DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m concerned about pornography, specifically with regards to enhancing my sex life.

Let me start by saying I know there are ethical issues to porn. I know it’s an unhealthy and unrealistic portrayal of what real sex is like, and that it could possibly desensitize you to real sexual experiences. I know all that stuff. I’m not uninformed about it, but I’ve never actually seen porn and I need help weighing the risks and benefits of seeing it.

Considering my life circumstances, I’m looking to see whether porn would do good as one of two things:

A) A way to get greater arousal and satisfaction than masturbation. Let’s get real here: while I am legally an adult (I turned 18 this year), I still live at home with my parents and two little sisters. “My” car is really dad’s that he lets me use sometimes, and I have no job, living the life of a full-time college student who is also single. In other words, this means I can’t really hook-up with others, I can’t buy sex toys or subscribe to a porno magazine (both for monetary considerations and because my sisters are 10 and 16 and could find that stuff at home), and I don’t have a go-to sexual partner. While I have fun with the daily threesomes between me, myself, and I (the latter of which are known as Left and Right Hand), the bottom line is that my sex life is basically unchanged from the moment I discovered masturbation in junior high, which now that I type it is more than a little sad.

I don’t mean to imply that watching porn is some sign of sexual maturity or some inevitable milestone in growing up (it’s not), I just mean to say that I’ve reached a sexual plateau and porn could be a way to go beyond that. Masturbation is great, but it’s certainly lost it’s magic over the years. When I first discovered and did it, it felt like discovering a cheat code in a video game: “Instant happiness just touch genitals”. Now it’s just become part of my daily routine and part of my regular rotation of recreational activities, no more amazing than watching TV or reading comedy articles.

B) Porn could be a stopgap measure to fill to bridge the gap between just masturbation and having a girlfriend, and a replacement to having a girlfriend if absolutely necessary.

I know that it’s okay to be a virgin, but at the start of the night I want to be next to a naked woman raring to go with me. In other words, let me cut to the point: I’m an 18-year-old male who wants to have sex. In fact, I even have the secret college motto of “Get good grades. Get laid.”, the idea being that while personal responsibility is the #1 priority, my very next priority is taking my V-card and shredding it to pieces.

Everything being said, I’m not looking for just any sex, but sex with a person I love and care about. The thing is, I’ve gotten used to masturbatory orgasms, and when I talked to my parents about how orgasms were supposedly this mind-shattering explosion of pleasure unmatched by anything (there’s a reason why people say “X is better than sex.” as a compliment, I hope) in the known universe when they were just merely great to me, they told me that there was a huge difference between just stimulating your penis until ejaculation and actually having sex with somebody you love.

Thus in college a girlfriend I seek, and the idea that I should get good grades and get laid is not some joke: I’m not going to consider myself a loser if I don’t get laid by college graduation (I have read your articles on age and virginity, and they REALLY spoke to me), but if we are to sit down and think objectively about the consensual convergence of human genitalia, we can only conclude that college is my best chance to get laid, considering that one could unironically call it a place where everyone is A. at or over the age of consent B. away from parental supervision C. living together in close quarters D. young (while being in the 18-26 age range doesn’t mean you’re attractive, you certainly don’t get more attractive as you get older.) E. In a world with condoms, birth control, and rigorous STD testing and treatment, creating the potential for (if only theoretically) consequence-free sex, and F. Is basically jacked up on sex hormones.

In short, college is a place where people live in close quarters while they are literally as sexy and horny as they will ever be in their entire lives, and any possible sex is thrice consequence-free (if you take all the precautions, of course), completely legal and away from any disapproving authority. If there is a time and place where one should expect a golden age of sexuality in one’s life, it’s college.

Yes, I know that I’m not doomed if I don’t get laid by the time I graduate college, but I want to have sex with a sexy young adult as a sexy young adult, and college is the best place to do that. I know I could meet someone I like in my future career, but I don’t want to go after thirty year olds as a thirty year old, and certainly not after twenty year olds as a thirty year old. And let’s not forget I’m in my sexual prime; my sexual fitness and attractiveness can only decline with age. While I know 80 year olds can have active sex lives, all things being equal now is the chance.

I’m in the right age at the right place, so college should be the golden age of sexuality for me, but it’s passing me by the day. Believe me in that I have tried to exploit this golden opportunity, but I basically have no friends in college (no one seems interested in socializing, let alone sexualizing) and the much-fearmongered “hookup culture” basically does not exist. In short, I have seriously considered that I may not be guaranteed to get someone to date me, let alone let me have sex with them. This is more than a little disheartening, considering that I’ve never even been in a date or kissed someone. I never got people to dance with me in high school and I didn’t have a date to prom, or even homecoming.

Although, let me surprise you by saying I’m actually looking sex in the context of a relationship, and I don’t mean that in the “I have to buy her chocolates and make a girl think I love her so she’ll put out” douchebag way, but in the sense that I literally want to have a genuine and real romantic relationship that also includes sexual activity. While this does fulfill the requirement of “do it with a person you love” that will apparently make my orgasms better, let me say that I do wonder what simply being in love is like as well.

However, with slim girlfriend prospects, I look to the possibility of pornography offering me an upgrade to my sex life in the case that I don’t find a girlfriend, as well as a stopgap solution to tie me over until I get one, if I do.

Yet, what holds me back from porn is safety issues, both in terms of legality and computer security. There’s this shadiness regarding porn that just really turns me off to it (pun not intended). What this means in practice is that if I see a Google result that reads “big t

*y MILFs XXX sshot” (intentional misspelling on my part), I’m not exactly thinking that it’s a totally trustworthy and safe site for me to use. I’m actually afraid of going to porn sites to be honest, because with porn there seems to be unnecessary risks you don’t get with any other so-called vices.

In other words, I’ve never drank alcohol except for Holy Communion, but I know that you don’t walk into a bar and wonder if what the bartender gave you was brewed up in a bathtub, nor do you wonder if the cigarettes you buy at 7-11 (not that I’m a smoker) have been laced with narcotics. Nobody goes into a casino only to find out that it was all an illegal mob operation just as SWAT teams pour through the front doors to arrest all the patrons.

But I do worry about something being safe and legal with regards to porn. How do I know that the actor is actually 18? How do I know if the porn site will infect my computer with viruses?

Things like cigarettes, gambling, and alcohol are regulated by the government, so while these vices may have their inherent destructive nature (getting liver disease or cancer, loss of money, etc.), you can be rest assured that what you’re doing isn’t illegal or more dangerous than it has to be. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent of that for pornography, no sense of consumer trust and guarantee that the product is legal and safe. The USDA grades eggs, but it’s not like you go to some government agency and see ratings and certifications for all the porn sites and see something like “FreakyMILFs has been certified A++ by the Federal Association of Pornography, with a 99.9999% No Virus Guarantee and a perfect track record of adhering to US laws and statues with regards to content and production”

I have wrestled with the question of porn for a long time, in turn using a stopgap solution that TV Tropes might call “Poor Man’s Porn”. In other words, I don’t masturbate to “real porn”, but to stuff like online catalogues of lingerie and sexy Halloween costumes (think Yandy and Victoria’s Secret), sexy fictional characters, or sexualized advertisements and online Cosmo articles (yes, really). I have a Hooters calendar and my dad gets the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated each year. On a side note, having fetishes has really been a boon to me throughout my life. since this means essentially innocuous (and therefore safe and legal) stuff is de-facto porn to me (for example, I have a cosmetics fetish and masturbate to YouTube makeup tutorials), but there’s always been the idea that there’s greater untapped potential in the viewing of actual porn.

So all in all, is Internet pornography really going to be the upgrade I’m looking for? What should I do if it’s not what I need, and how could I get safe and legal porn if it was the best option? Are my ideas and concerns about college wrong or misguided?

Sincerely,

Pretty Indecisive Porn Ponderer

DEAR PRETTY INDECISIVE PORN PONDERER: Hoo boy. There’s a lot to unpack in this PIPP because you’ve crammed a lifetime of expectations and misconceptions into one long-as-hell letter.

So in the words of the KLF and the Justified Ancients of Mumu, let’s roll it from the top.

We’ll start with the orgasms you’re having from masturbating.

First and foremost: I think you may be seriously overestimating what you’re supposed to get from your orgasms – especially by yourself. The wonderful thing about orgasms is that orgasms are wonderful things but I think you were expecting skyrockets in flight instead of a case of wham-bam-thank-you-glans, especially if you’ve been jerking it every day since junior high. Humans are very, very good at adapting to circumstances and anything – no matter how amazing or horrifying – can become just another part of your every day existence. This is doubly true of masturbation. First: if you’re masturbating exactly the same way every day, you’re going to get the same results. This can actually cause problems later on if you are using what social scientists call “an idiosyncratic masturbatory technique” and those of us in the sex-biz call “the Death Grip”. Some people come to solo sex in a number of shall we say, unique ways that can range from an incredibly tight grip to using a washcloth to sticking their penis between the mattress and the box spring. The problem is: when you habituate yourself to a specific speed, pressure and level of friction that can’t be matched by a mouth, anus or vagina, you make it that much harder to actually get off during partnered sex. Your partner, no matter how much they may try, simply can’t produce the same feeling that you’ve trained yourself to need to orgasm.

So. Regardless of whether you’re rolling solo or have a partner or two or three, you want to put some best practices into effect and start varying your techniques. Use a little lube, use lots of lube (actual lube – soap dries out your skin and Vaseline is hard to clean up), masturbate with a condom on, switch hands, go slower, go faster, stop in the middle and start again, keep yourself right at the edge for as long as you can. Keeping things fresh and varied for your penis helps make sure that you don’t get stuck in a routine that means that partnered sex is going to be nothing but a frustrating core workout for you and means that you’re going to have different and more interesting orgasms.

Next: your college experience. Just as Death Grip (or Idiosyncratic Technique – which, incidentally, is my new experimental dub-metal band) can give you unrealistic expectations and needs for orgasm, you have some very difficult problems ahead for you if you think that college is going to be the end-all, be-all of your sex life. Let us start by dispensing with the idea of one’s “sexual prime”. It doesn’t actually exist in any meaningful way. 99% of what you’ve built up in your head is cultural baggage with a thin layer of outdated science on top. The idea that people reach a “sexual prime” is based on a number of mistaken ideas that have little basis in actual biology and a whole lot to do with people’s ideas about male and female sexuality.

The split between a man’s “sexual prime” being 18 and a woman’s being in her 30s, for example, isn’t about reproductive fitness. It’s about that by the time a woman reaches her 30s, she tends to have shed a lot of the sex-negative bulls

t that cripples many, many women and has taken full ownership of her sexuality. She’s not suddenly reaching a hormonal peak, she’s finally hit a point where she feels confident in her body and her sexuality and what it takes to get off.  Men – who don’t have the same repressive mind-hackery telling them that they’re not sexual beings – at 18 are dealing with being told that they’re uncontrollable satyrs who’ve finally been let off the leash and have never been given anything that even vaguely resembles instructions on how to deal with the responsibilities of sex and sexuality. Throw alcohol in on top of hormonal changes – which, I stress, are affecting women just as much – and you’re going to deal with a bunch of horny owlbears who want to stick it into almost anything.

The biggest advantages of being 18 is that you can eat more without as many consequences, bounce back from hang-overs faster and the refractory rate can be measured in minutes. That last part is important because frankly, a lot of the sex people are having can be measured in seconds. It’s often the case that people in college aren’t having the sex of their lives, so much as having it at ALL.

Similarly, while youth has it’s appeal, being in your late teens to early 20s doesn’t mean that you’re going to be at your most attractive, your fittest or your most desirable. Attractiveness isn’t about how tight or supple your skin is; it’s about presentation, confidence and a whole lot of intangibles that may well not develop until later.  Some people – myself included – didn’t hit their stride until later in life. I can tell you for a fact, with photographic evidence to back it up: I’m better looking now that I’m nearly 40 than I was when I was 18. The sex I was having in my late 20s and through my 30s was almost infinitely better – in quantity and in quality. Why? Because, unlike when we were 18, my partners and I knew what the hell we’re doing. Treating college as a window of opportunity that, if missed, will leave you in the cold is a mistake. It is simply a singular stage in life. One that you should endeavor to take advantage of while you can, yes, but if it’s all down hill from there, it’s not because you squandered your 20s.

To quote a wise sage: 30’s the new 20, I’m on fire still. Done right, your 30s have the potential to be better than your 20s because you have the same drive but more experience and better credit. So let’s not get hung up on age here, especially since you’re having enough issues making friends, never mind finding lovers. You’ve still got some growing and maturing to do.

The other thing to remember is that there is no universal narrative of what sex is going to be like for you in college. Some people have lots of it. Some people don’t have any. Some people only have one partner, some have several. All of that’s ok. Focusing like a laser on getting laid mostly just means that you’re going to miss out on a lot of amazing opportunities because you won’t see them. Trust me: that’s exactly what I did and damned if I don’t wish I could go back and re-do things.

Beyond getting good grades, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is collecting experiences and taking chances – the things that make you a more interesting and compelling person. Sex may well be a part of it. But pursuing sex – or a relationship – with single-minded focus is going to be missing the forest for the trees. Relationships will come. I promise.

Now, all that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of your questions:

Should you use porn? Well, that depends on how you mean “use”. The way you talk about using it makes me think that – like your solo orgasms – you have some unrealizable expectations. Porn isn’t a substitute for sex or a relationship. It’s simply a way of getting aroused. The fact that you’re watching Layla London or Lexi Belle go down on someone isn’t going to make you feel any more or less lonely, any more than Rogue One or Moana will. It’s a performance. Just one you’re watching with your pants off. To be sure: people use porn as a way to supplement a relationship – imagining Gianna Michaels while they’re masturbating is a way of getting some variety in an otherwise monogamous relationship – but it’s not a replacement by any stretch. Treating it as one is how you end up having a hard time forging an intimate connection with people in your life or finding yourself deep in debt to cam-girls.

Porn is fine to jerk off to, or to use to spice things up with a partner. It’s not a replacement for intimacy.

Similarly: porn sex is nothing like real sex. Let me repeat that for emphasis: porn sex is nothing like real sex. Porn stars themselves will tell you: the sex they have on camera doesn’t even vaguely resemble the sex they have on their own time. The sex you will have in real life will be nothing like what you see on the screen, any more than your commute is like Fury Road. Porn is blocked, lit and performed in such a way to look good for the camera. When you’re having sex in the real world, there is no camera, no crew, no audience. There’s you and your partner.

So: should you watch porn? If you want. You’ll have some amazing orgasms at first, because it’ll be like nothing you’ve experienced before. You’ll be aroused more than you realize. But – as with your daily masturbatory routine – you’ll get used to it pretty damn fast. So don’t treat it like the end-all, be-all of your life.

How do you use it safely and ethically? Well that’s a different question. One presumes, for example, that you know the basics of computer security and hygiene. Don’t download strange files, keep your antivirus and firewall software up to date, etc. That’s your first step.

Think of getting your porn the way you get weed. When you go to a dispensary, you are buying carefully curated strains in a well-lit and safe environment. You know how much you’re going to pay, how much you’re going to get and what you’re going to leave with. Getting it from the dude behind the gas station, on the other hand, means you have no control over the final product, what’s in it, what you’ll pay or whether you’ll even get weed at all.

In practice, this means getting your porn from known, reputable sites rather than googling titles and hoping for the best. Sticking to the mainstream sites will help make sure that everything you get is on the up and up, legally and ethically speaking. Brazzers, Naughty America, BangBros, Vivid, Kink.com, Burning Angel and others are producers and have subscription-based sites; you know exactly what you’re getting and where your money is going. Because of the laws involved in filming porn (thanks in no small part to Traci Lords…), the actors involved are carefully vetted to be of legal age and consenting to be there. Similarly, Pornhub and XTube are mainstream streaming sites that pay attention to their content and maintain standards. Keeping their customers happy and coming back is in their business model; this means that they have a vested interest in not letting malware infect your computer.

(That having been said, the ‘tube sites regularly rip off the publishers so maybe pay for your porn instead.)

You might also consider going straight to the porn stars themselves. Many run their own sites, which not only ensures that everything is exactly how they want it to go – avoiding issues like James Deen or abuse on set – but gives your money directly to them. Thus you get off AND support someone’s hard work directly.

Another option is to choose a user-submitted site like Make Love, Not Porn; this is a site that focuses on real couples having real sex, not porn sex. This helps make sure that yes, everyone involved wants to be there and is having a good time. Plus, a lot of people find it far hotter than the very artificial performances of mainstream porn sex.

Other advice: use your browser’s incognito mode if you don’t want people knowing what you’ve gotten up to. Don’t install any plug-ins or download any files that you can’t source yourself. Clear your cache on the regular. And remember that strip clubs and interactive sites – cam-girls and the like – are designed to take your money and no, the cam girl does not actually want to date you no matter how intensely you may feel.

But the best advice I can give you right now: slow your roll. Don’t treat life and college as something you must master RIGHT THE HELL NOW. You have your entire life ahead of you and – contrary to your current beliefs – it can and will get better, not worse. And hey: if you want a little help in finding that first relationship, I’ve got some books for you that’ll give you the guidance you need.

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: Thank you for your column and work. I really appreciate the niche you’ve carved out and the help you provide your readers.

I’m usually a friendly, encouraging, and empathetic guy, but sometimes, I get depressed and ruminate on the same stupid things. I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about this, but I wanted to ask you why I’m wrong on this and get some insight into something better I can tell myself when I start thinking in circles.

I’m 40 now, but I still feel pretty young and decently healthy. When I was growing up, in a conservative social circle, I was an overweight and insecure guy who put way too much worth on someone liking me (I’ll own up to that as my mistake). I would get the nerve to talk to cute girls and then watch them walk away mid-sentence for some athletic guy. I would hear them talking about how cute so-and-so classmate’s butt was. But it was always ground into us guys that we should never disrespect women by thinking or talking about them as sex objects. Ultimately, I believed that if I were good-looking and athletic, then someone would love me.

I went to college. I lost weight. I gained weight. I worked out. I became an adult. I became more progressive. I watched the world be more sex-positive for women and require more responsibility for men. I got married, and after a year, I decided to get in better shape.

So over the course of a year, my wife and I worked out and lost weight together in a group setting (she, 45 pounds; me, 90 pounds with significant strength and athleticism increase). I did all the cooking and got some good and mostly “meh” reviews on it. But I kept it up. I went to the gym and spent an hour a day on the elliptical and then 30-60 minutes on weights. Then I’d go home and cook dinner for us. Then I’d clean up, lest I get a comment about how messy I made the kitchen when I cooked. In the meantime, I would compliment her on her increased strength and athleticism, and I’d tell her I always found her attractive. I got told my butt was saggy, and I got the loose skin on my abdomen grabbed and jiggled. I never made any critical comments on her looks, athleticism, or effort.

When we went to our weight-loss meetings, I was usually the only guy there, so I got an earful of “how easy it is for men to lose weight,” and how “men don’t have to work as hard.” I thought our group (including my wife) was there to support each other and not blast each other for excuses or bogeymen, so I didn’t flip any tables or go into how 5 hours a week going full-blast on an elliptical followed by cooking varied, nutritious meals made it “so easy” for me. I sure didn’t get any backup from my female leaders, just a bunch of head-nods that it was much harder for women, and how nice it was to have a guy who understood the struggle.

When I stayed late at work, I would come home, cook first and work out later. When I did, I would get a “Well, maybe you’ll come home before bedtime” comment. When I worked out before work, I would get grouched out because I woke her up. Somehow, I was supposed to make time to work out, cook, and clean where no time existed.

In the meantime, my wife would get all googly over John Cena, David Boreanaz, or “her boyfriend” Randy Orton. A few times, I would get a compliment that I had gained more definition in my back or shoulders, but I’d never make her as starry-eyed as those big beefy guys. I’d nod or laughingly agree with her comments; I never brought up any celebrity crushes or talked about what body parts on other women I liked a lot. I think my wife is attractive, and I would regularly tell her so, partly because that’s what I always wanted in my life. Even though my wife tapered off her effort, I never stopped telling her she was hot and awesome.

God, what I wanted most was just the appreciation for how hard I worked at making our lives better and how many things I was trying to juggle. I spent that time just white-knuckling. My wife’s not real touchy-feely, and I am, so I was just hoping for a hand on my back or a hug. I got into CrossFit and obstacle racing and I loved it, and I tried to juggle that with work and home responsibilities. Ultimately, I couldn’t keep white-knuckling. After a year of maintaining my weight loss, I gained back my weight. After a rough patch at work, I fell off the wagon and gained most of my weight back.

And I travel for work, with a mostly 50/50 male-female co-worker mix, often working in a traditionally female setting. We’ve all been given the usual sexual harassment training and lip-service expectations. But when I’m doing my work, where I can’t just pick up and leave, the women I’m working with (co-workers or clients) talk about real-life or celebrity men like this verbatim exchange:

“This is what that guy from ‘Game of Thrones’ looks like in real life.” 

“Oh, he’s cuuute. I’d follow that ass around like a lost puppy.” 

“Let me find some more pictures…” 

“Oh, yeah! That’s nice! Mmmm…”

And if I had stirred the pot by saying that this was disrespectful, hurtful, and uncollegial to me and made it hard for me to work with them, how hard would I be laughed at? Would I be known as the special snowflake who everyone must be Very Serious around?

So, here’s my circular thoughts that I can’t shake: Why is it okay (and “sex-positive” and “life-affirming”) and a non-issue for women to objectify men and talk about it around guys, when it’s wrong in principle for guys to talk about women that way? Why is it okay for women to have celebrity crushes, but it’s disrespectful and oppressive for men to have anything but tunnel vision? Why is it okay to remind a guy that other guys are much hotter than him and expect that he should just be attractive without understanding that it takes a sacrifice of time and effort it takes to get there? Why is it okay to lament how hard women have it and expect men to be out-of-the-box perfect and supportive at all times? Is a guy even able to say “I don’t appreciate the way you bring up (Mr. Celebrity) around me, It affects how I think about myself and I think I should be given more respect as a human being”? If that’s just silly, then why shouldn’t I opine on how fine someone’s knockers are and how I can tell she takes the time to work out regularly?

(Note: I don’t really want to blurt out how fine someone else is; everyone’s got their own struggles and goals and advantages and accomplishments. I’d rather not pontificate about an unattainable third party just to prove it’s my right to do so.)

Finally, at what level of accomplishment do I have to make so that women (really, just my wife) will like me and appreciate me? What do I have to do to ever get the fangirl treatment that I have to endure in friends and strangers around me? When does a guy do enough to be good enough and be able to cash out on his effort (if he wasn’t born with natural talent)?

Most of the time, my relationship with my wife is pretty awesome. She’s smart and creative, accomplishes things, and is attractive at any weight or fitness level. But when things get rough at work, I’m often ruminating on these thoughts. I feel like I missed something in my youth. I thought that at some level of physical/domestic/professional accomplishment, I would get that treatment from my wife I saw others get. But, as you’ve said before “It has nothing to do with you.”

In the big picture, I’ve got a lot of privilege, and I wouldn’t trade my struggles for anyone else’s. I just occasionally get my thoughts stuck in these bad grooves, and I’d appreciate some better ways to challenge/counter those recurring assumptions while I work on the bigger issues.

Best regards,

Not Great for the Gander.

DEAR NOT GREAT FOR THE GANDER: Alright NGFTG, I’m going to level with you. You have two issues here, and one of them has very little to do with why you’ve written into me. But before I get to that, I want to address your primary question

First of all: you – and men in general – are perfectly welcome to have celebrity crushes and to talk about how attractive you find women. There’s nobody stopping you. It’s not even really an issue about talking about wanting to bang someone. Objectification isn’t really the issue either – most of us WANT to be objectified on occasion, particularly from folks we’re into. Were not people, we’re also slabs of meat. The problem is that so-called “locker room talk” tends to be less of the “Oh damn, Rhianna is so hooooot” and far more about the fact that said talk tends to not stay in the locker room… and how much of it gives tacit approval for really, really awful behavior.

Here’s what’s going on with the differences between what you’re “allowed” to do or say and what women are “allowed” to say: decades of social power differential. You grew up being taught not to treat or talk about women like they’re sex objects, and that’s good. But while you may have been raised one way, the culture that we grew up in had some radically different ideas about that. You just have to do a quick browse through 70s and 80s comedies – especially the sheer number of boner-jams like Last American Virgin, Porky’s and the others – to see that. And the 80s and 90s were slightly more evolved in that respect than the 50s, 60s and 70s. For decades, casual sexual harassment was basically the norms of accepted behavior. It was just “how things were” and women who couldn’t take it were told they were frigid b

*s who didn’t have a sense of humor or “couldn’t take a joke” – and if they couldn’t get a thicker skin, then they should just GTFO.

So you know. Basically Twitter, but everywhere.

And frankly, a lot  of that behavior is still deeply embedded in our culture. Look at how much crap women get over calling out the Office Creeper, or the pushback over clapping back at street harassment. There’s still an overwhelming belief that women choosing to exist in the public space means that they’re doing so for the benefit of men.

Then there’s the fact that, for a long, long goddamn time, women were taught that they weren’t sexual, that they weren’t visually aroused like men were and that their sexuality was essentially receptive. It’s only really recently that women have been able to actually take ownership of their sexuality, and in a way that’s not a performance for men. It can feel weird to hear women talking openly about how hot a dude is, how nice his butt is or what-not because, frankly, a lot of us grew up in an era where that was a major social taboo.

It isn’t now and thank God for that.

But the fact of the matter is, there’s still a social power difference between men and women. Men are more likely to harass women, to creep on them and abuse them. Women are still treated as literal objects in media and in society; MRA and MGTOW complaints aside, that just ain’t happening to men.

This doesn’t mean that women can’t be creepers or harassers. Hell, I got creeped on by a woman. But the playing field is by no means level and likely won’t be for quite some time. Not when known predators can still expect to keep their jobs and be protected from the consequences of their actions.

Now, if their conversations really are bothering you or making you feel uncomfortable, then by all means speak up. You have a right to not go through your day listening to people’s sexual fantasies, regardless of gender. Even just a “hey, could you not bring this up around me?” is enough to let people know that this is something that gets to you and you’d appreciate it if they’d stop. If this actually got you laughed at and called a snowflake? Then that’s something to take to your company’s HR department, with the words “creating a hostile work environment”.

But I really doubt it’d come to that. Something tells me that this is more your jerkbrain telling you what you think would happen instead of the reality.

And to be quite honest: while I think it’s admirable that you try to be conscientious and (for lack of a better term) “woke”, I think you may have dialed the needle too far in the other direction. There is a point where you can go from trying to be a good guy to being so afraid of self-expression and judgement that you end up handicapping yourself. Be aware, be considerate of the people around you and be willing to enforce your boundaries as well, if you need to.

Now with all that having been said, I want to address something that leapt out at me from your letter. This, I think is your real issue:

Holy hopping sheep s

t dude, the way your wife treats you is abominable. I don’t think the problem is a dichotomy between how men and women are allowed to express themselves sexually, it’s that your wife treats you like crap. If you’d come to me just about your relationship with her, I’d start with telling you to get couples counseling and ending it with the Future Question: how long will you be willing to live like this, knowing that her behavior towards you isn’t going  to change?

Because quite frankly? The sort of behavior you’re talking about is setting off my “emotional abuse” alarms like a goddamn tornado siren.

Now maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe this is getting filtered through some of the body and acceptance issues you have. I think the best thing you can do for yourself right now is get your butt to a therapist and start unpacking some of this pain and frustration you’re having.

But for real dude: if it is as bad as it sounds at the top? Then I think it’ll be a lot easier to improve if you get the hell out, ASAP.

Good luck. And write back to let us know how you’re doing.

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 been a loyal reader of your column for a long time now and always think you give great advice and really get to the heart of things. My question isn’t really asking for advice so much as asking what your thoughts are on something I’ve noticed a lot in comment sections and online discussions, both on this site and lots of other places (and in offline life too)!

Backstory: Ten years ago, I cheated on my husband, which resulted in us getting a divorce. I had lots of reasons for cheating (my husband was emotionally distant, the thrill of something new, the fact that the other person was moving away and there was a heightened sense of “now or never” to it), but the bottom line is that I cheated, and it was a horrible dick move, and although I’m happier now that I’m out of that marriage, that was definitely not the right way to go about self-destructing it. I was entirely in the wrong and I feel bad about it, but at this point there’s nothing I can do to change what happened.

My question is that there’s this culture of unforgiveness when it comes to cheaters, and it bothers me. I know what I did back then was wrong, but so many people act like cheaters are irredeemable assholes who should never be trusted in a relationship again no matter what. Even outside of the dating world, infidelity is talked about like it’s something that is just a permanent moral failure that can’t ever be forgiven. I’ve had friends who pretty much dumped me when they found out why my marriage failed. I’ve had co-workers make snide remarks about me being untrustworthy. I haven’t really gone back out into the dating world (I’ve been happy to be single), but if/when I do decide to get back out there, I’m afraid I’ll be outright rejected because of it. I try not to really advertise what happened, but I live in a small community, so people tend to find out even if I don’t say anything.

Again, I take responsibility for what I did. I would never claim that it was a good thing or that it was justified, and if I could go back in time and change things, I definitely would. So I’m not asking you or your readers to say that cheating is A-OK and I didn’t do anything wrong, because it’s not and I did. It’s just kind of discouraging to think that I’m always going to be seen as untrustworthy and unforgivable for something that happened one time a decade ago that I realize was a mistake.

Is there any forgiveness in society for a cheater? Should there be? How can I address this when people find out about my past?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. You rock.

Once a Cheater

DEAR ONCE A CHEATER: There’re a few things going on here, OaC.

The first is that we, as a culture, treat infidelity as a universal and inevitable wrong, the worst thing that you could do to somebody. Some of this stems from old cultural fears of hidden parentage and the anxiety around the idea of being “tricked” into raising somebody else’s child instead of your own. Some of it comes from a sense of possessiveness – the anger that comes from “somebody touched my stuff!” Another portion comes from the betrayal of trust, or fears of the loss of affection or the potential exposure to sexually-transmitted infections. And still more comes from the way that we equate monogamy with romantic love and the idea that if you love someone you only want them. So when somebody cheats on their partner, they’re in effect committing a crime against love itself.

The next is that many people have a fear of being cheated on. Call it insecurity, call it free-floating anxiety, call it low self-esteem, but lots of people live in near-mortal fear that their partner is going to step out on them and what does this say about them? For many people, the idea that their partner may – or has – cheated on them becomes a referendum on their worth as a person. Maybe they weren’t good enough. Maybe their partner was unsatisfied and decided to go looking for sex somewhere else. Worse: maybe they were being used, a patsy or stepping stone for their partner’s desire to move up the value ladder, as it were. In these cases, cheating isn’t so much about their partner having cheated but the existential threat it represents to their very identity.

Then there are studies that suggest — not prove, suggest — that if someone has cheated in the past, they’re more likely to cheat again in the future. Now to be sure, correlation isn’t causation, but people will take studies like this as iron-clad confirmation regardless of what the data actually says.

Of course, there’re also many people who have had experience with having been cheated on – either directly by having been the betrayed partner, or indirectly, by seeing the pain and heartache it’s caused. Folks who’ve been through this particular experience are more likely to have a lot of negative impressions on someone who’s cheated, regardless of circumstance. Why would they want to be around someone who caused pain like they experienced, either first or second-hand?

And then there’s a psychological blindspot that hits all of us known as The Just World fallacy. The short version of The Just World fallacy is that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. This manifests itself in dating in a multitude of ways, but especially around the concept of cheating. Since being cheated on is a bad thing to go through, it stands to reason that the person who experienced it deserved it to some degree. You can see this in some of the common reactions that people have to finding out that somebody’s partner cheated: he or she must’ve driven their partner to it somehow. Maybe they were frigid or let themselves go or couldn’t satisfy their partner and so the cheater had to look elsewhere.

But at the same time, we also see the cheater as irrevocably bad, because they did a bad thing. Monogamy is one of the few things that we expect people to execute perfectly on the first try; should they slip up, then that’s an indication that they’re an awful person rather than an indicator that monogamy is frequently difficult. Their entire character MUST be in question, because only bad people do bad things. There is often little room for nuance in an infidelity; a one-time moment of weakness and regret is morally equal to a serial adulterer who callously betrays their partners. But part of what infuriates us about cheaters and adulterers is how often they don’t seem to suffer for their actions. This violates the idea of order and justice in the universe – if they’re a bad person, then they should have bad things happen to them, no? Now it’s not just that they’ve transgressed, but they’ve also broken the rules and somehow escaped their punishment. When we believe that morality has a law of cause and effect – for every action, good or bad, there’s an equal consequence – then people who don’t suffer the consequences for their missteps are somehow cheating the system. This outrages us, because we want to see them get their just desserts. And, in it’s own way, this belief gives people the right to be the agent of karma; if the universe won’t punish them, then we will because God forbid that someone not meet a suitably ironic fate for their actions.

Should there be forgiveness for a cheater? I think so, at least for some. Obviously, some people are just a

s… but not everybody is. I’m a believer that not every infidelity is equal, and that there are times when cheating is the least-bad option out of a collection of awful options. I’m also a big believer in people’s ability to grow and change and be better than they were before. When we treat any and all sins as irrevocable, regardless of how someone has changed, then we take away any motivation to seek redemption and to improve. And let’s be real: NONE of us are free from sin or f

k ups or things that we really regret having done.

How do you handle this part of your past, when you dip your toe back into the dating pool? To be quite honest, I’d stuff it down the memory hole; relationships aren’t depositions and we’re not required to air all our secrets and regrets to our partners, especially if it’s no longer relevant. If and when it comes up, then take ownership of it as part of your past. It’s what you did in the past, not who you are now. “I did a stupid thing, back when I was younger and stupider. It was a bad choice that seemed like a good idea at the time and I regret having made it. I wish I could go back and do things differently, but I can’t. All I can do is move forward, now I know better and I wouldn’t make that mistake again.” And then you let it go.

How they react will tell you what you need to know about them. If they’re someone who can’t handle the fact that you’re not a pure and perfect cinnamon roll, but are a flawed and imperfect human like everybody else… well, that’s on them. You now know that the two of you would never have worked and you’re free to find someone who’s right for you.

You did a s

*ty thing, OaC. But that was a long time ago and you’re a different person now. Learn from your mistakes, but don’t let them define you. You’ve lived through your past. Now it’s time for you to create your future, on your own terms.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 25 year old male virgin, and I need advice when it comes to reading signs and how to take things to the next step.

I don’t find it particular difficult to talk to people or women but I have 0 experience with women/dating due to suffering with anxiety in my teens. My problem is I have such little experience when it comes to dating that I feel like i have no idea what I’m doing, where to start or what to do if I find myself in the situation.

For example, a few days ago I went out for a few drinks with a girl I work with who I’ve been interested in for a while. On occasion, I get the feeling she feels the same way I do, but I don’t know the signs on how she feels or if I should try to take it further then “work friends”, or how I would progress it from just drinks to maybe more. She seemed open and warm to me, but then cold at times too. I also know she has a lot of stress recently and she’s even said to me she isn’t ready to date somebody so I feel I shouldn’t push it. Even so, there are times where her body language and her outright flirting make me question what I should be doing. I feel so inept with dating or just women in general that if she or somebody else where to give or have given me signs they would go over my head.

I feel like it’s too late for me because when it comes to dating, I feel like a lost little boy. 

Thanks 

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

DEAR I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING: Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, IHNIWID, and most of us don’t get an instruction manual when it comes to dating. Now, while I’ve written a book specifically for guys like you to help learn the ins and outs of dating, at the end of the day, what you need to do is just muscle up and take your chance. You can read and study until your eyes bleed and your fingers are worn to the bone, but you’re still going to have to get out there, take your chances and make some mistakes.

None of this is terribly difficult; all you have to say is “hey, I really enjoy the time we spend together and I’d like to see if there’s the potential for more. If you’re interested, I’d love to take you out on a date to do $COOL_THING”.  And then you wait. If she says yes, then congratulations, I hope you have an awesome first date. If she says no – or gives you an indirect or “soft no” like “I’m just not ready to date right now” or “I have no time” – then you say “OK, cool, I just wanted to ask.” And then you continue your friendship as though nothing’s changed, because, honestly? Nothing has. She’s still her, you’re still you and it’s only going to get awkward if you make it awkward. If you treat things as if it’s all good, so will she.

But you’re not going to make any progress until you start putting yourself out there, IDKWID. So do some studying to help get ready… but if you want to start getting some experience, you’re gonna have to take a deep breath and dive in.

Good luck.

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