DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 & a half years. Last summer he came to me and said he was poly. He wants a future with me & made all these promises that are no longer the case in the sense that he is poly & I am not. We tried bringing in another woman and it went very bad to the point it almost ended our relationship but we worked through it. He tells me he still has feelings for this woman even after all the bad that happened.

I told him I would be willing to try another partner but I would like it to be someone we meet together not someone he knew previously so we can both build a foundation with said person. But he tells me he loves me and I am his future but he is also still hung up on this other woman & it has been a year now since she was with us.

What do I do? 

Feeling Like The Third Wheel 

DEAR FEELING LIKE THE THIRD WHEEL: What do you do? You break up, FLTTW. I’m not sure why this is a question.

Look, I get it. You and your boyfriend have been together for nearly four years. That’s a lot of time that you’ve invested in this relationship. You clearly love him and you’ve done a lot to try to make this relationship work. That’s admirable, don’t get me wrong. But there’s trying to make a relationship work and then there’s trying to turn a lamb into a lion, and that’s what you’re stuck in right now.

(Please nobody bring up Ringing Bell, that’s traumatized enough people, thanks.)

If you’re monogamous and he’s polyamorous, that’s going to be a problem in and of itself. Now, there are one-sided open relationships, where one partner is functionally monogamous and the other partner isn’t. However, those are relationships that take not just a lot of trust and commitment, but also varsity communication skills, time management and a hell of a lot of emotional intelligence. And to be perfectly frank, it doesn’t seem like you all are there – your boyfriend in particular.

However, it seems like you tried for a poly triad, not just a poly relationship, where you have a third person in a relationship with the both of you. If polyamory is varsity level dating, a full triad is pretty close to an Olympic level relationship. That takes a very particular type of person, especially if the third is going to be romantically and/or sexually connected to the both of you, and it doesn’t sound like that’s you. If it is the case that he’s just looking to be the hinge and neither of you are expected to have a relationship beyond being metamours… well, that’s still complicated and his behavior makes me think that he doesn’t have the requisite emotional intelligence to make this work.

Feelings can be messy and complicated, trust me I know. But there’s being in your feels about a person – even as someone who’s poly – and then there’s going on and on about the other person to your current partner, talking about how much he still wants her even after it nearly destroyed your relationship. For all that the two of you worked through it, it seems to me like he’s still got a lot of lingering issues that he’s never addressed. Possibly because doing so would mean that he understands that it’s a binary decision here: it’s you or the one who got away, not both.

Well, to be perfectly blunt, I think the best thing you can do here is just skip straight to the end and save yourself a lot of unnecessary grief by breaking up with him. I think if you stay in this relationship, you’re going to be going through this same process again and again – possibly even with the same woman. And then when the break up inevitably comes, you will have spent who knows how much time and energy trying to turn this into something it’s not.

Some people come to non-monogamy and polyamory by being what’s sometimes called “poly under duress” – that is, they go into polyamory because that’s the only way to be with their partner. Some people soon discover that polyamory and non-monogamy works for them… and some discover that it absolutely doesn’t. It sounds to me like you’re in the latter camp. But even if you’re in the former, I think you’d be better off exploring this with someone who’s got a better head on his shoulders and doesn’t seem to be determined to charge back into that minefield like an infantryman with a death wish.

So I think you should do yourself and your boyfriend a favor and end this. He gets to go back to the woman who seems to have captured his head if not his heart and you find someone who isn’t as conflicted about who he wants while wanting things that you just can’t live with.

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 a nerd myself, and I have a bit of a conundrum. So, I’m a guy who’s currently trying to date. The problem? I’m a man who wants to be “the woman” in a relationship; I’m submissive.

For starters, I’m attracted to tomboys and general masculine traits in women. Muscles are my kryptonite, and I love qualities like leadership, bravery, rational thinking, heroism, protectiveness, assertiveness, and willingness to be violent if need be.

By contrast, feminine traits are either unimportant or unattractive. The ones that are the most unattractive to me are submissiveness, physical weakness, cowardice (if that counts), and pacifism. In fact, it’s ideal if a woman I like is “one of the guys.”

Then there’s my body. I’m 5’6″/167 cm, so I’m short for an (American) man–something that just got me rejected by someone. I get that a lot of women like to feel small, but I’d personally like that too. I’m cool with being taller, but it’s ideal to me if my SO is my height or taller than me. I care more about physical strength than height, so me being taller isn’t necessarily an issue. I just don’t like to feel BIG.

And as you can probably tell at this point, I’d rather play the supportive role in a relationship. Following her lead, cooking for her, cleaning for her, even making her feel strong, reliable, and like a hero.

I’ve tried my luck online, but nothing. And I tried to shoot my shot with two women at my job who were tomboyish, but they were both lesbians. So what can I do? I know many women want men who can “be the man”, but that’s just not me. How do I date when I basically want the roles reversed?

House Husband

DEAR HOUSE HUSBAND: HH, you’re hardly alone in this. There’s a popular meme that started going around four years ago that goes:

“Quiet, laid back men, why do you go for loud, fiery women?”

“Someone’s gotta tell the waiter that I ordered the mashed potatoes and it ain’t gonna be me.”

By that same token, I think a whole generation of gamers felt something unlock when they booted up Baldurs’ Gate 3 and got introduced to Karlach, the tiefling Muscle Mommy of the party. And, y’know, fair; Karlach was definitely my Tav’s romance pick for my canon BG3 run through. That combo of voice, personality (so well embodied by Samantha Béart’s performance) and knowing that she could conceivably bench press a dude is enough to take one’s breath away through sheer presence alone.

And hopefully, also her hands.

I can also tell you that those women – the tall, built, assertive and protective are out there. I know several. But, as is so often the case, when you’re looking for a specific type, the shotgun approach of flailing around randomly is not going to work. Maybe, maybe you get lucky by random chance, but the odds are better that you’re going to get a lot of nothing and the occasional false positive. As is so often the case, if you want to find the people you’re most compatible with, you have to go seeking them out specifically. 

You can’t just roll up into any random club or bar and hope to find an Amazon. Once again, it’s an inelegant metaphor, but if you’re hunting for lions, you don’t go looking in Anchorage, Alaska, you go stalk the Serengeti. If you’re looking for the Hippolyta or Atalanta of your dreams, you gotta go spend time where they do.

It also helps if you do a little due diligence first. Just randomly shooting your shot at every tomboy or more butch-looking woman means that you’re much more likely going to run into lesbians than you are women who sleep with men.

There’re a few things you can do to increase your odds of finding the right people for you. For one, if you’re going to use the apps, you want to make sure you’re using not just the right apps, but that you’ve fine-tuned your profile for that particular subset of women. You’re much more likely to find dominant women looking for more submissive men on an app like Feel’d than you are on Tinder or Hinge. You also would want to set your height range to 5’8” or taller, look for particular interests like sports, Crossfit, MMA, weightlifting, body building or other athletics and the widest array of “sleeps with men” that the search function will provide.

Similarly, you want to make it clear that you’re an aspiring wife-guy/house-husband/support class, rather than someone who’s looking for a more “traditional” relationship where people fall into the expected gender roles. Having pictures that emphasize your cooking and cleaning and softer side will help people who are looking for a guy like you see what you’re offering.

But online is only part of the equation. The other part is going to the places where you’re more likely to meet them in person. And that means you’re going to have to start doing some research, finding out what’s around you and possibly being willing to increase your overall search radius.

Now the most obvious place would be to start looking at body builder gyms – not your usual Planet Fitness or 24-hour chain but the place where the competitive body builders go to train. While most of these places tend to be full of testosterone-boosting gear-heads, those are also the places where you’re most likely to find female bodybuilders and power lifters – women who will fit your preferred stature.

You might also start looking into folks who are into Olympic sports. The build necessary to be successful at, say, hammer-throw, discus or shot-put is going to be a lot closer to what you’re looking for. Or you might want to look into martial arts, particularly grappling styles like judo or jiu-jitsu and MMA gyms.

Now I will warn you that a lot of the more athletically minded women are likely going to be more interested in someone who is up for an athletic lifestyle – both in terms of dietary restrictions but also demands on their time. Not every athletically inclined woman is going to want a gym-bunny partner of her own, but you’re going to have more success if you can show that you’re compatible with the kind of lifestyle she leads. And as a heads up, the more aggro the sport – like, say, CrossFit – the more likely that they’re going to want someone who could keep up with them.

I mention this because, even though God knows athletes date non-athletes all the time, what they don’t want is to be treated like a fetish object, nor do they want their passion treated like someone’s very specific Sex ATM. Just as women in yoga classes get tired of dudes who are only there to ogle women in tight clothes and try to snag dates, athletes aren’t going to appreciate a guy who gives off a vibe that they’re there to try to find unconventional sex partners. So you’re going to want to tread carefully and – ideally – find a gym or a group where you would be interested in participating even if you weren’t trying to find your own Julie Bell pinup.

Depending on where you live, you may also want to start looking to more rural areas. Once you start getting into more remote parts of the country, where you have more hunting/farming/ranching-oriented lifestyles and businesses, you’re going to find more women who are “one of the guys” and tend to do more manual labor or hard work that will correspond to a lot more functional muscle and strength.

This would also apply to areas with a lot of outdoor/adventure tourism, including things like hiking, river-rafting, rock climbing, horseback riding and the like.

Once again, this is going to be a matter of lifestyle. If you’re not willing to live out in the country, then hopping onto Farmers Only and looking for someone to fling you around like a bale of clover is going to be a waste of your time and theirs. Some people may be cool with a long-distance relationship that has you coming out to them or them spending weekends in the city with you, but if your lifestyle isn’t compatible with theirs, no amount of muscle worship is going to make a difference.

One unusual area that you might want to start looking into is the Society for Creative Anachronism – specifically, among the fighters and the armored combatants in particular. While female and AFAB fighters can be a bit thin on the ground, depending on the kingdom, the ones you do meet tend to be the exact sort of build and personality that you’re looking for. Plus, a page/squire and knight dynamic may well fit the sort of relationship you want.

That having been said, I’m going to continue to be a broken record and point out that compatible lifestyles and interests are going to be an important part of overall compatibility. The SCA is a subculture that takes itself very seriously and the armored combatants are an equally serious and committed subculture within it. The entire endeavor is a significant investment of time, energy and money, so I would not start treating it like it’s just a very niche singles group that you can dip into and out of at will. But if that’s the sort of thing that floats your boat, and you’re willing to actually participate, you may well find an Amazon who’s looking for her own cupbearer in the process.

Now the last thing you’re going to have to keep in mind is a bit counter-intuitive: you may be more submissive and more interested in taking on the female-coded role in the relationship, but you’re still going to have to be willing to make the first move. Being submissive doesn’t mean being passive, and showing interest and making it clear that you want to date someone – not just treat them like a fetish object, the way some guys do with female body builders – is going to be important. Even aggressive women have a s--tload of social pressure to not be too aggressive and your being willing to make the first move means that you’ll be cutting through a lot of “I dunno if he actually likes me.” You want it clear that you are attracted to someone because they can pick you up and carry you around like a kitten, not despite it. And then you can provide them with an assortment of baked goods and a good rub-down after their workout.

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 seem to have a very toxic relationship with my own virginity especially my mid 20s. I hate it, I despise it and I distain and frankly honestly want to get rid of this burden that’s crushing me like a ton of bricks.

Let’s be honest it’s 2024 and well it’s trendy, sex positive (thank you Bumble) and feminist shame, degrade and mock men for being virgins (and their penis size) and kinda understandably so because frankly lotta of male virgins (or incels) are f--kin dangerous people and women and queer people have every right to fear and be disgusted by male virgins. Unfortunately that fear catches people who are virgins and a not incels (very radical concept I know) to get caught in the crossfire. I do live in a very promiscuous very sex having very sex positive and slutty society/generation to the point I seriously doubt there are any women virgins that aren’t by choice or unironic femcels(maybe a handful of Ace women) and well I wanna join in this slutty and sexy by dumping this disgusting burden I’m carrying of being a virgin loser in my mid 20s. Cause let’s be honest lotta women see if a mans a virgin in mid 20s as a massive red flag cause what does that say about him? His character? His personality? Is he dangerous? It’s like slut shaming but the inverse.

But I have so much internal disgust and hatred towards myself (and other virgin men) it’s pretty much driving me insane in my day to day life. At work I look at smiling beautiful couples (my age or younger) lovingly stare into each other’s eyes and I thinking to myself “what in the actual f--k is wrong with me? How could they do so effortlessly and I can’t? What’s my excuse?”.

I am in therapy and well it’s more or less working because well my therapists clients is overwhelmingly women or queer people an well…she’s kinda treating me like I’m a defective woman and I’m starting to think Lotta therapists simply suck with men so that’s another point.

So what do I do? How do I dump this anger and hatred and disgust I have towards something that should be completely neutral and not a big deal?

Sincerely, 

Hauling Burden Bricks

DEAR HAULING BURDEN BRICKS: So I’m going to start with something obvious: the problem isn’t your virginity. If your being a virgin was the root cause of so many problems and you hate it soooo much… well hey good news! This is a money-soluble problem! Hire an independent escort, make it clear that you want to lose your virginity, tip her well, boom. Problem solved. If you’re worried about the legality issues of it, there’re legal brothels and places where sex work is legal in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Do your research, read reviews, find someone who you find attractive and offers the services you want, pay well, enjoy the experience and congratulate yourself on not being a virgin any longer. 

But let’s be honest: there would be reasons why this “didn’t count” or why this method of losing your virginity would be worse. Because it’s not about being a virgin, it’s what you think being a virgin says about you. It’s not that you want to lose your virginity so much as that you want to feel like you’re special enough, man enough to have had sex, to have been “chosen” by the Gatekeepers of Masculinity. But as I’ve said many, many times before: women aren’t Mjolnir. They’re not wearing panties that say “Whosoever should remove this underwear, should they be worthy, shall possess the power of Score”. Sex isn’t something that’s only given to The Worthy. People have sex all the time with partners whose main qualification was “least objectionable option” or “you’re here, you’re alive, you’ll do”, because people have sex for reasons that have nothing to do with the person they’re having sex with.

If you were to lose your virginity to a sex worker, you would almost certainly have a much better time than if you had a fumbling hook-up with a woman who picked you at closing time because she was drunk and pissed at her ex-boyfriend and trying to make a point. But one would be “legitimate” and the other wouldn’t be, because of how you feel about yourself and what having sex supposedly would mean. Even though, in both cases, neither of the person who you would theoretically be having sex with is interested in you as a person.

All of which to say is that the call is coming from inside the house. And that’s why I’m going to give you the same advice I have given a lot of similar young men in your situation, HBB: get the f--k off Reddit. I’d add that you should delete your TikTok, your YouTube, Snapchat, unfollow everything but close friends and family on Instagram too.

But before you do, I would recommend taking a moment to go through your FYP and recommendations.

You want to know why you’re having these thoughts and feelings? Look at what’s showing up on FYP. I’d be willing to put down five bucks cash American there’s a whole lot of Red Pill and incel bulls--t, a whole lot of complaints about sex and women and a whole lot of screaming about how unfair and bulls--t dating is and why women have all the power and advantages on top of virgin shaming.

Now why am I telling you to take a look and note what you’re getting served up in your social media? Simple: this is a look into your soul. What you’re seeing on your FYP, on YouTube’s front page, on your main Instagram feed etc. are all algorithmically selected, and it’s going to recommend things that are related to the things you’re already interreacting with. So if you’re getting fed a lot of Andrew Tate fans talking about how keeping your stable under control or dudes talking s--t about tiny-d--ked virgin manlets or rabidly misunderstanding what sex positivity is, it’s almost certainly because you’ve been vibing on similar videos and posts.

No matter how iconoclastic believe yourself to be, no matter how strong-willed you may think you are, no how much of a free-thinker you claim to be, you are not immune to propaganda and marketing. Every time someone says that they’re not influenced by marketing or the opinions of others, Don Draper smiles and pours himself another double bourbon and failed marriage. It’s one of those areas that people think they’re the exception and that the rest of the world are sheep and that’s precisely why advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry.

One of the fun quirks of the human brain is that if we hear things repeated over and over again, confidently enough, we start to assume it’s true and respond to it. You can see this happen all the time on Twitter and BlueSky – a few people start doomposting repeatedly about whatever – the 2024 election, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the state of the economy, the march of AI into other businesses, Apple making Patreon charges go up, anything – and the Emotional Contagion Machine goes to work and the mood starts to shift and sour, regardless of the actual facts on the ground. We see it over and over again – especially in networks where engagement is prioritized over quality of content – and our brains start responding to it as though it were true.

So if you’re neck deep in people telling you that virgins are awful and never leaving or actively pursuing other views and voices? Yeah, you’re going to start believing it. And the more you interact with it, even to just yell in the comments, the more of it you’re going to see.

So the first step is simple: you turn off The Emotional Contagion Machine and start paying attention to what you feed your brain. Feed it garbage, you’re going to produce garbage thoughts. Feed the garbage back to yourself and then you just get more garbage, and often worse. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.

Case in point: misunderstanding what sex positivity is. Sex positivity is very simple: people should be having the kind of sex they want to have, including not having it, if they so choose. That sex should be mutually consensual, as safe as is reasonably possible and enjoyable. People shouldn’t be shamed for having sex, nor should they be shamed for not having sex.

That’s it. People misunderstand or misuse the concept of sex positivity – sometimes by mistake, sometimes deliberately – in negative ways, such as trying to use the label to pressure people into having sex they don’t want or perform acts they don’t enjoy, but that’s not the point behind sex positivity. But if you get told over and over again that X is what it means to be sex-positive or if you don’t do Y you’re not being sex-positive and you don’t actively push back against it, you’re going to end up buying into it by osmosis.

(I’m still scratching my head about what Bumble has to do with any of this, outside of an epically bad ad campaign, but that is neither here nor there).

Another case in point: the undercurrent of misogyny in your own letter. There’re multiple points, especially as you get to the end, where you’ve made it clear that you’ve got less than stellar ideas about women, what women think and what life is like for them. You’re running with a whole lot of ideas about women that are, to be blunt, rather obviously based on what other men have told you, rather than actual experiences about or from women. The fact that you complain that your therapist – a woman, who also has female and queer clients – is treating you “like a defective woman” and that “lotta therapists just suck with men” is another telling point. It’s telling me that a lot of this is coming off some very rigid ideas about masculinity, virginity, sex and what it all means and just who your sources are.

And well, to quote one Savage: “Well, there’s your problem!”

It’s one thing if you and your therapist aren’t clicking or they aren’t the right therapist for you. This is a thing that happens; therapists are people too and not everyone’s going to be the right match. But running with the idea that therapists just don’t understand men… that tells me that you’re resisting and not actually listening because you don’t like what she’s saying, not because it’s wrong.  

Incidentally, this is also another benefit of stepping away from social media. It means that you’re going to stop getting weird ideas about how many women haven’t had sex or why, or what women “must” think when they find out a man’s a virgin. That is entirely down to “my source is I made it the f--k up”, “Dude, trust me” and “well, it makes sense to me so it clearly must be true”, not reality.

And while I’m on the topic, I hate to tell you this but it’s not women who are the primary vector of the idea that there’s something wrong with a male virgin. It’s not that there aren’t women who haven’t heard or adopted similar beliefs, but they are neither the primary source, nor even the biggest spreaders of the idea that there’s something wrong with being a virgin. Those would other men, because policing masculinity and punishing people for being insufficiently in line with toxic masculine tropes is part of how men establish themselves in the pecking order of restrictive, hegemonic ideas of manhood.

After all, the best way to shore up your own credentials as a manly man is to take away someone else’s man card and shanking someone over how much sex they haven’t had is easy. It’s been shorthand for “loser” for years, not because of women, but because of other men spreading that message. This message is one that’s transmitted over and over again, from person to person, through advertising, songs, pop culture… even in pop-culture that’s theoretically supportive and compassionate to older virgins.

I mean, it wasn’t a woman who wrote, directed, produced or distributed Revenge of the Nerds, The Big Bang Theory, Sex Drive, The Sure Thing, She’s Out Of Control, American Pie, Meatballs, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Super Bad… I could go on.

I would also point out that you’re part of the problem here. In the same breath that you complain about how you hate your relationship to your virginity, you also go on about how people are right to hate virgins, spreading the same sort of beliefs about incels and the rest, as though virginity was either definitional to being an incel or the root of incel beliefs. It’s not as though being a virgin is what makes a person an incel, or is it as though that the Royal Fraternity of Regular Sex Havers is free from hate, rage, abuse or misogyny. The problem with incels isn’t the celibacy, it’s the hatred, resentment, despair and desire for vengeance. They hate women and they hate themselves almost as much, and they want to lash out.

But here’s the important part about their hate: the reason why they feel such hate is because of the same bulls--t you’re talking about here. It’s the idea that women can mystically “tell” a virgin and will immediately assume the worst about him and thus doom his chances of ever getting laid. And since sex is part of how men determine their supposed value and status in society, these women are “denying” rank and status to these men and dooming them to being some sort of permanent gender underclass. They believe they are literally incapable of becoming “real men” because women ‘won’t let them’.

So if you want to start unlearning these beliefs and letting go of this anger and hatred you’re feeling towards yourself – and is clearly leaking out to other areas? That mental and emotional detox is the first step. If you know you’re getting poisoned every time you drink a milkshake, then you don’t want to take an antidote every time you go to In-And-Out, you need to stop drinking the damn milkshakes. 

The next step is to start recognizing that maybe you’re wrong about a whole lot of things. Instead of steadfastly insisting that the world is the problem not you, you need to start actually listening to what your therapist is telling you. If you feel like you’re not being understood, then you can work to clarify things. But your letter strongly suggests to me that this isn’t about being misunderstood, it’s about not liking what you hear and not actually doing the work to shake these beliefs.

And look, it’s hard to do, especially when accepting maybe your beliefs are wrong would mean accepting that you’re the author of much of your own misery. It’s hard to let go of beliefs that you’ve made into part of your identity. But it’s also clear that those beliefs are making your life worse and you don’t like it. You’re trying to behave as though you can hold onto the underlying beliefs while also giving up the self-hatred and I hate to tell you this but you can’t. They’re one and the same. Accepting that much of your circumstance is the result of your own actions is f--king hard. But that’s when self-acceptance and self-forgivingness comes into play. You look back at your past choices and say “Ok, I made these choices based on information that I had at the time and there was information I didn’t have that would’ve lead to my making different choices. Now that I know differently, I’ll make different choices.”

And while you’re doing that, you should ask yourself: in the circumstances you were in at the time, was there a chance for you to find that information? Would you have been in a place where you were willing to accept it as legitimate and take it on board? The answer is probably “no”. So it’s not that you could have done things differently. It’s that circumstances at the time made it that much harder. So you should cut your past self some slack even as you realize that you can change things now.

As you’re doing this, ask yourself what, precisely, losing your virginity would change. What would be different in the microsecond before tab A goes into slot B and afterwards? Because as someone who had a fairly positive – if oddly dramatic – first sexual experience, I can tell you the answer is: absolutely nothing. You will not be magically suave and sophisticated, you won’t have suddenly grown a beard to make the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok cry with envy, you won’t have unlocked the secrets of the universe. You will be the exact same person you were beforehand, just with one more new experience behind you.

I’d also recommend finding better, more positive and supportive places to spend time in – preferably in person. It doesn’t have to be woo-woo, virgins are sacred! or treating every form of sexuality as perfect and unquestionable, but you definitely want more people who will actually want what’s best for you and who aren’t going to tell you all sorts of obnoxious bulls--t about sex or women or about yourself because of their own hangups. It doesn’t do any good to do this detox then go right back to the poison.

So to TL;DR it: what you feed your brain affects how you feel and what you think. You’ve been feeding it garbage from a system designed to shovel garbage into you, so it’s time to disconnect from the garbage system. Do a digital detox, cut back on just about every social media account you have if not deleting them outright and start questioning why you believe these things. As you do so, stop resisting your therapist because she’s telling you things that you don’t like hearing and start accepting that maybe you’re wrong and should take in other people’s advice. And then find a better class of friends and peers who actually have your back and support you.

The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll find how your feelings about yourself are changing.

Good luck.

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