DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I tried to search for that sort of thing on this site, but I can’t find anything about it. This is unusual because the internet is literally full with it. Especially Reddit.

Now I saw that women claim that they wouldn’t leave their boyfriend just because he lost in a fight but they never claim that it actually happened and they stayed together after it. Also they tend to say that the fighting ability of their boyfriend doesn’t concern them in the slightest, especially because he can’t escort them every time they go outside. So the latter means that they have to be able to handle themselves anyway, so they can do it the same way even if their boyfriend is there with them.

But then there are the cases where the belligerent is actually targeting the boyfriend for a fight so he won’t stop the harassment and the woman can’t get him to stop unless she is willing to use force to do it. There are other cases too where the woman starts something with a man only to drag her boyfriend into a fight (usually inadvertently as she doesn’t realize that he might get attacked if she antagonizes the wrong kind of guy). This applies to guy friends too who is only a friend of the woman, like that case here that you answered ten or so years ago (it’s under the “protector” category)

So do you think women won’t end the relationship just because the boyfriend loses a fight? I mean Reddit is literally flooded with this issue, you can check it for yourself if you want to.

The main reason I’m asking this is because I’m really into self-defense, so I know how easy it is to die in a fight. (Or end up paralyzed, brain damaged, with organ damage, PTSD, imprisoned, you name it.) Also anyone who is into self-defense, martial arts, combat sports and the like will tell you that they go to great lengths to avoid fights because of the danger involved.

BTW the women I know form SD think the same way about fights as I do. They too use every pre-violence SD method in order to avoid fights. (Sit. Awareness, moving away, tactical retreat, de-escalation, etc)

I Know Kung Fu

DEAR I KNOW KUNG FU: I’m going to level with you IKF: I was really tempted to keep this letter for another lightning round column and save this for the “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” slot.

But I haven’t. Because after having to actually dig in, untangle this mess and figure out what the hell you were talking about, I decided that there’s enough here that ties into classic, toxic and restrictive ideas of masculinity that it’s worth addressing. And considering the number of suburban commandos that feel like they need to wear 8k worth of ill-fitting battle-rattle in order to feel safe going to Costco after spending tens of thousands of dollars to go to Navy SEAL fantasy camp and dudes who hold elaborate, detailed fantasies about home invasions, talking about guys who pretend that the world runs on Conan The Barbarian rules feels relevant.

Let’s start with the really obvious: the reason why you can’t find anything about this in my archives is because what you’re talking about is bugf—k nuts. This isn’t A Thing. This is the sort of “guys talking to other guys who pretend to have talked to girls who said that Ferris’ girlfriend dumped him for getting knocked out at the 31 Flavors last night” sort of s--t that continues to convince the impressionable, gullible and terminally online that masculinity is in crisis and that the only people who are dating or having sex are six and a half foot tall Vikings who wear Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks and drive McLarens, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The fact that it’s “all over the Internet” (it isn’t) and “especially Reddit” (surprise surprise surprise) isn’t proof that I’m somehow missing or ignoring the story, it’s telling me exactly what accounts you’re following on TikTok and YouTube.

Let’s start with some stats first, because these are going to be relevant. We’ll run with the stats from the Pew Research Center, which tells us that crime in general and violent crime in particular in the US are at historic lows, and have been on a downward trend since the 1990s when they were at their peak. According to the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, violent crime in general has dropped 49% from 1993 to 2022 and aggravated assault specifically has dropped 39%. The most common form of crimes people experience are property crime, specifically larceny theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary; violent crime comes fourth, with 268 incidents per 100,000 people and robbery comes fifth at 61 incidents per 100,000. Compare this to larceny, which occurs at a rate of 1402 incidents per 100,000 people.

And while there was an uptick of violent crime in 2020 – not terribly surprising considering how people lost their s--t at being told that they should maybe hold off on going to Applebee’s for a couple weeks – even that is down 2.8% as of 2023 and simple assault against men decreased from 9.5 per 1,000 people in 2022 to 6.9 per 1,000 people in 2023. The site Statstia provides a visualization showing just how steep the drop in violent crime has been within our lifetime.

(Amusingly, there’s very good reason to believe that much of this change is entirely down to reduced lead poisoning after leaded gasoline was banned in the 70s.)

I bring this up because reality is starkly different from the world view of would-be Billy Badasses who want to imagine that they’re the only thing standing between their family and the roving gangs of Riffs, Rogues, Boppers and Baseball Furies from The Warriors. The idea of “man as protector” that you bring up is based entirely around scenarios that are so rare that you would literally have better odds of winning the Powerball.

This is the reason why you see women saying that they’re not going to leave their boyfriend if he lost a fight, and why you don’t see corresponding reports of women saying “well my guy got in a fight and I’m still with him.” It’s not that women are lying and just omitting the time they dumped a guy because he got KO’d leaving the bar at closing time, it’s because the likelihood of getting into a fight like that is very f—king low. It requires a belief that the world looks like Kamurocho in the Yakuza series and assuming that people are much more violent than they actually are. This is, in fact, one of the most missed points of Fight Club: when Tyler Durden gives his crew instructions to go pick a fight and deliberately lose, the biggest challenge is getting other people to fight them.

The idea that women want a man who’s a “protector” isn’t about some belief that the world is only held at bay by men willing to do furious violence, it’s misunderstanding that women want someone who’s going to take care of their family and participate in keeping them safe. But safety doesn’t mean “from violence”; in fact, all of the fantasies these dudes LARP over don’t actually reflect the actual threats to their family’s health, safety and well-being. The men who talk about how they would do anything to “protect” their girlfriends, wives or families will make a lot of fuss about being willing to shoot to kill during a theoretical home invasion, but won’t lift a finger to do laundry (cut down on the spread of disease), make sure their kids brush their teeth and get comprehensive dental care (one of the most common causes of death in the poor and underprivileged) or even making sure there’re no guns in the house (one of the biggest predictors of someone dying of gun violence).

Strange how protection seems to only mean “I get to inflict violence on other people,” not “I will make sure that my family is safe from the things that pose actual risks to my family’s health, safety and well-being”. It is a case, as PJ O’Rourke famously said, of “everyone wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

It’s all part and parcel with the idea that one’s measure of being “a real man” is one’s willingness and capability of inflicting violence on others. And since being “a real man” is theoretically supposed to come with rewards of hot and cold running sex, there’s an inherent need to believe that women desire this in their partners, much as they supposedly exclusively desire a man with a 600 HP car (that can’t fit a single bag of groceries anywhere in the trunk). As always, the source is “dude, trust me”, strip-mall Spartans, sub-Reddits and some chinless goniff selling them an MLM and tanning their asshole as the path to “true manhood”.

You know who these dudes forgot to check with? Women. Women who are actually dating men and not trying to get in on the manfluencer grift. As I said: the reason why you keep seeing women saying “actually, I’m not really concerned with whether my boyfriend is the best fighter in the province” is because that’s not a thing they’re looking for. They’re not expecting Frank Dux to win the Kumite for them or waiting for someone to defeat their seven evil exes or even prove that they’re the toughest man in Letterkenny, and they’re not looking to recreate scenes from The Bodyguard.

This has far more to do with guys feeling like they aren’t wanted and thus have to be needed… and assume that this would conveniently include the violence they’re supposed to be ready, willing and able to inflict at a moment’s notice. Meanwhile, women aren’t worried about dudes jumping their boyfriend at the bar or hoping for a man who’ll go challenge catcallers to a duel for her honor. In fact, a guy who’s really good and eager to do violence is probably going to be a threat, not a protector. Women have far more reason to worry about their partners slapping them around than whether they know how to react to Bob the Goon leaping out from a dark alley.

(For real fun, go look up the domestic abuse rates of police officers.)

And it’s kind of telling that you’re not extrapolating from people’s responses so much as inventing s--t out of whole cloth and late night movies on basic cable. I mean, even if we leave out the Cynthia Rothrock of it all (“they have to be able to handle themselves anyway”), the whole “woman started s--t with another guy so now her boyfriend is getting dragged into the mess”, while marginally popular in b-tier schlock movies from the 90s, is not often found in Washington D.C. ��Or Atlanta. Or Couer d’Alene. Or Minneapolis. Or Saratoga Springs or Midlothean or Daytona or Chicago or… well you get my point.

The fact of the matter is that you’re begging the question; you’re starting from the premise that this is true rather than questioning why you think this would be the case in the first place. The fact that you don’t have examples of it is being taken as evidence that it must be happening because surely someone would say that “well it happened to me and I still love my boyfriend” as opposed to, say, dealing with the trauma of having watched her boyfriend being the victim of a violent assault.

Now I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is able to pull up a specific example of a woman dumping her boyfriend because he lost a fight. Not because he’s someone who gets into fights, or who’s violent by nature, but specifically because he lost a fight. In a population of billions, you’re gonna find some weirdos. Humanity is amazing that way. But quite frankly, all of this sounds like an attempt to retroactively justify how “being into self-defense” makes you attractive when it doesn’t seem to actually be moving the needle for you.

Were I you, I’d worry a lot less about theoretical women dumping you for trying to avoid a fight and focus a lot more on developing your social skills and charisma instead. And if you really want to burnish up your “protector of women” credentials, maybe go help people who are going to be affected by the incoming administration get access to reproductive health care.

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: Hi, it’s me again. I left a question earlier this year about my polyamorous boyfriend calling me controlling and now I’m back. I eventually broke up with him, reluctantly, and we were mad at each other for a while. But he told me he was sorry, and I said I was willing to try polyamory again.

That was clearly stupid. He shunned me a bit, and I broke up with him, to his later comments of “I was planning to break up with you soon anyway. She and I never have arguments like I do with you.” (that hypocritical butt. Like 2 weeks later he had three arguments with her in a row.) And also, before the first time he announced he was poly, he had spent a week trying to convince me that he didn’t like her.

Anyway, (you can clearly see I have ADHD) we became friends again and he helped me with my problems.

Then, at the beginning of this year, I realized I liked my best friend who lives pretty close. Just to get it off my chest, I told my ex-bf that I still liked him. I don’t know if I really do still like him, I just liked our relationship. I had a pretty terrible, abusive relationship before him, and he was like the only person I didn’t lose feelings for halfway through. So anyway, he tells me he doesn’t like me back, and I get set up with my best friend by a mutual friend of ours, and we start dating. Dating her feels more comfortable than being friends because for some reason it was always kind of awkward. It’s like it was meant to be.

About a week into our relationship, my ex texts me and says he still loves me, and is losing feelings for his girlfriend (who was the one he was dating while dating me) As you can imagine, I was like, REALLY MAN? I accidentally let it slip to his girlfriend later that he was losing feelings for her, and she was mad at him. I told her that it was better to break up than be in a failing relationship, and they broke up. Now, back to my relationship.

As much as I love her, I’m now for some reason starting to lose feelings for (my best friend). I want our relationship to be like the one with my ex before it went bad. But I know if I break up with her, the rest of our whole EXISTENCE together will be awkward and we might not even be friends. It’s so hard to avoid each other since we have a lot of the same classes. I don’t want our friendship to fail, but she’s also a great girlfriend (though she sometimes can be embarrassing). I’m kind of lonely in life, and my close friend group is crumbling. Most of us just date each other, scared to branch out. So yeah. In conclusion, my life is, well, a tornado would be an understatement.

I know this is a lot of questions and a lot to unpack, but HELP.

Life Is Like A Hurricane

DEAR LIFE IS LIKE A HURRICANE: I’ll be real, LILAH: it sounds like things are kind of a hot-mess express right now and maybe you should be dealing with that instead. Sometimes the problems we become most concerned with aren’t the ones we need to prioritize; they’re just the ones that just feel more important either because they’re the most recent or simply because they feel like one we can actually get our hands around.

The thing is: those problems tend to be symptoms rather than root causes, reflections of the real issue that just seem more manageable because they’re not so systematic. They’re often much simpler than they feel, but we put greater importance on them because we feel like maybe we actually can resolve those, even though there’re bigger and much more impactful issues lurking behind them.

I bring this up because you drop a couple pretty big clues about the real issues in the end of your letter: you feel lonely and you feel like your social circle is falling apart. And to be blunt, I think the group has already fallen apart; it’s just that nobody wants to admit it. 

And to be even blunter,  it sounds to me like some of this is a self-inflicted problem. Your situation with your ex-boyfriend is a prime example. I stand by what I said in your previous letter: I have no idea why in pluperfect f--kery you were dating him and why you’ve tried to stay friends afterwards considering the way you’ve both behaved. He’s either not able to be honest with himself or with you about how he feels and he seems to be stuck in a loop of wanting whichever person he ditched the last time. You on the other hand aren’t covering yourself in glory, either. I’m sorry but I’m going to have to call bulls--t on your ‘accidental’ disclosure that he was supposedly losing feelings for his girlfriend. You decided to chuck a bomb into his relationship, apparently out of spite for the way he’s been behaving and frankly that’s not cool. Even in a poly relationship, it’s not your place to get involved, especially since you had already decided you weren’t interested in seeing him again. Especially when you’re already feeling hurt by his seeming inability to decide who he actually wants to date and why.  

And look, I get it. I’ve got ADHD as well, I know how rejection-sensitive dysphoria can f--k with you and how ADHD plays merry havoc with impulse control. I can also see where the desire to be a chaos goblin with a vengeful streak can be very appealing. But this is precisely the sort of s--t that’s going to cause friend groups to fall apart. If the rest of your social circle is composed of similar drama llamas, I’m not exactly surprised that you’re locked in a cycle of dating Gotterdammerung. 

But the issue with your current girlfriend – and to an extent, your ex-boyfriend – is pretty simple and rather obvious in its simplicity. In and of itself, the problem is that you may be attracted to your friend, but you rounded that attraction up to “love” when there simply wasn’t enough there to sustain it. Under other circumstances, you might’ve had a one-off hook-up or a quick fling and learned that you weren’t compatible in the long-term. But because you were on a mission, you invested far too much and made things complicated.

And this was something you could’ve avoided if you addressed the actual underlying problem. You hit on the issue yourself at multiple points in your letter: you don’t want your ex-boyfriend back so much as you want The Relationship (in capital letters), and you thought your best friend would be able to replace him like an understudy filling the role when the original performer is unavailable. This is an almost literal example of trying to shove someone, anyone into a hole marked “Relationship”, regardless of whether they actually fit. When your ex-boyfriend couldn’t stop being an indecisive flake, you tried with the next easiest candidate and, surprise surprise, it’s not working there, either. But because you made this A Production, now your friendship with her is at risk too.

You’re lonely. I get it, I really do. I empathize with that. You want to stop feeling lonely and, like everyone else, you want to love and be loved. The problem is that you’re focused on The Relationship and not on people you might want to have a relationship with and unfortunately, that’s not going to work. The Relationship you’re thinking about – the one you theoretically had with your ex and want to find again – really only exists in your head. It’s not going to manifest in the real world, no matter how much you will it to, because you’re trying to cast people to play parts, not actually dating them. If you were to let things develop organically instead, you might find someone you could actually connect with. But then it wouldn’t be the exact Relationship you’re imagining; it would be a different beast entirely.

Here’s the thing: you’re lonely and you’re worried that your group of friends is about to crumble and leave you even more alone than you feel now. That’s the bigger issue at hand. I think you would do much better to stop worrying about dating and focus more on why your circle is falling apart and what can be done about it. And the answer may well be “nothing”; you may be in a period where this group simply cannot stay together the way that things currently stand and part of what you’ll need is to learn the lessons about why it crumbled so that you can avoid those mistakes the next time around. Owning your own part in it will be important. So too will recognizing how others contributed. If you can take those lessons, apply them and let them be an opportunity to grow, you may find yourself in a better position to build and grow a new network – one that’s stronger, more resilient and less prone to drama.

In the meantime, I think you may need to let your romantic relationship with your bestie simmer down while you process these lessons and deal with these feelings. If you want to be with her, you should be with her because you want to be with her specifically, not because you simply don’t want to be alone. That’s not fair to either of you, and that’s the sort of thing that will damage a friendship beyond the point of repair.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “you have to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others with theirs”. Well, this is one of those times. You need to sort out your s--t – processing your understandable complicated feelings about your ex and your behavior with him, your feelings for your BFF, your anxieties about your social circle – before you worry about actually dating. Otherwise, you’re going to run into the same problems over and over again. The only difference will be the faces they’re wearing at the time.

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: This isn’t really a dating question (we’re married) but I hope you’ll still consider answering it.

My husband is excellent. He’s kind, funny, I love to cuddle him. We have great fun together and are super compatible, but we are having problems in the bedroom.

We just can’t seem to make penetrative sex work for us. I suspect that he may have some death grip issues (he can only come from hand jobs, and likes a very firm grip, very fast at the end). He is considerate and always gets me off too (again manual or oral sex) but penetrative sex just doesn’t work. This is a problem because I really miss it.

We have been together for about 4 years total and he has come through vaginal sex only a handful of times. It has to be with me on top (not my fave) and working pretty hard, holding a particular angle that works best for him, usually for a long time. Lately it’s gotten to the point where I am starting to feel disappointed and I think this could harm our connection.

I don’t want him to sense disappointment from me, because I’m worried that could completely kill our sex life, but also I want to have a sex life that feels more full and varied. We talked about it recently and my husband was clearly very worried and feeling vulnerable. He is such a lovely, open person. He expressed that he has never really felt confident with vaginal sex, and puts it down to starting to have sex a bit later in life. He had other partners before me, but I think still feels like he doesn’t have a great range of experience. I think this problem isn’t particular to our relationship. I don’t want him to feel like it’s all his fault. I feel guilty and upset about this, and I just want it to work, but I don’t know what else I can do.

What would you advise?

Universal Serial Bang

DEAR UNIVERSAL SERIAL BANG: Alright USB, there’s a two-part solution to this problem. But first, let’s make sure we’re solving the right problem. So before I dig into what you and your husband can do, I want to ask you: is the problem his getting off, or is it how he feels about it?  You say that you can’t make penetrative sex work, and that he can’t get off except by masturbation, but that leaves a lot of unanswered questions about what that means. Is the issue that your husband is frustrated with not being able to orgasm during PIV and this makes it difficult to stay hard or remain engaged with you during penetration? Are you feeling the pressure to get him off during sex and that tension is interfering with your ability to enjoy sex with him? Is this a case of “it doesn’t count if he doesn’t have a ‘look-ma-no-hands’ orgasm in your hoo-hah” for one or the both of you? Or is it that he feels like not being able to get off during PIV makes him feel emasculated and that makes him less interested in sex in general? 

I ask because the nature of the issue changes whether this is actually a problem or just an unorthodox set of circumstances. If, for example, he’s totally cool with what he currently needs in order to climax, then this isn’t necessarily a problem so much as need to change how you two define sex and change up the way you’re intimate together. If, for example, he can stay hard during penetration to give you the kind of pounding you desire and then you can give him a handy when it’s his turn, then all you really need to do is adjust your expectations around what sex looks like in your relationship.

But if it’s bothering him, or you, or both of you and that discomfort is affecting your mutual willingness or desire to have sex… well, there’re a couple things to be done.

The first is to deal with the ahem root of the issue.

If the only way he can reliably get off during sex is through a hand-job with a very particular level of pressure and pattern of speed, intensity and stimulation, then yes, it’s probably a result of what doctors call “idiosyncratic masturbatory technique” – the dreaded “death grip” syndrome.

Because of the ways that some men discover masturbation, it’s possible for them to functionally train themselves to require levels of pressure and friction that human orifices simply can’t replicate. For some men, they discover masturbation by rubbing up against a pillow, sandwiching their penis between the mattress and box spring or the cushions on the couch. Others have more of a ‘grip it and rip it’ technique, where they simply are squeezing their penis much harder than they would experience from partnered sex. As a result: they’ve carved a groove in their brain where the level of sensation they need is very specific, and it becomes incredibly difficult to actually climax without it.

Now, the good news is that this is fixable. The bad news is that fixing it is a literal exercise in frustration; your husband would need to be willing to practice a very specific form of orgasm denial while he’s retraining himself. It comes down to having to starve himself of the required sensation – in other words, no masturbating, no hand jobs, nothin’ – until he’s so pent up and desperate to orgasm that the less-intense sensations of penetrative sex will get him there. If he can’t get off from penetration, he just doesn’t get off.

That, unfortunately, can take time and it requires some pretty significant dedication to not fall off the metaphorical wagon. If he’s already a bit averse to having PIV sex because of his condition, then he may still struggle to be motivated to have sex. A masturbation sleeve that’s more akin to the human body – such as one from Tenga or Fleshlight – might be an option for helping to retrain himself if he feels too awkward or self-conscious about sex with you.

Now that having been said, that doesn’t mean that you and he can’t still have penetrative sex while he’s retraining himself. In fact, this is an opportunity for the two of you to expand your sexual repertoire about what sex is for the two of you.

You’ve mentioned how this has been frustrating for you as well, especially since the way that he has been able to get off required positions and angles that don’t work well for you. One of the options for the two of you, both while he’s working on the issue and in general – is to start incorporating toys into sex. A penetration toy of some sort can give you the kind of sex you want and need without needing to worry about performance issues from your husband. There are a number of options that you two could experiment with, including ones that would allow you to have the sort of thrusting and positions that you like. There are strap ons, for example, that seat the dildo on the wearer’s pubic bone, allowing for the wearer to thrust and grind with their hips as though they were having standard penetrative sex. There are also ones that could be strapped to one’s thigh, so that you could sit on it and ride it and get the precise angles you need.

The important thing, however, is for the two of you to actually talk things through. I understand your hesitancy and his; this is an issue that can strike pretty deeply into male insecurities on his part, and you don’t want to make things worse by making him feel like he’s letting you down. But by not talking things through, thoroughly, all that ends up happening is that nothing gets resolved. He still ends up feeling weird and uncomfortable with the situation, your needs continue to not be met and nobody benefits.

Talking about it, however, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an uncomfortable or upsetting experience. The key is that this isn’t about someone’s inadequacies or failure, it’s about the two of you collaborating together to solve an issue in a way that will benefit the both of you. Focusing on the fact that this is about the two of you coming together (er… as it were) to solve a problem and recognizing how this will not just fix the issue at hand but make your relationship better, stronger and more satisfying overall. It’s the sort of joint effort that brings you closer together, because you’re reaffirming that it’s not about who’s satisfying whom, it’s that you’re a team and you’re in this together.

Now understanding that intellectually doesn’t necessarily make it easier to have that conversation. It may be helpful to have a sex therapist or sex-positive couple’s counselor facilitate the discussion. Seeing a counselor together can help the both of you express yourselves to one another in ways that don’t feel accusatory or like a stab at one’s ego. If you don’t have a counselor you feel like you can go to, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists has a referral directory to help you find someone in your area.

Again: if the both of you don’t treat this as a failing on his part but instead as a way to find options that work specifically for the two of you and your unique relationship, then it feels far less threatening and much more affirming. You would be encouraging him to feel empowered to open up and be vulnerable by showing him that he can trust you not to judge him or otherwise “punish” him for opening up, while he has active steps to take that will help you both while also getting positive validation and affirmation from you.

So talk things through – with someone to be your conversational Sherpa if need be – and collaborate on the solutions. It’ll make things much better for the both of you.  

Good luck.

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