Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 34 year old male. I’ve never kissed, sex, relationship, etc… I don’t mind discussing this with people I know. I feel like because I’m too open about my situation people think I’m looking for self pity. I don’t really, I just want them to know about my situation so it’s not awkward when it comes up later in time. I’m not embarrassed, but I know that some people look at as a red flag… especially women. So my question is : Is my openness about my situation really a red flag/dealbreaker? I’m not good with secrets. I also think I use it as an excuse when I get the vibe they don’t understand me.

Too Much Information?

DEAR TOO MUCH INFORMATION: The question you’re asking isn’t necessarily the question you think you’re asking, TMI.

I’ve talked a lot about the bulls

t shame that men get about virginity and sexual inexperience and how that ties into toxic definitions of masculinity and how experience or inexperience isn’t something to be ashamed of. That being said: much like people who misuse the term sex-positive means (or misunderstand what it means), there’s a difference between not being ashamed and inappropriate sharing.

See, one of the things that we look for in friends and partners is emotional and social intelligence – whether they understand social rules, know when it’s appropriate to discuss things and when it isn’t and – critically – what information people don’t necessarily need to know. People who don’t conform to the expected social rules make us uncomfortable; sometimes it’s simply a matter of informing us of things that we don’t want to know, other times it’s a question of “if they don’t get this rule, what other, more important rules do they not get?” So when you’re sharing incredibly personal things about yourself – such as being an older virgin – the question isn’t always about what you’re sharing but when.

If you’re just blurting this information out during the “getting to know you” phase of a date or interacting with your co-workers… well, that’s generally not the right time. You’re telling people far more about yourself than they want to know, never mind need to, and usually at a time when it’s not socially appropriate. If you’re talking about sex or past relationships, that’s one thing. If you’re just dropping this truth-bomb in the middle of a conversation, a “Just FYI, I’ve never had someone else touch my penis. So about those mid-term elections…”, well that’s just going to be weird.

There’s also the question of how much of this you’re sharing. Not everyone needs to get the full disclosure about your sexual history (or lack thereof). You’re not giving a deposition, you’re having a conversation. You can just leave it as “yeah, I haven’t dated much” or “I’ve never had a serious girlfriend/boyfriend”; most of the time that’s all anyone wants to know. If they want to know more, they’ll ask and then you can go into more detail. When and if someone should know more – such as when you’re about to get busy – then you can tell them more. But even then, a simple “just so you know, I’ve never done this before,” tends to work better than a sudden and unexpected download about the hows and whys of your sexual history.

And as always: how you talk about it is important. People will follow your lead when you talk about yourself. If you’re revealing that you’re inexperienced like it’s a giant flaw, then people will respond like it’s a giant personal flaw. If you roll it out like it’s no big deal, it’s just part of who you are, then they’ll treat it like it’s no big deal. And if they do get weird about it… well that tells you a lot about them, doesn’t it? If someone sees your experience or lack thereof as a deal-breaker, then that’s their problem and they’ve just self-selected as someone you wouldn’t want to date anyway.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’d love it if you could shed some light on my situation, you always make sense and I appreciate how much you take lots of angles and even a meta-perspective into account usually. I’m a young woman in my mid twenties. I have a fulfilling life: lots of hobbies and interests, a good career, I’m always on the lookout to travel, I have moved to different cities because of studies/jobs a lot while maintaining close relationships with my family and friends, I love to learn and think about new stuff all the time. I’m a bit of a free spirit and I identify as polyamourous. (I can cite some passages from “the ethical slut” and other literature on the subject by heart and have internalized and lived by its values). I’ve had an open relationship in the past, where I had one “boyfriend” and 1-2 “mini-relationships”. My boyfriend had the occasional “extra-curricular activity”. It worked for us that way, things ended a year ago for reasons that had nothing to do with being open/poly.

Now “the problem”: a few months ago I met a guy who is a few years younger and we hit it off right away: we love talking about the same topics, we both love to travel, we have heaps of fun together, we just vibe very well. One drunk night we landed it bed together and, you can guess it, had sex. A week later, I discovered that I took his virginity that night, without knowing it at the time of the act. We talked about how I felt bad because it wouldn’t have happened like that if I had known that beforehand. He said he had no regrets and didn’t want to say anything because he thought it wouldn’t have happened otherwise. (He has a point there, but I still feel taken advantage of and like I took advantage of him at the same time as well). We then had the “what are we talk”. It was clear to him from the get-go that I am poly and that we could build a loving friendship but without being exclusive. He understood, asked the right questions, we talked about “the rules”. Everything is still going fantastic in the 2 months we’ve been together now. We still vibe well, enjoy our time together (even though we live 100 miles apart), talk about feelings/issues, he buys me gifts, we do fun trips, he introduced me to his friends and family (I didn’t introduce him to family because that’s not something I do). Even though I am his first girlfriend, he just gets everything right about communication etc., which just proves again what a great human being he is.

And that is my “problem”: it is going so well, that I am confused. He makes me want all those mundane, typical societal things I’ve looked down on for so long: suddenly I’d like to settle in something typical and exclusive and couple-y – even though that is in direct conflict with everything I have believed in and stood for in the past and have defended with reason and fire against nay-sayers about open relationships.

Please help:

– should I go against my nature and try being exclusive? How do I even bring that up, after it took a lot of conversation to explain polygamy to him in the first place? Is he even going to want monogamy, perhaps he likes me that much because of my poly-nature?

– will it affect our relationship for the worse? maybe it goes so well because we only see each other sporadically (because of the distance)?

– sometimes I feel like I am using him because I am older and more experienced in the sexual and relationship department – any thoughts on that? Is being poly with someone like that even fair? Can he really make a good estimation on the topic if he never had a girlfriend before?

Please help – suddenly everything I was so sure of isn’t that sure anymore. My thoughts need some structure.

Cheerfully Confused

DEAR CHEERFULLY CONFUSED: I think you’re making things more complicated than they need to be, CC.

Here’s the wonderful thing about people: they’re complicated and complex. We lay down these rules and labels, many of which are absolutely arbitrary, and then freak out when we realize that they’re not perfectly universal. We grow and change and find people who push us out of our comfort zones and into worlds that we never thought would apply to us and then we get scared because suddenly everything is different. The problem is when we tense up and try to force things into ill-fitting labels and rules instead of just going with the flow and seeing where things take us.

Right now you’ve got a boyfriend who’s making you think all kinds of thoughts that are contrary to how you’ve defined yourself. You’ve always been poly and now you’re thinking about being exclusive… ok, and? You’re allowed to try different relationship formats as long as your partner or partners are down with it. Maybe you’re in a more monogamous period of your life. Maybe this particular relationship with this particular guy is just an exception to your general rules. Or maybe this is just a temporary thing and it will pass as your relationship grows and matures. The key is to not freak out about it. This doesn’t mean that you were wrong to be poly or that there’s something more “correct” about monogamy… it just means this is where you are right now. If you’re down with giving exclusivity a shot, then hell, go for it. You and your partner or partners have the right to set the rules of your relationship as you see fit.

(That being said, experimenting with exclusivity for the first time in a long-distance relationship makes an already difficult relationship even more difficult, so be prepared.)

It’s admirable that you’re concerned about using him or leveraging his inexperience against him, and that’s a sign that you’re a good, ethical and caring lover. Users and abusers don’t concern themselves with such questions. You should keep in mind that no relationship is going to be perfectly balanced and egalitarian. There’s always going to be one partner who has more experience than the other. Nobody is going to have the exact same history or experiences as their lovers; that’s just how the world is. The key is not using that differential as a weapon, and believe me, the less-experienced partner is just as capable of wielding that whip as the more experienced one. Don’t assume that just because he hasn’t seen or done as much as you have that he’s incapable of making decisions for himself. He’s a big boy and he’s perfectly qualified to decide what sort of relationship he wants to try.

The way that you make things work – as is true in every relationship – is communication, communication, communication. As I’m always telling people, the answers to most relationship difficulties is to use your words. Every relationship is an ongoing conversation, after all.

Case in point: the poly vs. monogamy question You’ve talked about being poly before and what it means, so now talk about monogamy. Explain how you’re feeling and ask how he feels about it. If you’re both into the idea, then have a discussion about how you both see it working and what the rules should be. Perhaps you would want to treat this as a timed trial – see how monogamy works for a couple months and then revisit the question. Perhaps you’d want to try a semi-monogamous commitment; some activities such as penetrative sex are off the table but other things are permitted.

Just don’t spend the emotional and mental bandwidth looking for reasons why things are about to go wrong. The worst thing you can do in a happy relationship is waste it waiting for the other shoe to drop. When you’re borrowing trouble from the future, you make it impossible to enjoy the now.

Keep those lines of communication open with your guy and don’t sweat the labels. Your relationship can be whatever you two decide it is.

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 grew up in a religious household, one that strongly believed in the idea of no sex before marriage. I had chosen to remain a virgin until marriage, but wound up losing it anyway. This upset me pretty badly, made worse when my family found out. I’ve since had more experience (always feeling guilty), had in toxic relationships that I stayed in only to validate the activity. It’s been a long struggle, but I’ve become comfortable with myself and who I am and want to be, especially sexually.

I am now dating someone in my own faith and assumed I would wind up returning to my original choice to wait, especially since he was a virgin. As you may guess, this did not happen, but I find that this time, I’m actually comfortable with the result and enjoying myself and him in a way I never did before. I’m still having one problem, though. He is aware of my sexual history before him and, while he’s never said or even implied anything derogatory, I still feel embarrassed and ashamed at anything that hints at my past. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that I know what I’m doing and with telling him what I like. Half the time, I find myself laughing uncontrollably while I try to spit the words out, but mostly I just want to curl in on myself. I’m almost there, but can you help me cross that final barrier to being a confident sexual being?

– No Longer Waiting

DEAR NO LONGER WAITING: Your letter nicely illustrates one of the biggest injuries that our sex-negative culture inflicts on people – women especially.

Now I’ll be the first to say that people are welcome to take sex at their own pace and wait until they’re ready, willing and able. That being said, my personal opinion is that waiting until marriage isn’t a good idea; sexual compatibility is an incredibly important part of a relationship and one’s wedding night is a very bad time to find out that the two of you have entirely different ideas about sex. I think that this attitude robs people of the opportunity to explore their own sexuality and get to know just what they want, how often they want it, how they need to get off and what they will or won’t consider when it comes to indulging a partner’s fantasies.

Just as importantly however, is that it perpetuates the commodity model of sex – that a woman’s worth is based on the amount of sex she DOESN’T have – and perpetuates the Madonna/Whore view of women. And that’s where the damage really starts to sink in. It’s bad enough when guys internalize the idea that women who’ve had lots of sex have something fundamentally wrong with them. For women, though, that attitude not only damages their psyches, but their lives.

Bad enough that you lost your virginity in a way that - from the sounds of it – was not the way that you wanted. Even more so that your family got involved – evidently blaming you, because of COURSE women have to police men’s sexuality (ugh).

But it was this line in your letter NLW really leapt out at me:  

“I’ve since had more experience (always feeling guilty), had in toxic relationships that I stayed in only to validate the activity.” 

That, unfortunately, is an incredibly common story, especially among women I’ve known who’ve come from backgrounds similar to yours. One of the side-effects of the sex-negative culture in America – the wackos who insist that women should be virgins until marriage and have no sexual autonomy – is that it promotes the idea that “if he puts his dick in you, he owns you for life.” There’s an implied sense of obligation to stay now because – as Elizabeth Smart articulated brilliantly – you’ve been taught that you’re worthless and nobody is going to want you now. I’ve got very good friends who, like you, stayed in toxic, even abusive relationships because they were taught that sex was dirty and shameful unless it gets the holy stamp of Church and State approval; leaving the relationship would only mean that they’d done something wrong in the eyes of God and man.

So, yeah. I’ve kinda got a beef with the people who teach sexual shame and trades on ignorance, fear and negativity, especially in the name of a caring and loving god. The damage they do is farther reaching than I think anyone realizes.

Case in point: you’ve had a long and difficult struggle with coming to terms with your sexuality and being willing to take ownership of your life… and frankly you should be applauded. This is an incredible testimony to your strength and perseverance and your determination to push past the bulls

t that people tried to instill in you. It’s awesome that you’ve come to a place where you can actually enjoy your sexuality like you should and be comfortable with yourself. You should be proud of yourself and your progress… and most importantly, you should NOT be embarrassed by your past.

Those last niggling doubts and feelings of shame are the last little tendrils of the utter crap you were taught, holding on for dear life around your brain, and it can be hard to extract them. In fact, your brain will actually fight against it at times, even though you know intellectually that it’s wrong. It is very difficult to break old patterns and habits, even when you understand that they’re bad for you. You may notice that these feelings crop up hardest when you feel like you’re about to make a breakthrough – just when you’re starting to truly feel like you’ve come into your own, suddenly there’s that little a

hole voice in the back of your head that whispers “Don’t forget, you’re slut and nobody can possibly love you. If he knew what you were REALLY like he’d be disgusted.”

This is what’s known as an “extinction burst”. Because you’re getting close to overcoming this old programming, there’s a part of your brain – the part that absorbed all of these lessons – that says “wait, if I don’t do something, this is going to go away” and suddenly it floods you with feelings of shame and remorse. It’s the emotional equivalent of someone on a diet who suddenly goes on a binge of crappy food. The difference is that while breaking the diet is based on a physical reward system – your body’s used to the high it gets from carbs and sugar and fat – the other is psychological. You’ve been brought up to believe that questioning your beliefs were wrong and that any deviation from these strict teachings means you’re a horrible person who deserves to be punished. Now that you’re starting to step away from those beliefs – you have your faith, but you no longer believe in their dictates regarding sex – that little part that’s supposed to keep you from breaking away is firing up and trying to bring you back into the fold.

It’s also complete bulls

t.

The fact that you have a sexual past is inherently neutral. You’re not a bad person because you’ve had sex; the only bad parts were the ways that you were hurt in the process. The fact that you know what you like sexually and want to to tell him? This is unquestionably a good thing. In fact, this is an unbelievably desirable asset in a sex partner, especially when the other is relatively inexperienced. Let’s look at it from another angle: your boyfriend has somebody confident, caring and patient, who wants to teach him how to please a woman instead of letting him fumble his way, learning all the wrong lessons and getting frustrated in the process. Who wouldn’t want that in a partner, especially their first? 

This is what your jerk-brain is trying to deny you. It’s trying to take a strength – your hard-won experience – and turn it into a weakness. And you shouldn’t let it.

By all accounts, it seems like your boyfriend’s a cool person who’s not judging you by your number. You care for him and trust him… so take “yes” for an answer when he’s giving you every indication that he’s not intimidated by your past. And if he – or any guy you may date in the future – has a problem with the fact that you’ve had sex before… well, that’s THEIR problem to overcome, not yours. A guy who can’t handle the fact that his girlfriend or wife has a sexual past can hand back his man-card; he’s not a man, he’s a boy and he’s got some growing up to do.

I’m not a big believer in affirmations, but whenever you have that voice from you jerk-brain piping up, remind yourself that you’re strong, that you’re desirable and that you deserve the sex you want and anyone who says otherwise is cordially invited to go f

k themselves. Your past – as painful as it was – has lead you to who you are today, and from the sounds of it, that’s a pretty amazing place. And that past includes the people you’ve slept with. It’s molded you. It’s shaped you, it’s tempered you and tested you and you’ve come out stronger and better for it.

Nobody can take that from you if you don’t let them.

Enjoy the sex you’re having with your boyfriend. Revel in it. Teach him how to pleasure you in all the ways you enjoy. Take pride in where you are and what it’s taken to get you there and reap the rewards of being a sexually confident woman. There’s nothing to be ashamed of; there are only small-minded chucklef

ks who’ve tried to convince you otherwise. And you’re stronger than they are.

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 moved to a new city about six months ago to start a great new job and to be closer to my college buds. I had an awesome job right out of college but in an inconvenient location, which probably cost me my ex girlfriend due to long distance.

Anyways, starting anew in my new city, having been single for about a year, I was ready to find a new girlfriend that met all my qualifications (very smart, successful, and attractive obviously). It didn’t take me long to find someone who met all my standards and liked me(!!!). She’s very cute, has an awesome/prestigious job and went to the same elite school as me (we never met in college). We went on a few dates and it was clear that we were both into each other, so we started a relationship.

Now, a few months into the relationship, I’m realizing that she is very inexperienced with relationships and the bedroom. She was a bit of a late-bloomer and came into her own only recently. She may still be recovering from previous insecurities. We haven’t had sex yet even though I’ve made my desire to known. She has been coy about her sexual experience, but has said that she isn’t a virgin. I think this aspect is draining on my patience with our relationship and it is definitely leaking over into our otherwise, exceptional compatibility. Little things like suggestions on how to do things come off as condescending and annoying now. 

Making things even worse, my roommates are both single and enjoying a more casual dating life with great success. That isn’t necessarily what I’m looking for (I enjoy a more intimate experience than the casual bang even though that’s what I would settle for before my recent relationship), but I am not going to lie to myself and say that sex isn’t important to me and my overall quality of life.

Did I jump in too quick?

If I eventually find that it isn’t going to work out anymore, should I pull a Paul Simon and “get off the bus, Gus, drop off the key, Lee” and get myself free? How do I do that? I’ve been in many relationships before and usually it ends mutually or I’m the one that gets broken up with.

Your advice would be much appreciated.

– Easy Z

DEAR EASY Z: Speaking strictly for my preferences, I’d say yes, you leapt before you looked. Personally, I’d have recommended waiting for more than a few dates before entering into an exclusive relationship with somebody; at the very least, it would’ve provided you more time to discover and work out any sexual compatibility issues prior to deciding that you were forsaking all others for the foreseeable future.

Of course, it isn’t helping that your roommates are going out and having crazy nookie-filled adventures and leaving you feeling frustrated and deprived, watching the rest of the world (or so it feels) going out and doing all the things you wish you  were at the moment.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Wait For It…

DECEMBER 27, 2013 BY DR. NERDLOVE (EDIT)

Doctor’s Note: It’s an all Ask Dr. NerdLove week as I’m traveling for the holidays. Regular columns will be resuming on Monday.

Doc,

I moved to a new city about six months ago to start a great new job and to be closer to my college buds. I had an awesome job right out of college but in an inconvenient location, which probably cost me my ex girlfriend due to long distance.

Anyways, starting anew in my new city, having been single for about a year, I was ready to find a new girlfriend that met all my qualifications (very smart, successful, and attractive obviously). It didn’t take me long to find someone who met all my standards and liked me(!!!). She’s very cute, has an awesome/prestigious job and went to the same elite school as me (we never met in college). We went on a few dates and it was clear that we were both into each other, so we started a relationship.

Now, a few months into the relationship, I’m realizing that she is very inexperienced with relationships and the bedroom. She was a bit of a late-bloomer and came into her own only recently. She may still be recovering from previous insecurities. We haven’t had sex yet even though I’ve made my desire to known. She has been coy about her sexual experience, but has said that she isn’t a virgin. I think this aspect is draining on my patience with our relationship and it is definitely leaking over into our otherwise, exceptional compatibility. Little things like suggestions on how to do things come off as condescending and annoying now. 

Making things even worse, my roommates are both single and enjoying a more casual dating life with great success. That isn’t necessarily what I’m looking for (I enjoy a more intimate experience than the casual bang even though that’s what I would settle for before my recent relationship), but I am not going to lie to myself and say that sex isn’t important to me and my overall quality of life.

Did I jump in too quick?

If I eventually find that it isn’t going to work out anymore, should I pull a Paul Simon and “get off the bus, Gus, drop off the key, Lee” and get myself free? How do I do that? I’ve been in many relationships before and usually it ends mutually or I’m the one that gets broken up with.

Your advice would be much appreciated.

– Easy Z

As fate would have it, this letter came right after I read after I read Vulture’s oral history of Donna Martin losing her virginity on Beverly Hills 90210. The universe, it seems, has a strong sense of irony.

Speaking strictly for my preferences, I’d say yes, you leapt before you looked. Personally, I’d have recommended waiting for more than a few dates before entering into an exclusive relationship with somebody; at the very least, it would’ve provided you more time to discover and work out any sexual compatibility issues prior to deciding that you were forsaking all others for the foreseeable future.

Of course, it isn’t helping that your roommates are going out and having crazy nookie-filled adventures and leaving you feeling frustrated and deprived, watching the rest of the world (or so it feels) going out and doing all the things you wish you  were at the moment.

Sex and sexual compatibility is a critical part of a relationship, EZ. It’s also one that gets people the most riled up when you point out that you’re not happy with it. It’s a sad part of our deeply sex-negative culture that people – usually men, but women too – get shamed when they admit that they’re not satisfied with the sex in their relationships and are considering ending it. They’re told that they’re being selfish, that they’re being pigs, that if they actually care about their partner, they’d get over this seemingly minor problem and so forth and so on.

(Of course, as soon as said dissatisfied person mentions the possibility of looking somewhere else for sex, that minor issue is suddenly a great big one… but I digress.)

So this is a way of warning you in advance that you’re probably going to take some crap from folks for wanting to break up with a girl because you want sex and she isn’t ready to have sex yet.

The tricky part is that you’re both entirely right. She’s perfectly within her rights to want to wait to have sex until she’s comfortable – for whatever metric of “comfort” works for her. Since she hasn’t been the most forthcoming about her views on sex and sexuality – other than that she’s been a late-bloomer and is otherwise not a bloomer – it can be hard to tell just how she feels about things; she may be waiting for an arbitrary deadline (ten dates, your six-month anniversary), until she feels secure in the relationship or some other reason… and that’s entirely cool. Nobody should be having sex if they’re not feeling ready and secure for it.

It’s also entirely reasonable for you to want to have sex with someone you’re dating. As long as you aren’t pressuring or coercing your date/girlfriend (generic date/girlfriend, not just your current squeeze) into something she’s not comfortable with, being upfront with the fact that yes, you would like to have sex is just fine… as is not necessarily wanting to wait on her schedule.

The key question then is: what are you willing to do? Waiting for sex is going to be the price of admission with this particular woman. It’s up to you to decide whether the other aspects of this relationship – your shared interests, your mutual emotional intimacy, etc. – makes it worth hanging in there until she is ready to sleep with you.

If it is, then it’s time to use your words. You and she need to be able to talk about sex – not just in the abstract or what you’d like to do to one another, but about how you both feel about the sexual component of your relationship and about sex in general. She needs to be able to be up front with you about how she feels and her experiences without feeling as though you’re going to belittle her or push her into something she may not be comfortable with yet. You need to be able to explain to her how you feel and that you’d appreciate some insight into her perspective. She should also be able to give you an idea of what sort of timeline the two of you are working on.

And quite frankly, if you can’t talk openly and honestly about sex, then you’re really not going to work anyway.

You should also talk about potential compromises. You don’t mention whether there’s any sexual contact at all – mutual masturbation, oral sex, frottage, and so forth, or if everything has been strictly about some PG-level making out on the couch – so it’s hard to get a handle on just where the line is drawn and what she’s comfortable doing and not doing. Working out an agreement where you’re both willing to meet each other half-way (so to speak) could help both of you with the relationship maintenance.

But if waiting – even with the potential of the occasional orgasm assist – isn’t something you’re willing to do, then you need to end things, and soon. It’s not fair to either of you to drag it out if this is going to be an insurmountable problem or if you would be waiting longer than you feel you could stand. You have a right to a sexual relationship with somebody you’re dating, and it’s better for you to be with somebody who you’re sexually compatible with than to try to cram someone into a hole that doesn’t fit1. If the sex isn’t working, then the rest of the relationship isn’t going to work.  Meanwhile, you’re already frustrated and more than a little resentful – which is relationship poison – and she deserves someone who is cool with her attitudes about sex and is willing to be on the same timeline as she is without feeling as though she’s holding him back or depriving him.

As I always like to say, the cleanest breaks heal fastest and leave you with the best chances of salvaging a friendship – or even a potential future relationship – out of this.

How you do it is simple: you tell her that you’re just not working out. It’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just a matter of the two of you not being compatible. You’re in different places and want different things and it’s not fair to her for you to be demanding something she isn’t ready to give. Let her know you respect her and her choices and this is why it’s better that the two of you break up now rather than letting things go on and making it worse.

There is the (small) chance that, when you tell her this, that she will offer to sleep with you; I can’t stress enough that this would be a horrible idea on many levels.  To start with: that’s not going to be what she actually wants, that’s going to be her doing whatever she thinks it’s going to take to salvage the relationship… and that’s going to be more damaging to both of you than to simply part ways and reconnect later on as friends. It also would put you in the same place as people who hold their partner’s anxiety over the relationship as a way of coercing them into doing things they wouldn’t be willing to do otherwise. Do not be one of those scumbags.

If you do decide to end it, then make it fast and make it final. Do not take “time apart” or “go on a break”; all that is going to do is drag things out and prompt one or both of you to do things you would regret.

TL;DR: if everything else is worth the price of waiting, talk to her, find out how she feels and see if there’s some way the two of you could work out a compromise together in the meantime. If it isn’t… break it off quick and clean and walk away.

Good luck.

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