DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Whenever I would go out with my most recent ex, whom I thought of as genuinely the most beautiful girl I had met, we always ended up making out, having oral sex and stuff like that, even before we got together officially (i.e. during the dating phase). I’d asked her to have sex multiple times during the dating phase too and she’d always say no to me.

I thought we were really special because of the way we met. I had picked her up at a party and we went somewhere else to make out under the starry night and we really liked each other. Furthermore, the fact that she kept denying me the actual act of sex was something that drew me closer to her because I realised she thought of the act of sex as something sacred – to be meant to be done with love and with someone special. So we got together after 4.5 months of dating. Needless to say we had sex soon after becoming official.

3 months into our official relationship, I found out that she had taken birth control pills (BCP) while she was only 1 month official with her ex and that created a brain worm in my head cos now I’m thinking… what did she and her ex do together that I have not done with her yet?

When I asked her about this, I found out that she, during the course of her BCP, had let her ex have raw sex with her, and also finish in her. That literally dropped my stomach to the ground and I felt like I died inside. I was overwhelmed by so much sadness after hearing that from her that she and her ex did that with each other….but she hadn’t done it with me even though I thought we had a much better start and I was much more capable and competent than her ex (her words). I started wondering why she took BCP for her ex and allowed him to have that experience but for me she never even bothered to think that I may have wanted to also do those things?

I did not lash out at her or anything, but it did hurt me a lot to find out about a sexual discrepancy between her ex’s experience and mine. From then on, I would usually hint to her that I want to do it raw, and this carried on for months on end.

Around 8 months into our official relationship and still no raw sex, I found out from her that she brought condoms to her 3rd date with her ex…expecting both of them to have sex. Needless to say that this information coupled with the BCP thing made me go crazy because not only did she keep denying me sex during our dating phase, she had been so much more open about sex with her ex than with me, and he got to experience all that I wanted without even needing to ask her for it… she just did it for him or allowed him that experience.

From that point on, it ruined the relationship for me, finding out that she had been so forthcoming with sex while with her ex, than with me. I felt like I wanted to marry her at the start of the relationship, but at this point all I wanted to do was to end things with her. I could not get the image of her and her ex doing it raw out of my head anymore, and it would send pains into my stomach that I never knew could hurt so badly.

I had no choice but to tell her about these things bothering me because it got too much for me to handle by myself. I told her I wanted to do it raw and finish in her too because I felt I could not bear with the knowledge that some other guy had gone further with her than me. She told me that she is afraid of the risks of taking BCPs, to which I felt bad wanting to force her to take something that she doesn’t want to, and I told her it’s fine to not take the pills but I still want that experience of having raw sex at least.

However what continued hurting me more after that talk was that she never tread lightly about this with me. She never ever bothered to ask me or be forthcoming about having raw sex with me. It literally never happened other than a few months later during our anniversary and that too after I had to ask her for it. I felt extremely pathetic at that point, because she never understood how much finding out about her past affected me, and even after spending all the time with her and telling her about it, she still did nothing to sort of ease it on me, or be forthcoming about this issue, like she was with her ex where she literally brought condoms to her third date expecting sex, and also allowed him to finish in her a couple times while she took birth control pills.

I don’t think if she liked me that much or understood how much it affected me, that she would prevent me from having that experience. Eventually I started seeking validation from other women in my life. I went out with a girl who was extremely beautiful while I was overseas on a holiday. I did not do anything sexual with this girl, but it made me feel good about myself for a short bit being with her. My ex found out about it and she ended the relationship with me. I understand why she’d want to do that, but I am at a crossroads with myself as to whether she really loved me or not while we were together, and why she wouldn’t even understand to tread carefully on the matter of sex between us or even bother asking or checking in on me regarding the images the she knew kept popping up in my head. I feel if I knew she was going through that, I would love to have helped her out knowing that it would help to improve our relationship. But why would she not?

Anyways, I would like to know if this is retroactive jealousy and if I could have done things differently while in the relationship so I can prepare myself better for my next one. I don’t want to feel like this again while in my next relationship, and feel like I’m inferior to my partners ex because of how much more open they were with them than with me. If this is insecurity, please help me understand myself better, and let me know what I can do that’s within my control.

Jealous Rage Monster

DEAR JEALOUS RAGE MONSTER: Hoo boy. 

OK, JRM, I’m going to start off by saying that wanting things and being envious of experiences that other people have had is understandable. In and of itself that’s not a bad thing. It’s normal and human to want things, even to want them very, very badly. 

By that same token, I’m not going to tell you that you’re bad for wanting unprotected sex with your ex. A desire is just a desire; the emotion itself is fundamentally neutral. It’s what you do about that desire that makes it a problem or not. It also matters whether you treat that desire and the fulfillment of it (or lack thereof) as a you problem or a them problem.

And you, JRM, very much tried to make this a them problem with your ex.

So I’m going to be blunt: this attitude is what we in the dating advice biz call “a tell”, because it tends to signal something important in the men in question. Especially when we’re talking about sex and women’s sexual history.

See, the feeling of “she did this with other people, why won’t she do it with me?” is one of the more common reactions from guys who are having issues with their girlfriends having a sexual past, JRM. Sometimes it’s the idea of “well, they had their wild and crazy sexual adventures with other people, so why don’t I get those experiences?” and other times, it’s “why am I having to wait when other folks didn’t?” And still other times, it’s “I feel like I should get what her previous partners did, too”.

The reason why it’s a tell is pretty simple: how someone handles that feeling tells you a lot about them. As I said: the feeling is inherently neutral. We can have feelings or desires that are contrary to our values and we can have feelings that are fundamentally selfish. Having those feelings doesn’t make you a bad person. But the tell comes in how you handle those feelings. And for the folks who decide that they’re owed those experiences – not that they want them or are envious of the people who had them, but are owed them – then it’s betraying a particular mindset that those men have about sex, about women as individuals with agency, and about women’s sexual experiences. And frankly, it’s not pretty.

Now a sharp-eyed reader might realize very quickly what the problem is here: the guy who’s complaining about this – as you are – is seeing this entirely in terms of himself. It’s about what he “deserves”, his desires and his feelings about the sex she had previously. That guy doesn’t think about what his partner thinks, what she deserves, or her feelings on the sex she had previously. It’s an outgrowth of the idea that women don’t like sex and are the gatekeepers of sex.

Part of why a lot of guys get hung up on women’s sexual pasts is the idea that “well, if women aren’t sexual like men are and are the gatekeepers of sex, then a woman who has sex with me means that I’m special enough to break through that lack of desire.” If a woman has a healthy sex life and too many partners (the acceptable number of previous partners being N -1, where N = “the minimum number of partners that will make me uncomfortable”), then her sleeping with that guy means he’s not so “special” after all.

Some guys, however, take a slightly different tack; to their minds, the sexual history is less a “my partner has lived a life before me”, it’s now a menu, a list of what’s on offer and what he should have “access” to instead. And this mindset says a lot more about the man in question, rather than the woman.

One aspect of the mindset is that once a woman (and it’s almost always about women, very rarely about men) has had a particular experience or performed a particular act on one partner, then she’s somehow obligated to have those experiences or perform those acts with her current partner as well – as though this were some sort of contract she had signed without realizing it when they started dating. Those men get upset that other men “got” to have those experiences and it’s just not “fair”, somehow.

The second aspect is that those men rarely stop and think that maybe those previous experiences are why she’s doing things differently this time.

The thing about relationships – or sexual experience, for that matter – is that it’s not a one-way street, where each new thing you try or experience now becomes part of your permanent repertoire and there’s no retiring it, sticking it in the vault or otherwise taking it off the metaphorical menu. Which is a little odd (OK, not really, that’s just a rhetorical flourish) because we don’t consider that for most other areas in life. If a person decides to make fried calamari for someone, they’re not expected to be making fried calamari for everyone else in their life, after all. Especially if, say, they didn’t like it after they tried it, or they didn’t care for it themselves but they made it specifically for that person. Most people wouldn’t say “well, now you have to make fried calamari for me,” and we’d think they were weird for insisting on it. Similarly, if you went to Disney World with a previous partner, that doesn’t mean you now have to go to Disney World with every person you date from that point forward because it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

Which is why it’s always a bit absurd to say “well, you had a threesome with a previous partner, so now you need to have threesomes with me!”

Every relationship is different, the circumstances of every relationship is different and the idea that “X person unlocked Y act means that everyone else gets that act too” is, quite frankly, offensive.  

Here’s the thing to think about, JRM: people change their behaviors based on past experiences. The fact that your ex used birth control and had unprotected sex with her previous boyfriend didn’t happen in a vacuum. Nor did the rate at which her relationship progressed. Her past sexual experiences are something that she might well have had evolving, mixed or even negative feelings about. Similarly, she might have learned more about herself in the wake of her last relationship, and her shift in perspective changed how she decided to progress in her future relationships. You’re treating this as though it were something you were being denied, rather than recognizing that this probably wasn’t about you at all.

People – not just women, people – may, for example, realize that they were getting sexual in their relationships before they were ready to. Or they may have had experiences where having sex early coincided with the relationship ending and so they want to avoid the possibility of having that happen again. Or they may have been having a kind of sex because they thought they “had to” or were “supposed to”, even though they themselves didn’t care for it or actively disliked it. They might have had bad experiences that lead them to change their mind or reevaluate their relationship to sex and their own sexuality. Or they might have learned something about themselves that made them decide they wanted to do things differently.

You, on the other hand, don’t seem to have the slightest bit of curiosity or interest in to how she felt about those experiences. Maybe they were something she did when she was more reckless and realized it was a mistake. Maybe it was something she did to please a previous partner but made her feel cheap and used. Or maybe it was simply a different time in her life, and now she has an entirely different understanding about what she wants and needs from a relationship. Nor do you seem to question why she is averse to using birth control pills again. A lot of women have issues with hormonal birth control – whether the pill, implants or hormonal-based IUDs. And while hormonal birth control is very safe, there are still risks and side-effects involved and many women will decide that those simply are too much for their comfort and tolerance. It seems clear to me that there’s at least some aspect to them that made her decide that she didn’t want to use them.

Just as importantly, you don’t seem to care about anything other than “I need to get mine” without actually thinking things through. You’re thinking that you’re entitled to unprotected sex and ejaculating inside her as this thing that you should be allowed to do, regardless of circumstances, period the end. It doesn’t seem to occur to you that this is a pretty f--king big deal when you’re talking about an act that may be rewarding and risk free for you but comes with a very significant risk for her.

Unless she decided to get a different form of birth control (and based on your letter, I’m presuming she didn’t), you’re telling her “you owe me the chance to get you pregnant OR ELSE IT’S NOT FAIR”. That has nothing to do with whether she loved you or cared for you and everything with your saying “I want you to let me do something that has a high risk of overturning everything in your life and potentially endangering your health up to and including your death, because I like, really want it.”

Now an important thing to note: you would’ve been well within your rights to break up with her over this. If you were feeling like this was a deal breaker and unprotected sex was something you absolutely were going to need from your partner and she wasn’t cool with it or able to provide you with what you wanted, you could have ended the relationship, no muss, no fuss. You could then have gone on to try to find someone who was willing to have unprotected sex with you.

Would people have thought you were an asshole for doing that? Oh, I’m sure they would have. But people will think that about almost any reason that someone might choose to end a relationship over, because people have different ideas of what a relationship “should” be. That’s why it doesn’t matter what they would think about you leaving someone because she had unprotected sex with a previous lover but not with you. That’s the thing about relationships: other people can have opinions, but they don’t get votes.

The only people who get a say in whether to stay in a relationship or leave it are the people involved, and the people involved can leave, unilaterally, for literally any reason. If it’s important enough for you that it’s going to be the cornerstone of your complaint about someone you thought you were going to marry? Then it’s important enough to leave the relationship over.

AND HERE’S THE THING: you might have gotten there. I have been in similar shoes as you and in my eagerness and lack of empathy or consideration, I too have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory because I couldn’t shut the f--k up and let things proceed at its own pace. So I know of which I speak, from bitter experience. If you hadn’t been pushing and constantly demanding sex – and unprotected sex at that – and instead had just built up love and trust and security with her, you might have reached the point where she felt safe and secure enough with you to decide to forgo condoms and be fluid-bonded with you.

All you had to do was be a good and trustworthy boyfriend, and wait.

You f--ked that one up for yourself.

I want you to sit there and let that sink in for a moment. I want you to sit and think about how, if you hadn’t been hectoring her and poking her and prodding her about how it wasn’t fair and how if she loved you she would understand how much the mental image was bothering you and how you deserved it and all the rest, you might have actually gotten what you hoped for.

But you didn’t. Do you understand why she never checked in with you about sex or the mental images? A) it was a you problem not a her problem and B) you apparently never shut the f--k up about it with her, so it was never exactly a mystery how you were feeling about such things.

Was this envy of her past boyfriend? Yes. Was this insecurity because you felt like you weren’t “worthy” of something that past boyfriends might have done and it meant you were less “special” as a result? Abso-f--king-lutely. But most importantly of all: you never once thought about it from her side of things. You didn’t consider how things might have changed, how her feelings about sex in her relationships might have evolved or, for that matter, the very real risks that sex would present.

You turned this into a stone in your shoe and then made it her problem too. It sounds like your entire relationship became about “but whyyyy won’t you let me rawdog you?” like the saddest and most entitled buzzsaw whine in the ear. That more or less guaranteed that your relationship was going to end sooner rather than later. But then you took that ressentiment and decided the best thing you could do was detonate this relationship, messily and all over the place. This was all you. 

So how do you avoid this going forward? Well, some self-awareness is going to be useful. You clearly understand that you f--ked up, which is good. Recognizing that and owning that is the first step to fixing the problem.

However.

You don’t seem to fully grasp that this wasn’t just about envy of her past lovers or insecurity on your part. It was also about the fact that you were incredibly selfish and self-centered about this. You don’t seem to have understood that sex is something that people have together, not something that’s doled out by one person to another. Nor do you seem to understand that just because somebody did something in the past, that doesn’t mean that they’re obligated or necessarily even interested in doing it in the present. Especially if there’re reasons why maybe they regret having done it or their reasoning for doing it was tied to something they’ve grown past.

Was that something that happened with your ex? I don’t know, because you certainly don’t seem to have ever thought about it. And that’s the core of the  other problem: you never considered her, her feelings or the risk that unprotected sex would mean for her. You were thinking of yourself and comparing yourself to her ex for no good goddamn reason, and you were using her body as your measuring stick. This was never about her and I mean that in the pejorative sense; she didn’t enter the equation except as a prop for your feelings.

Now am I being harsh? Oh yeah. But like I’ve said: I’ve seen this attitude before because I’ve had that attitude and I’ve seen firsthand, through my own stupid actions, how much that can hurt other people. And I don’t even mean in some broad, theoretical, societal sense, I mean in the sense that this sort of behavior really hurts the person you’re doing it to. Even if they’re a casual friend, it’s hurtful to be treated like a piece of meat – especially when they don’t want to be. But for someone who you supposedly loved and who presumably loved or at least really liked you? Yeah, that’s the sort of thing that cuts deep and leaves scars.

So moving forward, you need to be way the hell more considerate and less self-centered. A relationship is a gestalt entity, formed of people coming together to create a third thing. It is not one person getting what he wants from the other at the rate that he wants, like they’re a vending machine that doles out sex. If you’d taken some of the focus off what you thought you weren’t getting and instead just focused on being in the moment and enjoying what the two of you had and were building together? Things would have been different. If you had given some thought to her feelings, her past, her considerations, it might have been very different. And if you, after careful consideration, decided that this too much or too frustrating and you couldn’t deal with it any longer? Well, you could’ve ended the relationship cleanly. It would still have been painful – breakups tend to be – but it would have been the quick, sharp pain that heals quickly, not the long, drawn out death by a thousand pokes by a three-quarters turgid dick in the back.

You need to mature. A lot. Take time, think of how it would feel for someone else, someone you cared for, pestering you like that and being mad at you over not doing something you may have been uncomfortable doing.

Once you understand how that would feel? Then you’ll have a much better understanding of what not to do next time and why.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So I am very painfully average. Which seems like a massive detriment to my dating life. Average looks, average skills, average dress style, working an average with a painfully average face and mediocre body type (built like an uncanny love child of current Steven Segal and a deflated Kevin Smith despite being Gen Z) which yeah I’m essentially the human equivalent of warm oatmeal. Sure safe and inoffensive but no uniqueness, no spice, no umph, no excitement, no sex appeal in that.

Many women and girls friends tell me that I’m not boyfriend or hook up material but rather husband material which to me and a lot of guys is a very insulting thing to say. It’s essentially saying “Yeah I don’t find you physically or sexually desirable but you’re just stable, safe, competent, nice, useful and resourceful” that’s not a compliment that’s the bare minimum, the low bar all men should met; that’s not exciting, sexy or desirable. I’m not the guy women are seeking out for an unforgettable experience of pure passion and sexual euphoria, I’m sloppy seconds not a prize. And I want to be the prize the one who’s truly desirable, an honest to goodness sexy badass, someone who’s actually lusted after because to me there can be no connection without physical desirability, I know that sounds shallow but that’s very important to me. I wanna be truly sexually desirable, truly lusted after not be like everyone else dull mediocre and boring. Not be settled for but rather someone who truly is a diamond among the coal in the best way possible. To truly be unique and special for women to want both physically and sexually rather than just emotionally.

Signed, Warm Oatmeal

DEAR WARM OATMEAL: Considering yesterday’s letter, have you considered going around bragging about your massive hog?

OK, let’s be serious for a moment here. The first thing to keep in mind is that most people are average. This is literally what “average” means. It’s not a moral judgement or an indication of value, it’s simply the majority of any population. It is the standard, the quality of being within the largest percentage of a group that is representative of the whole. If being “average” were the kiss of death, the human race would’ve died out long before we ever left the savannah.

The issue here isn’t about you being “average”, it’s about how you feel about yourself and how you’re running yourself down. It’s entirely about your attitude, about yourself and about others.

(Well, ok, it’s also about you needing to get the f--k off Reddit and the manosphere side of TikTok, because once again, I can tell exactly where you’re getting these talking points.)

Part of the problem is precisely in how you treat “husband” material as an insult; being told that you are someone who has the qualities for a life-long, meaningful connection, full of shared history, adventure, love, comfort and companionship is no insult, unless you consider things like “commitment” “family” and “love” to be insults. But that’s going to be hard to see if you’re stuck in the idea that women “settle down” with men they don’t love and care for, or that marriage is the death of adventure and excitement.

The comparison to ‘warm oatmeal’ betrays both a lack of understanding of long-term relationships and the fact that, I’m sorry, but you’ve been having s--tty oatmeal. Get off the Quaker Instant, get yourself some Scottish steel-cut oats, add some brown sugar, cinnamon, a pinch of salt, some dried fruit or frozen berries… hell, even a little bit of peanut butter for an extra protein kick. Because hey as it turns out, oatmeal tastes better when you start with a quality base and then you add to it to make it the precise complex dance of flavors and textures that you desire as well as the nutrition you need.

Is there a metaphor in this? You’re goddamn right there is.

If you think someone can’t see their husband as sexually desirable, a lust object and diamond among coal, that’s very much a you problem and you need to be spend some time learning the lessons of Gomez and Morticia Addams. Because this is very much the words of someone who takes the jokey-jokes that marriage is the death of lust or adventure as gospel as opposed to the culmination of a partnership of partners in crime.

(And believe me: talk to some women who’ve dated “bad boys” and you’ll be shocked to discover how much “stable”, “safe”, “competent” and “secure” is not just an insult but a massive turn-on and a necessity.)

The other part is the way you’re denigrating others; referring to people as “sloppy seconds” makes it clear that you see other people having had relationships or sex before you is degrading. That’s the first thing you’re going to have to lose if you want to actually feel desired. Nobody wants to sleep with someone who thinks that having sex with them devalues them.

This is, quite frankly, some toxic bulls--t about what it means to be a man. It’s coming down to the idea that lust and sexual conquest are the only measure of masculine value and that anything that’s less than a Playboy Mansion of lovers, with weasels-on-meth sex coming from every tap is meaningless and pathetic. It’s using sex as validation of your worth – the idea that you were “chosen” because you were “better” or more “special” than the others – when in reality, people have sex for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the person they’re f--king in that moment.

You know what makes someone “hookup” material? More often than not, it’s got more to do with the person who is looking for the hookup than the person they choose. Some people want validation, attention or simply to not be alone for a little while. Some people do it because they feel like that’s what they’re supposed to do, even if they don’t necessarily want it. Some do it because they think it’s how to get people to like them and still others do it because they’re bored and have an itch that they want to get scratched.

And in those cases, more often than not, the bar is simply “the sex is likely going to be good enough to be worth the risks that will come with sleeping with this guy and I won’t have to deal with him later.” The hookup isn’t about finding the best guy (or girl, for that matter) to f--k, it’s about getting a need met; the person is just a tool. While hookups can certainly turn into relationships, the point of a hookup is that it’s a quick, often “one-and-done” encounter.

And – spoiler alert – hookup sex is rarely very enjoyable for women and even rarer to be a “sexual euphoria”. In fact, part of the reason why women aren’t as open to casual sex as men are is because men who think they’re just having a hook up are less likely to bring their a-game. Why should they? They’re going to get theirs, and since they assume they’re not going to see this other person or sleep with them again – there’s no real need to put in the effort.

The really good, mind-blowing sex? The kind that women will brag about to their friends? That tends to come with a partner who actually cares about other people’s pleasure. It is very rarely found in a random hook-up or with a stranger at a bar, and almost always in a relationship where everyone feels safe, secure and trusting enough to be open and truly vulnerable, with actual conversation and connection and knowledge about what turns each other on and the sort of sense of security that means they feel empowered to take risks or new experiences. It’s very hard to have the sort of freedom from fear that allows you to relax and open up for sexual euphoria with a stranger or even someone you only sort of know. But with a partner you know and trust? Completely different.

Yeah, I get it. Calling you “husband material” feels like an insult to you, because you’re seeing sex and sexual attraction as the measure of a man and these women – the ‘gatekeepers’ – are withholding your “value” from you. The idea that there’re measures of worth besides “every girl in this club wants to jump on this” is just so much “cope”… because that’s what you and your fellow travelers have insisted it is. But it’s that very belief that’s going to keep dragging you down, not your supposed “average”ness .

Because here’s the thing: it really doesn’t take much to change. You don’t like being average and unremarkable? Cool… what are you going to do about it? You can find your style and dress in a way that makes you stand out in a good way. Break from the mold of most men and embrace color and interesting fits! You can cultivate your passions, dive into the things you love and have a life full of creativity, challenge and fulfillment. Or you can go seek out adventure – not just traveling to exotic faraway lands, but finding the obscure and fascinating corners of your own home town. The thing that makes Gomez Addams husband-goals is his joie de vivre and unrelenting excitement and passion for life.

Want more excitement in your life? You can start by challenging your self-limiting beliefs and pursue things that you’ve wanted to try but never really had the courage to start. Take cooking classes, take improv classes, play a musical instrument, learn to speak foreign languages and then make plans to travel so you can put those skills into practice. Want to be sexier? Great, learn how to move your body, learn about pleasure, what turns you on and why. Learn how to touch others and how to connect with them, learn how to express yourself and your passion to others. Regé-Jean Page can make eating soup look like a sensual experience because of how in tune he is with his body and his expressiveness. And yes, that is a learned activity; he’s an actor, that’s literally a skillset that he developed over time.

And if you think it’s just his looks, might I point out Messrs. Serge Gainsbourg and Vincent Cassel, who, charitably, look like frogs dipped in nicotine, but have gotten more strange ass than a Vault dweller at a mutant donkey auction.

But none of that is going to help if you’re also carrying around the idea that the only form of validation or value that counts is how many people are throwing their panties at you or how many bodies you add to your body count – especially when you see love, romance and commitment as “boring” and “safe”. The disdain  you have for yourself and for the women who are choosing other people is going to drag all exciting qualities down. I promise you, every woman out there can tell you about men they know who may radiate sex or look like a Greek statue come to life… but who render themselves absolutely unf--kable based entirely on the vibes and attitude they give off.

This is a fixable problem if you choose to fix it. And as with so many, the first thing you have to fix is your own beliefs – about yourself, about men and about women. Get off the incel and red pill subreddits, block the “masculinity” influencers who’re dripping poison in your ear and if your friends are telling you that this is how to be, get better friends. Want a little more positive masculinity in ways that are ‘traditionally’ masculine but without the toxic bulls--t? Channel a little Chadwick Boseman as T’challa, a little Chris Evans as Captain America, a little Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor and a lot of Gomez Addams.

You’re only as “warm oatmeal” as much as you allow yourself to be. But with the attitude you’re displaying in your letter, you’re going to make yourself far less palatable.

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 a friend who’s overly endowed in the penis area. He somehow makes this fact known in every situation that he seems to be in, which is his prerogative, but when it encroaches on myself and my own actions, it drives me crazy and in the past has led to a potential love interest getting redirected in his direction. 

He claims it’s not his fault, but I believe that he uses his endowment as a legit reason to push himself into the middle of everything. He seems to think he’s more important than anybody else because of his gift. I find this to be complete bulls—t personally. But the way that society works these days, people always gravitate towards whatever seems to be bigger and better. 

I know that that us advice you’re probably going to give is just to say stop being friends with this person and move on. And if it truly is that simple, that’s exactly what I will do. At the same time, I feel like I’m the best friend he has ever had and I might feel like a jerk for just abandoning him. But as a wingman I still feel like it’s unfair when he touts his attributes seemingly from the rooftops all the time, when he could handle it differently and incorporate me into the whole scheme, you know, up talk me a little bit to people and give me some props. But I never get any goddamn props, I always get leftovers. Makes me want to put my fist through a wall to be honest.

He’s The (Brat)Wurst

DEAR HE’S THE (BRAT)WURST: OK, once again I will reiterate my standard policy on fake letters: I generally catch the obvious fakes, but I’m not terribly fussed when someone manages to sneak one by me. Most letters are theoretical (and thus, functionally not real) to everyone but the letter writer as it is, but if there’s a lesson that other folks can take away from a potential fake, I find that value to be greater than the supposed “gotcha” of someone managing to slip one by.

Case in point: this letter. A lot of people have had experiences dealing with That One Friend and/or penis anxiety in general, so we’ll roll with it for a moment.

Let’s take the ongoing chorus of “Enormous Penis” out of the equation here and focus on this guy’s actual behavior. The long and short of it is very simple: whether he’s got a huge willy or not, he’s acting like a massive tool. It’s the cliche of “God give me the confidence of a mediocre white man” writ large, where he’s decided to make himself the center of attention at all times, regardless of the people around him or without consideration for either his supposed goals (being a good bro and wingman) or whether folks want to hear about his theoretically ginormous schwanz.

This is one of the times when we run into the difference between being confident and being an arrogant, pushy asshat. Someone who’s confident doesn’t feel the need to brag, boast or otherwise try to direct attention to his moneymaker. It’s not that confidence is always quiet and assured, but there’s not really a need to brag when you know what you’ve got, you know what you’re worth, and you know what you’re capable of. As a general rule, the louder that someone proclaims their vaunted superiority in some area, especially when it’s not relevant, the less secure they are about it… or in other areas, where they’re (ahem) overcompensating. It’s often about a need for attention and – importantly – validation. If it’s not about the thing they’re bragging about, it’s often an attempt to draw attention away from other inadequacies. Big d--k energy, as it were, is usually displayed as unwavering confidence other areas, not in loud braggadocio.

It’s not as though that confident and secure people can’t be loud and obnoxious, but much of it really comes down to “put-up-or-shut-up” time. LeBron or Jordan may be masters of trash-talk, but it’s talk that they can back up and do so, regularly. They’re among the GOATs precisely because they have the skills that make them the elite among the elite. The trash talk is baked into the competition, a challenge of skill – the declaration that “if you come at the king you better not miss.” Just rolling up on people with “what up I got a big d--k” isn’t the same, certainly not unless he’s in a literal d--k-measuring contest.

(Now, I will give some credit here: sometimes it’s just severely misplaced confidence. A lot of guys who legitimately have large penises tend to think of themselves as God’s gift to women. Most of them tend to be lousy in bed, in no small part because they’ve convinced themselves that size is the only thing they need to bring to the table. So foreplay becomes something that happens to other people, the g-spot is where they hang out listening to Snoop Dog and the clitoris is a piece of equipment they’ve never seen but they’re pretty sure isn’t necessary anyway and they miss the bored and pained expression on their partners’ faces while they jackhammer away.  Meanwhile, 70-90% of women can’t orgasm through penetration, so Johnny WangDoodle ain’t got the stroke game he thinks.)

The bigger issue however, is that he’s a boor, a bore and a snore. Rolling into conversations with “oh, have I mentioned that every time I get an erection I nearly pass out because it needs all the blood in my body” has all the charm, poise and believability of Danny DeVito pointedly “accidentally” dropping a Magnum condom. For the folks around him it’s about as welcome as morning wood while trying to pee or something sus prodding your lower back on a crowded subway. And that’s before we get into the fact that he’s neither a good friend nor a good wingman. A wingman’s entire job is to support his or her friend. That means helping clear a path, handle logistics, provide moral and emotional support and be the Flavor Flav to their buddy’s Chuck D. This is something that is supposed to go both ways; you support and prop them up, they do the same for you. If all this guy is doing is dominating conversations in unwelcome ways, turning the topic to him and otherwise blowing up a promising connection, then he’s not being a wingman. At best, he’s a grenade with the pin about to fall out at any moment. At worst, he’s a poacher. And none of it makes for being a good friend.

Now all this having been said: this isn’t about the world “gravitating to the bigger and better”. Trust me, the only people who care that much about penis size are straight cis men. This isn’t about the world catering to him, it’s about this guy being loud and obnoxious and getting all the attention… even though most of the attention is “who the hell is this freak and why is he going on about his wang?”

This is an area where, if you think it would be worth it, you should have a very long, and firm conversation about his behavior, how it bothers other people and how it affects you. Because, as with most cases, it’s not that he “can’t help it”. If he’s not acting like the big swinging d--k to, say, his boss, his teachers or the cops? He absolutely can. He’s doing it with you because you let him get away with it. Once he gets his d--k knocked into the dirt, I suspect that that tune would change.

But if he doesn’t want to listen (presumably because the blood rushed away from his brain after thinking about Sydney Sweeney in a micro-bikini), then the best thing you can do is get a better class of friends. You may be the best friend he’s ever had, but he’s decidedly not returning the favor. He’s being an absolute knob to you and the people around you. That’s on him, and you don’t have any obligation to hang around just because you’re the only one who tolerates him. If he doesn’t want to alienate people and drive friends away, he can stop acting like a bellend.

So have a word with this friend-who-definitely-exists and if he doesn’t or won’t listen? He can go spend his time with his buddies John Thomas and the twins and be with people who might actually appreciate his schlock. Or his schlong.

Good luck.

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