DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I appreciate everything you do for people trying to connect with other people.

I have an issue, that’s probably not a really big deal, regarding someone I have gone on a 3 dates with. I am a 27 year old virgin (not an issue, I understand it doesn’t define me), and actually putting in effort to go on dates with women is so new to me. This is the first time I have decided to truly take my love life into my own hands.

Anyway, I have gone on dates with this wonderful person, who I think is very cute and I enjoy spending time with. She also seems to really enjoy my company as well. Dates that I have gone on with other women, especially conversation heavy ones, run very slow and the incompatibility is very clear, but when I sit and talk with her, time seems to fly by.

My issue comes about where I find her cute, but I don’t seem to be in a rush to be physically intimate with her. I definitely don’t have the lustful urges I have had for other women, and maybe that is starting to concern me a little. Because I’ve never made it past a first date before, or had sex for that matter, I don’t know if that is typical or if there is a time frame for this sort of thing.

I can’t tell if being nervous to be physically intimate with a women for the first time, is keeping me from that more lustful form of attraction, or I just want to be friends with this girl. I can’t help but feel the urge to decide now, before we go on more dates. I don’t want to lead her on if I end up just wanting to be friends, but I’m also not sure if I have given it a long enough time to know how I feel about her. I will say, that even if I found myself constantly lusting after a woman, I would still want to get to know them quite a bit before we have sex (that is a common behavior I have regardless of who they are), it’s just I don’t seem to have the lustful component with this one. I know all relationships are different, and some are more passionate than others, but this still has me worried.

I met her on Hinge, and she initiated the interaction by liking my profile. I immediately matched her because I found her profile attractive and wanted to talk to her. And honestly, if it doesn’t work out romantically, I could see us being good friends. I enjoy her company a great deal, and we have fun together and make each other laugh. I know it sounds like I want to just be friends, but I legitimately don’t know how I feel about her yet, and have no clue about how the typical dating process goes, or what to expect.

So, my questions are: what is the time frame people develop sexual desires for someone they don’t have from the jump? Is there a time frame? How do you know when/if you just want to be friends? If I do decide I just want to continue to see her as a friend, how do I make that transition?

Cue The Butterflies In Stomach

DEAR CUE THE BUTTERFLIES IN STOMACH: There’s no real standard timeline for love and attraction, CTBS. People are wild and varied, and everybody tends to have their own patterns and schedules. Some people know right away whether someone is a potential sexual or romantic partner, a platonic friend, or someone they’re just not that into at all. Other folks need time to decide; they may have a history of picking the wrong people or mistaking infatuation or sexual attraction for love and compatibility, or they may prefer to establish trust and connection before considering a sexual relationship. Some folks are demisexual and need time before they develop sexual feelings for another person. Some folks are asexual or aromantic and never develop those feelings for other people and may take other factors into consideration when deciding on what kind of relationship to pursue.

Since you’ve mentioned being sexually attracted to other women, it doesn’t sound like your demisexual… it honestly just sounds like you made a friend. And hey, that’s awesome; not every date (or series of dates) needs to fall into a binary of “relationship” or “go away forever”. Sometimes you meet folks who you have emotional chemistry with, but no sexual or physical chemistry and that’s fine. That’s just part of dating. Dating is, at its core, a numbers game, especially when it comes to dating apps. There’re a host of factors that dictate who we are and aren’t attracted to that can only be experienced in person — whether its their smell, the way they taste when you kiss or even just how they treat waitstaff or service industry employees. It’s incredibly common to meet folks on Hinge or Bumble or what-have-you who have great photos and who you click with over text… but who you discover you have no interest in when you meet up in person. That’s not a failure on your part or theirs; it’s just the nature of the game. You’re going to get false positives on dating apps; we’re a species wired for face-to-face, in person connections.

(You might get false negatives — people you swipe left on when you encounter them on the app, but you might have mad chemistry with if you met them in person instead.)

This, incidentally, is one of the reasons why I’m a big believer in getting off the apps and meeting in person as soon as is reasonable. You want to establish whether or not there’s mutual interest and chemistry as quickly as possible, rather than getting over-invested before you even meet and ending up disappointed when you get together for the first time.

As you continue to match, meet and go on dates, you’ll find folks that you like and are attracted to right off the bat as well as the ones that you’re just “meh” about. It’s just a matter of finding the right people.

Now all that having been said: I do think that in the case of your current match, it’s better to call it early. It sounds to me like you’ve made a potential friend, and that’s great. However, it’s better to let her know that you like her and want to be friends now — especially since you’re three dates in — so that she has the option to decide how she feels. Telling her now is the considerate thing to do. It means that if she’s only looking for a love match or potential romantic relationship, she won’t be spending time on building something with you that isn’t going to lead to where she wants. It’s better to tell her now, so that she can be free to find someone who’s on the same page as her.

Telling her now is also better if she is only feeling friendship as well; this means that she knows you and she actually are on the same page and she isn’t going to have to call things off with you, lest she end up leading you on.

As a general rule, I’m an advocate of telling people sooner rather than later. It’s kinder all around and means that nobody wastes their time. But at the end of the day, it’s very much a “do unto others” scenario. When and how would you prefer someone tell you that they like you as a friend, but not a romantic partner? Consider that and let it be your guide towards how to proceed with this woman.

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 have had a few friends since high school. We remained friends even after we graduated, went to different colleges, lived over an hour apart, after I moved out of state, but now I’m back, and one of my friends moved less than 10 minutes from me for the first time.

We’ve been on the same Discord server and are all online more than once a week. However, I’ve been feeling distant from them much more, because they got into live-streaming. Now in theory, this shouldn’t change anything, but in practice, everything is so much worse. They almost always are playing a game I REALLY don’t like, to the point that it makes me feel much more bored and down when I play it. So I don’t. The problem is, it’s a game that they are always communicating during it, and any time I try to say anything, I just get ignored or a “I can’t talk now, I’m busy with this.” And then they play it for hours on end.

Even when they don’t play that, stuff still isn’t the same. Like, I can’t talk about anything remotely political with them, I can’t talk about anything personal, and even though it’s not their profession and they’re not particularly famous, they do get a small amount of viewers, so I have to always watch what I say and I can’t be myself when they’re streaming. At least one of them is streaming almost every day of the week, and it’s always while I have free time. It’s just exhausting to have to constantly be watching what I say, even around my closest friends, especially after a day of work. I’ve also been going through other things emotionally, and I can’t even talk about it, because I can’t say it on a livestream, because it would be taking attention from the streamer and it’s something any audience member wouldn’t want to hear.

I don’t want to make them stop, because they seem to enjoy it and I don’t want to be a funwrecker, but I just want my social and friend life back with them, especially after a long day of work. I also don’t want to keep this bottled up, before I do or say something I regret and can never take back. But I also just want my social life with them back… What do I do about this?

Video Game Widower

DEAR VIDEO GAME WIDOWER: This is one of the times when you should be talking to your friends, not to a loudmouth with an advice column, VGW.

The core conflict here is fairly simple: your friends have a new hobby that they’re currently wrapped up in and it’s not one that you dig. It’s taking up a lot of their time and attention and the very nature of it precludes hanging out with them while they do it. The problem is that you’ve presented yourself with a false dichotomy; it’s not a case of “make them stop” vs. lose your friends, it’s telling them “hey guys, I haven’t hung out with you all in forever, and I’d like to do something other than stream games.”

(We’ll pause to appreciate the irony of my writing this after having just finished watching the Mighty Nein vs. Vox Machina stream…)

Honestly, that’s the first step: let them know you want to hang out in person, and not during a stream or making your hangout part of their stream session. You can even start with proposing doing something specific — go play mini-golf, go for beers and watch the UFC match at a bar somewhere, go bowling… something that isn’t just “hang out on cam, playing a game for the livestream”. Having a specific event at a specific date and time means that spending time with them won’t just turn into another livestream session; you’re going to be out and about and — ideally — not broadcasting it with GoPros or smartphones.

Now, this may end up requiring some compromises. If they’re streaming on the regular, they may have set times when they’re live; you may have to work around their streaming schedule. Or it may be that you have to plan to get together a few days (or even weeks) in advance as you try to find a time that it works for everyone. That may not be what you want, especially if you’re used to hanging with your friends at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, the need to plan seeing friends days or weeks ahead of time is something that happens more and more often as we all get older and have increased responsibilities with work, relationships, family and so on.

However, you may also end up dealing with the fact that your friends are prioritizing streaming over hanging out. If that’s the case, then yeah, you’re going to have to use your words. But again, that doesn’t  mean that you’re left with “tell them to quit streaming or else.” Laying down an ultimatum like that isn’t going to work out well. You don’t have the leverage to make them do anything. The only leverage you have is your presence in their lives… and that’s what you’re going to have to use.

What you need to do is make it clear that this is about you wanting to see your friends, not subsume your friendship into being part of their Twitch stream. Let them know that this is the first time in years when you all have been close enough to see each other regularly, that you’re not into streaming and that you don’t feel comfortable hanging out with them and a live studio audience. You don’t feel like you can actually spend quality time with them while they’re focused on being “on”, nor do you feel that you can be your authentic and unguarded self while they’re on stream. You would rather spend time with them when the point is for you all to spend time together as friends, not as part of what’s ultimately a show for other people and you don’t like the idea of mixing friendship and monetizing their hobby.

If they decide that streaming is more important to them right now than hanging out with one of their old friends… well, then they’ve made their choice. We all grow and change as people, and our interests and priorities change with us. And that, unfortunately, means that sometimes those changes include friendships coming to an end. It’s not because you or they didn’t put enough effort into making it work, it’s just because as everyone has changed, they have changed in ways that mean you and they aren’t compatible the way you were before. As a result, it may well be that you and they have outgrown your old friendship. If that’s the case, unfortunately, there’s not really anything else you can do besides mourn the end of that friendship and move on.

However, regardless, of whether you find a compromise and hang out away from the cameras and capture rigs or your friendship with them gets downgraded, I think it would be a good idea to put some effort into making new friends. Having diverse — and separate — social circles can be a good thing; you can have friendships based around different interests or activities, rather than having a small group of people who are supposed to be all things to you and vice versa. And it would also mean that your friendships aren’t going to be contingent on somebody else’s Twitch schedule.

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 need help understanding how to navigate my boyfriend’s friends. They are all gamers or part of his D&D group or both, and I don’t really have any experience of either of those things. The problem isn’t that so much as the facts that they seem to have a completely different set of social expectations than what I’m used to.

My boyfriend’s best friend lives pretty far away, I’ll call him J. He and his girlfriend (H) were coming to visit. My boyfriend kept talking up H and how much we had in common. To the point where I was getting worried we’d be separated by gender once they got here. The fact that he never used her name, only ever called her J’s girlfriend, also made me uncomfortable. I’ve heard him talk about me the same way, I think most of his friends probably don’t know my name even now after two + years together and 6 months of living together. It was fine once they got here, we did spend time together as a group mostly but it still felt strange to me. And that’s the only time they were both here. This weekend J was here alone and they’ve been gaming non stop for two days, from morning to far into the night and I only see them while eating dinner. I work weekends and this morning J woke up when my boyfriend was still sleeping but after realizing I was the only one up, he hid away at the computer until I left for work.

He had some other close friends over once for beer. The first time I met them too. None of them spoke to me at all besides from saying hello. I just sat there the whole night watching them talk, trying and failing to join the conversation whenever the topic was something other than the games they were playing. I felt like a chair or a lamp or something, it was awful. I told him how it had felt after and he was shocked, he hadn’t noticed and didn’t understand why I hadn’t just left. That the girlfriends usually join to eat and then leaves. That it shouldn’t matter if his friends like me or not.

For me the normal thing would be to want to get to know the partner of someone who’s important to you. If I visit a friends house I’ll talk to their partner as well. When my best friend or my siblings have been here we’ve all made sure to include him in conversation and to all hang out together. Maybe not the whole visit, but they want to get to know him. Since he’s part of my life they want to get to know him. And I want him to know them. This has confused him too, at times.

He has one friend who he does invite for me to hang out with as well. We’re both vegan and that’s really the only thing we have in common. He also mostly doesn’t talk to me though, when I ask him low stakes small talk things he gets uncomfortable, and I don’t know what else to do. At least it’s better than the others.

I’m not naturally social, it’s hard for me, I get very anxious and default to being quiet but I try very hard. I don’t know how to get it right with his group though. If it stays like this I think next time any of his friends come to visit I’ll just make sure not to be home at all, because if we don’t get to know each other at least to the point of acquaintances, it’ll just be painfully awkward forever.

Fifth Wheel

DEAR FIFTH WHEEL: It sounds to me like you’re dealing with a classic dilemma: when two socially awkward samurai of equal power meet… who makes the first move?

Ok, let me back up a bit.

The issue at hand is that you’re dealing with nerds, and from the sound of it, painfully socially awkward ones at that. Part of the issue with this particular brand of awkwardness is the classic Geek Social Fallacy: that friendship is transitive. A lot of well-meaning nerds tend to believe that, because they’re friends with X, Y and Z, it only makes sense that X, Y and Z should be able to be friends with each other as well. In a lot of cases, there’s even the underlying belief that this friendship should basically already exist; everyone will just click like old friends who’ve only just met and it’ll be effortless and simple.

In reality… this doesn’t happen very often. While there are times when friends from disparate groups will mesh up perfectly, there’re just as many times when there’s a lot of stilted awkwardness. This is especially true when you’re dealing with folks who may be a little anxious, a little awkward or just socially inexperienced. Thus you end up with scenarios where a new person — in this case, you — is introduced to the group — his friends — and there’s that weird moment of awkward tension that just hangs in the air. Who makes the first move? How expressive or effusive should you be? What do you say? How do you join in the conversation without feeling like you’re intruding, or how do you make them feel included when you and your friends have years of inside jokes and shared experiences that they don’t have?

This can be exacerbated when — as it seems to be in your case — that your boyfriend and his friends aren’t in the habit of including the significant others in their reindeer games. This, in and of itself, isn’t inherently a bad thing; it’s good for couples to have separate interests and do things with separate groups of friends. However, that does often mean that they don’t have quite the same level of ease or familiarity with their respective partners, and that can make folks uncomfortable. It’s this odd feeling of “I should say something, what should I say, I don’t know what to do here, s--t, I’ve been quiet for too long now it’s A Thing…” That discomfort of not knowing what to do and the fear of The Awkward can end up being incredibly uncomfortable; if you’re socially awkward or inexperienced, it feels easier to just try to avoid things than to just confront it head on.

Hell, the feeling of “I’m awake before anyone else at a friend’s house and the only other person who’s up is my friend’s partner who I don’t know” is painfully familiar to a lot of nerds.

Now part of the problem is… well, again, your boyfriend’s friends are nerds. While this doesn’t automatically translate to “poor social skills”, the closed-circle-hyperfocus-on-our-favorite-topics-excluding-everyone-else trope among nerds and geeks is a very common one, and it seems like this is the routine with his friends. The partners are there for dinner, then go and do their own thing; very 1920s “the men will adjourn to the library for brandy and cigars” in its way.

Though in fairness, I suspect this is less misogyny or a lack of respect and more of benign ignorance. They’re so used to this routine — and their partners go along with it — that it never occurs to them that this can feel awkward or alienating to someone coming into it for the first time. That doesn’t make it better, mind you, but the rudeness and exclusion is a side-effect, not intent. And again: the fact that things get awkwardly uncomfortable provides a distressing incentive to just hope it goes away.

Which, unfortunately, it doesn’t. Especially not for someone like you, who’s making a good faith effort to connect with your boyfriend’s friends.

So… what do  you do?

Well, if I’m being honest, it sounds like you’re doing everything you can. It sounds like you’re trying to draw them out, find commonalities or things to talk about. You may get some success by asking them about the things they’re interested in — maybe ask for a beginner’s explanation of their favorite game — but this seems like a case of some folks who are just really uncomfortable socializing outside of their circle of friends.

This may change over time, the more that they see of you and the more you see of them. Continuing to be friendly and strike up conversations may help them get comfortable enough to not just Homer-Simpson-Into-The-Bushes… but it may not, too. It may help to ask your boyfriend about how to best connect with them, but at the end of the day, you can’t pull blood from a stone and you can’t pull conversation out of someone who feels too uncomfortable to talk to someone they don’t know.

It may just be that these are dudes who just aren’t ready or able to talk to the partner of their buddy. That’s on them, not on you.

That having been said: at the very least, your boyfriend can try to help make it so that you don’t feel like you have to leave whenever he as his friends over for a game night. It’s your home too, after all.

Good luck.

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