DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Reading a letter you recently answered and listening podcasts on incel culture (don’t worry, not those kind of podcasts) has made me do some self-reflection lately and realise that I’m not quite healed from an anxious attachment style and hold some views that get in my own way a bit.

For context, I’m in a relationship and happy in it, but the question “what if this is the only relationship I can get?” hangs over me sometimes and that’s obviously not a Good Thing. To expand on that, I think there’s an erroneous belief that only good-looking people cheat. I have no idea if I’m good looking or not, but I don’t believe I am. I think there’s a danger for those with low self-esteem to stray because they view any attention as good attention.

Not that I have any desire to stray. But confident, healthy people understand that there will be attention for them should they want to reciprocate. When single, this “beggars can’t be choosers” belief can make you overlook red-flags or, cruelly, lead people on that you’re not interested in. Furthermore, it makes dating an anxious nightmare rather than an exciting thrill. Basically, if you believe that you’re someone worth dating, it’s good for you and your partner. Abundance mindsets are good all round, whether single or taken. What’s a bigger compliment than knowing your partner chose you, rather than kind of just fell in with you?

So, my question is this: how do I believe that I’m worth choosing and that, if I had to, I could choose? I try my best to be open to experience and have varied hobbies and quite a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. I think I style and groom myself pretty well (in a shot of whiskey rather than a cup of tea way), although I should probably be more consistent in the gym. In conversation, I think I can be funny in a way that isn’t self-deprecating or tediously dry and sarcastic and I’m interested in the lives of others.

But.

When I’m out in public, taking a walk through the city, people catch my eye. I don’t mean in a way that they’re more attractive than my partner who does and still would catch my eye, just in a way that I’ll occasionally think to myself “they have great hair” or “that’s a cool dress and track-jacket pairing”. But I don’t think I’ve ever been aware of anyone looking back and it shakes my self-esteem.

Now obviously, people have found me attractive enough to date, and because I’m not Professor Charles Xavier (and if I were, I’d hope to use my abilities ethically), I don’t know this for a fact. I also know that women are less likely to express overt interest, although apparently people play with their hair and mirror body language and stuff, and I don’t think I’ve ever observed that. I think I caught someone look at me yesterday and when I looked back, we exchanged smiles, but that’s the exception that proves the rule, by virtue of the fact it stands out. When I was on the apps, I didn’t have a huge amount of success, but I know most men don’t and nor was I a prolific swiper myself. I don’t think anyone’s ever had a crush on me.

The invisibility as I age, and more so, the question of if I was ever visible, stings. Have I passed up what might have been really great connections because I’ve always assumed my approaching someone would be an insult? Am I deluded in thinking those possibilities would have even existed for me? To put it bluntly: Am I allowed to consider myself capable of being part of this human experience. Would a slight twist of fate have meant that, with my looks and social ineptitude, that I’d be posting about Looksmaxxing and Chads and Staceys on Reddit?

Best,

Claude Reigns Eternal

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DEAR THE KILLING KIND OF LOVER: Right from the jump, I can tell you that you’re dealing with some mindset issues and some pretty fundamental misunderstandings, CRE, and that’s part of what’s messing with your head right now.

Let’s start with the obvious question: you’re asking if you settled for your partner and the answer is… yes. You did. Everyone who is in a relationship has settled for that person, because that’s part of how relationships work. In every relationship, no matter how wonderful that person is, you are settling for what you get vs. what you are willing to give up. Nobody, no matter how rich, handsome, charismatic, famous or any other quality you care to name, gets 100% of what they want, simply because no single person can be everything to their partner. So, every relationship is an exchange: you choose someone with the full understanding that doing so means that you are giving things up. You just have to decide whether what you get is worth the cost of what you don’t get. Part of ensuring a happy and successful relationship is that you are satisfied with this exchange; that is, what you get is so good that you’re fine with letting the rest go. That’s part and parcel of how relationships work.

(And to fend off the obvious: polyamory or ethical non-monogamy isn’t the work-around that folks would think. While other partners help meet the needs that others don’t, you are still having to weigh what you get for what you give up and looking for an otherwise equitable exchange where the holistic whole satisfies you enough that you don’t regret what you are giving up.)

This is why the answer to “is this the only relationship I can get?” is always “no,” because this is the relationship you’ve chosen. It’s where you’ve decided to stop looking and settle down. Now maybe there’s been a long period where you weren’t finding people who chose you back, but entering this relationship was your choice. You could have kept looking and accepted being single until you found another. You could, likewise, leave this relationship and keep looking for someone else. You aren’t guaranteed to find one – nobody is – but that is part of the exchange of being in a committed relationship. Giving up the search is part of the exchange. 

This also is why the question “Is this relationship the best I could do?” should be a joyous one, not one of despair; you want the answer to be “I chose someone so awesome that what I’m not getting is insignificant and that’s great!”

But this is also why you’re coming to this from the wrong angle and you’re letting your mindset get in the way. Who cheats and who doesn’t isn’t as simple as “confident people stay, insecure people stray”. Yes, some insecure people will treat any attention as good attention. But that’s not the same as acting on that attention. Similarly, confident people, believing that they are always going to have options, may decide to exercise those options despite having a committed, monogamous relationship, or they may think that they’re such a prize that they can get away with breaking another person’s heart without suffering any consequences. Or they may think that they can get away with it because they’re just that clever and that sneaky.

This is where your mindset is f—king you up. It’s not about who’s confident and has a secure attachment style, it’s about you assuming that you’re the loser and your opposite is the winner. If it wasn’t about attachment styles or confidence, it would be something else; you’re just reacting to how you feel about yourself and extrapolating outward based on those feelings.

Case in point: you assume that nobody has shown interest in you as you’ve been out and about. But… how do you know? What reaction are you expecting to see that would convince you that someone is checking you out and how different does that look from what you do? I mean, I’m assuming that if you see someone sleek and sexy, you don’t turn into a cartoon wolf howling and beating himself over the head with a skillet. In all likelihood, your “checking them out” looks like “your eyes flicked over to them,” or “you turned your head slightly as they walked by”, so why wouldn’t that be the same for what other people are doing?

Well, unless you are giving every person walking by the hairy eyeball, how likely are you going to notice what they’re doing? Is it possible, for example, that you’re so focused on what you are looking at that you simply miss what other people are doing? And would you accept that someone was checking you out in an approving way if you did see it? Or would you just assume that they’re judging you?

This is where your mindset and attitude comes in. If you believe that you’re “invisible” or undesirable, then you’re much more likely to assume that they’re judging you negatively instead of checking you out. If you see someone do the classic “make eye contact, look away, look back and smile”, would you think that they’re into you or just that they caught you looking and they’re giving a smile in hopes that it’ll placate you and you aren’t going to get weird?

This is why how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself is important. People are beggars in as much as they perceive themselves to be beggars. Perceiving yourself as a beggar means that you’re much more likely to be single for longer and that the relationships you get into won’t be good for you simply because you’re working from the belief that you’re not “allowed” to have standards or to prioritize what you want in a partner. It means that you’re going to be coming into every interaction with the belief that you have to seek someone else’s approval, rather than considering whether they’re worth your time. As a result, you’re coming to the interaction from a place of insecurity and supplication, two things that are pretty universally unappealing. Why should someone want you if you’re sending the message that you’re not worth wanting? There’s a reason why no product seriously advertises itself as “we’re ok, I guess. There’s better stuff out there, so we’d get it if you chose that instead.”

If you’re going to base your self-worth and sense of desirability entirely on whether someone else expresses desire first, regardless of how you feel, you’re much more likely to end up in a toxic or unhealthy relationship. Toxic people, after all, look for people who have weak boundaries and low self-esteem; these are the people who are the easiest to manipulate. And even good, well-meaning people aren’t going to want to have to manage someone else’s emotions and self-esteem for them. There’re few things more likely to kill a relationship than for someone to constantly question whether you actually like them and call you a liar when you say “yes”.

Nobody is a beggar unless they decide they are. Everyone can be a chooser; it just requires understanding that other people are choosers too. Relationships are double opt-in, after all. If you choose to believe you have no options – and choosing to be single and to keep looking is an option – then you’re still being a chooser. The difference is that you have chosen someone where what you get may well not be worth what you give up… but it’s still a choice.

This is why the issue is ultimately how you feel about yourself. You need to be your own biggest and best fan first, because otherwise you’ll have a much harder time believing other people could be a fan. Work on your self-esteem and how you see yourself and you’ll be amazed at how many more people you will spot checking you out. It’s not that they were never there before; it’s simply that you didn’t believe that they existed in the first place and dismissed what you did see. Once you believe, you’ll see 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: Recently, while I was going through your blog, I noticed a reference to Tim Minchin’s “If I Didn’t Have You”. I had never heard of this artist or song before, so I looked up the lyrics and…it made me depressed.

For personal context, I’m a 22-year-old straight male who has never been in a relationship. I’ve never even been hugged. Part of it is my own fault, part is fate, I suppose. I know, I’m pretty young, I’ve my whole life ahead of me, there are plenty of fish in the sea. But when you only have your 22-years of life as experience and rejection is all you’ve known, it’s hard not to feel like rejection is all you’ll ever know. But that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.

You see, reading the lyrics of that song, it made me depressed because I’ve always held the belief that love is a sacred thing. I logically don’t believe in soulmates (heck, I definitely don’t believe in souls), but emotionally…I had found a person who I still call the love of my life (she doesn’t reciprocate), who I think would’ve been perfect for me. I know that’s not actually possible, and even if it was, it doesn’t matter if feelings aren’t shared.

So, love isn’t sacred, soulmates don’t exist. Heck, you could make the argument that life itself isn’t sacred. To quote Canary by Everything Everything, “Don’t wanna say the quiet part out loud, but we’re not profound, we’re just meat”. Death always feels like it’s just around the corner, no matter how many safe and correct steps you take (I’m kind of an introvert, I don’t go outside all that much, even if that would solve most of my problems).

So, in the face of the grander, uncaring scheme of things, how do you not succumb to nihilism? How do you keep loving if the culmination of love is grief – heartbreak or death (God of War Ragnarok reference)? How do you subscribe to optimistic nihilism?

Sorry if this was a bit rambly, I tend to overthink and go on tangents, though I have tried to be as concise as possible by me. Again, hope you have a good day.

Sincerely,

The Killing Kind of Lover

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DEAR THE KILLING KIND OF LOVER: Alright, TKKL, I know you said that you weren’t asking about the whole situation you put forward in your first paragraph, but here’s the thing: it may not be what you’re asking about, but it sure as hell is relevant to the rest. A lot of people really, really want to compartmentalize their lives, acting as though dating and relationships aren’t part of the holistic individual but that’s not how life works. Nor, for that matter, is that how people work. 90 times out of 100, the issues you have in your dating life are often reflections of issues (or consequences thereof) you have in other aspects of your life; the remaining times, it’s usually a matter of demographics or bad luck.

You mentioned that you were going through the archives on the blog, so I’m sure you’ve seen the times I’ve talked about how your attitude and your mental state affect your love life – for the better and for the worse. Well, that’s relevant here. So, too, are the choices you make. And most of all, so is your age, because holy s--t, KKOL, you are so very young. I’m not saying this to be dismissive, I’m saying this because your attitude and your beliefs are very much the beliefs of the young: that you’ve already seen the future and you know exactly how it will play out, that you know what there is to know and other people just don’t get it maaaaan and the sort of youthful nihilism that many of the young mistake for having a personality… especially if they’ve spent too much time on Reddit.

Trust me: I may be An Old these days, but I remember – in exacting, painful clarity – just how it felt to be your age and in your position. I remember the rock-solid certainty that I knew exactly how the rest of my life was going to play out, splayed out before me like an MMO’s upgrade tree. I remember believing, with my entire heart and soul, that this was it. This was the future that I was locked into, like someone in a time travel movie whose every action only confirmed the future they were trying to avoid.

And guess what: I was wrong about pretty much everything. I was wrong about what I wanted to do with my life, I was wrong about where I was going to live, I was wrong about who I was going to be and who I could be, I was absurdly wrong about my career path, God knows I was wrong about Why I Was Like That (spoiler alert: it was undiagnosed ADHD) and I was 1000% wrong about my relationships and what I could expect from them.

And that really was down to my age. Not because being young makes you stupid or ignorant, but simply because I had no lived experience, no distance or perspective, no mileage under my belt that gave me the insight and the wisdom to go with the knowledge I’ve had. To break it down into D&D terms: intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put tomato in fruit salad. But I had the certainty that comes with youth, and that sure as s--t feels like wisdom and foresight.

What you have is youth and intellect. What you don’t have is experience, nor distance to see how much things have changed or the perspective to see how so many things come together to help you see why things were the way they were and – with that information – make the decisions that would change things going forward. Part of being young, especially when you’re in your early 20s – barely starting to take your first trembling steps out into the world! – is the feeling of the Eternal Now: it is thus and so it shall always be thus.

It feels that way simply because you haven’t lived life under your own control; you’ve always been living according to other people’s plans and whims, under the dictates of people who may or may not have your best interests at heart but who are not you. You haven’t had the times when you’ve pursued something to have it fail by succeeding, nor have you succeeded by failure. You haven’t had those moments when you realize that everything you assumed about yourself turned out to be wrong, and then had to decide how you were going to proceed with this new knowledge. You haven’t had to truly strike out on your own, with no safety net, no guidance, nobody to turn to and tell you what to do and how to proceed. Once you’re out on your own, without the safety net of childhood… well, things that seemed clear cut and obvious suddenly turn out to be murky and complicated and more difficult (or occasionally, simpler and easier) than you could’ve expected. It is, as the sages say: everyone’s got a plan until they get hit in the face.

And hooo boy does the universe love it when you make grand declarations about what the future will be, because now it’s absolutely going to f—k with you with wild abandon.

All of which is to say: you’re projecting a whole lotta s--t right now that is based on nothing but vibes and being in your early 20s. And I’m here from the future to tell you: the future ain’t fixed by any means. The steps you choose to take now and the things you choose to believe now will absolutely change your future. That feeling that rejection is all you can expect in the future? The feeling may be real – that is, you are feeling that despair – but feels ain’t reals and vibes don’t predict history. Not without action that turns those vibes from potential into actual. And to be clear: inaction is also action. It’s the action of remaining in place, a choice that was made to not move forward or to affect change. Rejection is all that awaits you only if you choose not to change that. And is a choice.

Put a pin in that; we’ll be coming back to that soon. For the moment, I want to provide some context to your comments and where you’re getting things wrong.

For those who haven’t heard it before, the relevant part of Tim Minchin’s “If I Didn’t Have You” is this:

If I didn’t have you to hold me tight (if I didn’t have you)�If I didn’t have you to lie with at night (when I’m feelin’ blue)�If I didn’t have you to share my sighs�And to kiss me and dry my tears when I cry�Well I really think that I would have somebody else

If I didn’t have you, someone else would do

Our love is one in a million, you couldn’t buy it at any price�But of the nine point nine nine nine �Hundred thousand other possible loves �Statistically some of them would be equally nice

The point here isn’t that love doesn’t matter, nor is it not sacred. In fact, it’s actually saying the opposite of what you feel is true: the woman who you feel like would have been perfect for you is not the only person who you will make you feel that. It’s not that soulmates don’t exist, it’s that there are many soulmates out there – that whole 9.999 hundred thousand other possible loves part. One person who doesn’t love you the way you wish doesn’t mean that it’s the end of everything. It just means that one person doesn’t care for you the way you wish she did, but there are others who will. Others who are equally amazing if not more so, and who – importantly – will love you the way you hope someone will.

The problem here is that you’re assuming that something being sacred makes it unique and that other things being like it takes away from it being sacred and that’s not the case. Over the course of your life, you will have many loves – not just eros, the love of the body; or agape, the love of the soul; but also phila, the love of friends and compatriots and storge, the love of family, of birth and of choice. Each love is sacred, and each love is going to be unique and none of them take away from the others. You have family, but loving one parent doesn’t take away from the love you have for the other, nor does it make that love less important or significant. You have friends, but the love for one doesn’t render the others less important or less meaningful.

So it is with romance. I am here from the future to tell you: there have been people you have loved before this person and there will be people afterwards, and all of them will be significant and important in their uniqueness. This isn’t feel-good pablum, it’s the knowledge that only comes from having been there and done that, more times than I can easily count. I have loved and been loved by many in my time, and my loving another person didn’t make the previous person (or the concurrent or…) less special, less sacred, simply because love isn’t a zero-sum game. Nor does having loved mean that they’re less or forgotten. Everyone I’ve loved has left their mark on me (occasionally literally!) in some way, shape or form. From foods I eat to the music I listen to, in what books I read, which journeys I’ve taken and all the experiences I will have in the future, I am a map of all the ways that the people I have loved and been loved by have marked me and changed me. That doesn’t make them insignificant or less special; it makes them formative, integral to who I am. Even the ones who’ve hurt me and the ones I wish I could forget are still important for the lessons learned and experiences that brought greater wisdom.

Were any of them “perfect”? Absolutely not. Nor was I perfect for them. It was the same and will be the same for you. Someone being “perfect” for you doesn’t exist, which is precisely the point. The person you loved is only “perfect for you” right now because you never actually had that relationship with them. They’re perfect because they’re not a person, they’re an idea, a fantasy, a statue on a pedestal with all their rough surfaces smoothed down and their harsh edges and corners rounded away. They can be perfect because you never had to deal with their imperfections and all the little ways that they would annoy and frustrate you or make you want to pull your hair out and yell and throw things. Any person you fall in love with and have a relationship with will be imperfect simply because they’re real, with all the contradictions, flaws and quirks that implies. And each and every imperfection they have will make them that much more special, that much more sacred.

This is why it’s important to understand that the reason why you’re holding onto this – making the choice to hold onto this belief – is because it’s easier to love a fantasy that will never happen than to love a person. A fantasy is perfect because of its unreality; everything happens exactly the way you want it to, playing out precisely as you choose. Even the conflicts and trials and tribulations you picture only happen because you want them to, and they resolve exactly as you care for them to resolve. It’s safe, because there’s no risk and no responsibility.

To love someone and to have a relationship with them in reality means embracing responsibility for that relationship. It means that if things fall apart, it will be in some part – large or infinitesimally small – because of you. It means that your choices and actions have consequences and repercussions that you can’t possibly control for and outcomes you can’t guarantee or prevent… for ill but also for good. And that’s terrifying, because now you have something to lose. A relationship that only exists in potentia can be whatever you want. A relationship in essa will be what it is. But it’s much greater because it is real.

Now, let’s circle back around to something I said before. Remember how much I’m bringing up choice, intent and action? Well, that’s actually bringing us into the part of your letter that you want to talk about: what do you do if nothing means anything? How do you love if, as the sage says, nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, and we all die? Easy: you choose to do so. If nothing means anything, then everything means what we want it to mean. It means that we have to make meaning, we have to choose to give things meaning and we have to act with intention instead of just letting things happen.

It’s like the famous (if highly paraphrased) Talmudic lesson of why God made atheists: “when an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone who is in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that God commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality, and look at the kindness he can bestow upon others simply because he feels it to be right.”

If death is always a possibility, no matter what we do, then how we choose to live matters. If there’s nothing after we die, then what we do now matters even more. We can choose to exist and just put off death for as long as possible, or we can choose to live, to give meaning to each and every moment. We can choose to do nothing, or we can choose to try to make things better while we live, to have an impact on the world in some way.

But what about when the cost is pain? If every life ends and every love ends, then how do you choose to go on loving?

Simple: you make it worth it. You acknowledge that the end is there, waiting, and you make sure that what happens between the beginning and the end matters.

In 2021, I said goodbye to my cat, Guinness. He had been with me for a lifetime – half of mine, all of his – and it was never enough. After a time, I got Vincent. I know that bringing Vincent into my life means that I’m also bringing his death. The day will eventually come when I have to say goodbye to him. I could have spared myself the pain that will come on that day – a pain that was still very fresh and present when I brought him home – by never bringing him into my life. But doing so would mean missing out on all the wonderful, incredible, priceless moments I’ve had with him since the day we first laid eyes on each other. I would never get to know how smart he is, laugh at how much he loves to play pranks or wonder at how he reads my moods and tries to cheer me up when I’m low. I would never be astounded by his capacity for play or the way he invents games for us. Without him, I will be spared the tears that will eventually come… but my life would be so much poorer and emptier for it.

So it is with love. Relationships begin and relationships end, and even the best endings come with a sting. But it’s what’s between the beginning and the ending that makes the difference. If you are going to experience the pain of the ending, then it’s all the more important to make sure that the time between is worth it instead of focusing on the ending. And when the end comes, there will be pain… but that pain fades in time. It never fully goes away; there’s always a hole where someone we loved used to be, and no other person can fill it. But the hole reminds us of what we had and why it matters that they were there. They may no longer be gracing us with their presence, but their impact, their influence never fades and that’s magical. And it’s a reminds us how important that those future loves will be, because they will be important and magical too.

But that can only happen if you choose to pursue it. Things only have the meaning or importance that we choose to give them, because all of life is about what we choose to do, how we act and how we turn intent into action. We’re as helpless as we choose to be. If we choose not to do something, that’s a choice. And if some of our choices are constrained and nothing we do can change the outcome… well, we choose how we respond to it, how we let it affect us, what meaning we will give it, what we will take from it and what we will do in the future. But what matters the most is remembering that we have choices. We have agency. We have the ability to turn intention into action. And it’s like the bards say: if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

This is why it’s significant when you say things like “I don’t go outside all that much, even if that would solve most of my problems.” That’s a choice you’re making. You are choosing to keep your problems, rather than to confront them and solve them. You are choosing to hold onto a one-sided attraction, rather than to let it go and to seek out another. You are choosing to believe that nothing matters. But you can choose otherwise. You can choose to make things matter, to create meaning, to imbue significance on everything anything. You can choose to hold on to someone for no reason other than you think it makes you special and significant to do so… or you can choose to let go of the pain and find someone who will love you the way you want.

But you have to choose and take responsibility for that choice, with everything that means.

It’s all up to you.

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 understand that this is going to sound like bragging, but it really isn’t, this really is something that’s hurting my relationships.

I’ve read a lot of letters from guys who are worried about their lack of experience, but what if you have too MUCH experience? I (M/28) have been in a relationship with my girlfriend A (F/23) for a little under a year now and up until now things have been pretty great! We get along wonderfully, we’ve met each other’s parents and friends, and everyone likes us as a couple, we share a lot of the same values… except one. 

My girlfriend has had precisely one boyfriend before me, a guy who she thought was going to be her one-and-only. Obviously, that didn’t work out because here we are but A has dreams about finding true love, one person being all she ever wants and vice versa. Well, we went to a holiday party a friend was throwing, and it came up in conversation that I had dated a couple of the women at the party. This wasn’t the problem; it was a long time ago before my girlfriend and I ever got together and they’re both with other people who are also great. 

The problem is that we hadn’t talked too much about our relationship histories; she knew I had dated other people before her, but not who specifically or how many. S the topic of numbers came up later that night. Like I said: A has only been with one other person than me. I had been in relationships with 5 women before her and slept with 22 people total, including A. Aside from the relationships all of them had been short term flings, we used protection, I’ve been tested, I’m all clear, so I figured it just wasn’t a big deal. 

Well, A disagrees. She thinks it’s a huge deal that I’ve been with all these other women and that I could never be satisfied with her or could love her the way that she loves me. And this was the first time either of us had used the L word so that caught me off guard. So now we’re “on a break” while A tries to sort through her feelings and wants me to prove myself to her before she’s ready to come back and I honestly don’t know what to do here. Is she asking me for commitment beyond us already being exclusive? Am I supposed to denounce my previous partners? I’ve tried asking her how I’m supposed to prove myself or what I’m supposed to prove but all she said was that if she had to tell me then it wasn’t “real”. 

I’m going out of my mind here because this has been amazing up until now and I had thought we had long term potential. What do I do? 

One Isn’t The Loneliest Number

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DEAR ONE ISN’T THE LONELIEST NUMBER: This is one of the reasons why I think people get way more hung up on people’s “numbers” than they should. Different people have different relationships to sex and sexuality, including hang-ups, and getting too focused on how many partners is too many (or too few) ends up creating problems where there aren’t any.

This isn’t an issue of numbers, OTLN; this is an issue of maturity and communication. Specifically, I think it’s one of not communicating expectations and instead assuming that everyone is on the same page… until they discover that they’re not. And when that happens, you run into this precise situation: one person feels betrayed because the other has rudely refused to live up to the version the former had in their head. You know, the one they never told you about and expected you to just be.

Quite frankly, that’s profoundly unfair, and it’s not a reasonable thing to blame someone else for. It’s not your responsibility to match someone else’s unspoken idea of who you are “supposed” to be, nor is it your fault if you don’t match it perfectly.

Part of why I always tell people that the Defining The Relationship conversation is about more than just ‘are we exclusive/what are we calling this relationship?’ A big part of the conversation is to make sure that you and your partner have the same beliefs, understandings and expectations about what this relationship is or entails. That includes things like your relationship to sex. For some people, sex is incredibly intimate and deeply tied to love and affection. For others, sex is sex, love is love and while the two can overlap, they don’t always. You seem to be the latter, while your girlfriend seems to be the former.

I’m going to be honest: I feel like your girlfriend is being immature here, and I’m not sure this bodes well for your relationship. I can understand needing a moment to process that the person she thought she was dating has a history she didn’t expect. I can even understand how this might cause someone to blue-screen momentarily while they try to process this, especially if your history runs counter to the values she holds or grew up with. It’s the demand that a) you make this up to her and b) that you have to divine what that means that bothers me. I’m also not thrilled that she treats things you did before you two were ever together �– things that are entirely normal – as an offense against her. 

It sounds like she expects that love makes you a mind-reader, which is not great for the relationship. This becomes a lose-lose sort of situation; if you “prove” yourself to her satisfaction, then this justifies her behavior as valid. If you fail, because she’s demanding a near-impossible task, then this is “proof” that you don’t love her, regardless of literally everything else you’ve experienced together.

Then there’s the fact that she’s mad at you for having a history, which suggests that maybe she was more in love with an idea than you as an individual. If it was so important that you have an equally low number of sex partners, that’s something she should have been filtering for, not just assuming. Unless you were actively misleading her or presenting yourself like the romantic lead in a Hallmark Christmas movie, her mental image isn’t your responsibility.

I’m also not terribly thrilled that she brought up being in love with you for the first time as a weapon that she used against you. That’s… not great. Like, at all. It’s a form of emotional blackmail, implying that her love includes an obligation to you to match it, and to do so on her terms. It makes me wonder whether this is going to be a recurring theme in your relationship.

Now, it’s possible that she’s just a little immature and this is the first time she’s been confronted with reality diverging from her fantasy. That doesn’t exactly thrill me, but it’s at least marginally less bad than “this is setting up a pattern of emotional manipulation that you can expect for the rest of your relationship”. So here’s what I suggest: you reach out and ask to talk. You want to schedule this talk, not only so that you can set aside time for it, but also so that you’re actually able to prepare and know what you’re going to say. This isn’t the sort of conversation you want to freestyle; emotions are already running high, and you want to prioritize clarity and understanding.

First thing: you don’t apologize for your sexual or romantic history. There’s nothing to apologize for, and you don’t want to start off by conceding something that doesn’t need to be conceded. You also want to resist any urge you may have to say what you think she wants to hear. That’s going to be a mistake; you’re not trying to end the fight; you’re trying to make sure you’re both understood and on the same page about everything. Instead, you lay out what sex and love mean to you �– how they’re connected, how they diverge and so on. I would also emphasize on how having other sex partners hasn’t taken away your connection with people you were in relationships with; love isn’t pie, and sex doesn’t change or take away from how you feel for any particular person.

I would also say that your romantic and sexual history is part of what made you who you are today. Without those past experiences, you would not be the person your girlfriend presumably fell in love with.

Then it’s her turn; give her time and space to say how she feels about things and why. Despite how tempting it may be, don’t interrupt to object to how she interprets things or to ask questions. Wait until she’s done, then ask or clarify.

Once you’ve both said your piece, you have two choices: you agree to see if there’s room for understanding and moving forward, or you break up. What you don’t do is promise things that are contrary to who you are as a person or that you know you couldn’t live up to, just to keep the relationship going. I know there’s always a temptation to say what needs to be said to stay with someone, but that’s a mistake. If you end up compromising authentic self in order to stay in a relationship, all you’ve done is set a timer on when this relationship will end, and how spectacularly it will do so. It’s better to end things now, when there’s at least some possibility that you might be able to try again at a later date, than to let the relationship dissolve into bitterness and resentment.

I know that’s not necessarily what you want to hear and I’m sorry. But the cold hard truth is that right now, she’s giving some warning signs that this isn’t a good relationship for you. If those hold true, then it’s better to just break up than to try to keep this relationship alive despite itself.  

But hopefully it won’t come to that. With luck, this is ultimately a weird glitch, a moment of pain that signals growth that will pass as you sort things out and find the ways to be better partners to one another and better communicators.

Good luck.

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