DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am a 38 year old woman that has only participated in monogamous relationships in my life. Until D. D has been a friend of mine for about 5 years and 2 months ago we both admitted that we’ve had crushes on each other for years, but we both assumed the other wasn’t interested. We started dating and for the most part this is one of the healthiest relationships I’ve ever had. So there’s only one catch.

D is polyamorous. I knew this long before we started even thinking about dating and when we first began hooking up he already had two partners. His more recent partner, N, is also poly and she took the news of me becoming part of his polycule with minimal insecurities. His other partner, J, on the other hand…

J is not polyamorous and plays a lot of head games with D. She tells him that she doesn’t mind that he’s poly but when he started seeing N and me, she guilt tripped him by telling him “I just wish I was good enough for you.” When he and I started dating she completely freaked out and insisted he call it hanging out because dating was what they do, not he and I.

This was the point where I put my foot down. I made it very clear that if I’m taking a chance on being with someone who is poly, I refuse to be part of a situation where his other partner tries to diminish and erase me. D is very bad at standing up for things that he wants, but when it became clear that I was not going to stay in this relationship if he continued to allow her to try to make me gone, he talked to her and made it clear that we are both his girlfriends and she needs to accept it if she wants to be with him. And she’ll pretend to be fine for awhile, then have another freak out where he just has to take care of her, especially when she knows he and I or he and N are spending time together.

So at this point we have an ongoing pattern of her being emotionally manipulative and sometimes even abusive in order to try and get him away from me and N. And for me it’s beyond frustrating. I’ve legitimately reached the point where if he brings her up I mentally cringe because I don’t know if telling him he needs to get away from her is a line I can cross as his other girlfriend. I don’t think I’m jealous of her because it doesn’t bother me at all when he talks about or spends time with N. But when I know he’s gonna be with her I get angry and nauseous. She doesn’t have to be my friend, but I deserve better then J constantly ignoring or trying to erase my value to D.

Any thoughts or advice would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

Polyamory Is Confusing

DEAR POLYAMORY IS CONFUSING: So let’s put this out there right away, PiC: no, you’re not being jealous and J is absolutely crossing a line. Several lines. She’s running up and down a football field at this point.

Here’s the thing about poly relationships: there are many, many ways of doing them. There are triad relationships where everyone is dating one another. There are poly relationships where two parties are both dating a third, while not involved with one another. Some poly relationships are hierarchical with a primary partner, while others have everyone on the same footing. And if you’re going to be in a poly relationship, you need to be pretty clear up front over what kind it is. 

Which leads to the problem that you and N are having with J. You two entered this relationship under the expectation of being equal. J clearly has other ideas. And the problem is that your boy D doesn’t seem to be willing to actually follow the rules that you are all presumably working under.

Now the biggest problem here is that J is poly under duress. It’s clear that this is the only way that she can have a relationship with D and she has, technically, agreed to it. And since she’s not happy being poly, she’s determined to do whatever she can to control the situation. D may be poly, but J is trying to make sure that he’s only poly in name. If she had her way, you two wouldn’t be in the picture at all. And since she knows she can’t just demand that D dump you both, she’ll just try to manipulate him and occupy all his time.

Now I’ve seen this literal situation play out before and I’m here from the future to tell you that this is going to end badly for everyone, messily and all over the place. The only question is how long it’s going to take and how much screaming and crying is going to result.

In an ideal world, D would realize that he needs to actually put his foot down — not in the half-assed way he’s been doing it thus far, but laying down firm boundaries, letting J know that if she’s going to be in this relationship, she has to quit playing stupid head games.

But it’s not an ideal world, so you and N are going to have to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with him about this. J’s head games affect the two of you, so the two of you need to present a united front. The two of you need to tell D exactly how J has been screwing with the two of you, and how it’s affecting your relationship with him. It’s not right, it’s not cool and it’s materially affecting everyone.

And while it may not seem fair… it may be necessary for you and N to consider throwing down an ultimatum. He doesn’t necessarily have to dump J (but he should) but he sure as hell needs to be willing to stand up to her.

Why talk to D and not confront the source directly? Well… because honestly, it’s not going to do anything. J wants you gone. She’ll quite cheerfully claim ignorance or try to flip it around on you and then go running to D and claim that you are bullying her. J is a habitual line-stepper and gaslighter and while have no real problem making this about how you’re actually the baddies in this situation.

Plus: while D isn’t the only person in this relationship, he is the one who’s refusing to stand his ground or enforce his boundaries.

N is your ally and fellow victim of this BS. Talk to her. Make common cause. And then the two of you confront D with this. And if he’s not willing to stand up to one of his partners in the name of preserving and improving his relationships… well, then maybe he’s not somebody you should be in a poly relationship with.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 30. Never been in a relationship. I’m considered good looking. However I’m deaf but I don’t sign.

I have no problems whatsoever getting dates online. I’ve gotten much better on my dates. More daring, more in charge. More confident. But the problem is…I never seen the women again. The dates never lead to third or a formation of a relationship.

We chat lots online, they’re very very keen on me.

We meet for a date, have a great time. I’m leading them. We connect.

Have amazing conversation. I’m a gentleman who has everything planned, no doubts. Take them to places that I know they will like.

We hold hands, kiss, flirt. Spend hours talking and laughing. Sometimes I take them back to mine for you know what (with the intention of seeing them again). We make plans to meet again. They text me they’ve had a great time and thank you. They say I’m a great kisser. One girl said she couldn’t wait to see me next week.

Then a few days later…radio silence! I try to text the woman…I can tell they’re disinterested, more flakey. Their texts are shorter. Boring. I ask then what’s up? They either say nothing or they will say “you’re such a great gentleman but no spark” “I’ve had a fantastic time but no chemistry sorry.” “I don’t have time to date sorry or I’ve met someone else”

It’s getting me so frustrated and so depressed . I’ve been on 85 dates this year with different women and this keeps happening. I want a relationship, I’m sick of dating so many different women only for them all to disappear or to tell me I’m a great gentleman but not for them. I can’t seem to be for anyone! I want to be the chooser not the chaser.

Could you please help me? I’ve tried reading all your books but it doesn’t seem to cover my issue. I’m really really desperate as I’m getting older. All of my friends have partners, married. Kids etc.

I’ve asked my family and my friends about my issue and they think it’s my deafness that is subconsciously putting them off.

Thanks

Hard of Feeling

DEAR HARD OF FEELING: These are the questions I hate getting, HoF because there isn’t really a clear answer. I’m not there to silently spy on your dates, so I can’t really say what it is that you may or may not be doing that puts people off. Generally, if someone’s going to ghost you, it’s because they’ve lost interest or they weren’t that interested in the first place.

It’s one of the frustrating truths about modern dating that many times, we tend to have a hard time telling people that we’re not interested. It’s a lot easier to just say “yeah, I’d love to do this again” even when you know damn good and well that you’re not going to call again. It’d be nice if people could muscle up and say what they actually mean… but they don’t. And that leaves many of us confused and frustrated and having to try to figure out just where things went wrong.

That means looking for points of commonality. And in this case, those seem to be few and far between. When they seem engaged and enthusiastic on those dates — even coming back to your place for the you know what in the you know where with the you know who — and still lose interest afterwards, then we have a couple of possibilities, none of them fun.

First is to accept that yes, it’s possible that your being hard of hearing is turning people off. They may be ok in the moment, but what’s acceptable in the short term — over the span of a couple hours, even for a hook-up — may not be something they think they can handle in the long-term. The potential inconveniences of dealing with someone who can’t hear may start to sink in the more they think about seeing you again. That may well be the dealbreaker for them.

Alternately, it may be how you handle the dismount… er, as it were. Some folks are great on the first date, but get less appealing over time. Sometimes they let the charm drop or they turn out to be complete dicks. And then there’s the guy who tried to drag  the world to hell after he slept with someone. But that’s another story never mind. It’s possible that there’s something that you do after the first date that turns people off and that’s why they start getting less and less interested.

Or it could be that you’re not great at maintaining the vibe or excitement after that first date. You may get a little too clingy or enthusiastic, expecting (or giving) levels of intimacy and closeness that aren’t warranted by the relationship you have. You may not be texting with the same charm or verve that you were beforehand. Or you might be not be texting at all except to try to set up the next date.

Of course there’s the possibility that they’re just not enjoying the sex or the dates.

But it could also be none of those things. As frustrating as it may be, it could just as easily be that you’ve had a string of bad luck, with people who weren’t compatible with you in the long term. Dating is a numbers game, and sometimes you are going to get a lot of false positives — especially over online dating — and first dates to nowhere. Sometimes the problem has absolutely nothing to do with you and the only thing you can do is grit your teeth and keep trying.

Which is the most likely? Unfortunately, I can’t tell you. If you have the opportunity, then I’d suggest talking with friends who know you, friends who you can trust to give it to you straight. If you have an ex or two that you’re on good terms with, then getting their input could be valuable.

Otherwise? It’s time to do some journaling and some A/B testing. Keep a detailed journal of your dates, what you said, how you said it, what you did, everything. Over time, you may see patterns develop that you couldn’t see otherwise. And as you track your results, try doing things differently. See what happens if you change up your routine or the way you usually handle your dates. It may well be that making changes will get you the results you’re looking for.

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 basically need some advice about how to move on from an ex. I dated a guy for about two and a half months. I’m in college, he just finished a few weeks before we started seeing each other. At first it seemed he was very enthusiastic and making all of the moves first. He was the first to suggest we be exclusive, constantly telling me how much he enjoyed dating me, etc. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the start of the relationship as I knew I had a previous problem of expecting too much of partners and moving a relationship too fast, but this constant independent reassurance let me relax and by the two month marker I was beginning to see it as the start of something long term.

Then I left to visit family for a week, and on the coach back home he called me and said he felt nothing towards me and wanted to break up, but still wanted to be friends (he had wanted to do it in person but we weren’t going to see each other for a while so it wouldn’t have been fair any other way). I also then made some time to meet him, given that this was a pretty big thing I wanted to talk about, and I let him know my feelings and how much I really, really liked him. He told me I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t being too clingy or too distant, and he was sad it didn’t work out because he didn’t know why he didn’t feel anything. But he emphasised over everything that “I still want you in my life”. The whole thing came as a shock but of course you can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like you (duh) so I said sure, that’s fine, I would be friends.

It’s now been four months. I haven’t brought anything up to do with our relationship or asked to get back with him, etc, even though it’s constantly at the back of my mind no matter how much I try to process it, repress it or tell myself it’s impossible. We’ve seen each other a lot, hung out together on our own and in group situations, and been to plenty of parties, etc, together. But it still hurts, every time I see him and every time he messages me. I know he will never “take me back” or anything like that, and he owes zero explanation of why he didn’t feel anything towards me: sometimes that just happens, and it’s happened to me. But realising that hasn’t made me stop loving or liking him any less, and some tiny tiny part of me still hopes he’ll ask me out again. I know it’s impossible and keep telling myself that, but I keep making excuses – for example, maybe he still wasn’t over his serious relationship he got out of a couple months before me, and he just needs time to process that before coming back to me, and if I stick around enough maybe it’ll happen. (Of course it won’t, but my brain keeps entertaining these kinds of fantasies.) But every time he says how lucky he feels to have me in his life, or compliments my appearance, or anything, it just adds to that impossible little spark of hope. I should be grateful I have such a great friend who values and appreciates me, but it also just makes me feel so sad I can’t be with this amazing person romantically.

I also knew it would be tough seeing him date someone else but a mutual friend messaged me over the holiday break to say she had slept with him and that they would be dating and that she hoped it wouldn’t upset me because she valued me as a friend. I told her that’s of course fine and why should I ask anything of them on behalf of my stupid unrequited feelings? I want to be happy for them, and for them to be happy too – all I’ve ever wanted was to make him happy. I have also been dating other people in the months since we broke up, and he knows this, so it would be completely unfair for me to say this upsets me. But I do think it hurts realizing a mutual friend knows how much I love him and still do, since she helped me through the break up, and has still decided to do this. It shouldn’t, I know this isn’t healthy or fair, and my past shouldn’t stop her seeing anyone she likes. But the thought of it just makes me well up and I’m not sure I could ever see them together in person. I don’t want to stop them being happy together but it hurts far too much to think about the whole thing.

Basically, I just want to ask for a second opinion on should I keep trying to be friends? Or, ideally, how do I make these feelings go away? I’m so emotionally drained and sad about it constantly, which also isn’t fair on anyone I try to date, so I’ve cut off or declined anyone asking me out in the last few weeks. I would love for us to be friends, more than anything in the world. But I don’t know how to describe how much it hurts seeing him and not being with him, or being there for him as a partner when he’s sad, or just being with him. We act much the same as we did when dating, messaging probably even more, but all without the benefits of being in a relationship.

Tl;dr: How do I move on healthily from my ex who has ended up being one of my best friends, or how do I cut him off, even though this would also hurt immensely, without upsetting him too?

Yours

Trying To Be Friends

DEAR TRYING TO BE FRIENDS: Oof. I’ve got a lot of sympathy TTBF, because I’ve been where you are. I had a particularly memorable break up where I decided that we could still be friends afterwards. I thought I was going to be mature about all of this and it was all going to be fine.

But it wasn’t. Every time I saw her – or even thought about her, let’s be honest – was like a knife to my soul. And trying to be friends and power through it just made things worse.

You see, I’d made a major mistake… and one that you’re making right now. I thought I could seamlessly shift from “couple” to “just friends” immediately, without any transition period. And unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. It hurts when you break up with someone, even when it’s a relatively painless break-up, where nobody’s really at fault. It causes you actual pain, and it takes time to let that pain heal. But you can’t heal if that person is still around, reminding you of what you’ve lost. You need actual separation from them so that you can feel the hell out of your feels, have a good cry and mourn the loss of your relationship without also having to see them every day. Those wounds won’t heal if you keep peeling off the scabs.

That’s part of why my recommended first step for recovering from a break-up with someone is to employ the Nuclear Option – to seal them away from you entirely, as much as you reasonably can. That means cutting ties – unfollowing or muting them on social media, deleting their number from your phone, filtering their emails so they go into a folder marked “THE EX-FILES” instead of your inbox and putting away all of those reminders and souvenirs of your relationship together. Now this isn’t always feasible – especially in cases where, say, you’re co-parenting a child –  but it helps relegate them to “out of site, out of mind” status and puts barriers in your way that prevent you from “accidentally” checking on their Instagram to see if they’ve moved on from you yet. This doesn’t need to be forever, but it does need to be long enough that you can mourn the loss of your relationship and let those feelings fade.

But you didn’t do that. And as a result, you’re in a relationship that causes you emotional pain. Not just the pain of loss and the unpleasant hope that maybe he’ll come back to you if you stick around but also by having front-row seats to his life as he moves on. Because he was going to move on – you knew this – and then one day, he did. And unfortunately, you found out in a way that caused you more emotional distress. Your friend was trying to do you a solid by giving you a heads up that she was involved with your ex… but it just became yet another way you reopen wounds that hadn’t fully healed yet.

(Though to be honest, she didn’t need to tell you that she slept with him… she could’ve just left it as “we’re starting to see each other”.)

And then there are all the little injuries that he may not be aware that he causes. Those little compliments or offhand remarks about how he’s grateful for you may seem like a way to keep on good terms with an ex to him… but to you, it’s like being stabbed with teeny tiny knives every single time.

None of these are, frankly, conducive to either your emotional health or your being friends with him.

Now having said all that… I’m gonna have to be real with you TTBF: this wasn’t a great relationship and the pain you’re feeling is out of proportion to the relationship you had. Again, I can sympathize; that relationship I had lasted for less than half a year before she dumped me and I drove myself bats

t over her. But sympathy or no, the fact is that you were dating this guy for less than three months. You mention that you had a tendency to rush into relationships and, well, that’s exactly what you did here. At two months, you barely know the person you’re dating, never mind know that it has long-term potential. At this stage, we’re all still putting on our absolutely best faces, putting up the idealized versions of ourselves in hopes of winning over the person we’re dating. It’s all a show and mating dance where we only display the best sides of ourselves. You over-invested in this dude, giving him more importance and significance than he deserved or was reasonable at that stage of your relationship. That’s a big part of why it hurts so much right now: to use a poker metaphor, you went all in on a weak hand in hopes that you were going to draw to a backdoor straight. You didn’t, and now you busted out.

In fairness, this dude helped things along. He totally love-bombed you; showering you with compliments, reassurances and attention to get you to relax and let him in. And honestly, he’s still doing it with those comments about how glad he is to have you around and those random compliments. Maybe he’s doing it deliberately because he wants to keep you on the hook. Maybe he does this without meaning to keep you drawn to him. But it’s sketchy behavior, and it’s part of why you’re still hung up on him.

So no. Right now you can’t be friends with him. You’re still too invested in him, you’re still hurting and you aren’t letting yourself heal. And he isn’t letting you heal either. Whether he knows it or not, he’s prolonging your pain by his actions. So the only option you have right now, if you want to actually feel better, is to cut ties. You’re going to have to tell him, straight up: seeing him hurts you and you can’t keep doing this to yourself. As much as you wish you didn’t have to, you have to cut yourself off from him until you’ve had time to heal and recover. Maybe in the future you two can be friends, but you can’t right now. It sucks that you have to do this, but you have to make your own health your number one priority.

And then, as I said: you go nuclear. You cut ties. No more emails. No more texts. No social media stalking. No giving him access to you so he can keep trying to get his hooks back into you. You need to go cold turkey on this guy so that you can finally start the healing process. In a few months, maybe you can reconsider easing him back into your life. But not definitely not right now, and not until you’ve had a lot of time away.

Oh, and one more thing: it’s entirely possible that if and when you tell him this, he’s going to love-bomb you again. He’ll talk about how amazing you are and how much he cares. He may even drop hints that he wants you back. Don’t let this sway you. This won’t be because he’s suddenly realized he’s made a mistake, it’ll be because he likes having your attention. You still need to cut him off. If you want any sort of a healthy friendship with this guy in the future, you need to get your head on straight, sort through your feelings and give yourself closure on this relationship. And you can’t do that if you’re holding out hope that there’s a future for the two of you.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m looking to dip my toes into more involved online dating (more involved than Tinder et al), and as someone with a nonbinary gender identity, I’m interested in trying sites like OKCupid that apparently have more gender identity options than just “(Trans)Man/(Trans)Woman”. But I’ve got concerns about the intersections between the technical structure of these sites and dating etiquette.

If I go to a site where I can enter a nonbinary gender identity (in my case, agender), I assume I will only show up in people’s search results/feed/etc. if their preferences include my stated gender identity, right? But I generally pass as cis, at least in appearance (as soon as I start talking or using any body language, people get queer vibes), and I’ve dated some cool cis people in the past with whom my GI wasn’t an issue even though they didn’t have much exposure to nonbinary folk before. I look the part, mostly, which seems to work for some cis people who otherwise only date cis people.

So if I choose a nonbinary gender identity, I’m essentially shutting off 99% of the dating pool because the vast majority of people just don’t think about adding other identities to their preferences, so my profile will always get filtered out, right? Which leaves me with a tiny dating pool – and I’m sure there are some cool people being shut out who just hadn’t thought about it, since I’ve literally dated people like that before. Is it okay for me to display my “apparent” cis gender instead, or is that bad form? I usually tell people about my gender identity within the first few dates, so long as they seem open (and if they don’t, no more dates), but something still feels weird about putting my closet door on my profile.

Anyway, just hoping you’ve had some thoughts, or have some friends who have thoughts.

More Than Ones And Zeroes

DEAR MORE THAN ONES ZEROS: First of all: I want to invite my non-cis and nonbinary readers to weigh in on this; after all, I can only comment on this from my perspective as a straight, cisgendered male. So take my advice with applicable amounts of salt.

One of the ongoing dilemmas of online dating is just how wide of a net you want to cast. This is something that almost everybody struggles with at one point or another. There’s an almost instinctive desire to want to appeal to as many people as humanly possible; after all, who wouldn’t want to try to have the largest potential dating pool possible?

The problem though, is that a large pool of potential partners isn’t the same as having a large pool of partners that will want to date you. Having lots of options seems great at first… but it means that you’re going to be dealing with a lot of folks who only kind of like you or are somewhat interested. That gets exhausting and frustrating very quickly; there are few things more demoralizing than going on date after date with people who are just kind of “meh” about you. And that’s before we get to the folks who will treat your being nonbinary as a negative. Plenty of folks – cis women, especially, but enbies, trans folks and other gender non-conformers – have had people react badly, even violently when their dates discovered that their preconceptions about them were wrong.

(Hell, it isn’t even always about gender presentation; I’ve had friends who’ve seen guys rage out at them because the guys made incorrect assumptions about their sexual histories.)

You aren’t wrong in that by choosing a nonbinary identity, you’re going to be limiting your dating pool significantly. Folks who aren’t necessarily opposed to dating someone who’s nonbinary often won’t choose “nonbinary” or “all” in their “looking for” pull-down menus simply because it may not occur to them to do so. But that means that the people who have done so aren’t just passively open to the idea, they’re actively opting in to dating people like you. And that’s a good thing.

As I’m fond of saying: you don’t want to be everyone’s cup of tea, you want to be some people’s shot of whiskey. You don’t need to have broad but very shallow appeal; you want people who really dig you and what you have to offer and for whom being nonbinary isn’t a dealbreaker or worse.

So with those considerations in mind, there’re a number of ways you could play this.

You could list yourself as nonbinary, accept the more limited dating pool but take heart in the increased number of people who are looking for folks like you.

You could list the gender you tend to present as, and bring up that you’re nonbinary in your profile – especially under “you should date me if” or “the most private thing I’m willing to admit” sections. This admittedly comes with risks; lots of folks don’t read profiles thoroughly (or at all) and could well miss the fact that you’re nonbinary. You could also end up with a lot of, for lack of a better word, tourists – people who find your gender identity exotic but who are only interested in you as a sort of curiosity or marking off a box on their personal checklist.

You could also list yourself as nonbinary and take a more proactive approach, being the one to make the first move on folks who seem like they might be open to dating someone who isn’t cisgendered. The Double Take and double opt-in mechanics of OKCupid mean that if you choose them, the site will let them know and let them decide whether they want to take a chance on you.

Or you could take a hybrid approach. You’re more likely to find people who’re open to dating you, specifically, when you meet them in person, even if they never considered it before. Mixing up meeting people while out and about – through friends, at bars, etc. – and via online dating can give you the best of both worlds and help you find entirely different populations of potentials.

Every approach has its risks. It’s just up to you which risks are acceptable compared to the potential rewards.

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 am a 39 year old male. I am a research faculty at a prestigious university in the US. I have been married for 10 years, and have two beautiful kids. Me and my wife were lovers and married after ~3 years of courtship. The problem(s) began about year after our second child was born. My wife has been steadily losing interest in sex. We talked about this, and she said she was afraid of getting pregnant, so I had myself snipped. I have no regrets about that decision. But after everything she is just closed off. I have to almost beg to have sex. She said I am aging, and I do not have energy. I am sure on some level she is right. But I feel frustrated. I love her. She loves me, but the physicality in us seems to have ended. About 6 months ago we had a massive fight over this issue. Things were a bit better and then everything went back to being worse. Everytime I broach the subject I come across as a nymphomaniac. But truth be told, I think she is the sexiest woman I know. I do not know what to do.

At My Wits End!!

DEAR AT MY WITS END: Questions about sexless marriages are becoming one of the most common questions I get these days, AMWE and tends to be one of the most divisive topics I get. There is a lot of cultural expectation to tell the person with the higher libido to deal with it because hey, it kinda sucks to have no real interest and have someone pawing at you. But at the same time, this is unfair to someone who wants intimacy with their partner or to treat sex as something that is so unimportant that one should just be able to go without it… right up until they go looking for it elsewhere. Or suggesting that both partners work out an equitable exchange – less sex overall, but the lower libido’d partner giving the higher libido’d partner a helping hand or mouth on occasion.

And then there are the common answers of “well, high-libido-having-person,have you considered doing more $GENDERED_ACTIVITY_HERE, whether it be do more chores (for men, generally) or be more seductive (for women, generally) without considering the vast multitudes of reasons why people quit being interested in sex, all the while trying to tip-toe around answers like “they are just done with sex” or “they are done with sex… with you.”

Needless to say, the expectation to dance around the topic and get blunt makes things frustrating for everyone involved.

But let’s deal with your situation. Before I could give you an answer, I’d want to know a lot more about your circumstances because there more x-factors that affect libido than a loudmouth with a blog can account for. Childbirth, obviously, is a big one; not only does the actual, physical act of giving birth tend to kill one’s desire for sex for quite some time but raising the kid means that couples rarely have the time or energy for sex. To start with: dealing with a squalling ball of constant poop, piss and vomit means that you’re not going to be feeling terribly sexy at the best of times, and that’s without getting into issues like not having a full night’s sleep. When you get a couple hours shut-eye out of every 24, you’re not really going to be interested in doing anything horizontal besides napping.

Other issues like what medication your wife is on would make a difference as well. There are a number of drugs, especially SSRIs, that will absolutely crater your libido to nothing and neither love nor money nor Ryan Gosling stripped naked and dipped in cheese could create so much as a twitch in one’s nethers.

And then there are emotional issues. Not just things like depression but simply feeling neglected or taken for granted; when one partner feels like they’re left doing all the drudge-work or responsibilities for the family, it’s very easy to lose interest in sex. It becomes just one more goddamn chore, no matter how sexy one’s partner thinks they are.

It could be that she’s gotten bored of the sex you’ve been having, especially if it’s not necessarily the sex she wants to have. Or it could just be that she’s done with sex. It may never have been much of a priority for her and two kids later, she’s decided that was enough. Or, and I hate to say it, it could well be that she’s done with sex with you.

I’d also want to know how she feels about her lack of a sex drive. Is she upset about it? Or is this something that she’s ok with?

The varying reasons she has for not wanting to have sex leads me to believe that there’s another, bigger one lurking under the surface that she may not want to actually tell you. Not that her other reasons aren’t equally true but they’re less… confrontational… than what the real reason might be. And unfortunately, that reason may very well be something you can’t do anything about and your coming at her for nookie is just pissing her off because she doesn’t want to tell you how she really feels.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think you’re the bad guy here. There’s nothing wrong with wanting intimacy and affection from your partner. There’s nothing wrong with wanting sex or wanting sex with your spouse. It’s an important part of making a relationship work. But getting the spark back means figuring out why it’s gone in the first place and just asking for a blowjob ain’t gonna do that.

The best thing you two can do is to get to a marriage counselor – preferably a sex-positive one who isn’t going to treat your sex drive as the problem – and dig into the underlying causes. But until you can determine the source, whether it be physical, neurochemical, emotional or situational, give your wife a break. Having more fights about why you aren’t having sex isn’t going to solve the problem and will only make things worse. Grab a Tenga, hop onto PornHub and take care of things on your own while you both figure things out. It’s an inconvenience in the short term, but one that may help ensure that you’ll have a long-term.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Hi Doc,

I’m very bummed out because women don’t like my photos…I have been putting them on photofeeler to get them rated for online dating and getting awful ratings. I realize that they aren’t professionally done, but I still don’t get how they can be THAT bad. I even think that I look good in them so I am very confused and it’s killing my self confidence!

Please Help!

Not So Hot Or Not

DEAR NOT SO HOT OR NOT:

This is the dating equivalent of “Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this.”

Well, then stop doing that.

As with the joke, there’s an easy solution here dude: quit putting your pictures up on rating sites. You’re not getting an accurate representation of your actual attractiveness, you’re getting the opinions of bored people who have decided that the best use of their time is to dump on people who aren’t Instagram thirst-traps. Ignoring the fact that sites like that can be gamed really easily by assholes, there are people who will look for anything that isn’t 100% perfection and insist that this makes that person an unlovable troll. You can go through a dozen subReddits and find guys who swear up and down that they wouldn’t bang Megan Fox with a borrowed dick because of her thumbs or that Lupita Nyong’o isn’t hotter than rocket fuel because of her skintone.

Similarly, very minor things, from the way you look at the camera to the angle of the light and shadow on your face can utterly change how you come across in photos. Squinting, a less-than-flattering hairstyle, framing or an awkward pose can make you look night-and-day different from a photo taken five minutes later. If you check out the Tinder roundtable, you can see how much slight differences in photos affect how women feel about the person in them. Take a lesson from women: for every selfie they post, there’s about a dozen on the camera roll that never saw the light of day. Same with professional photographers: you’ll take a metric-assload of photos and discard all but the best. So don’t just treat your dating profile pics like a one-and-done.

Now that having been said, the quality of your photographs can affect a lot too. You may want to consider finding a professional photographer – especially someone who can do candid portraiture – to handle your main profile pictures and add the others in sparingly.

Photofeeler is a useful tool, but only to a limited degree. Don’t rely on it exclusively; you’d do well to also consult with friends whose opinions you trust who you can also trust to be honest without being cruel.

Good luck.

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