DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I understand you hate Friend Zone questions but please bear with me as I think mine is most unique.

Three months ago, I packed up and moved to another state. Before switching cities, I visited my new home town about 3 times (you know, to get a lay of the land). The first time I went, I noticed a woman on the bus sitting in front of me. She was beautiful but I thought nothing more then she was a hot woman on the bus. The second time I went I saw her again and instantly recognized her as the woman from before. The third time I went I saw her a third time and was immediately smitten with her.

Before classes started I went to an orientation and low and behold SHE was there (lets call her Rose from here on out, not her real name of course). I said a few things to her but most came out nervous and uninteresting. This surprised me because I’m usually very good at talking to women. That night I immediately went on Facebook and found her. I chatted her up for the next three days before confessing I liked her and asked if we could go on a few dates when school started. She accepted.

I was traveling quite a bit before the semester started, so meeting with her was never really an option. Because of this I talked to her on Facebook A LOT (everyday). We would flirt a little and talk about some very sexual things. Occasionally we would get drunk and talk to each other.

When school started, I was regrettably a nervous mess. I could barley talk to her or even make eye contact. This was surprising because as I said before I’m VERY good at talking to women. This lasted about two weeks till I began talking to her. It was all very casual for about a week when finally I decided to ask her out. I stepped up, asked her on a date. Her answer was a no.

Over the past five weeks since, I have gotten to know her much better (we are very good friends)and at this point its fair to say I love her. I think about her everyday and care about her more than she’ll ever know. She is beautiful and because of this many guys try flirting with her. None of them can laugh with her like I can, and none would kill for her like I would. So last night at a dance (were me and her both hugging the walls and not dancing much), I confessed how I loved her. I told her that i think about her everyday and how if she said no I would be okay with it. She said no but was very surprised and I definitely got my point across.

And now Doctor NerdLove I need to know. How can I show this woman I’m serious, there is a chance we’re going to be hanging out on Halloween. Should I try something then? I don’t know. I really feel a spiritual and physical love for this person and I need a way to show them.

Love Fool 

DEAR LOVE FOOL: I don’t hate friend zone questions, LF. It’s just that nine times out of ten, everyone who writes in already knows the answer to the question they’re asking. They just want someone else to tell them that they’re wrong and there is hope.

Now, before I get into the meat of your question, LF, I want to point out what you did right… and what you did wrong.

By the third time you saw her, you knew that she was a regular on your route; you had no real reason not to talk to her then. While I’m normally a bit loathe to suggest approaching women on public transit — they’re functionally stuck with you, and they don’t know if you’re going to follow them when they get off at their stop — familiarity can breed comfort. If you’re enough of a known quantity, you’re more likely to get a positive response when you say “hey”

I know it can be intimidating approaching a stranger for the first time, but once you learn to muscle through the anxiety, you can start making approaching women you’re attracted to an organic part of your life. As it was, you were still running the risk of never seeing her again, and you’d be kicking yourself for not taking the chance.

In your case, LF, the fates saw fit to smile upon you and give you a second chance by having her applying to your school. This time you managed to actually talk to her: good work!. And while you may not have impressed her with your gift of gab, but clearly you didn’t creep her out and she accepted your Facebook request.

Now here’s where you screwed up again: you didn’t strike while the iron was hot. Talking for three days before asking her out wouldn’t have been an issue… if you hadn’t been about to go out of town. It would’ve been better to go on a date before you would be out of town than to ask her to wait for however long instead.

It’s one thing if your schedules didn’t line up and the first chance you had was after you got back. In this case, however, it seems like you had the time and opportunity; you chose to wait instead.

And it’s not as though this caught you by surprise. You knew you were leaving; this should have been your motivation to ask her out on at least one date before you left.

Now, she did agree to go on a couple of dates with you, true, but she agreed knowing that this would be three months in the future. Her agreeing to go one some dates that far down the line is… well, it’s not really much of a promise. It’s far enough in the future that it feels less like a date and more of a polite way to get someone to back off for a bit. After all, it’s easy to humor someone when there’s that much emotional (and physical) distance; it won’t feel as real or immediate, and there’s always the chance that you’ll forget or otherwise let her out of it.

So once again: she MIGHT have been genuinely interested in you or willing to give you a chance and go on a date or two. Or she may have agreed to go on a couple dates thinking that there was the distinct chance that she wouldn’t have to actually go out with you. If you had asked her to go out the next day, say, you may or may not have gotten a date out of it, but at least you’d have an answer.

Letting things go until after you got back in town, on the other hand, meant that you were losing any emotional momentum that you might have had. Talking over Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp is easier than people would think; there’s a certain level of distance and abstraction lowers our inhibitions. As a result, you can find yourself talking about things that you wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable talking about face to face. This includes a willingness to be flirty — or at least SEEM flirty, even if there’s no real interest.

The other problem with putting the dates off until school started was that you built the moment up in your head. It’s no wonder that you were a nervous mess when you got back home. You most likely spent those weeks building those dates from a simple social outing to events of monumental importance. I wouldn’t be surprised if you started mentally mapping out every possible way things could go – and most of ’em leading to romance and/or sex. So now you’re back in school and the GRAND MOMENT is upon you! It’s do or die time! Gotta make it happen, after all that build up!

And then… nothing.

In effect you essentially psyched yourself out. This is another reason why you want to make your move as soon as possible: to avoid building things up to impossible degrees and over-investing in someone who you still barely know.

As a result, it took you another two weeks before you tried to bring up her going out with you… that’s two more weeks of bleeding away any emotional momentum you may have had. It’s not surprising that when you finally asked her out, she said no. She may never have intended to go out with you in the first place. She may have been up for it at first but time and distance caused her to lose interest. You’ll never know now.

So that brings us to today: You told her you loved her, she didn’t return your feelings and you’re firmly stuck in the Friend Zone.

(Standard disclaimer: There’s no such thing as The Friend Zone. There’re just folks who don’t want to date or sleep with you.)

There are many ways you could have avoided the problem in the first place, but now you’re looking for your way out and you’re hoping that convincing her of the depths of your sincerity is going to change her mind.

SPOILER ALERT: it’s not. Especially when you’re using phrases like “I’d kill for her”. I know you’re not serious, but that’s the sort of language that sets people’s Spider-sense tingling and makes them start eyeing the exits.

Making a grand gesture makes for great dramatic moments in the movies, but in real life it doesn’t work out the way you would hope. It’s not going to solve the problem for you, because you’re trying to fix the wrong issue.

The problem isn’t that she thinks you’re not serious about how you feel. The problem is that she just doesn’t like you back. Not the way you’re wishing she did.

Right now, the best thing you can do is accept the truth and focus on letting your broken heart heal.

That, unfortunately, is probably going to mean that you need to get a little distance from her. Hanging around her right now is obviously hurting you and – contrary to everything pop-culture has taught us –  there’s nothing romantic or even terribly sane about subjecting yourself to that sort of pain over and over again. It sucks that she doesn’t return your feelings, but moping about and trying to backdoor your way into a relationship with her isn’t the answer.

The best thing you could do right now is take some time and distance and – and I know this is going to seem counter-intuitive – date other people. I’m a firm believer that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, as it were. It’s not that sex heals all wounds and so you should go get some strange, nor is it a matter of replacing her with the nearest warm body. Getting back out there and dating around will remind you that there are other women in the world – ones who might return your feelings. It’ll help you rebuild your confidence and self-esteem, while reminding you that as amazing as Rose may be, she’s not the ONLY woman out there. She’s ONE person, not the LAST person who could ever love you or that you could ever love.

So let Rose go. Be friends with her if you can, but accept that you’re friends, not potential lovers. Date around, meet other amazing folks and remember: he who hesitates is lost. Next time, do yourself a favor and make your move. When you’ve met someone awesome, remember what the sage said and do not throw away your shot.

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: Question about sex coming your way! I’m 31/F and I’ve been in a happy and healthy relationship for the last 10 months or so. I love this guy–he’s sweet, caring, we have so much in common, and I just love spending time with him. Things are going so well that it kind of blows my mind. We’ve got good communication and talk about everything–our needs/worries, what we want, etc. We’re very compatible in so many ways. And we have really good sex that leaves us both satisfied.

At least until now.

I’m realizing that “new relationship energy” is fading a little for me, and my desire has waned. I’m still very attracted to him, but that “I can’t keep my hands off you” energy has gone a little. I still enjoy kissing and sex–it still leaves me very satisfied! But it doesn’t always have that passion we had in the first six months. It’s a little routine now. Here’s my main worry: sometimes I feel like I don’t get as aroused as I used to. We’re using more lube now when we didn’t need it before (and I know using lube is totally normal), and somehow I feel like it’s my fault for not getting turned on enough. I know what kinds of foreplay turn me on, and I’ve told him, but sometimes it still doesn’t work.

Kissing usually helps me get turned on, but my partner has a different kissing style than me. It’s something that I’ve noticed from the beginning, and it doesn’t quite turn me on the way past partners’ kisses have. I feel so bad about that. I’m scared to say something to him because I don’t want him to feel bad. He’s sensitive so I know he would feel bad about himself. And his kissing is in no way a deal breaker for me. But lately I have a lot more anxiety creeping in when we do have sex, and I constantly ask myself, “Why aren’t I turned on more?” I’m in my head so much that it’s making it hard for me to enjoy sex. And then I get nervous and start asking if HE’S enjoying sex because I don’t know that I fully enjoy it all the time.

What can I do? How can we keep that spark alive?

Thanks!

Jumpstart Needed

DEAR JUMPSTART NEEDED: One of the truths about relationships is that desire for a partner does fade over time. This isn’t necessarily an indication of problems; it’s just part of how humans are wired. We’re a novelty-seeking species, and the first year or so with a new partner is very much part of the “getting to know you” phase. That New Relationship Energy comes about because being with someone new means our bodies are firing dopamine and oxytocin straight into the pleasure centers of the brain. But unfortunately, we’re also incredibly adaptable and we can get used to anything. This is known as “hedonic adaptation”; literally, the more exposed we are to something, the less exciting it becomes because we’ve gotten used to it. This is why even banging the hottest of the hot becomes… well, just the status quo to us. But when we hook up with someone new… well, suddenly it’s all fireworks and explosions in your heart and pants again.

However, running into this problem 10 months into a new relationship is not typical. While yes, there are folks for whom the initial excitement fades quickly — and that’s normal for them — the fact that it’s not part of your usual pattern suggests that there’s an issue.

Now, part of the problem is the anxiety. Like I told PIED In The Face recently, anxiety around sexual performance is a self-perpetuating cycle. Your anxiety gets in the way, keeps you from enjoying the sex or getting as aroused as you normally do, so you get anxious about having sex, which keeps you from enjoying the sex you’re having or getting as aroused as you normally do. When the anxiety inhibits your enjoyment and creates more anxiety, the obvious answer is to figure out what’s causing the anxiety and address that to break the cycle.

It seems that a core issue here is that you are worried about bringing these concerns up with your partner. While I understand that he’s on the sensitive side and you don’t want to make him feel bad, not saying anything is counterproductive. I mean, think of it from his perspective. If he’s a caring lover who’s concerned about your pleasure — and I presume he is — then how upset would he feel to know that you’ve been having these issues and never told him? Especially if it’s something that he could have been helping you with?

The kissing issue is actually a great place to start. This is a solvable problem, but it’s not one that he’s going to be able to divine out of thin air. He’s going to need some direction to know exactly how you like being kissed. The key here is the way you present this information to him. If you roll it out as “ok look, I was willing to put up with you kissing technique until this point, but now it’s a problem,” then yeah, it’s gonna hurt his feelings. On the other hand, if you present this as “hey, let me show you something I’d like more of….” and then demonstrate it — along with some appropriate encouraging noises and actions — then this is less “your kissing technique sucks” and more “this really turns me on“.

The same goes with the foreplay you like. It’s one thing to tell him once. It’s another to show him — or request it in the moment, for that matter. “Hey, you know what I’d really like?” is one way to draw attention to it. Another is to just straight ask for what you need, right then. If you need him to go down on you like a champ, then you need to make that clear at that moment that this is what you’re craving and anything less than his best effort won’t do. You can phrase it like a challenge, like a contest or even a sexy demand… but you have to use your words to do so.

And here’s the important thing: it’s important that you get in the habit of asking for what you need when you need it, not just once outside of the bedroom and hope that he remembers. I realize that this sounds like training a pet, but changing habits requires reinforcement. That means not being afraid to ask for what you want or need as the need arises, until such a time that he gets that these are the things that get your motor humming and it becomes part of his regular routine. If you ask for it once, he may well pay attention and give you what you need that time… but he may not process that this is an ongoing need and fall back into old patterns, especially if those patterns worked well enough with his previous partners.

But more than anything else, you need to not be afraid to address issues in your relationship or places where you feel things are lacking. That’s something you should get used to doing now; it may feel difficult to bring up at this stage of the relationship, but I can promise you that it’s a hell of a lot more difficult at two years. Or five. And that means that you’re going to be dealing with anxiety and mediocre sex that entire time. Getting started now, when things are still fresh and new, makes it much much easier, and it empowers you to ask for what you need down the line, instead of letting things fester until they become a massive problem.

And to be perfectly blunt: sometimes you need to be willing to risk hurting someone’s feelings when s--t’s going wrong, rather than suffering because you’re afraid to say something. As the saying goes: you need to stop setting yourself on fire just to keep other people warm. Hurt feelings are avoidable most of the time, and heal quickly when they aren’t; making yourself miserable and dealing with s--tty situations, on the other hand, will cause the relationship to rot from the inside out and do all sorts of damage to your own self-esteem and emotional well-being. And to be even blunter: if someone’s so sensitive that the slightest hint that they could be doing things better would shatter them like glass? That’s not somebody you should be in a relationship with. That’s a them problem, not a you problem, and you shouldn’t allow it to become yours.

So if you want to get out of your head and get back to the bed-rocking, headboard-thumping, keep-the-neighbors-up sex you were having before? It’s time to start using your mouth to make him understand what you want, what you need, and what needs to be different. Yes, it may be awkward at first…  but it’s better to power through a moment of awkwardness than years of keeping silent and just making yourself more and more miserable. Speak up now, and your future self will be looking for ways to travel back in time and give you the highest of fives.

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 know your stance on porn already, but I was hoping to take it a step further and ask what you think about porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED)

Recently I was with my girlfriend getting intimate, and when it came time to do the deed my little friend became my little enemy. Our relationship is close enough where we brushed past the awkwardness, but I still went searching to find out if that’s something that was likely nerves or something deeper.

What I stumbled across was people talking about PIED, and the debate on whether or not it exists. I myself have been playing whack-a-mole for far too long, and the fact that I have a girlfriend meant that making the choice to kick the habit was a no-brainer for me. But reading through the champion subreddit for it r/NoFap I’m not sure what to believe about it.

I see people talking all the time about how the recovery process could take months or years. People swearing up and down that taking a shower while wearing your underwear (uh, gross) is the way to go, and questioning if seeing a Victoria’s Secret ad on TV broke their “streak”.

So how much of this is legitimate good advice and how much of this is self-fulfilling prophecy for them? Do you think the issue is just a matter of nervousness, or do you think the dopamine from too much masturbation really did rewire my brain?

Thanks for any insight you can give

-PIED in the face

DEAR PIED IN THE FACE: Before we get into your letter, I want to remind you of three crucial concepts that will make your life much easier overal PITF:

1. Correlation is not the same as causation

2. The simplest and most obvious answer is usually the correct one

3. Never trust anything from a subreddit that promises you that giving up masturbation will give you superpowers

#2 is especially important in your case. As the saying goes, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

Now as for your letter:

No, this is f--king awful advice. NoFap is the spiritual ancestor of John Harvey Kellogg — yes, THAT Kellogg  — a 19th century physician who had a LOT of… shall we say, interesting ideas about health and physical fitness. Amongst other things, he believed that undigested food in the colon was the cause of most disease, that comfortable beds, warm showers and spicy foods sapped years of people’s lives away and that any sort of emotional “excitement” was detrimental to people’s mental health. This included orgasms of any sort, whether self-provided or through sex with another person. In fact, he believed in this so fervently that he would brag that he had never, ever had sex with his wife of 40+ years — including on his wedding night. He believed in this so fervently that his various “cures” for masturbation and terminal horniness included inventing the graham cracker and corn flakes (bland foods intended to avoid provoking “passion” in the consumer), circumcision without anesthetic done in such a way as to make erection impossible, chastity devices that would stab the penis with needles when someone started to experience an erection and total clitorectomies. Following his advice would, in his mind, prevent a multitude of “nervous disorders” ranging from depression to psychosis as well as epilepsy, uterine cancer, and a host of other ill-defined maladies.

(He was also, incidentally, a profound racist and eugenicist who saw racial integration as destructive to the character and gene pool of America.)

It’s honestly rather astounding to see folks in the 21st century continue to make the same arguments, with “disrupting the humors of the mind” replaced by “dopamine depletion” and the like. It’s also rather annoying having to wade through SEO-bombing websites tied to religious organizations (not to mention groups like The Proud Boys) to get to actual studies investigating porn-induced ED rather than summaries that drastically mischaracterize what those studies have actually said. In fact, one of the most famous studies — a literature review of other studies involving erectile dysfunction — that gets cited as “evidence” of PIED actually says that the studies are inconclusive and more research is needed. Meanwhile, a 2019 study found that there was no likely link between porn use and ED.

Part of the problem is that penises are famous for being divas, and the slightest disruption or change can cause them to not work properly. In a classic example of “correlation is not causation”, one of the most common non-physiological causes of ED is depression… and people who suffer from depression will often use porn and masturbation as a form of self-medication. And then to make matters worse, lots of antidepressants — such as Prozac and Zoloft — will not only kill your libido deader than the dodo, but it’ll make you anorgasmic to boot. So rather being “desensitized” to mainstream porn and needing more and more extreme porn to get off, people find they have to work harder to get off because hey, turns out their SSRIs have made it so they can’t orgasm for love nor money.

Of course, all of this gets obscured or even discarded entirely by groups like Your Brain on Porn or Fight the New Drug, which are thinly veiled religious orgs dressing up their concerns in science drag, and other sites that go out of their way to try to push legitimate studies and science off the front page of Google.

As a general rule: if the site (or forum or…) refers to “porn addiction”, you can rather safely assume it has an agenda that goes beyond “following the science”. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors or Therapists has stated that the organization “does not find sufficient empirical evidence to support the classification of sex addiction or porn addiction as a mental health disorder, and does not find the sexual addiction training and treatment methods and educational pedagogies to be adequately informed by accurate human sexuality knowledge,” and “sex addiction” was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the fourth edition.

Now, if you have an unhealthy relationship with porn — you’re spending money you can’t afford to lose on cam sessions, you’re watching porn at inappropriate times (like at work or school) or you’re watching porn rather than having sex with your partner, etc. — then yes, restricting your porn consumption is a good idea. Similarly, if you’re masturbating so much that you don’t have the energy or drive to have sex with another person (and you want to have sex with them), then addressing the masturbation issue is important. But I suspect that, were that the case, then you would have said something.

Getting back to the case of “dicks being divas” — having things fail to rise to the proverbial occasion, especially when you’re relatively sexually inexperienced or you’re with a new partner is fairly common. It’s all too easy to get so in your own head about the import of it all that when the moment finally comes, your penis goes “eeeenh” and just fails to work. And because irony, not gravity, is the strongest force in the universe, that worry puts a whammy on your head, you get all too worried that you’re going to have another failure to launch, which makes you more concerned, which makes it all too likely that you’re going to have a third time you can’t get it up for the first time.

The key to fixing this is to break that self-perpetuating cycle. The easiest — and hottest — way to do so is actually quite simple: you take your penis off the table, so to speak. That is, you and your partner agree that you’re going to deprioritize not just penetration, but penile involvement. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have sex; it just means you put the focus on things like oral sex, using your hands and fingers, penetration toys or vibrators and the like. It’s still sex and you’re still having sex with your partner; you’re just not having penetrative sex with your penis is all. This not only takes the pressure to perform off of you, it also reminds you that you have more ways to share intimacy and pleasure with your partner than “insert tab a into slot b”. It expands your repertoire as a lover, widens the type of activities you and your partner can enjoy together and it encourages more creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking.

…er, as it were.

And the great thing is, once you’re no longer worried about needing the magic wand to be the end-all/be-all of sex and pleasure, you’ll find that you’ll be ready, willing and able to actually add intercourse back into the mix. Getting rid of the jitters is a much more reliable, effective and — importantly — fun way of dealing with stress and anxiety-induced ED than becoming a nevernude who worries that a flesh-toned bra cup is going to ruin one’s streak.

So get off the NoFap, get with your girlfriend and let your fingers do the talking. You and she will be much happier for it.

Good luck.

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