DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a teenage adult, former virgin, in his first actual relationship with a woman I love deeply. One big difference between us is our vastly different sexual past. Before her, I was a virgin who hadn’t actually been in a relationship. She, however, has let’s say around 12 previous sexual partners and 4 romantic partners (male and female). I knew that she had sexual experience before I had begun dating her, and it didn’t bug me. She was even talking to her previous ex when we started talking. I never liked the idea of my partner talking to exes, but who was I to ask her to stop talking to a guy she was friends with before me?

Then about a month or two in, something happened. One of her past hookups had started hanging around her again. As someone who thought it wouldn’t bug me, I was surprised to see this jealousy just suddenly flare up in me. Suddenly I had all of these questions invading my mind and holding onto it with a death grip. Being freshly 18, and an inexperienced lover, I lashed out with my jealousy. I felt threatened by this person I perceived as better/cooler than me and directed it at her. Since then, this person has left our lives for the most part (found out they’re not a good person at ALL. Whole other story) but since then, this jealousy has just been jumping from person to person (only the men honestly. Maybe this is some internalized s--t, but I’m only ever threatened by the men in her past)

I asked more and more questions, learning about more and more of these people. I found out that she’s slept with her close guy friends in the past. Guy friends who she might still hang out with or talk to. Or if they haven’t slept together, the guy had feelings for her at one point. Even coworkers who she’s had small flirting flings with bug me knowing that she works with these guys. Every time she hangs out with or mentions these guys as her friends, my brain just force-feeds me images of her being with that guy sexually, or of them flirting. Even if it’s years in the past! I think the biggest trigger of these feelings is the fact that these people are still in her life. If she had guy friends that she didn’t have that history with, I wouldn’t care. If her ex-hookups, relationships, or flings weren’t people she talked to often it wouldn’t bug me to think about it as much. I feel like every time I hear about a guy friend in her life or run into someone she knows in public I can only think “has she been with this guy before?”

Through it all, she’s been completely honest with me about her history every time I’ve asked, even if it just made me feel worse. I have literally no reason not to trust her. I don’t think she’d cheat on me. I don’t want to control her. I don’t want to say who she can or can’t hang out with. I know all of these experiences has made her the beautiful woman she is today. If I could, I’d just snap my fingers and not feel these feelings anymore.

Now, we’re a year in and my jealousy STILL gets the better of me. There’s been times where I’ve made her cry when I’ve told her how I’m feeling. She’ll say things like “I wish you treated me like a human being”, and it just f--king destroys me. I’m so insecure that I’m going to f--k up this amazing thing I have going with this amazing girl. This is literally the one issue we have. The one thing we fight on. I don’t want to let something as stupid as my insecurity to ruin us.

I don’t even know if I’m looking for advice or just a place to vent. I feel like I have something mentally wrong with me to be feeling this intense jealousy and hurt over these things.

How do I fix this?

Failing Student of History

DEAR FAILING STUDENT OF HISTORY: Every once in a while, I get a letter that leaves me pinching the bridge of my nose and reminding myself that the writer is very young before I respond.

OK before we start, I’m going to be honest: You don’t mention your girlfriend’s age, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that she’s around your age. If that’s the case, then I’m wondering just how many of these “sex partners” involved actual penetration and not just, y’know, extensive fooling around. 12 partners by the age of 18 is a lot in a relatively short amount of time, and that makes me suspect that these numbers are squishier than the letter would imply. Leaving aside issues of defining “sex” beyond PIV, this would hardly be the first time that encounters got rounded up to “sex”, especially in the head of the person who’s having a… let’s call it a “less than optimal” response to it all.

But the thing is: I don’t care. Much like when people detail the acts their partners did before them, the number is a distraction at best, at worst, it’s someone trying to make the other person look bad and make their jealousy seem justified or reasonable. I’m not all that interested in speculating on the hows and whys of it all because it’s not relevant. Even if this is 100% accurate and she has, indeed, had 12 partners before you, the numbers don’t matter. It doesn’t matter if she had 24 partners; this is entirely a you problem that you’re insisting on making a her problem, FSH.

This is, quite literally, all in your head – both the problem and the source of the problem. And the fact of the matter is that you’re only making things worse, in no small part because you’re not actually addressing the issue here. Until you do, nothing is going to improve; it’s only going to get worse, and this is going to follow you from relationship to relationship.

Here’s the thing: this is not about the fact guys she’s hooked up with are still in her life, nor would it be easier if her only guy friends were ones she never hooked up with or ever had an ounce of attraction to. Hell, even if she her sexual history was entirely confined to her 4 romantic partners and never proceeded past some PG-13 action, you’d still be having these issues. Because it’s not about her exes, it’s about how you feel about yourself.

The reason why you feel threatened by these guys is that you don’t feel like you have any inherent worth or value that your girlfriend would be attracted to. If it were just about her having slept with them and they’re still being around, you’d be far less worried about the ones who she just flirted with, or the ones who’re completely platonic but supposedly have/had feelings or her. You’re threatened by her exes, not because they’re her exes, but because you feel like they have qualities you don’t and that your girlfriend is going to be drawn back to them like a moth to a flame.

At the end of the day, you’re worried that someone’s gonna take your stuff because you’re just not good enough.

Part of this is, quite frankly, toxic and sex-negative bulls--t about male and female sexuality. The fact that she’s had multiple sex partners before you hits your insecurity buttons because there’s a whole lot of crap floating in your head about how her having sex with you less special. She chose you, sure, but she chose all those other guys too, so now you’re a face in the crowd.

Now, instead of being The Chosen, you’re dealing with the belief that without some other quality to make you stand out from the crowd, you’re just the Johnny-Come-Lately and not nearly as cool, handsome, desirable or whatever random quality your jerkbrain will latch onto. And because you don’t believe you’re special or that she could choose you simply because you’re you and she wants you for that, these other guys are a threat. If she wakes up one day and decides she’s over you or is just upset because you two had yet another fight, she has her choice of suitors waiting in the wings to pick back up where they left off. It’s why random guys in her life are so threatening to you and you wonder whether she’s banged them too: because each previous sex-partner is one more person who underscores how not special you are.

This is why things haven’t gotten better in the year since you two started dating. You’ve never addressed the inner issue of how you feel about yourself. And to make it worse, you’re taking this internal problem – your worry that these guys are going to take what you have because you don’t measure up – and you’re lashing out at her, as though she were somehow the cause.

Here is a truth: sex doesn’t make you special or better or whatever. As I’ve said many, many times before: women aren’t Mjolnir. Women, like men, don’t only sleep with someone because they are The Worthy. Women, like men, will f--k people for a whole host of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with the person they end up sleeping with. Nor, for that matter, do they date people or become attracted to them in comparison to others in their lives. People don’t choose their partners based on lines on a graph and need to make sure the line only goes up. Someone who dates you isn’t dating you because you had more points on a spreadsheet than the other person, they’re dating you because they want to date you, specifically. Maybe you’re better than previous exes in some way. Maybe you’re not better than those exes in some way. None of that matters because those exes are exes for a reason, just like you are their partner for a reason.

But if you can’t believe in your own value, in your own worth and recognize that you’re a prize, none of that is going to matter, because you’re never going to relax. You’re always going to be looking for the shoe to drop because you will never be able to trust that they’re with you because they want to be with you.

And, quite frankly, I’m kind of astounded that she’s still with you based on how you’re treating her. There’re only so many times someone be called a liar every time they say “I love you” before they give up.

The fact of the matter is that you’re being an incredible asshole about this, and it’s entirely down to your own feeling about yourself. Yeah, I know imagining her with other people f--ks with you. But you’re imagining it because you think you aren’t good enough, and this is your brain’s way of confirming this… in the worst and most painful way possible.

Until you address that inner lack and find your internal validation, you’re going to be having this problem regardless of who you date. It’s going to leak out, even if you’re dating someone who was a literal Vestal Virgin until the day you met; your jerkbrain will find reasons to feel threatened by the other men in her life simply because you can’t believe that someone would want you for your own sake.

If you want to save your relationship with your girlfriend – or any future relationships you may have – then you need to start with your relationship with yourself.

Actually, I take that back. You need to start by deeply and sincerely apologizing to your girlfriend for the way you’re acting. Then you need to start working on your relationship to yourself. And to be clear: this doesn’t mean that you need to start cultivating new hobbies or earn more money or get six-pack abs. It means that you need to start learning to believe that you’re great and desirable – even if other people don’t see or agree with it. Because it’s not about other people’s beliefs or opinions, it’s about yours. Without that core sense of self-worth, it won’t matter how much external validation you get. You’ll just be tossing it down a whole that’ll never be filled.

You’re going to have to fill that hole yourself. And hopefully you’ll do it before you hurt your girlfriend any further.

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 am finding myself struggling with dating in our ever-increasingly digital world. I am 22 and am not super “online” as it is (I’m barely on Bluesky and that is my most used social media) and am struggling to find other single young people out in the world. It’s difficult to connect with peers when I really only have a public LinkedIn when you search my name. I live in a moderately sized city and the Big City in my area is only 30mins away and I travel there often. I find I’m not meeting a lot of 20-somethings at bars or at events who are single. 

I really prefer emotional intimacy before sex, and I can’t seem find other young progressives who will take it low and slow with me. I’m a bi man and so the dating pool should be very open. I have good friends, but I really miss having a romantic partner. I haven’t (seriously) dated anyone since high school which was before the pandemic, and I just feel so lost! 

Please Help!

Sincerely,

Troubled in The Roaring Twenties

DEAR TROUBLED IN THE ROARING TWENTIES: You’re hardly alone in struggling to find love in a digital world, TTRT. In fact, you’re a lot closer to the cutting edge than you’d think. It turns out a lot of Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha are increasingly frustrated with trying to make a connection via the apps or online in general. So much so, in fact, that Gen Z have been leading the move away from dating apps and towards meeting people in person, leading to an increase in interest for singles-focused meet-ups and activity groups, events like speed-dating and just, y’know… getting out of the house and meeting folks like our ancestors did.

(And if you’ll forgive me for a moment but I have to say this: I TOLD YOU SO!!)

You’re actually in a pretty good position to take advantage of this movement, TTRT; living in a mid-sized city with the Big City in striking distance effectively increases the size of your potential dating pool… at least initially, anyway. Part of the learning experience of dating is learning that the first and most important rule is to waste as little of your time as possible; this means learning how to filter out the folks who just aren’t right for you, so that you cut the number of pointless first dates to a more manageable rate.

Now, you are going to have a slight handicap as a demisexual in some dating-specific events and groups. Please notice very carefully that I said slight; it’s a challenge, not an impossibility. Some of it is simply a matter of age and some of it is a matter of demographics. A lot of people in their 20s are less interested in a serious or long-term relationship than they are in something more casual. That doesn’t mean that folks like you aren’t out there, who want emotional intimacy first, just that they’re harder to find in your age bracket. There’s also the guy factor of it all. One of the drawbacks for people who sleep with men is that it’s much easier to find guys who’re up for sex, but less so to find guys who’re prioritizing relationships. Again: they do exist – you’re one of them – but finding them can be a little like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

But then again, when you want to find that needle, the best thing you can do is burn the haystack. In this case, that means being up front that you take things slow, that you prefer to be comfortable, get to know them and build an emotional connection before you take things sexual. By putting that front and center – not as an apology, not as some deep dark secret that you’re confessing but just as a non-negotiable part of who you are – you’re going to find that the folks who are least compatible with you are going to self-select out of the dating pool. And that’s a good thing. The people who aren’t interested in moving at your pace will move on… but the people who’re ready and willing to invest the time will stick around and enjoy the benefits of a slow burn.

However, there’s more to meeting Mr., Ms. or Mx. Right than running groups and speed-dating events. One of the things I’m always telling people is to find opportunities to pursue their passions in ways that bring them in contact with other like-minded individuals. If you’re into tabletop gaming, finding the gaming stores that hold events, offer space for running campaigns and the like should be a priority. If you’re more of a musical persuasion – whether performing or listening – then you may want to find a coffeeshop that caters to local performers or offers an open mic night and become a regular. Continuing education classes, cooking classes, community organizing and improvement… let your interests drive you to the places where people who share those interests spend their time and get to know them.

The benefit of taking this approach is that you get to meet people in a place where it’s much easier to strike up a conversation. After all, you already know that you have interests and values in common. It’s a lower pressure environment, and you won’t feel like you have to run the gauntlet of dating expectations. When the focus is more on mingling and less on mating, it’s a lot easier to take a slightly more relaxed approach and get to know people over time. This has the benefit of allowing you to build up a connection and seeing if a) this person is right for you and b) if there’s the possibility of more than friendship. It’s not as targeted and focused as a speed-dating or singles running club, but it also isn’t going to come with the feeling of “am I going to have to tell folks that I need time before I’m ready to take it to the next level?”

It also means that while some of the folks you meet aren’t necessarily going to be the next love of your life… they may well be the people who will introduce you to them.

Don’t worry about being an analogue guy in a digital world; you’re not alone, and there’s more of you every day. Play to your strengths and try a mix of in-person singles events and finding where your people hang out. Be clear about what you want, what you’re willing and not willing to do and don’t be afraid to turn folks down if they’re not on the same page.

Someone special’s out there and looking for a guy like you. Go make it easy for them to find you.   

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’m female, over 30 and have never dated. I’ve consciously known for at least 5 years that I’m bisexual.

However, I live in a conservative area and I’m very close to my family, who would not accept me having a female partner. I also have ADHD with rejection-sensitive dysphoria that makes me freak out at the thought of being disliked or disapproved of by anyone, even stupid old bigots I don’t even like. I’m therefore only looking to date a man. But I’m finding two kinds.

We get as far as talking about big stuff, and either he rejects me for not wanting kids, being bi, or both. Or he’s fine with that, but wants to know if I’d ever have a threesome with another woman, or date women on the side and tell him about it.

The answer to that is no, I want to be with one and only one person in my life, regardless of gender. It’s terrible feeling like there’s something fundamental about myself that’s so widely seen as this huge minus by people who are otherwise compatible with me, and the only ones who see it as a plus are incompatible. Since being with a woman is as much a fantasy for me as being with my favorite male celebrity, would it be too dishonest to just say I’m straight? Then tell my boyfriend I’m also attracted to women once our relationship is secure enough, he knows I’m not going to cheat or run off with one.

Or maybe even keep it to myself forever.

Thoughts??????

Not Poly, Just Bi

DEAR NOT POLY, JUST BI: Whoof, NPJB, you’ve got a tricky one here.

Now before we get into what to do about it, I want to make it clear that most of this is a them problem, not a you problem. If you’ve read my column for any length of time, you’ve probably seen me talk about the Sir Mix-A-Lot problem: everything is great, this person is amazing, and then here comes this big ol’ BUT.

Well, that is part of what you’re running into here, and I think it’s important for you to recognize this. You talk about how people who are “otherwise compatible” BUT they see your being bi as a minus, and honestly… I think that “but” is part of the problem here because that “but” shouldn’t be there. They’re not “otherwise compatible” with you, they’re flat out wrong for you. The fact that they think that this part of you – something that’s an inherent and intrinsic part of you, part of your holistic self – is a “minus” is precisely what makes them incompatible. The rest of it doesn’t matter when they can’t or won’t accept who you are as a person.

So, it’s not that you’re running into people who are “otherwise” compatible with you. You’re meeting a whole lot of folks who are just plain wrong for you. It’s a tricky mindset to shift, but I think doing so will go a long way to changing how you see things.

And frankly, changing how you look at the problem is going to be important because while, much like one J. T. Kirk, I don’t believe in a no-win situation, you’ve set yourself up with a very narrow needle to thread.

Your situation is like a series of debuffs that stack in a very unfortunate way. To start with, there’s the issue of demographics. You’ve narrowed your dating pool right from the jump by currently choosing to date men. That’s going to cut down the number of partners who will fit your preferences rather drastically.

This isn’t helped by the fact that you live in a conservative area, which is going to narrow the field down even further. While you can and do find people who are more cosmopolitan, progressive and open-minded, even in the reddest of red states, they’re going to be thinner on the ground, and possibly a little quieter than most. And while God knows that liberal and progressive people – even fellow queer people – can have regressive ideas about sex, sexuality and bisexuality in particular, the more conservative the guy you meet, the more likely they’re going to be a poor fit for you.

And then there’s the ADHD/RSD issue which is just adds disadvantage on top of those negative modifiers you’re wrestling with.

This all means that you’re going to make some choices, and it may come down to which ones suck the least for you.

The first choice is to stop letting your parents make their issues with your sexuality your problem. I have to be honest here: in my opinion, giving your family this kind of veto power over your relationships is a mistake.

Now granted, it’s easy for me to say this as a straight, cis man; my perspective is going to be inherently limited, and there’ll be nuances that I’ll miss. And believe me, I understand not wanting necessarily to drive a wedge in your relationship with them, especially if you’re close to them otherwise. But at the same time, I’ve always been of the opinion that love and acceptance that’s contingent on letting others define you and not accepting the sum totality of you is… let’s just call it sub-optimal. It strikes me as ultimately trying to make yourself smaller for the sake of others who won’t consider your comfort or happiness. And I get the RSD side of it, believe me – I got that particular combo plate with my ADHD too. But you can only sand off the various edges and corners in order to fit into other people’s ideas of who you “should” be before you’ve started giving up the things about you that make you uniquely you and wonderful. And that seems like an unnecessary tragedy to me.

To be quite frank about it: if they don’t have material control over your life – you live in your own place, pay your own rent and bills, etc. – then the only real power they have is your fear of their disapproval. That’s power that they can only wield as long as you allow them to. Rather than your fearing their disapproval, they should fear yours. As scary as it would be – and again, I completely get the RSD of it all – I think that if they love you, they’ll learn to love and accept all of you instead of pretending that there’s a part of you they can just section off and pretend doesn’t exist. They may have to throw a temper tantrum or two, but once they get that out of their system, I think you might be surprised to find that they can expand their horizons to encompass your entire truth, not just the parts they prefer.

(Also: parents can surprise you. Someone close to me came from a very conservative Christian family and was convinced that they would never accept that she was going to divorce her husband. When she broke the news, they didn’t just accept it, they were glad for her. Maybe give your parents the chance to prove you wrong about this.)

A second choice, and one that’s fairly obvious, would be to move to a more cosmopolitan area – a more LGBTQ friendly city would widen your dating pool, if only to include bi or queer men who sleep with women. This is obviously going to be pricy and disruptive to your life, but if you have the resources and the freedom to do so, that might be an option worth exploring. You can be close to your family without necessarily being physically close, after all. ��(Living in a more queer-affirming area might also mean you might reach a point of not necessarily letting your family dictate who you’re allowed to love and date, too… Just sayin’.)

A third choice would be to prioritize finding someone who doesn’t want kids and who’s going to be educated enough to understand that bisexuality isn’t just something you do to be popular at parties, nor is it about their sexual fantasies.

The drawback here is that, if you don’t move some place where the demographics would be more in your favor, this means that you’re going to be single for longer than you might prefer. You’re already having a hard time meeting people who fit these standards, and it’s leaving you understandably frustrated. I can understand why you might start wondering if this is something you could learn to work around or even learn to live with.

But at the same time… these aspects of you aren’t just bonus content that people could skip, or DLC that they could take or leave as they so choose. They’re part and parcel of who you are as a person. You don’t want someone who loves you conditionally; you want someone who loves and accepts all of you for who you are. I know it’s easy for people �– especially partnered people – to say that it’s better to be lonely because you’re alone than to be lonely because you’re with the wrong person… but it’s true. I’ve been there and done that and let me tell you, the difference is like night and day. When you’re lonely because you’re alone, you can find comfort and community with others. But being alone even when around others, because the person you share your life with is fundamentally wrong for you and can’t accept you as you are? That feels like death, but you’re still walking around.

The final choice would be… well, to put it bluntly, to be closeted for a while and hope that you can finesse a conversation down the line. And in fairness, a lot of people have had to have Awkward Conversations with partners as they’ve come to understand and accept that maybe their sexuality is different from what they and their partners had thought it was. And while many couples have ended up splitting up because this became an irreconcilable difference, many more have made it work and figured out how to incorporate this new understanding into their lives.

But here’s the thing: most of the time, those were people coming to this understanding from a place of honesty. They were often trying to reconcile this new knowledge themselves while talking it through with their partner. It’s a bit different when you’re hoping to hide this side of yourself – as though it didn’t matter, as though it were unimportant – and hope that they’re going to be cool about it when you roll it out later.  

This is a high-risk choice, and it’s one that’s going to take months or possibly years to fully play out. That’s a lot of your time to invest on a dice roll, even one that may be less of a risk as you get to know each other.

But less of a risk isn’t no risk. Even under the best of circumstances, a lot of people still have a hard time accepting that bisexuality just means that a person is attracted to more than one gender, even in this day and age. It doesn’t mean that they’re inherently non-monogamous, nor does it mean that they want threesomes or, for that matter, that you can “only” be fulfilled by exploring both sides of your sexuality.

(And that’s before we even get into the people who will question your bisexuality entirely. “Are you really bi if you haven’t dated X gender?” and “you don’t count if you’re in a straight-passing relationship” are both things that bi and pan people deal with all the time from, and from all sides.)

While it’s certainly possible, I think there’s also a good chance that you end up spending a lot of time with yet another person who can’t or won’t accept this part of you – one that you felt like you had to conceal to be with them in the first place.

This is also why I think the framing that “being with a woman is as much of a fantasy as being with my favorite male celebrity” isn’t helpful. There’s a difference between “wouldn’t it be hot to throw Bad Bunny to the floor and ride him like he was Seabiscuit” and “I can have romantic and sexual connections to people of different genders” and equating the two diminishes how this is part of you.

Like I said: the way you’ve set things up for yourself has made this a very tricky minefield to navigate. I think there’re ways you could make life much easier on yourself, but they’re going to require that you take some pretty big swings at the start. But that’s easy for me to say as the person on the outside, where all of the consequences are theoretical. You’re the expert in your life and situation, not me. I just hope you make the decision that’s best for you. ��Oh and one more thing: as someone who’s dealt with the RSD bonus content, I can tell you that managing my ADHD also turned the volume down on the RSD. There’s an extremely notable difference between when I’ve taken my Vyvanse and when I haven’t. If you’re still struggling with the RSD, you may want to talk with your doctor about the possibility of trying different medication and seeing how the change affects how you feel.

Good luck.

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