DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m in my late 50s and newly divorced after decades of monogamous marriage. FWIW I’m a masculine-of-center lesbian, but I’m guessing my question is relevant to people of all genders and orientations.

My question is: how do older people with creaky bodies navigate having sex with new partners? The last time I was on the market, I was young, kinky, and flexible. Now I’m old, creaky, and rigid. I have joint problems, chronic pain, arthritis, asthma, and sleep apnea. I’m cancer survivor with a bilateral mastectomy. I’m post-menopausal with all the sexual challenges that come with that. I feel like I’d need to give someone a two-hour safety orientation before even cuddling.

Sex is supposed to be fun, but when I think about being physically vulnerable with someone new, it feels scary and not in a good way. I’m scared that even normal vanilla sex could result in a serious injury if my partner isn’t willing or able to be super cautious with my body. I’m anxious I’ll disappoint my partner if I don’t have the stamina or flexibility to have sex the ways they like. And I’m wondering, who would actually want to go through all this hassle just to have sex with me? Should I just focus instead on ramping up my solo game?

I can’t be the only older single person with an aging semi-functional body who has physical limitations around sex! But I haven’t been able to find any good guidelines about sex etiquette for people in my situation. When do I bring up my physical limitations? How do I talk about my mastectomy without killing the vibe? How do I learn to trust that my partners will care for and respect my body’s needs and limitations?

My worries about this are really holding me back from starting to date again. Any tips?

Signed, Old Dog Needs New Tricks

DEAR OLD DOG NEEDS NEW TRICKS: Age is the great leveler, ODNNT; time, entropy and gravity take their toll on everyone, whether prince or pauper. Until the day we get fully functional artificial bodies a la Commander Data, we all face days when our bodies aren’t going to work the way we’d prefer and we have to work around those limitations.

But it’s worth noting that people already face these issues and still have sex – especially as average lifespans grow and modern science makes it possible to mitigate some of the age-and-infirmity related roadblocks to sex. Retirement communities and assisted living communities are hotbeds of sex, as seniors – in varying degrees of decrepitude – continue to bang out. Similarly, people with a multitude of disabilities and handicaps that run the gamut of severity also date and have sex. Does it mean that people have to make adjustments and allowances and find work-arounds? Of course… but that’s precisely part of what makes all sex work.

Now, one of the benefits of the fact that other people also face these challenges and difficulties is that people have been there before and have drawn up maps and wrote guides to help others find their way through, too. I highly recommend that you check out The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness by Miriam Kaufman, Corey Silverberg and Fran Odette – a medical doctor, a sex educator and disability advocate, respectively. It includes not just practical advice on positions and acts, but ways of seeing yourself as a sexual person, discussions on desire and suggestions on how to find partners and discuss your needs and restrictions. ��I would also recommend Naked At Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex by Joan Price. While you may not be a senior citizen yet, this is a great resource for addressing feelings and concerns about sex as we age and why getting older doesn’t mean having to resign yourself to a sexless existence. I think these two might pair well and give you both practical advice and vocabulary to communicate with your future partners.

However, in addition to the assigned reading, I think you should reframe how you see yourself and your body, especially in relationship to the partners you will have in the future – specifically the question of trust and comfort and how to communicate your needs to potential snugglebunnies.

You have limits, and any partner you have is going to need to be aware of them and sensitive to them. Those aren’t problems, per se, they’re facts. They’re just who you are and how your body works. Treating this as a problem or something you have to apologize for puts you in a poor place for finding and vetting a partner, in part because you’re talking about coming to them and saying “I’m sorry I’m broken in these ways, I hope you still like me.” You don’t have anything to apologize for; these aren’t flaws or defects, they’re just your body aging, like bodies do. Moreover, many of them are signs that you’re a survivor, bearing the scars of many hard-fought battles with Death himself. That’s not something to apologize for, that’s something that cultures used to brag about. Cancer couldn’t kill you! That’s the sort of battle that earns you a seat in Sto-Vo-Kor, win or lose.

(I’ve been binging Deep Space 9 and Lower Decks lately, does it show?)

So, I would suggest reframing your thinking about how to roll things out to your partner. A key point to remember is that people will look to us to understand how to react to information we provide them. You don’t want to apologize for how your body works, or for what you need for sex to be satisfying to you, you want to roll it out as “here’s how I work, here’s what I like, here’s what I need, here’s what I have to be careful with, and here’s what I can’t do, full stop.” You aren’t apologizing, you’re handing your prospective partner the “here’s how you win with me” guide.

How they respond to this information is going to be like the filter that tells you whether they’re a good fit for you or not. Someone who’s worth having sex with will take this information on board and use it appropriately. Someone who’s mature and kind, but finds that maybe this doesn’t work for them will bow out gracefully – no harm, no foul, just not a good fit. Someone who has a problem with this, on the other hand, disqualifies themselves and does you a favor in the process.

The same applies to the process of getting comfortable enough with a partner to have the kind of sex you want and enjoy. If you don’t want to kill the vibe by talking about your mastectomy, then I’d recommend talking about it before there’s a vibe to kill – that is, when there’s enough mutual attraction that sex is a possibility, but before you’re having to hit pause in the middle of a make-out session. I think an Awkward Conversation to cover “Hey, if we go forward with this, here’s what you should know” is a good idea – marking out time specifically to talk about it and answer questions without feeling like you need to rush through to get back to the hands and mouth action. Both of the books I recommend have suggestions on how to conduct those conversations.

Similarly, I understand being concerned about needing trust and security with a partner because of your challenges as well as the actual risks, and I would say that this is as good of a reason to keep many, if not most forms of sex off the table until such a time that they have built that amount of trust with you. There may be things you can do – mutual masturbation, for example – but other forms may have to wait until later down the line. This, too, is a filter; folks who are going to be right for you will be ok with this. Folks who aren’t, won’t be.

(And to be clear, that doesn’t mean that they’re bad people if this doesn’t work for them. It just means that you two are a poor fit!)  

I completely understand why your worries are making you hesitate, ODNNT, but I promise you that you’re traveling a path that many people have traveled before, and they’ve left advice on how you can follow it through successfully too. The worries are large and in charge, but I promise you: they only seem larger and scarier than they actually are.

You’ve got this.

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: So, I’ve got a ‘fun’ one for you. It’s going to have layers upon layers of bulls--t, so please bear with me while I type it all out. Also, I get the impression that most of your audience usually skews pretty cis-het, so consider this one a variety offering.

How does one look for a partner while being well outside of anything resembling ‘the social norms’, and thus dealing with massively constricted pool of options -on top- of being involuntarily picky?

I’m a trans man, technically bisexual but with full romantic preference for other men. Being trans already tends to narrow down your options (often massively so, depending on where you live), even if you are otherwise a picture-perfect catch. Well, I am most certainly not that, using the normal metrics. I’m a full-service sex worker, of many years, and have no intention of changing my line of work. I am aware that it’s usually somewhat less frowned upon among the polyamorous community, but… Since we can’t have it too easy, I am extremely NOT polyamorous. I have a hard preference for romantically monogamous, open relationships. A potential partner having other romantic involvements is a non-starter – I am perfectly happy with them f--king all and sundry as long as they use protection, however.

To make this even more convoluted, I am also deeply, profoundly unsociable. I don’t really use the term ‘introverted’, because I don’t feel that quite describes the scope of what I am talking about. I am fortunate enough to have an extensive amount of genuinely good friendships, but I’m the sort of a friend who will help you move or will show up in the middle of the night due to an emergency. Not the one you invite to an activity. Those I am likely to outright decline. Put simply, anything I do is decidedly more enjoyable to me when done alone. My primary hobbies CAN be done with other people – and I usually have a s--t time doing them when I have to account for presence of others. I go through cyclical, short lived bursts of social energy, but they do not occur in a predictable pattern and it can be literal months between them.

Obviously, this affects the “where” of meeting potential partners. I am very aware of the dynamics of meeting people in the “wild”, by means of getting involved in A Community. That is indeed how I found the relationships I did have while younger (I’m in my mid-30s now). Unfortunately, the vast majority of the time, I am -actively unhappy- when committing to any kind of organized/scheduled activities. I have gotten both less sociable and, of course, busier with age.

So, we have the “normal, sensible ways of meeting new people feel like a visit to the dentist” aspect. The final cherry on top is that I very rarely find myself sexually and romantically interested in others. I’m one of those people who -require- certain kink activities for anything resembling satisfying sex life (this has buried several of my serious relationships, before I figured it out). So, it is common for me to have a pang of sexual attraction to someone, then find out that what I am looking for is not on the table and poof, just like that it’s gone. Romantic angle is even harder – it is very rare that I relate or connect with people on a deeper level (autism doesn’t help). While even nowadays, I still sometimes find people who are interested in me, I usually don’t feel even platonic social interest in return.

Given all of the above, I am in all honesty increasingly leaning towards “you know what, you are just not built for any of this, focus on your hobbies and work and forget all that relationship s--t”. But, inevitably, the “wow I wish I wasn’t single” brainwave returns whenever I am not completely absorbed in my projects.

So, I suppose the question is: How do I know if finding a decent match is so mathematically unlikely as to be not worth the price of admission in time spent? If I decide to indeed not resume actively looking, how do I deal with the recurring misery pangs? And, on the contrary, if I decide to start looking again, how do I do so as someone who actively dislikes spending time around others and is aware of this -from experience-?

A Weird Hermit

DEAR A QUIET HERMIT: Not gonna lie, AWH, you do have a challenge on your hands. But something being a challenge isn’t the same as being “impossible”; it just requires reframing things. This is why the question is ultimately “what are you willing to do about this?”

Everyone who gets into a relationship – whether they’re cis or trans, straight, gay, bi/pan or anywhere else on the spectrum of sexuality – makes compromises, adjustments and changes in order to find, enter and maintain that relationship. Sometimes it’s a matter of compromise – what are they willing to give up in exchange for that relationship? Sometimes it’s a matter of changing their circumstances – are they willing to make the changes to themselves, their lifestyle or habits? Still other times it’s a matter of changing their expectations – including their expectation of how long they’re willing to wait to find someone.

So the question for you starts with “how badly do you want to find a partner?”

Now I realize this sounds like I’m telling you that you need to start changing everything about yourself in order to date, and I’m not. What I’m doing is asking you about where “don’t want to be single” fits into your priorities. Understanding that makes it easier to decide just how you want to proceed, and whether the changes that you might need to make are worth the result.

Is it high enough that you would be willing to try to work with or around your preferences and limitations and see if there are ways you can overcome them without breaking yourself in the process? Alternately, would you be willing to accept being single for longer than you might prefer, while you wait for things to line up in such a way that your challenges aren’t as daunting or don’t require as much effort to match and overcome?

Another thing to consider is whether you even want a romantic relationship in the traditional sense. You’re someone who already lives outside of conventional norms and expectations; a “traditional”, heteronormative and amatonormative relationship may be a poor fit for you, even if you do address the aspects of your life that present a challenge. So it may be that the relationship model is the bigger problem. Trying to forge your own relationship model – one that actually fits your needs, wants and lifestyle – can be just as challenging, but it may be easier than trying to twist yourself into knots like a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat while also sanding down your corners and edges in order to fit into something that was never right for you in the first place.

For example, people joke about having a “outdoor cat” attachment style – where one veers between bursts of intense togetherness and disappearing for weeks at a time, but still caring for their partner – but that may be a mode that works well for you. It requires setting expectations and understanding that those relationships may be short-lived, especially if you require romantic fidelity, but it may be a much better fit for you and your lifestyle. The duration may not be as long as a more “traditional” relationship, but the value, meaning and importance of a relationship isn’t measured by its duration. A short-term relationship can be just as significant and meaningful as one that lasts for decades.

Or you may find that something more akin to a queer-platonic life partner is more your speed. Someone you can share your life and space with, where sex isn’t as much of a priority might well meet your needs. It might even be easier if you don’t live together, but within easy reach; you might occupy both sides of a duplex, or find apartments or condos in the same building.

If you do decide to actively look for a partner and relationship, then I would suggest starting with your top priority and working down from there. You mention that you absolutely need certain kinks for a satisfying sex life; that sounds like the place to start when it comes to meeting and qualifying potential partners. I’m a big believer that sexual compatibility should be a top priority in a partner; when the sex doesn’t work, the rest of the relationship tends to fall apart. Meeting someone who is right for you means going where they’re most likely to hang out; kinky people tend to hang out with other kinky people, so participating in the kink community (to the degree that you are able to) is a good starting point. It helps that the kink community has a lot of overlap with the ENM and queer communities, and they’re more likely to be comfortable with someone who does full-service sex work. A kink-forward dating app like Feeld might be a good supplement, especially for the times when you don’t feel like going and socializing in person. It’s no guarantee that everyone or even most will meet your requirements (or you, theirs), but it’ll be a lot easier to find viable candidates if you’ve already filtered out the ones who you wouldn’t be able to have a sexual connection with.

But even in those circumstances, you may be waiting a while to meet someone who is right for you and who you’re right for. You might – and I stress might – speed things up if you can bring yourself to be more active in the community… but that brings us back to whether trying to force yourself to be more socially active is something you’re willing to do.

And to be absolutely clear: the answer to “what changes are you willing to make?” may be “none” or “not these” and that’s ok! If you know yourself well enough to know that those changes wouldn’t be feasible or sustainable, then hey, it is what it is. That just means adjusting expectations instead, including possibly saying “yup, too much trouble, I’ll revisit this question again later,” which is also valid.

And revisiting the question later may well be the answer. Life has a funny way of looking like it’ll be one way forever and then radically changing down the line. If and when your circumstances change, your needs and requirements may well change as well. If that day comes, then it may be worth returning to the question of “is this worth it for me?”  and seeing how things look.

But until that day comes, the best advice I can give is to make sure that the love of your life includes the love of your life – a life that you love, with meaning and satisfaction, whether you’re rolling solo or with a party.

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 writing because I’ve been stuck in a mental loop that’s slowly poisoning the way I see myself and how I experience desire.

I don’t have abs. I do have a trained, athletic body, but not one that’s visibly “shredded” or visually striking in the stereotypical way. And here’s where my problem starts: I’ve had sex, relationships, and women who desired me — but almost always after they got to know me.

On paper, that should feel validating. In reality, it doesn’t.

What it ends up reinforcing in my head is the idea that my body alone doesn’t inspire desire. That I’m not wanted at first glance. That my attractiveness only “activates” once I prove myself through personality, presence, intelligence, confidence, or charm. In other words, I feel like I always have to demonstrate something to earn desire.

My ex-girlfriend once told me she fell in love with me because of the way I walked. And instead of feeling good about that, my mind twisted it into something darker — like my physical body itself was irrelevant or disposable, and only the performance mattered.

I’ve never experienced what I imagine as raw, visual desire: the look from a woman at a rave, on the beach, or across a room that says “I want you” without context. And I’ve internalized that absence as proof that I’m lacking something fundamental as a man.

Intellectually, I know this is a distorted belief. Emotionally, it feels deeply ingrained. It makes me feel like a man who must always compensate, always earn, always prove — never simply be desired.

I want to get this schema out of my head. It’s not motivating me; it’s corroding me. I don’t want to measure my worth through imaginary abs or an idealized version of instant visual validation.

How do I dismantle this belief without gaslighting myself? How do I stop equating “being interesting” with “not being desirable”?

Thanks for the work you do, and for reading this.

Best regards,

Feeling Trapped

DEAR FEELING TRAPPED: Women have looked at you like a piece of raw meat, FT; the problem is that you don’t believe it when it happens. You have dismissed the ways that people are into you because you don’t want to believe it’s possible. Until that changes, you’re not going to see it; your confirmation bias is going to tell you that it wasn’t “real”, that it wasn’t about your body or that you’re clearly getting it wrong.

Want proof? Ok… so tell me something: why is telling yourself that you’re desirable, not just as a person but as a piece of meat gaslighting, but “you must look like a Heated Rivalry body double to be desired” isn’t?

Seriously. That’s it in a nutshell. You have already declared that trying to believe anything else is “gaslighting”, which is precisely how you’re going to shut down any chance of changing. Do you see how that’s you closing off the possibility that your mindset is wrong?

That’s why this the place to start. Why are you willing to only accept the worst about yourself as the honest truth, but the belief that people are warm for your form as it is now are delusions and lies? Who is telling you this and, critically, why do you listen to them?

I’m not asking this rhetorically; I’m asking because I want you to actually sit down and dig into why you’ve taken this belief onboard to such a degree that you don’t believe the women you’ve dated who wanted to fuck you until the bed collapsed into splinters. And then I want you to explain to me how they weren’t actually having sex with your body and were only blowing your mind.

Seriously. Re-read your own letter and tell me why someone who thought that the way you walk was what made her fall for you isn’t responding to your body. Have you perfected some mystical technique where you are walking without physical form? Are you just projecting the illusion of locomotion, muscular contractions, and inverse kinematics through sheer psychic power? Or was it the way that you moved your body, much like how dancing is moving your body.

The answer, ultimately, is because you’re looking for a very specific form of validation. You feel like there’s a way that people are “supposed” to be into you, and the idea that context is needed – people needing to get to know you, learn who you are and realize that damn that turns them on – doesn’t “count”. It doesn’t “count”, because you don’t see yourself as being attractive, especially in that very narrow and specific way. You’re buying into a particular idea of how attraction works and I’m willing to bet you $5 cash that most of this comes from men talking about what women find attractive, rather than listening to women.

Women have shown you, time and again, that they lust for you. You aren’t willing to accept it because you feel as though it needs to come in a very specific context, but that’s not a context that actually exists. Not unless you ignore that attraction isn’t inherently and exclusively physical.

Let’s put it another way: when is the last time you wanted to fuck a piece of art? I mean it; when is the last time you looked at, say, The Venus of Arles, The Veiled Maiden or Cupid and Psyche and thought “man, I want to hit that?” Have you looked at Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or even a print of Hildebrandt’s “Unicorn Dreams” and got even a half-chub?

Ok maybe art isn’t your thing, so let’s think about photography instead. When is the last time you have gotten aroused looking at a photo of an attractive nude woman who is just standing straight in a t-pose, arms at 90 degrees to her torso, eyes looking straight forward and a completely neutral expression on her face. There’s no sign of emotion, personality, no sign that she has ever moved, ever.��Or perhaps you should picture a realistic sex doll – one that is functionally indistinguishable from a flesh-and-blood woman, but who just stands there, arms at her side, looking at nothing. Just a physical body, occupying space. Or maybe she’s just lying flat and unresponsive on a bed, a physical form with no indication of life beyond not showing signs of death or decay.

Sure, if that’s the first time you’ve ever seen boobs, it might stir something… but you have to admit, that’s a pretty unerotic image, yeah? The proportions and symmetry is nice, her features are appealing, but nothing about it is going to really inspire feelings of lust.

That’s because there’s more to desire than just meat. Meat, no matter how attractive, is just meat. It’s the spark of life that makes someone desirable – the indications of personality and emotion. There is a reason why Playboy pictorials aren’t just nude people in neutral poses; everything is about implying personality and motion. The coy look and teasing smile suggest awareness that she knows that you’re looking and she likes it. The arch of a back and closed eyes while her hands are placed as though she were running them down her body give a feeling of not just motion but sensual enjoyment – leaving the viewer with the feeling that she is someone who enjoys the physical sensations of hands touching her skin.

In other words: it’s not just her body that’s turning you on, it’s her attitude and personality, the impression of her sexuality and the desire that she feels. It’s all part of the sum totality of who she is, implied in visual short-hand that conveys volumes of meaning in a simple gesture, quirk of the lip and glance to the camera.

Even when the person is a complete stranger or is completely anonymous, you’re filling in the blanks yourself, inventing a person out of posture, pose and facial expression and imagining interacting with her. It’s not just a body, but the person… even if all you are interested in is her physicality.

It’s why a nude model in a life-drawing class isn’t inherently erotic, no matter whether she looks like Sydney Sweeney or Dame Judi Dench. Context, personality, motion… all of these have to come together to trigger that sense of attraction and desire. You aren’t only being aroused by the body, but the holistic person.

Once you understand that – stale jokes about male sexuality aside – that you’re not attracted by physical form alone, is it really that hard to believe that women too are aroused by context?

I mean, women aren’t thirsting after Michael B. Jordan on looks alone, it’s his looks in context with what they think about him. If he were just a motionless, personality-less body like an inactive Host from Westworld… it’s a very different picture.

But maybe it’s unfair to refer to someone who is stupidly hot as an example. Let’s look at, say, Paul Potts instead. Potts, a contestant in the first season of Britain’s Got Talent is a dumpy, kinda chubby guy who, charitably, isn’t going to grace the cover of Men’s Health any time soon. But if you watch his audition on BGT’s official YouTube channel, you can see the way Amanda Holden’s impression of him visibly changes at the 1:05 mark. However, it’s the moment at 2:05 where things peak, because Nessun Dorma isn’t the only thing that’s reached a climax.  Holden hasn’t just changed her impression of him, she’s going to need a change of clothes. Potts may not be the most physically impressive guy, but his voice is powerful and beautiful enough to make people fall for him.

The point is that attraction and arousal isn’t just physical, it’s contextual. Changing the context changes the association and the feelings the person inspires, because it hits that person’s buttons just right. When that context changes, it changes how people feel, and how they feel changes how they see the person. This isn’t just feel-good woo-woo bulls--t, there’s actual science behind it; the more we get to know a person, the more attractive we find them.

So yes, your ex, who loved your walk loved your body… in this case, specifically how you moved your body. That’s not “earning” desire, that’s inspiring desire. That’s someone going “hold on, did it get hot in here” and fanning themselves because they suddenly got hit by a wave of lust.

I know you’ve felt this way too. Be honest – can you really say that you’ve never realized you were hot for someone after you got to know them? Or do you want all of us to believe that you and you alone only fall in lust at first sight and nothing ever shifts that for you? Have you never seen someone you knew in different context and suddenly realized that holy s--t they’re hot? Do you only get hornt up immediately upon seeing someone and never later on?

The point of all of this is that you have been drawn to people because of their holistic selves, not just because of their body. You have almost certainly had times when your attraction to them wasn’t instant, but came after you got to know them. Would you consider your desire for them to be less, if it wasn’t immediate and instant?

If you are capable of accepting that you are capable of being turned on by someone after you got to know them and that this wasn’t them “earning” or “proving” themselves to you, then why doesn’t that apply to them, too?

If you paid attention to women and who they’re into and didn’t dismiss their opinions as fake, misleading or outright lying, you might be surprised. Some women like the Greek statue look. Others would let Matt Berry do any depraved things he wanted because they think he’s just that hot. Go to any forum with lots of women and do a search for “hear me out”, and you’ll be astounded at who and what women think are unspeakably desirable and why.

There comes a point where you have to either accept that the people who love and desire you are doing so because you’re you, with everything that means. That doesn’t mean that you had to “prove” anything or “earn” their desire, not more than women have had to “prove” themselves to you or “earn” your desire.

If you want to change this belief, you have to be willing to change how you feel about yourself. Part of that is going to be accepting that maybe you’re wrong about what women want or how they feel about you. Another part is going to be letting go of the ways you reinforce the belief that you aren’t attractive. This includes not listening to the men who insist they know women better than women do and listening to the women who are saying “yes, yes, OH GOD YES.”

Until then… well, you’re going to be with women who want to climb you like a tree and you’re going to keep calling them liars.

Up to you, my guy.

Good luck.

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