Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m writing to you since I have a problem and I don’t know how to solve it anymore. A little while before the pandemic started in 2020 I’ve experienced a massive drop in my sex drive. Before, I’d be attracted to people, interested in and sex and masturbation, but to this day I’m not interested in all of this anymore and it stresses me out and makes me sad. The only explainable thing I can trace this back to is an unwanted sexual encounter right before the pandemic where somebody crossed my boundaries.

Due to this and the pandemic the last 3 years have been quite a mess. While I definitely can say that I’ve been experiencing depressive episodes and avoidance of anything sexual in the past, since this year I’m feeling so much better. I have lovely flatmates, a new job, a lot of friends, and I never lay in bed anymore struggling to get up. but I’m struggling a lot with the fact that I’m unable to have sex, masturbate or even being aroused. I’m never aroused anymore.

This is very stressful for me, because I’m not having any solutions that fit my situation. All I’m getting is “try to relax” which is so unhelpful it makes me want to punch the person in the face or they are suggesting I’m having self-esteem issues (which is not true. I’m having self-worth and I really like my body). Or that I should try masturbation because this is supposed to be safer for people who had unwanted sexual encounters. But I feel like advice for people with sexual hang ups don’t fit me (relax, sometimes you don’t want sex, talk to your partner, explore). They don’t fit me because I don’t have a partner and I can’t explore my sexuality if there’s nothing there anymore which I can explore. Sexual media and fantasies are boring and maybe at best not-distressing and pleasant, but not arousing at all, even its stuff that has been core of my sexuality before. And I know from before what it’s like to be not in the mood in a situation. But these phases have never been so long and I just did not feel it but never felt like I’ve had no sex drive. Advice for people with trauma doesn’t help me much either. I don’t think I’ve ever had flashbacks or anything and I feel very much like myself now again, except for not being able to enjoy myself sexually. But it’s not something where I desire someone and maybe want to f--k them and not being able to due to unwanted memories of flashbacks or being scared, I’m just don’t feel interested or attracted or aroused even if I’m attracted to them romantically.��I’ve talked a lot to somebody who experienced sever sexual abuse and while I formerly related to things they experienced I do not anymore. I feel like I’ve worked through the nonconsensual situation, I’ve journaled a lot about it, and I’m probably starting therapy but I feel like I’m just too stubborn to accept that my sexuality changed and this is my new normal and therapy can’t change that either. I can’t help to compare myself to them: they are having really obvious really intense symptoms, and I just don’t have them. I feel very much like myself and I really like myself, really not struggling so why can’t I masturbate or like somebody while they can f--k several people while dealing with their severe PTSD-symptoms? next to them I feel really s--tty. I’ve never really felt down for not having sex so far, but this is really taking a toll on me. especially it’s not a question of “there’s nobody available” but more like “even if there’s someone I’d maybe like in that way or could like, I would not be able to be attracted to them or aroused by them or myself”. and I feel like they try to explain my problems with trauma, but when I bring it up that maybe my sexuality changed because I don’t have symptoms and I should just stop wanting sex and accept it, they don’t believe. And tbh I don’t know what to believe either.��I’m really sad and angry that I’m not able anymore to enjoy this part of myself because before this thing happened masturbating, consuming sexual media and dating people was really joyful and easy. ofc there have been problems (like not knowing how to communicate my boundaries or being scared of certain things and therefore not pursuing folks) but they felt easy to solve or I knew I should just give it time and there would be a solution. with this problem it feels like I’m hitting a brick wall and I really hate it and I’m so scared that it will stay like this forever. I’ve gave myself so much time but I’m really fed up now. I’m really jealous of folks who can enjoy sexual stuff and it hurts so much to see them do it.��My question is: how can I tell if this is just normal sexuality and wanting to changing that would do more harm than good or if change would be fine? And how can I get my sex drive back if no normal advice helped me?

No Time For Love

DEAR NO TIME FOR LOVE: First and foremost, NTFL: I’m sorry for what happened to you. However, I feel like I should point out that trauma comes in a lot of forms. Just because you’re not experiencing things in the exact same way others do doesn’t mean that you’re not experiencing trauma. Diagnosing yourself based on other people’s symptoms can be incredibly misleading at best.

Is it possible that this is all a result of having been assaulted? I mean… sure. It’s certainly possible. But I think there’re other possibilities out there that you may not have accounted for.

(Standard disclaimer: Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor. Please don’t take anything I say as a diagnosis or medical advice, I’m a loudmouth with an advice column, not a medical or mental health professional.)

As a general rule, my advice for when there’s a major change in one’s libido, it’s important to look to see what’s changed that may be having an effect. A lot of medications – especially if you’re taking anything for depression or anxiety – will kill your sex-drive deader than the dodo. A number of SSRIs, such as Zoloft, are infamous for dropping one’s sex drive faster than walking in on your parents reenacting the food scene from 9 ½ Weeks. And if you’ve recently changed medications – even ones that seem innocuous – that may be a key contributing factor.

Similarly, if you’ve had changes in sleep schedules, drastic changes in weight, started or stopped smoking, drama and stress at work… these are all well-known libido stompers. You should also talk to your GP about getting your hormone levels checked; sometimes the issue is purely chemical.

And of course, part of what you describe – when something you loved no longer makes you happy and you can’t bring yourself to participate in it again – is a very common symptom of depression. I know you’ve said that you’re not having a depressive episode and that other aspects of your life are doing just fine, but it’s possible that this is still the results of depression. That’s something that would definitely need to be brought up with a trained medical professional.

But there’s at least one humongous potential cause that’s hanging over this letter like Banquo’s ghost: The COVID pandemic.

Remember at the start of the pandemic when people suggested that the lockdowns would trigger a post-pandemic baby-boom? With couples and roommates and such locked in together for who-the-f--k-knows how long, people thought we’d all be friggin’ in the riggin’ because there was f--k-all else to do.

Well, turns out it was the exact opposite of all that. Thousands upon thousands reported that their get-up and go just plain got up and went. Many folks lost all interest in sex, full stop. And it wasn’t confined to sex; many people found that the couldn’t enjoy or participate in things they loved and brought them joy ­– from reading to music to games or creative pursuits. As it turns out, living through an apocalypse is really goddamn difficult and the stress, fear and chaos of it all have long-lasting effects. This can be exacerbated by people swearing up and down that it’s all over and we’re supposed to just return to normal like it never happened – as though the effects of living through millions of deaths and the feeling that we had been abandoned by our governments and the powers-that-be were something we could turn off like a switch.

Quite frankly, a lot of the current state of the world is the cumulation of worldwide trauma and we need to reckon with that.

Now, here’s the other side of things: some of what was suggested for you was actually not bad advice. Masturbation, for example, may actually be useful. A lot of people don’t have spontaneous arousal patterns – the old boner-outta-nowhere or suddenly being wetter than a cat in a hurricane. Instead, they tend to have responsive arousal patterns – instead of being aroused and then having sex, they experience sexual activity and become aroused during the process. So by starting with physical arousal – in this case, masturbation – you may find that mental arousal happens during the act rather than before. Giving yourself a work-over even if you’re not feeling it at the start may trigger the actual desire.

Similarly, being told to relax about it sounds like someone dismissing your legitimate concerns with condescending head pats and bulls--t, but what they’re saying is that you can’t force yourself to feel aroused or be attracted to someone. And to make matters worse, the more you focus on your current state of non-horniness, the more you reinforce it. You’re not just keeping it at the forefront of your brain and spending all your bandwidth on it. You’re getting so frustrated because you know this is something you’re capable of but it’s. Just. Not. WORKING. and as a result, you’re actually making things worse.

It’s a little like when you can’t beat that one goddamn boss in Elden Ring or Bloodborne or, hell, goddamn Ninja Gaiden for the NES. The more you try, it seems like the worse you get until you’re about to set a record for how far you can hurl a game controller through drywall.

But if you just… stop for a while, put down the controller, turn off the console and walk away for an evening, you often find that when you come back to it, you blow through that level like it wasn’t even there. That time away let you relax, recharge and calm down. That, in turn, allowed you to focus the way you needed to, respond with cat-like dexterity and send another collection of pixels and polygons to hell like it deserves.

So giving yourself permission to just not be horny for a while can be valuable. Instead of frustrating yourself trying to force the issue or make it happen, giving yourself permission to just not think about it and just be can be helpful. Clearing your mind, letting yourself de-stress and just getting to a point where you can inhabit your body without feeling like you need to force sexy thoughts may well be like taking a deep breath and feeling every muscle in your body unknot at once.

My recommendation is to try a little bit of both. Giving yourself permission to just not be horny or attracted to people and letting things be can be important. Testing the waters (as it were) even when you’re not in the mood may, at the very least, give you insight as to whether it’s that your libido has cratered or your response patterns have changed.

But also: you should talk to medical professionals – both your GP and a therapist. Ruling out any physical or chemical causes is a good start, as is addressing the possibility of how the pandemic has affected your mental health. In fact, since you mention that you’re probably going to therapy, I’d recommend that you make that a priority. However, I would suggest that you may want to at least start with those sessions being a bit more wide-ranging, rather than trying to leap immediately to what you would see as an obvious cause. Just as holding tension in your neck and shoulders can cause pain in your hips and lower-back, stress, trauma and other sources of distress can cause effects that don’t always seem directly related.

The odds that it’s any one, easily addressed cause is relatively low. It’s seems far more likely to be a blend of issues that’re leaving you high and dry. But the first step in bringing your sex drive back – in whatever form it may take – is going to be letting yourself just be what you are for a while. Leaning into it and not fighting it may well be what lets everything else come back into alignment and either return to normal function or allow you to treat the cause(s) rather than the symptom.

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’m an AFAB genderqueer person. When I was in my teens and 20s I was very sexually active. I had a lot of confidence in bed. But then I got married. My husband made it clear he thought I was a terrible lover. (He was emotionally and physically abusive, too.) The only person I dated after my marriage, a woman, did horrible things to my sexual self-esteem as well, making me feel I wasn’t good enough.

Now I’m in my mid-40s and haven’t had regular sex in years. I’d like to get back in the game, have some casual hookups, but I have terrible performance anxiety. I had a hookup with a man about a year ago and it didn’t go well because I was so anxious.  I’ve been afraid to try again.

Any tips?  Thanks.

— Twice Bitten

DEAR TWICE BITTEN: I’m sorry all this happened to you, TB; having people you care for abuse your trust like this can be so incredibly damaging.

I’m going to start with my standard recommendation: if you haven’t already, talking to a counselor would be a good start. A lot of times, having someone to talk to can help exorcise the ghosts that abuse can leave behind even after the abusers are gone.

You might also find some benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy – even self-directed exercises; the focus on recognizing and questioning those unwelcome thoughts, recognizing triggers and working on changing your relationship and reactions to them may be helpful in your situation.

But as for sex… I’m going to be honest, TB: I don’t know if casual sex is a good idea for you right now. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with casual hook-ups but because of what’s at stake for you and what you’ve been dealing with.

Here’s the thing: you’ve had multiple relationships – both apparently profoundly abusive – and they’ve damaged your self-esteem and left you with wounds that haven’t fully healed. You’re in a place where you feel insecure in your sexuality, in your ability to connect to others and to perform in the moment. While I understand part of what you’re looking for is to restore your confidence and to get back the part of you that you lost… I don’t think that hook-ups and casual sex are a good place to find them. If anything, I think you’d find that casual hook-ups are likely to cause more performance anxiety for you.

You’ve had your trust violated, your sense of self damaged and your ability to relax and connect with others has been hindered. I suspect part of what you’re going to need is the ability to feel imperfect with a partner while you’re trying to get your groove back, and I don’t think you’re necessarily going to find that in a hook-up scenario.

Part of the problem is that right now, I suspect you feel like you have something to prove – primarily to yourself, but measured through the metric of how the sex is for your partner. But this often runs dead-bang into the complication that to really get into it and feel certain and safe in your body and skill, you need to be able to relax and lose yourself to an extent. That’s really difficult to do when you worry that your partner’s judging you or when the voice of your jerkbrain starts dripping poison in your ear about how someone’s behaving. You risk reading far too much into every moan, grimace, muscle twitch, hip shake and lip bite and getting caught in an analysis paralysis loop at the worst possible time – creating the unfortunate loop of self-consciousness and performance anxiety that you’re trying to break out of.

While I don’t think you need a Proper Relationship – with capital letters – to recover, I think what you are going to need is a partner or partners who you feel safe with, who you feel comfortable with and whom you can trust and relax enough with to risk imperfection. They need to be people who you can trust to be patient, who know what you’re going through and who you can not only trust to be honest, but also to not be judgmental – even if the judgmental version is only Them As What Lives In Your Head, rather than the one currently between your thighs.

Whether that ends up being multiple concurrent partners, one partner for a limited period of time or even a connection that ends up lasting longer than either of you expect, the gentleness, patience and trust are going to be vital so that you can reconnect with yourself and remember who you were before your abusive exes tried to bury that part of you.

The tricky thing is: that’s a connection that tends to be built over time, rather than found right off the bat with a Tinder match or a flirty person at the bar.

Understandably, this can take time, and that’s not necessarily what you’re hoping for. But it’s a little like an athlete with a horrible injury; you can either take the time necessary to heal and recover, or you can try to rush the process to get back in the game and risk a career-ending result.

There are some options that may, if not speed up the process, at least streamline it. There are sex therapists and sexual surrogates out there who are trauma-informed and work with survivors of abusive relationships who’re trying to get back on the horse… as it were. That may be one option for you, depending.

You may – and I stress may – also want to see if there are some options for you to turn down the volume on your jerkbrain with a partner that you know well and trust implicitly. Taking a low-THC edible before a make-out session might help you relax and turn off the fears and worries to let you bang without questioning every move, touch or sensation. However, I’d suggest seeing this as a jumpstart, rather than a solution; you don’t want to set an association of needing to self-medicate in order to do something you used to enjoy. And it’s still going to require that trust, connection and communication before, during and afterwards – for your safety and your healing

Yeah, it’s f--ked up and frustrating. The negativity bias we all have guarantees that s--tty experiences are going to stick to us like superglue while we need four times as many positive ones to drown out the negative. There’s not really any way around that, unfortunately; this is part of why time is a crucial aspect of the healing process – to let us cultivate enough of the good so that we’re armored against the inevitable times when things don’t go according to plan.

But while doing the work is often frustratingly, grinding-your-teeth-to-powder slow… it’s still necessary. But most importantly: when you do get there, it’s worth it.

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’ve been a reader for a very long time and you’ve given so much great advice over the years! I’ve taken much of it to heart and have put in a lot of work to improve my life in so many ways. My friendships are far stronger, I have interesting hobbies, consider myself fairly attractive, and am a far more confident person!

My dating life has had to be placed on the back burner because of my work and school situation. See, I majored in chemical engineering which was extremely difficult and left me with very little time to meet people and date while in school. I also graduated, moved to a new city, and then the pandemic hit which also meant that I had no way to meet people and date. Last year, I really focused on building up a social circle through my city’s salsa dancing community and incorporating tons of what I learned from you. Because of only focusing on that, I now have a rock solid group of friends focused around something I really enjoy. I’ve even taken up the role of group planner and planned several trips with everyone and am considering becoming a volunteer organizer within my dance organization!

I really want to focus on my dating life now and get a better handle of what I want in a partner and how I can be a better partner myself. Because of my major and the pandemic, I haven’t really had much of a chance to date. I’ve only had two very short relationships back in high school, one of which was abusive. I am 26, still a virgin, and nervous around sex. I also have this huge fear of romantic rejection that I am actively working on getting over. It’s taken some time, but I can at least ask a woman out without needing to drink several shots to not feel scared.

Here’s where my predicament lies. I recently accepted a job that will have me moving countries every 2-3 years. It’s an absolute dream job for me, and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I am worried that finding a partner is already difficult because of my lack of experience, gigantic fear of rejection, and nervousness around sex. I really want to gain experience with both serious and casual dating. I am in a bit of a catch-22 because I have so much built up fear that I feel would be easier to get over with someone I was a bit more serious with, but really just want to date casually for the time being. Dating apps have not been a successful avenue for me because I am a man and extremely short at 5’1.” I feel as if I need someone to kind of hold my hand through everything I am scared of, just once or twice, and then I will have so much more freedom since those types of social situations will be less foreign to me.

Ideally I would try to start a casual relationship with someone I was already fairly close friends with because at least I’d trust the person and feel less scared. My rejection fear tells me that this is a terrible idea and will ruin my social circle by introducing some weird drama. I logically know that this is unlikely, but it’s hard to ignore my mind screaming at me whenever I consider this.

Any thoughts on how to conquer my fear, gain some comfort, and handle dating while nomadic are appreciated! Keep being such a wonderful source of help!

Sincerely,

Dating Dancing Nomad

DEAR DATING DANCING NOMAD: First, I’m glad you’ve made so much progress, and you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. I’m also sorry that you were caught in an abusive relationship in high-school. That is unquestionably part of what’s affecting you here. But that’s only one part.

Now, I want to qualify all of this by saying that what you see as an ideal starting point isn’t a bad thing. However, I think that a lot of what you see as an ideal, or the sorts of relationships you’re hoping for aren’t going to work out the way you would hope. This is in no small part because you’re coming to them from a place of fear and, to a certain extent, misunderstanding.

This is important to recognize, because the whole “can’t always get what you want/ but you can get what you need” thing is true. So too is “sometimes the best gift the gods give are unanswered prayers”. It’s entirely possible to get what you want and realize that what you wanted was the wrong thing or that getting it made things worse, not better.

So I think part of what you need right now is to face the fears and anxieties first, to overcome them and let them pass through you, so that you’re not making decisions based off those fears.

Here’s the problem you’re facing: you’ve basically created a long series of imaginary problems that you’ve convinced yourself that you’ll inevitably face and let them be the reason why you “can’t” do something. Then, to make matters worse, because you’ve created those obstacles in your head, the only way through would be solutions that you also invented. And since our brains treat what we imagine as real, you’ve more or less forced yourself to constantly experience rejection and worst-case scenarios and solutions that are even riskier and more upsetting than the problems they’re supposed to fix.

You have, for all intents and purposes, been hurting your own feelings for no good reason whatsoever.

Now here’s why this is a problem: these worst-case scenarios you imagine, and the solutions you’ve imagined for them have become a significant handicap for you because they’ve become a reason to avoid the things you’re worried about. This is entirely understandable; anxiety, in a perverse way, is a way that our brains try to protect us. Yeah, it makes us f--king miserable… but “safe” isn’t the same as “happy”. If one form of misery keeps us from the supposed danger our anxiety is keeping us away from, then as far as that part of our brain is concerned, it’s done its job correctly.

But the problem is that avoiding the things we’re afraid of actually makes those fears worse.

Like I said, it’s an understandable part of human nature to want to avoid unpleasant experiences, including things that we’re afraid of. But what we’re often trying to avoid – especially when we’re talking about non-physical fears, like a fear of rejection – are the feelings those events cause in us. This includes the very unpleasant feelings, physical and emotional, that come with fear and anxiety. As we try to avoid those feelings, we often end up fearing those feelings too… and so we try to avoid things that might make us feel them.

This is why avoiding the things we’re afraid of rarely helps. If anything, avoidance makes things worse. If we take your example – a fear of rejection, fears of ruining things by asking a friend on a date, and so on – what we have are a series of reasons for you to not do those things. The longer you continue to avoid doing them, in the name of not triggering those fears and anxieties, the easier it becomes to keep not doing them… and that causes those fears and anxieties to grow. Avoidance is a maladaptive system of handling anxiety, and all it does is increase the things you’re anxious about, until even things that are tangentially related become triggers.

Between the scenarios you’ve imagined and the tendency to avoid anything that smacks of them, you’ve functionally forced yourself to live in a zone of “safety” (with big sarcastic quotes) that just keeps shrinking as time goes on. It’s a sort of negative reinforcement; you’re in a situation where you feel afraid and anxious, you get out of that situation and feel relief. But since relief comes from getting away from that situation instead of confronting and pushing through, you train yourself to try to avoid the situation. That then increasingly becomes the response to any fear or anxiety trigger – avoid it, feel better.

This isn’t entirely unreasonable. If you’re afraid of drowning, staying out of the water makes sense. But when those anxieties are tied to things that you want – like, say, dating – avoidance just sets you up to live in that zone of safety that just keeps getting smaller and smaller, while the feelings of anxiety just intensify.

So what do you do about this? Well, first of all, I’d recommend therapy – specifically cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT has a pretty solid track record for dealing with anxiety issues and phobias, as well as intrusive and unwelcome thoughts regarding those anxieties. Think of it as retraining your brain and undoing the conditioning that you’ve been inadvertently creating.

The next thing I would suggest is creative visualization. Remember what I said about how our brains treat what we imagine as having really happened? Well, that cuts both ways. The worst-case scenarios you imagine aren’t visions of the future, they’re things you are making up in your own head. That means you control them… including how they play out. So rather than thinking of all the ways things could go horribly wrong, you want to take those moments and start to consciously imagine them going well. Hey guess what, women you meet at parties are happy to see you and think you’re cute and intriguing! The cutie you see all the time at Starbucks is single, ready to mingle and has an interest in salsa dancing!

Yeah, it seems really goddamn woo-woo to just say “visualize it and you’ll make it happen”, but what you’re doing isn’t “manifesting” success, it’s changing the operant conditioning that you’ve been exposing yourself to. You’re just retraining your brain to not be your worst enemy in these cases. Even something as simple as “going into interactions with new people with the assumption that they already like you” helps with this.

But the most important thing is that you have to teach yourself to stop avoiding these situations. Even having someone hold your hand isn’t going to help – not in the way you hope. What that’s ultimately going to do is get folded into the way those anxieties hit.

Let’s choose virginity as an example. You could lose your virginity next week, if you wanted. All; you’d have to do is find an independent sex-worker, fill out her screening information, put down your deposit and book an appointment. If you wanted to avoid any legal risks, you could fly out to Reno and go to one of the legal brothels; most of them will even send a car to pick you up at your hotel or at the airport as part of the service. You pay the fee and boom, no more virginity.

But will that actually make you feel better? Or worse? I suspect the latter, because this isn’t about just being a virgin, it’s what you see being a virgin says about you. I suspect that what would ultimately happen is that you’d see this as either not counting or that it’s even more shameful because you “cheated” or “had” to pay, instead of being “chosen”.

This is why, at the end of the day, even with the benefit of therapy, visualization exercises and everything else, what you’re ultimately gonna need to do is just stop avoiding the things you’re afraid of. There’s only one way out, and that way is through.

There really aren’t any shortcuts. Someone holding your hand to walk you through it isn’t going to do it. Therapy and visualization help, but at the end of the day, you’re still going to have to confront those fears head on, pass through them to the other side and realize that they no longer have a hold on you.

And here’s a truth: you can’t avoid rejection; everyone gets rejected. Nobody, and I mean nobody goes 5 for 5. Some people just aren’t going to like you, no matter what you do, and that’s OK! It’s neither something to be feared, nor is it the end of the world, nor is it a measure of your value or desirability as a man. The hottest male celebrity you can think of has gotten shot down like a pilot who wants to get home from the war so he can kiss his newborn son. Multiple times.

There’s only one way out, and that’s through. Do the therapy, get things under control. Face your fears. Take a chance, fall on your face, get back up and try again.

That’s how you beat your fears and how you win in the end.

Good luck.

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