DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I stumbled upon a startling search history on my boyfriends computer… but let me give some background.

When the topic of physical sexual preferences has come up in our conversations over the last year of being together, he has mentioned the same few things he likes to see in a woman almost every time: skin-and-bone body type, short as possible, with super small tits and a decent ass, blonde/brown hair, bleach pale skin, no “trashy” tattoos or piercings… the typical millennial beauty standard. And I believe him, based on his previous love interests and partners.

The problem is, his porn searches vary between the unsurprising “young small emo blue hair girl gets finger blasted” to the extremely out-of-the-blue and unanticipated “big t—ty arab/ebony teens” — I wouldn’t think he was lying to me about his preferences if the latter was aimed towards MILFs and not teens, because MILFs could easily be explained as a simple fantasy, which everyone has. They’re not feasible or realistic, nor acted upon as often. Though now I’m worried that he’s just been telling me his “preferences” are conveniently all the traits that I seem to have… but he doesn’t search for porn with women that have those traits?

Every time I’ve mentioned considering dying my hair black (“goth girl”) or getting more tattoos, or wishing I had bigger breasts/could gain more weight, or wanting to go tanning…. he tells me I shouldn’t, AND his reason isn’t even for the sake of “preserving my body” but more because he likes another option/what I already have. But if he actually likes darker skin and bigger bodies, which apparently is his porn preference at least, why would he consistently and effectively convince me of the opposite this whole time? Honestly, I’m quite insecure and have gotten pretty persistent over the months, so this has been a well-versed subject.

Why do men have a certain taste in women that they date in real life, and another preference for what they actually prefer to get off to? Why don’t they just indulge in the type of women they fantasize about, in real life? most men are so indulgent when it comes to sex, especially this guy.. so why limit yourself from the thing you presumably idealize? 

Anyway, now I’ve multiplied my fear of never being what he actually wants by a million.

All thoughts and suggestions are welcome!!

Not His Fantasy

DEAR NOT HIS FANTASY: Well if folks want another reason why “snooping means you find things you’d rather not know”, here’s a great one.

This is easy, NHF. If your question is “does he want me, or does he want women like the ones he searches for on PornHub?” then the answer is… yes.  Both? Both. Both is good.

But I suspect that what you’re really asking is “does the fact that he’s jerking off to other women mean that he’d rather be with someone who looks like them?”, then the answer is no. There’s a temptation to assume that what we wank to is what we actually want, and that’s not really true. Certainly not in the way that people tend to think. In fact, people tend to twist themselves into knots about the difference between someone’s public facing life and what they do (to themselves) in private, especially in the privacy of their own heads.

One of the most frequent examples of this is “fierce, ask-no-man’s-pardon-take-no-man’s-s--t feminist is secretly a submissive/ likes to be spanked/ has ravishment fantasies”. None of those are terribly unusual kinks or fetishes – in fact, they’re fairly common – but they contrast so completely with the person’s stated lifestyle and values that it seems like an inherent contradiction. How could she be a ball-buster AND also like being tossed around like a toy or spanked like a naughty child? Well… because people are freaking complex and what makes are junk go “oooooh” isn’t always going to line up perfectly with the values we have outside the bedroom.

Hell, sometimes what gets us off does so precisely because it’s the opposite of our values in our everyday life. The sexual appeal of the taboo, the wrong and forbidden, of crossing over to the “dark side” if you will (for suitably variable definitions of “the dark side”) has long, long been understood. We understand that there’s a naughty thrill to be had in doing the things we’re not “supposed” to do, and occasionally that juxtaposition gets us off like literally nothing else. That doesn’t mean that we’re somehow lying about our stated values or that we don’t truly hold them. It just means that humans are basically electrified piles tapioca piloting meat mech suits so it shouldn’t be a surprise that sometimes the stuff that gets us off isn’t exactly the same as the stuff we do with our pants on.

Similarly, people will often have fantasies that may make them hornier than the human endocrine system can handle but that they don’t want to act out in real life. It may make ’em shoot off like a rocket when it’s just them and Rosie Palms, or Buzz All-in, but it’s stuff that would be an immediate boner kill if they were presented with the opportunity to do it in the flesh. Because hey, people are weird like that and isn’t it awesome?

However, another common example – one that comes up a lot in relationships – is when someone is masturbating to porn that doesn’t correspond to the sex they’re having or to porn stars that look nothing like their partners. This seeming dichotomy tends to send people in weird insecurity spirals, in no small part because… well, we tend to forget that humans are capable of holding more than one opinion at a time. And since we’re not AI who can be defeated by logical paradoxes, sometimes those opinions can seem to contradict one another. This is never more true than when it comes to what – or who – gets us off.

Think of it this way: lots of women will cheerfully oogle the cast of Magic Mike but also still love and get the screaming thigh-sweats for a dude with a dadbod, a KPop star or an UwU softboy. That doesn’t mean that they’re lying about being into one or the other. It just means that their capacity for attraction and arousal is broader than folks will give them credit for.

The same goes for men. Guys across the gender and sexuality spectrum are perfectly capable – and frequently do – get turned on by different “types”, whether that type is “big-t—ty goth GF”, “rail-thin blonde teen”, “curvy MILF”, BIPOC, MENA, southeast Asian or whatever category you want to consider. While there are some folks – regardless of gender – who are very rigid in their attraction and only get turned on by a specific type, most folks tend to vary. They may have a type that they prefer, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not attracted to others. It just means that their type often rolls with advantage on Charisma checks, that’s all. And as any seasoned gamer can tell you, rolling with advantage doesn’t mean that you’re gonna succeed every time.

Now I could just end things here, but I doubt this is going to answer your question in a satisfying way. After all, you’ve made comments about how, when you’ve made noises about changing something of your look, your boyfriend has said “nah, don’t.” And yet here he is, searching for… I dunno, Mia Khalifa or Osa Lovely. So what does that mean?

Well, if we’re being honest? It means he’s a primate with a sex drive. That’s really it. It would be one thing if, for example, he was saying he was into you, but the sex you’ve been having has been sporadic and not terribly involved and then you found that his porn search was mostly bi men. In that case, you might have reason to believe that your boyfriend’s sexuality is more fluid than he’s either willing to cop to publicly or to himself. But – assuming that the sex has been good, he’s been physically affectionate, clearly enjoys your body and so on – the fact that he’s searching for women who don’t look like you is actually pretty normal.

Here’s what’s going on: humans as a whole are a novelty-seeking species. We are capable of getting used to anything, no matter how exotic or outré. At some point, the new, unusual or different becomes the known and normal and doesn’t kick off the same chemical cascade in our brains that novelty does. This is true about just about everything in life, but especially when it comes to sex. People – guys, gals, non-binary pals – tend to like variety when it comes to our sex partners. This is known as “The Coolidge Effect”, named so after an apocryphal story involving President Coolidge and his wife.

The story goes that President Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government facility that was experimenting with new and more efficient farming techniques. As they were taken on separate tours, Mrs. Coolidge came upon the chicken run, where a rooster was very vigorously copulating with one of the hens.

“How often does this happen?” asked Mrs. Coolidge. “Oh,” said the tour-guide, a little embarrassed. “Well, many times a day. Dozens, really.” “I see,” she replied. “Be sure to tell the President this.”

Later on, President Coolidge was brought to the chicken run where, once again, the rooster was pounding away at a hen. When the tour guide conveyed Mrs. Coolidge’s message, the president paused for a moment and asked: “is it with the same hen every time?”

“No, Mr. President,” replied the guide. “It’s a different hen every time.”

“Well,” said the President, “please convey this to Mrs. Coolidge.”

The story is apocryphal, but the effect is real, and well documented in males and females of multiple species, including humans. Having sex with a new partner creates a veritable waterfall of dopamine and oxytocin that goes straight to the pleasure centers of our brains. But over time, the amount of those hormones taper off; we don’t get the same “ooomph” from the sex with that same partner. But once we have sex with a new partner, the amount of hormones ramp right back up again.

Now, I bring this up because, while we have an instinctual desire for novelty and new sex partners, that doesn’t mean that our long-term partners are bored and waiting for the opportunity to bang someone else. Sometimes the way we fulfill that desire for novelty or different partners is through porn. A quick five-finger shuffle with a browser window open or the phone propped up somewhere fulfills that desire for variety, but in a way that doesn’t break promises to our partners if we made a monogamous commitment. In fact, that desire for novelty is also why people don’t tend to only ever masturbate to one particular porn star or one video. Were that the case, then really, porn stars wouldn’t have as long and varied credits as they often do.

So to bring it back to your boyfriend: no, I don’t think he’s lying when he says he loves your body or that you match the type of woman he’s into and has dated before. Again, unless it seems like the sex has fallen off a cliff or his interest in you had high highs before dropping to incredible lows, it seems safe to say that you’re what he’s into or who he prefers to date or have relationships with. He likes you as you are, and to him, changing that (beyond the way that time changes us all) may well be like painting a Groucho mustache onto the Mona Lisa.

(That being said: if you want to dye your hair or feel like you’d prefer to put on some weight, go for it. I’m a big believer in trying new and different looks and seeing if the new one fits well or not. It may mean you no longer look like his type, but if it’s a look that makes you feel good, he may well like the results.)

The porn he’s watching involves women who look different from you is almost certainly because they look different from you. It’s getting that desire for novelty and variety fulfilled, but in a way that’s ultimately just between his ears. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you or your body or wants someone else. It’s not that he prefers other people, it’s that these are things that turn him on in addition to you doing so as well. It’s a “yes, and“, not an “instead of” situation.

This is very much a “deeds, not words” kind of thing; if his behavior with you is saying that he’s still warm for your form? Then hey, take “yes, yes, YES!” for an answer. And tell him to wipe his browser history or use an incognito window when he’s going on the tube sites.

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: You have written eloquently about the ways ADHD has affected your life and your relationships. I find myself feeling a great deal of anxiety and insecurity at a rather late stage in my relationship with my ADHD wife, whom I started dating 21 years ago and married 17 years ago. I’ve thought about some incidents which, if they involved anyone else, might indicate a lack of care for me, or even an attraction to someone else. I know you can’t say for sure what these things mean, but maybe you can help me frame them better, and not take them so personally.

First, the good part. When my wife and I met, it was virtually love at first sight. We were like heat seeking missiles. Within a short time, we were inseparable. We had a great sex life and were explicit about wanted to get married. 20 years later we are still in love, have children, and still have a very good sex. We have been faithful to each other and there has never been a time when we have come close to breaking up.

Here are the incidents that are bothering me:

1. The disappearing act. One Saturday a few months into our relationship I had plans to have dinner with my father. My then girlfriend made plans to see some friends. I learned that their plans were to go to a singles bar (friends were unattached and looking for hook-ups). This made me uncomfortable so I asked my girlfriend to go to dinner with me instead, but she refused. I pressed, saying that I would be done with dinner by 8:00, and didn’t want to miss spending the night with her. She insisted that she didn’t want to miss spending it with me either, and suggested that we meet at my place at 8:30, after dinner. I came home after dinner and waited, and waited and waited. At 9:00 I called her cell, but there was no answer. I called her all night, but she never picked up and never called me. She finally rolled in at 2:00 am, happy as a clam, unaware that she was even in trouble. She said she left her phone in her car, had forgotten to come home, and just didn’t think of calling me. Her story was that she really did just sit there talking to her friends for 6 hours. She apologized profusely. I raked her over the coals – she was in tears. In the end she acknowledged how bad this was and I forgave her. Now, 20 years later, she has no memory that this ever happened. That makes me even more suspicious.

2. Not getting the picture. 3 months into our relationship my wife found a box of old pictures at the bottom of my closet that included 15 years worth of pictures of my life with my first (ex) wife. The box had been moved from my former marital home- I never went through it and decided to keep or discard these pictures- they were just there. My then relatively new girlfriend flipped out. She demanded that I destroy all images of my ex, along with all pictures of trips I went on with her. She lectured me on how important to our relationship this was- especially if we were to marry and have kids- and the said that she had already destroyed all of her pictures of her ex-boyfriend- someone she had dated for 2 years- in a bonfire, no less! I complied, and destroyed the pictures while she watched over me.

Fast forward 20 years. While moving some books around, I came across some photo albums that I know my wife bought about a year after the incident with my pictures. I opened them to see what was in them and found dozens of pictures of her ex boyfriend, and a whole album of pictures from a trip she took with him. Most of these pictures were incidental- he just happened to be in them- but a few were extremely romantic, including a “lovebirds” picture of her wrapping herself around him and snuggling her cheek into his shoulder. I looked around some more (I was freaked out by the albums) and found a box in our basement with what appeared to be the pictures she chose not to put in the album, including about 8 couples pictures of her with her ex.

Finding these pictures shocked me and caused me to have a panic attack. I knew she wasn’t secretly in love with her ex, and I know that these albums and the box had been out, for me to look at at any time, not kept secretly in an underwear drawer. She obviously made the album without any thought of making me destroy my pictures a year before, and somehow without any recognition of the impact on me of seeing that use has put romantic pictures of her ex into an album she made over a year into our relationship. Not surprisingly, my wife has no memory whatsoever of making these albums or of putting the pictures in the box. She has no idea why she did this, or why she failed to destroy them. Hardest for me, she is angry at me for being upset about what she did, and hasn’t really shown any remorse about it at all, even though she effectively broke her word and a very important commitment. She acts as if her younger self who did this is a different person- not her now- and she isn’t accountable for what this young woman did. I had to make her destroy the picture of her ex. She didn’t offer to destroy the trip pictures; awhile later I made her destroy those too.

3. Nailed to the wall. My wife was a collector of ceramic tiles. She would pick them up whenever we traveled to places. When we bought our house, she out them up on our wall. They are like a travel montage – each from a different place. One day I noticed that one of the tiles was from the home country of my wife’s ex boyfriend (he was a foreigner), a place my wife has never been. I asked her what it was and she said it was a gift from him. Then it hit her what she had done. I blew up and made her throw out the tile. She had put it up with apparently no recognition that she was memorializing her ex-boyfriend on the wall of her marital home. It was a tile with the name of his country written on it. It may as well have been his name written on it. I can’t believe she could put a memento of her ex boyfriend on our wall without realizing how offensive to me and to our marriage it was.

There are many other examples of thoughtless, inconsiderate behavior, including instances where I swear she literally has forgot that I existed. My rational brain tells me that none of this is intentional and that none of it means she doesn’t love me, or that she isn’t over her ex. (She says she hasn’t even thought about him in 20 years.)

But I’ve entered a stage, triggered by finding those albums, where these things are getting to me. I’m worried that maybe she hooked up with me on the rebound. I’m worried that I misperceived her feelings for me. I’m worried that my ADHD girlfriend may have done something impulsive the night she disappeared and has chosen not to tell me the truth about it.

You can’t read her mind or know the facts about these situations, but you know what it feels like to have an ADHD brain. Can you give me some perspective? Could the disappearing night just be distraction? We’re the pictures and the tile just hyperfocus? I’m hurting right now and want a way to see these things in a less threatening way.

Thanks!

Coping with ADHD Partner

DEAR COPING WITH ADHD PARTNER: Well I see we’re going to be having another day of “the problem you have is not the problem you think you have” here at NerdLove Industries.

OK, CWAP, strap in, this is going to be a rough one.

We’ll start by talking a little about how ADHD affects people and – importantly – its interaction with memory. One of the things that people often don’t realize is that there is more than one type of ADHD. We tend to think of ADHD as being a case of someone who’s so wound up they can’t sit still or who’s so easily distracted that the slightest thing will set them off, like the golden retriever from Up. While that’s one form of ADHD, another common form is what’s called inattentive-type ADHD, where people have a harder time focusing on tasks and forget seemingly important things. They’ll lose things frequently, have difficulty following or remembering instructions and will frequently seem to just… not pay attention.

Now, this sounds a lot like what your wife has. However, ADHD in general is tied to memory issues, especially short term and working memory. It helps to think of working memory as being a little RAM in a computer; data gets uploaded to RAM while in use, then returned to – or pasted into – long-term storage. People who have ADHD have issues with their working memory making the transfer to long-term storage. This is why people with ADHD seem so careless, absentminded or forgetful; the short-term memory simply doesn’t make the transfer to storage. This means that, among other things, folks with ADHD will frequently forget about instructions, dates, appointments, deadlines and so on. Sometimes this can even be immediate; someone will mention setting up a get together on a particular day and time and the person with ADHD may as well have just heard a dial tone for all that it got stored in long-term memory.

The short-term memory issues can also affect things like object permanence or even simply seeing things. One of the clues that someone has ADHD is often a tendency for items to fade into the background as soon as they put them down. Even if it’s in the most obvious and unmistakable place possible, if you have ADHD, it can be like you put the thing down and then it immediately glitched out of the universe for all that you can look directly at it and not see it.

Similarly, while the exact mechanism isn’t known yet, ADHD can affect things like long-term memory performance and even the sense of the passage of time. Speaking from my own experiences, not only do I have issues with remembering the exact dates (or even the year) that events happened – even seemingly momentous events – but friends can bring up stuff we did together years ago that I literally have no memory of. It can be supremely annoying under the best of circumstances. If you’re someone who doesn’t know they have ADHD or how that affects memory, it can be terrifying.

With this information in mind, much of your wife’s behavior makes sense. It’s completely understandable that she would’ve forgotten her phone, that she would’ve forgotten plans that she’d made – especially if she made them that day – and lost track of time because she was having a good time hanging with her friends. This isn’t a matter of not respecting you or your time or your relationship enough to remember; it’s that the mechanism in her brain that allows her to remember things is faulty. If she didn’t have a diagnosis at that point, wasn’t on medication yet or wasn’t on medication that actually worked for her, this is entirely understandable. It’s frustrating to be sure – believe me, it’s frustrating to experience – but it’s understandable. So is the fact that she doesn’t seem to remember this at all. This is a very common experience for folks with ADHD, myself included.

The same goes for things like the tile on the wall or her photo album; odds are good that shortly after those were put into place – on the wall or in the attic – she quite literally forgot they were there. She may well literally not see the tile or attach particular significance to it that would last beyond it leaving her eye-line. If you have ADHD, “out of sight, out of mind” is a very real and quite literal phenomena.

So yes, everything you describe – the forgetfulness, the object impermanence, the not having any memory of a particular event or time… those are all very typical of inattentive or combination-type ADHD.

All that having been said…

HOLY HOPPING SHEEP S--T dude, I don’t know if you’ve realized what you wrote but you do not cover yourself in glory, here. Your girlfriend – now wife – definitely had issues that having ADHD have made worse but you have decidedly not helped things. Like, f--king hell dude, you’re pushing her to change her plans with her friends because you don’t like where they’re going? Demanding that she come spend time with you instead of her pals because going to a bar made you uncomfortable? Yelling at her afterwards for not following through with the thing that you shouldn’t have been pushing for in the first place? “Raking her over the coals” over your goddamn insecurity? What – and I can’t stress this enough – the actual f--k, my dude. That is a deeply, deeply s--tty thing to do to someone you supposedly cared for and trusted. If you had no reason other than your own insecurity to believe that she was going to get up to sketchy s--t at the bar with the girls, then that was very much a you problem, not a her problem and it was  – and apparently still is – on you to sort out your trust issues.

Now, her flipping the f--k out over the photos of your ex-wife was also very not cool. I can understand what triggered that – rejection-sensitive dysphoria, where the fear of rejection is dialed up to 11 and then snaps the knob clean off is a comorbidity of ADHD and other disorders – but that s--t isn’t acceptable either. I’ve had my own lifelong struggles with RSD symptoms, and I’ve managed to avoid demanding that people destroy all evidence that they had previous relationships. I can understand the trigger (now, anyway) but that doesn’t change the fact that behavior was unacceptable from her. It was disrespectful, it was unwarranted and deeply s--tty of her and honestly, it would’ve been grounds for dumping her on the spot.

However, her s--ttiness there – and again, it was s--tty and out of line of her – doesn’t make it acceptable when you turn around and do the exact same thing decades later. This isn’t really a case where turnabout is fair play; this is a sterling example of “two wrongs don’t make a right”. It was s--tty of her to demand that you destroy those photos. However, I would’ve hoped that maybe that experience – the unfairness of it, the frustrating resentment of someone you care for not trusting or believing you – might trigger some empathy and understanding from you when you were on the other side of the experience. Instead, you freaked out again and were actively cruel for no goddamn good reason other than “she did it first”.

And seeing as both of you are grown-ass adults, that grade-school excuse doesn’t fly.

Same with your losing your s--t about a tile on the wall from a trip she took with her ex. F--king hell, man, get some goddamn perspective here. You had a past and an ex-wife. You, presumably, didn’t undergo some Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind treatment where you erased even the memory of having been with your ex-wife after your divorce. Having those photos from your relationship didn’t mean that you were “memorializing” your past relationship at the expense of your present one. The same goes for your wife. She had a past. She had lovers before you. She may well still have fond memories of them and of the time spent with him… or she may have kept that plate because while she may not have fond memories of him, she had fond memories of that trip and didn’t stuff those memories into an oubliette because she broke up with him or did some Stalinist rewriting of her own history.

But here’s the thing: you don’t want her to erase those memories. Everything she did with her ex, everything she experienced with him and felt while she was with him? Not only are those the things that ultimately lead to her being with you and not her ex, but all of those experiences are what made her who she was when you met her and fell in love with her.

People are allowed to have exes, my dude. People are allowed to have fond memories of exes, of things they did with those exes and the experiences they had with them. Those aren’t a threat to you, they don’t diminish her feelings for you, nor do they take away from the relationship you have now. It would be one thing if she had photos of her and her ex snuggled up together all over the house and was rubbing your nose in it or giving you reason to believe that she wasn’t over him. I could understand being upset or anxious if her ex were still in the picture and were actively interfering in your relationship. I could understand it if she’d cheated on  you with him and kept souvenirs from the times when she did.

But a f--king photo album tucked in with other books (that apparently hadn’t been touched in years), more photos forgotten and buried in other s--t in the attic, and a goddamn commemorative plate? Your reaction isn’t just disproportionate to the offense, it’s f--king unreasonable and borderline abusive.

I don’t know what trauma you may be dealing with our what hang-ups you may have. I don’t know if your ex wife utterly f--ked you over and left scars or what… but in this letter, you have demonstrated some deep seated insecurities and you’ve apparently been taking them out on your wife. While I can understand how not realizing how much ADHD can affect memory and behavior could amplify the anxiety factor, you don’t seem to trust your wife or your relationship at all and fly off the handle at her at the slightest provocation.

You, my dude, need to deal with your jealousy and control issues here. Maybe there’s some lingering resentment and fear from early on when it’s a little more understandable that your trust in someone wouldn’t have been as strong as it should be after 20 years. But if that’s the case, then that’s something you need to work out with a therapist – possibly a couple’s counselor too, but definitely on your own. Demanding that your partner destroy their property because it makes you insecure is deeply f--ked, controlling and toxic behavior. It wasn’t right when she did it and it sure as f--k wasn’t right when you did it.

So yeah, ADHD f--ks with memory and if it’s untreated it can cause irrational fears to make you do stupid s--t. It can be intensely frustrating for the partners of people with ADHD, especially when it’s undiagnosed or untreated. But none of it justifies being s--tty back, nor does it justify taking out your insecurities on her.

Hopefully she’s on medication that works for her and has learned new ways to manage her  memory issues. YOU, however, need to get your own s--t under control if you want to be a good partner and husband… to her or anyone else.

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 just got engaged to my boyfriend of 6 years and was extremely happy until I found pictures of an old fling in his email. They weren’t dirty pictures, which I actually found more offensive. They were just pictures of her smiling and doing regular things. 

The thing is, he cheated on me with her for the first 2 years of our 6 year relationship. I should have left him at the time, but I didn’t because he insisted they’d never been intimate, they just would flirt and kissed… once. 

A year ago I bought him a new phone and from the date stamp on the email forward, I can see that he transferred the pictures from his old phone to his email. 

This is just making me question everything about our relationship. Is this girl the One for him? Am I just holding him back from true love with this home-wrecking hussy?

Standing In The Way

DEAR STANDING IN THE WAY: Man, it was literally just yesterday that I was asking someone why they were with their partner in the first place and here we are again…

OK, SITW, it seems like it’s time to reiterate my opinion on people who go snooping through their partner’s stuff: it’s almost never justified and almost never a good idea. Under the best of circumstances, you’re violating their trust for no good reason. At worst, you’re going to find things that you would rather have not known and won’t be able to un-know. And, quite frankly, snooping is pretty much only ever justified retroactively. And to be very blunt: it really wasn’t justified here.

At all.

In fact, let’s be honest: this is precisely the sort of thing that I warn people about. You went snooping and you found something that has now utterly ruined your happiness, and it’s not even anything all that shocking or incriminating. You found… normal pictures of another person in his email. Pictures that he wanted to keep for reasons that, quite frankly, are ultimately known to him. Maybe he’s got feelings for her and never got over her. Maybe they were friends whose friendship got a little too intense but he still has good memories of their friendship. Maybe he’s just someone who keeps mementos of his past because they remind him of good times from that period of his life.

The only person who does know what those mean would be your fiancé. But since you found these by violating his privacy, asking about them means that you’re going to have to admit that you went snooping first. That, needless to say, is not a great way to start a conversation about how he may or may not feel about someone or why he has photos of… a friend, an ex, a rando he was sticking it to, whatever. Especially if those are photos with an innocent explanation.

And yes, context in this case matters, especially context surrounding the relationship between him and this person he cheated on you with. That’s going to explain a lot about why he has those pictures and what they mean to him. Especially if she was someone who was part of his life before you two got together. The idea that exes get retconned into non-existence after we start dating someone new or that we can’t have fond memories of a past partner – or friend – because we broke up is absurd, unrealistic and in many cases, toxic. Expecting someone to pretend that they never had a past or that their past has to be something they don’t look back on with fondness is mindblowingly bonkers.

But let’s talk about the why of it all, for a second. Why you went snooping and why you found those pictures. Because that’s the real issue here, to my mind.

Straight talk, SITW: I would be very hard pressed to call what your fiancé did cheating. If the sum totality of what he and this person did was be flirty and kissed one time, then that’s not cheating; that’s someone who danced up to the edge of making a mistake and pulled back from it. I’m not going to say that this wouldn’t, shouldn’t or didn’t hurt to learn. That’s all very real and very valid. My opinion on whether this counts as cheating is irrelevant when it comes to how it made you feel. If that hurt you, then that hurt you.

That being said, my opinion of whether it would be cheating or not or to what degree comes back in when it comes to your response to it all. I would think that breaking up with a partner of two years over flirting and a kiss would be out of proportion to the nature of the offense. If that’s all it takes for you to throw things aside, then I’m wondering how things will go when the two of you handle far worse conflicts… ones that’ll have nothing to do with sex or attraction.

And while I’ll be the first to say that my views on infidelity are nuanced and that I don’t think that cheating is the worst thing someone can do in a relationship… honestly, a single kiss isn’t something that I would say validates four years of hanging onto a grudge. Especially if you’re still so pissed about it that four years later, you’re going through his email and checking on him.

Now, to be fair to you: yeah, he says that things never went further than flirting and a single kiss. Maybe he’s lying to you about it to cover his ass. That’s a thing that happens all the time, god knows. Plenty of folks will plead to a lesser charge if they think it’ll get their ass out of a worse one when they’ve been caught dead to rights.

HOWEVER.

If you truly believe that he wasn’t telling you the truth then, if you can’t trust him? Then, yes, you should have broken up with him back then. Because, quite frankly, if you’re going to take someone back after they made a mistake but never forgive them and never let them earn your trust back? Then you’re just being cruel to them for no reason other than you feel justified in continuing to punish them for their transgressions. If you’re forever going to be going through their s--t to keep tabs on them, then there’s no point in continuing the relationship. Either they’re a cheating piece of s--t who can never be trusted – in which case, why are you still with them? – or there’s literally nothing they can do to prove that they’re sorry or make things right and treating them like this is just being hurtful for the sake of hurting them. In either case, breaking up would be the right answer.

And let’s be real here: you clearly don’t trust him. This wasn’t a “oops, his browser was open to this specific email”. This wasn’t a case of “I asked to use his phone to send a text and I couldn’t have not noticed”. This was “I deliberately went looking through your private effects for proof of something and oh look I found it.” That ain’t cool and that is not the basis for a long, happy relationship. If you’re either going to be continually violating his privacy or if he doesn’t get privacy where you’re concerned? Then break up with him now. All you’ll be doing by staying together is prolonging the fighting, the misery and the anger, and life is too goddamn short for that.

If this was a one-time thing, a moment where you failed your particular saving throw and you regret it… well, I would hope that you could have similar compassion for him having done the same thing. If so, the best thing you could do is stuff this down the memory hole and work with your fiancé – and a relationship counselor – on forgiveness, rebuilding trust and communication. But that’s going to take a lot of work and a willingness to actually forgive and move on. If that moment of betrayal from four years ago is still so fresh and present in your mind and it’s always going to be something you’ll be holding over his head for the rest of your relationship? Then end it now, work on issues around jealousy and trust and start dating someone else.

It’s the best thing you could do… for him as well as for you.

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