, the best thing you can do is stop hitting the wall. Take a step back, let things fade a bit and then take another swing at things. You may discover that you’re trying to go through when you need to go around. Or that you actually don’t want to get to what’s on the other side of that particular wall but you got tunnel vision and lost your focus.

So, yes, if you feel like you need some time off, then by all means, take some time off and give yourself permission not to worry about it until you’re feeling rested, refreshed and ready again.

But in the process, you may want to consider making a few changes… especially to your mindset with regards to dating.

Part of the problem you’re having is that you keep giving yourself artificial deadlines. This is a bad idea in general; the fake pressure of an arbitrary end date means that you’re putting yourself in situations that are going to stress you out. The idea of doing X by Y time seems like it’d be great motivation, but it also puts an absurd amount of pressure on yourself – especially when it’s not something you actually have enough experience to gauge whether it’s a reasonable timeline or goal.

If you were to, say, set a “I’m going to run a marathon by October” you might feel like this is a reasonable amount of time and a way of keeping yourself motivated. But if you’re not someone who’s already training for a marathon, you’re putting yourself in a position of trying to push yourself harder than your body is ready for or capable of. Going from couch to a marathoner would mean doing such intense training that you’re likely to hurt yourself in the process.

Similarly, this approach assumes that you have far more control over the world than you actually do. This is especially true about dating, where you’re dealing with a whole lot of forces that you have no control over. First, there’s just the matter of finding the right people – folks who are compatible with you, who are in a place where they’re ready, willing and able to date and who are even in the same physical area as you. It doesn’t do you much good to declare that you will find a girlfriend by X date if you’re in an area where the demographics work against you, after all.

But there’s also the fact that you’re dealing with other people – people with agency and choices and their own hang-ups, preferences and goals. As a wise man once said: you it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. Everything you list about yourself as being a hindrance could have vanished in a puff of smoke and wish-fulfillment and yet you still could fail to get a partner just because sometimes things just don’t line up the way you’d need them to.

To use a D&D metaphor: you can roll with advantage and still roll natural 1s.

Giving yourself these artificial deadlines just gives you one more thing to be stressed about and – as they approach – they incentivize taking wilder swings just to try to beat the buzzer. It’s the sort of stress that’s perfectly designed to ensure you aren’t playing at your best; you’ll be trying to speed run things, take shortcuts and just find someone to fill that particular hole labeled “girlfriend” so that you don’t feel like you’ve “failed”.

And then on top of all of this, you’re already giving yourself a disadvantage by talking about being “good enough”. Let’s take your weight, for example. You treat not being at your goal weight as a measure of your worth and people rejecting you for your weight as proof that you’re not “good enough” yet. Well ask yourself: do you want to date someone who’s going to treat your weight as a mark of shame or views it with disgust? Or would you rather find someone for whom it’s not a problem or – better yet – is into big dudes? If you want to keep working on getting your weight down, more power to you, that’s absolutely valid… but if you are seeing it as a marker of your worth, then all you’re doing is talking yourself down for no reason. You’re validating that the people who weren’t attracted to you as being correct, instead of recognizing that they’re not right for you.

If you’re going to take time off from dating for a bit – and it sounds like you might benefit from it – then I’d recommend focusing on doing the things that make you feel better about being you. Not things that you think would make you a more desirable partner, but the things that make you feel awesome about being yourself. Because here’s the thing when it comes to dating and meeting people – you want to be coming to this from a position of “what makes you worth my time?” You don’t want to be thinking that you have to appeal to someone in order to “earn” their approval but rather find someone who meets your standards and then see if the two of you are a decent match.

As it stands, you’re coming to this from a place where you feel like you have to “justify” your attraction or that you are at a lower level than the people you’re attracted to and have to “prove” yourself. You need to start from the position that you’re awesome and live an awesome life and you want to find someone who matches your awesome. If they can’t see your awesome or can’t appreciate it? Then that’s their loss. If they’re physically attractive but they don’t have other things that would make them a good match for you? Roll on and don’t worry about them; focus on finding the people who are a good match.

But that’s not something that can be done on a strict timeline.

So find the things that make you feel like a sexy badass for your own sake. Then live your life in a way that you meet awesome people who might be a good match, rather than flailing about and hoping that a shotgun approach would work better.

This may take a very short amount of time, or it might take longer… and that’s ok. You’re better off taking a bit more time so that you’re ready and you meet someone who’s right for you than to find anyone that you can squeeze into that role. Because that approach? That’s a great way to end up realizing that you’ve wasted time with someone you shouldn’t have dated, and missed out on people who would have been worth your time.

Trust me: I have been there, done that and have the emotional scars to show for it.

So take a break… but use your break to be your best self. And just as importantly: live your best life without the self-imposed deadlines. To quote the song, you can’t hurry love. This isn’t a sprint. It’s not even a race. Love happens most efficiently when you’re not desperate to make it appear.

Good luck.

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