DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: There’s this girl I’ve known and been friends with for a while at work. We’re both university students, I’m 20 and she’s 21 but really, we’re less than 6 months apart. She’s shy and quiet but really nerdy and funny once you get to know her, and so attractive for the longest time I couldn’t believe she wasn’t taken.

Well you’ll be proud, I finally got around to asking her out. She said she liked me, but she’s a virgin, which is very late for our country’s culture, who has never even dated and the reason why is embarrassing. 

We went out for drinks and later at my place she told me even though she is straight with a high sex drive, she has always been grossed out by the idea of straight sex. She wasn’t raped or abused, it’s just how she’s always felt. The only thing that gets her hot is gay sex, mainly in fantasy situations where the bottom man gets pregnant. She showed me art by herself and online friends of different characters pregnant and stories they wrote about this.

I won’t lie, it was weird and might have turned me off, if I wasn’t already into her. She said if I wanted to try out a relationship I would have to be okay with no penis in her vagina, ever, just kissing, hands, maybe oral, and maybe, maybe, maybe someday anal. Also, if I would read and talk about her stories with her.

I’m completely straight but have nothing against gays or gay sex. Am I crazy to consider this? My friend who’s my housemate says I am, I should be friends with her but keep looking for a normal girl to date. However, he is a lot taller and more outgoing than me, he has a lot more options, so he doesn’t quite understand.

My only concern is that I want to have kids someday, I mean in 5-10 years. I know there are other methods of conception, I’m mostly just concerned about a woman who is turned on by pregnancy and babies. I know it’s weird to think this far ahead about someone I’m just thinking about dating in university. But it also seems weird, once you’re an adult to start a relationship knowing for certain that it can’t last. What is your advice?

– Mpreg and Mpeg

DEAR MPREG AND MPEG: Well hey, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten a letter quite to this standard, so let’s reiterate the usual disclaimer: even if a letter is glaringly fake, if there’s something of value to be learned from it, I’m not going to fuss too much about its authenticity. And in this case, I think there’re a couple valuable lessons to be found here.

First and foremost: call me skeptical, call me old and out of touch with The Youths (just don’t call me before 9 AM) but I don’t think the issue here is that she’s only turned on by mpreg fanfic. I think what we have here is a lot simpler, a lot more common and a lot more banal: we have a young woman who isn’t necessarily comfortable with sex and sexuality and especially with the inherent risks that women face when they’re sexually active. She may be sex-repulsed and on the asexual spectrum, or she may, like a lot of young people in general and women in particular, uncomfortable with the way that culture tends to sexualize and objectify young women.

If I’m being honest, I suspect the latter and the key is in her choice of fanfic. One of the reasons why many young straight women enjoy stories featuring queer men and their relationships is because it’s one of the few times you’ll see men in fiction actually expressing a full range of human emotions and expression. Even in a lot of romances, toxic and restrictive ideas about masculinity tend to loom large and straight men are constrained to their roles as the stoic, dominant leader types. But in queer relationships, we see men engage in the entire spectrum of emotion and connection. They’re allowed to be submissive, to be nurturing and caring, to be openly expressive of their feelings. They can inhabit other roles in the relationship, be jealous or nervous or insecure in ways that don’t line up with dominance or aggression. They can be soft and gentle, in ways you aren’t likely to see in the portrayal of straight relationships.

There’s also the way that roles are reversed and taboos played with. One of the reasons why queer men are often derided by straight men is because of the idea that bottoming – that is, being the receptive partner – is inherently weak and degrading. At least a man who’s topping another man is in a position of dominance and control, or so the theory goes; that’s as it should be. It’s a man being penetrated, in defiance of what is supposedly the natural order. It’s why being “the bitch” is a mark of disdain; they’re allowing themselves to be dominated by another person and thus lowering their masculine status.��(We’ll ignore things like prostate play or topping from the bottom; that just tends to break some straight dude’s brains.)  

Part of what makes mpreg popular is how it takes the idea of the man bottoming being in the feminine role to its (il)logical extreme: not only does is he being fucked instead of doing the fucking, he’s being impregnated. It’s quite literally emasculating, putting a man into the ultimate female role. For a lot of people, breaking that taboo can be incredibly hot.

(There’s also a certain amount of fetishization of sperm and a man’s potency involved as well, which is why you’ll also see mpreg fantasies in queer male spaces too, but that’s neither here nor there.)

For a young woman, one who isn’t necessarily comfortable with the expectations and desires society and culture puts on her and the way it treats her, this can be a way of exploring her own sexuality and desires in ways that don’t trigger the squickiness of the real world. It allows her to play around with dominance and submission, masculinity and femininity, even breeding and potency in ways that don’t reflect her day-to-day life. It’s a space where she can appreciate pleasure for her own sake, without the feeling that her body and sexuality is ultimately for other people’s consumption. And, if I’m right, it’s also a way of turning a very real and understandable fear into delicious wank-fodder through the transformative power of fetishization.

Based on what you say later, I’m willing to bet a lot of her feeling uncomfortable with sex has a lot to do with the risk of pregnancy. The fact that PIV sex would be off the table, while oral and anal sex are maybes, helps support that theory. I strongly suspect that, as she gets older, gets more experience under her belt becomes more of her own person, her feelings on sex and sexuality may well change. Doubly so if she’s able to access some form of birth control, whether short term or long-term, that isn’t reliant on trusting men to have condoms and to actually keep them on.

But that’s a lot of ifs and maybes and supposition. If we stick to what’s definitely on the table… well, it’s a take it or leave it kind of situation, You can certainly go into this hoping that those multiple maybes become “yes” or that things will change as she grows and becomes more confident and experienced, but you have to accept the very strong likelihood – a near certainty, really – that what you get now is all you that will be on offer.

More to the point, however, I think you’re coming to this from the wrong place. Specifically, I think you’re treating this as “this is my only option and all I can get,” and coming to it from a place of scarcity. And look, I’ve been there and done that. I stayed in a toxic relationship for far longer than I should have because I thought that it was the best I could do. Not only was I wrong about that, I was wrong to stay for as long as I did; being single is a hell of a lot better than being in a s--tty relationship. So is being in a relationship that doesn’t actually meet your needs, just so that you could have a relationship. Even under the best of circumstances, this is just a recipe for resentment and dissatisfaction. But more to the point, I am here from the future to tell you that when this relationship ends – and it will end – it’ll end in a way that makes you feel worse about yourself and like you’ve given up far too much and lost too much time when you didn’t need to.

I’m sure she’s a lovely woman and under other circumstances, might make for an interesting, very short-term fling. But it’s not what you want or need, and it’s not going to satisfy you. It’ll just serve to make you feel like you’re lesser, as though you’re such a loser that you can’t get laid even though you have a girlfriend. That’s a s--tty way to feel, even though (or especially because) there’s nothing actually wrong with that relationship. It’s just not one that’s going to work for you, and entering it under the idea of “well, this is the best I can do” is going to lead to you making yourself feel worse and ultimately blaming her for your issues.

You deserve better than that and so does she. And trust me when I tell you that you’ll be a lot happier staying single and meeting someone who’s right for you than to go into a relationship where you know certain needs will go unmet, in hopes that maybe you could change her mind. That’s just disaster waiting to happen. Been there, done that, could’ve printed the t-shirt.

She’s a great woman, I’m sure… but she’s not right for you, and you’re not right for her. Take this for what it is – confirmation that you do have options, that women do find you attractive – and let that spur you to find someone who is right for you.

That is, of course, assuming that she exists and this isn’t someone’s creative writing experiment.

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: We really are living the darkest timeline and it only seems to get more and more hopeless. From Trump and Musk getting drunk with power and the many people around you who knew what they were doing because they wanted to upset the other side. It’s so hard to remain optimistic even hopeful and it doesn’t help that getting more and more hopeless. A small part of me is convinced being nice or kind isn’t really the way to succeed in either dating or anything really, like the people who climb to the top of society lied, manipulated, backstabbed and threw others under the bus to get to where they are now like Elon Musk or Martin Shkreli, and if consequences come it’s usually a slap on the wrist like Shkreli got.

Same with dating, I’m saying this earnestly say this; good guys don’t even finish last, they don’t even start period but at the same time I wanna be the good guy lots of women supposedly yearn for but it’s very hard when year stories like this; Neo Nazis who get married and have families, Men who appeared on Chris Hansen’s to Catch A Predator who got married after getting caught or monsters in prisons like Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez or Ian Watkins getting conjugal visits and love letters from lots of women (side note you never see men going crazy over serial killer women like Karla Hamolka or Cassey Anthony like this)

Drug Dealers who ravaged and destroyed communities around me buying their 2nd Lamborghini for their big house. Like I’m sorry but yeah this isn’t fair, but I’ve trying to live honestly and earnestly with my morals and yet haven’t gotten in a relationship yet even though I’m nothing like the guys who I described. Which surprise it’s another source of my own anxiety because if there is something Intersectional sex positive progressives (just look how LGBT community treats ACE people who aren’t interested in kink or being slutty) and alpha male manosphere red pill types both fundamentally agree on is that a man with no relationship experience or sexual experience IE incel/virgin (these days you can’t separate the two) is a man of low to non-existent value. Because shocker sexual experience is tied with his moral character, whether he’s desired by other women because well women want a man who’s desirable to other women and if he’s a virgin especially at an older age (that’s me) he’s therefore unf--kable, undesirable and unlovable and reasons why it hasn’t happened are irrelevant. And well trying to look for stories of women who’ve slept with or dated older virgins and well it with every positive encounter you’ll have like 10 stories the story of her being bored and leaving to well just wanting an “upgrade”.

So how do I keep this light shining in this bleak hell world, how do I keep that spark of hope as said hopelessness and anxiety is consuming me? How do I stop self-harming and self-sabotaging myself for my shortcomings and failures?

Sincerely 

Keeping the Spark Alight

DEAR KEEPING THE SPARK ALIGHT: I’m not exactly surprised to be getting more letters like this, considering, well, everything. I’d recommend you check out some of the other letters I’ve covered on this topic as a starting point, KSA, but there’re a couple things that you bring up, specifically, that I feel should be addressed.

Let’s start off with debunking a myth: the number of romantically idolized serial killers and the like is vastly overstated and poorly explained. While many criminals have had their fans – Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde and others are some prime examples – this is as much about media coverage and the effects of glamour and infamy. Pretty Boy Floyd, for example, was popular in part because he consciously affected a Robin Hood persona of robbing from banks (at a time when banks were busy foreclosing on everyone) and giving money to people who’d hide him from the police. That helped make him an underdog or folk hero in the eyes of many, rather than a violent criminal.

But with regards to serial killers like Bundy or Ramirez, it’s more accurate to say that people are drawn to them because people want the transitive power of fame and celebrity, more than it being about attraction to the individual. Much of the myth of their appeal ties far more to their portrayal in movies by conventionally attractive actors like Mark Harmon or Zac Effron, and the fact that they featured in movies at all.

Ariel Castro and Josef Fritzl weren’t exactly dealing with hordes of women throwing their panties at them, nor is there a line of women dying to hook up with folks who, say, shot a bunch of people in a bodega during a robbery.

Focusing on the outliers just creates a false impression that really only serves to reinforce your pre-existing beliefs and a sense that evil should be inherently repugnant to people and the universe in general. Which actually brings me to my next point.

The litany of complaints you give right at the top can really be summed up with “it really sucks when bad people don’t get punished for being bad”. And… yes. It does. It’s not fair. But fairness isn’t the issue here. The problem you’re having is that you’re expecting the universe to be fair and to do the punishing.

This is what’s known as the Just World Fallacy – the idea that people “get what they deserve”, as though there’s a morality mechanic to life and if you cross a particular threshold, you get handed appropriate rewards or punishments. It’s something that comes up a lot when we see folks that we think are succeeding despite being awful… but it also comes up when we think about folks who get harmed by others. A lot of victims of assault, rape, robbery and so on are treated as though they “deserve” their suffering. If someone’s not the ‘perfect’ victim, they’re often disbelieved or treated as though they’re responsible for what happened to them. People who are suffering from poverty, being unhoused, dealing with addiction issues… if they don’t fit the “right” narrative, it’s often seen as being their fault.

This is why I actually appreciate the inherent unfairness of life, even if I wish it were otherwise. It’s a reminder that life is something that happens, and it’s up to us to shape and direct it. To quote Marcus Cole: “I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?’ So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.” 

The problem with holding onto the idea that good is rewarded and evil is punished is that it tends to blind us to the world around us and why things happen the way they do. When we attribute reward and punishment to God, the universe, karma, whatever, we don’t have any real motivation to look around and say “hang on a minute… this isn’t right.” It lets us off the hook because hey, what can you do, that’s how the universe works…

(And I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t point out that karmic outcomes are something that happens after you die. Karma doesn’t reward or punish you in this life, it determines what happens to you in the next life. The same thing applies in Christian theology: you get punished for your sins in the afterlife, not during.)

Karma isn’t responsible for, say, people being unhoused, minorities being sentenced to longer and harsher penalties than white people convicted of similar crimes or why some crimes get punished and others go uninvestigated. That’s not a matter of God having left the building, that’s the result of structural issues within society. Those structural and systematic problems aren’t the result of laws of nature or acts of a divine system of morality, they’re systems and structures created by people.

That means, in turn, that it’s up to people to fix them. A more just, equitable world isn’t going to just happen; it’s on us to make it happen. That means having to take your own agency and privilege and put it to use. The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, not because of any natural law, but because a whole bunch of determined motherf--kers grabbed onto one end and started pulling. If justice is going to be inevitable, it’s going to take people who make it so, rather than hoping and waiting.

That same issue – that the punishment and rewards come from people taking action, rather than from inherent fairness of the universe – applies to your other complaints too. You’re attributing romantic success or failure to both the unfairness of the universe, perceived slights and the supposedly inalterable attitudes of people based on little more supposition and self-limiting beliefs and occasional s--tty posts on social media that confirm your preexisting beliefs.

It doesn’t exactly take the work of a master detective to figure out how much time you’re spending on incel forums and listening to other people complain about why bad boys win and nice guys lose and crafting grand theories that tacitly ignore things like “developing charisma” and “being assertive and making a move” and instead attributing it to evopsych bulls--t. Attributing sexual experience to moral character is just the same s--t drenched in different artificial flavoring.

To be blunt: your entire argument barely hangs together at all and is entirely dependent on begging the question. The only way it makes any sense requires first accepting the premise as being correct and then relying on random forum posts that your confirmation bias regards as “proof” while conveniently hand-waving away equally anecdotal posts that don’t confirm your priors. You’re buying into all sorts of bulls--t – such as “women want men who are desired by other women” – that comes almost entirely from people in the PUA/Red-pill crowds, whose sources are “dude trust me” and “everyone knows this”. At best, the people you’re hearing from are misunderstanding the concept of vetting or social proof; at worst, they’re relying on things that pick-up artists like Mystery wrote back in 2004. These are theories that, I might point out, were composed under the rigorous scientific method of “yeah, sounds about right to me” while sitting around at an LA diner at 4 AM.

And to add to it all, you’re creating and mixing up examples that have nothing to do with one another, in order to prop up your confirmation bias around virginity and morality. Being part of the LGBTQ community doesn’t automatically make you sex-positive, nor a progressive, nor does that have anything to do with the supposed desirability or seeming flaws of someone who’s a virgin. Queer people can be assholes, the same way straight people can. Queer and straight people can even be s--tty to the same people for the same reason – just ask bi and pan folks. But that has nothing to do with anything that you’re talking about, nor does it even tie into your complaints about fairness or morality. You’ve moved from morality to social value and status, and the two are rather clearly not the same… even if you’re treating both as things that just happen rather than acts of deliberate will.

Much like justice and fairness, social value or status doesn’t just “happen”, nor does it get handed out. These things are cultivated and created, born out of action, not mere existence, and value and status are as deeply personal and nuanced as what makes someone attractive. Put me next to various sports heroes, and while I may have some admiration for their athleticism, I don’t find them particularly awe-inspiring, nor do I really find them to have great social value or cachet among me and my friends. Drop someone like Matt Mercer, Lou Wilson, Lindsay Ellis or Hbomberguy in the mix, on the other hand and people will lose their goddamn minds. And the same goes both ways; people I went to high-school or college with could meet Brennan Lee Mulligan and have no idea who he is or why he’s a big deal, even though he sold out Madison Square Garden.

All of which is to say that you’re creating all sorts of reasons and theories to explain why things are unfair and hopeless, when all you’re really doing is just reinforcing your own sense of helplessness and lack of agency. Just as it takes people to bend the moral arc of the universe – that is, people taking an active hand in shaping the world around them – it takes being an active participant in your own life to build and generate attraction.

All any of this is, is another variation of thinking that being a “nice guy” is all it takes for people to be interested in you – as though sex is the reward for maxing out the light side of the morality meter. It’s not. Sex and attraction comes about through interaction with other people and – importantly – how you make them feel. Being isn’t the same thing as doing, and hoping that just being is going to do the work for you is a fool’s errand at best.

Even someone who’s classically handsome has to actually put in effort – both in terms of presentation to make themselves look good, but also in interpersonal connection. Just standing there like a handsome statue doesn’t get you laid.

As I’ve said before: the sex-gettingest men I have ever known have run the gamut from tall and muscular to short and fat, from classically handsome to borderline gargoyle… but every single one of them were fun to be around. They made people feel good. They were taking an active hand in getting to know people, connecting with them and building attraction, rather than hoping that someone would just intuit their positive qualities. Just as importantly, they didn’t attribute their failures – and they did indeed have failures, as every human does – to unfairness or injustice in the universe or some all-encompassing attitude about whatever random quality they may have. They took it as either “this didn’t work” or “this person wasn’t right for me” and moved on.

It’s undeniable that the world is an unfair place. But that’s because that’s just the world. It is what we make of it. If we want a better world, we have to take action to make it so. And to be clear, people are. The Tesla Takedown movement is producing very real results, sapping away at the financial fiction that gives Elon Musk any sort of authority or influence. Protests have been forcing the administration to reverse course, while people have been making their elected officials actually serve the public interest as the public that they serve expresses precisely how pissed off they are. Action gets the job done.

The same applies to your personal life. If you want things to be different, you have to do things differently. And in many cases that means actually doing things. If you want people to see you as a viable sexual partner, you have to take action to make yourself one. That means, among other things, letting go of the idea that being a virgin automatically disqualifies you or that being “good” is all it takes. You have to work on your social skills and your presentation. You have to actually go and meet people, to put yourself out there and connect with folks instead of hoping that it will “just happen”.

You also need to take your foot off the brakes and stop doing the stupid things that only serve to demotivate you. This is, yet again, why I tell people to get the f--k off the Internet, go outside and touch grass. If you’re doing nothing but marinating in your own misery online, that’s all you’re going to see, because all your socials will gleefully serve up as much as you can slurp down. All you’re doing is just listening to other crabs in the same bucket, telling you that it’s all pointless and hopeless and you should give up. They want to pull down anyone who tries to crawl back out because if someone does get out of the bucket, it means that they have to confront how much of this is the result of their own choices.

Getting off the socials, closing your accounts and making a point of going out and interacting with real people, in the physical world will do you far more good than any amount of searching Reddit for the incel equivalent of just-so stories. Taking deliberate action to make changes in your life will give you better results and change your attitude much faster than sitting around, complaining that there are weirdos writing to serial killers in prison.  

And, incidentally, considering you drop comments about self-harm at the end of your letter, one of the steps you should be taking is get your ass to therapy.

You can be a bystander in life, or you can be an active participant. But if you choose to just be, instead of taking on an active role, then you have little to complain about when your dreams just pass you by without stopping. It’s only going to happen when you make it happen.

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: What do you do when you think you’re falling out of love with someone? I’ve been married to my wife for over 15 years now. Over the course of that time, we went from being unable to keep our hands off each other to my being annoyed when my wife cuddles up to me on the couch as we watch TV.

I know that things aren’t going to be as passionate as they were at the beginning but now I feel like time we spend together is an imposition. When I think about making plans, I don’t plan date nights or whatnot, I want to make them with just me and my friends. When she asks me about my day after work or texts me something funny the dog did, I feel like it’s intruding on time I want to spend on my own.

It’s not that I dislike her or hate her, I just find everything to be annoying or expecting to feel pressured to act like I did when we first started dating. I’m in my early 40s now, I don’t feel ANYTHING like I did when we first met. I don’t really want to get divorced, but if she were to come with papers, I’m not sure how hard I’d fight. There’re times I feel like maybe life would be better if I were living on my own, on my own terms and not having to run it through another person. 

I feel bad about feeling this way, but I don’t know how to change it or if I should even try. What do I do?

One Foot Out The Door

DEAR ONE FOOT OUT THE DOOR: Y’know, OFOTD, it’s certainly possible that your relationship with your wife is reaching its natural conclusion. Not every relationship is meant to last forever; sometimes they’re only right for us for a little while, and then we reach a point where they no longer meet our needs and that’s ok. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with the relationship; it just means that you’ve reached the end of the chapter of this particular stage of your life.

But it’s also possible that you’ve fallen victim to one of the greatest and most colossal traps that hits basically every couple: you got too comfortable and that comfort has started turning into contempt. There’s a quote from Esther Perel’s Mating In Captivity that I feel is relevant here: “Too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”

Here’s the thing: in every relationship, we all settle down and settle in. We get comfortable with that person, in part because we feel safe and secure. We don’t necessarily feel like we need to keep up with certain things because we know we love them and they love us. And while that’s a good thing – relationships should be comfortable – it also means that you quit doing more than the bare minimum to keep the relationship going. Yeah, human biology means that the initial waves of passion are gonna slow down and you’re not going to be as hungry for each other as you used to be, but that doesn’t mean that you should let everything slide. And yes, some of this is simply a matter of “ok, I don’t feel like I need to be in fighting trim at all times” – you’ve got a partner, after all, you don’t need all that wonderful plumage to attract one – but some of where we let standards slip is in how we treat our partners and our relationship.

One of the interesting things about human psychology is how much our behavior shapes our feelings, rather than vice-versa. We as a species are very bad at understanding why we feel the way we do. We assume that we do X because we feel Y and Y inspires us to do X. But in reality, it’s often the other way around: we do X and that makes us feel Y instead. Our brains take the cues from our bodies and invent the reasons afterwards. The way we act can change the way we feel, simply because our brains assume that we’re acting this way because we feel that way and so we start to feel it.

This matters in relationships because when you start to treat your partner as though they were less special, you tend to feel like they’re less special. And I don’t mean that you’re treating them badly, but that you’re simply not doing the little things that you used to do because it makes them smile. It’s easy to feel passion and excitement when you’re off together doing exciting things; it’s entirely different when the only place you take them is for granted.

Here’s a question for you: when’s the last time that you’ve made an effort for your wife? And I don’t mean doing expected household chores or maintenance, I mean making an effort specifically for her? When is the last time you dressed up sharp because you know she likes a sharp-dressed man? When is the last time you got her a little token of affection because you knew it would make her smile? When is the last time you planned a date for the two of you, not as a married couple but like you were planning a date from the early days of your courtship?

So my first advice for you is simple: make an effort. Even if right now it feels like you’re forcing it, make the effort to treat your wife like you’re only six months into the relationship. Treat her like she’s the Morticia to your Gomez or the Laura Mohr to your Shorsey, as though you would – to quote the sage – “tongue-kiss your toaster to vacuum your f--kin’ car”, the way you did at the start. Keep this up and you might be surprised just how much those old feelings start to return.

Now the second thing I would suggest is going to sound counter-intuitive but… have you considered having time away from her? You mention feeling smothered or inconvenienced by her, but when’s the last time you’ve legitimately gone and had a stretch of time on your own? I’m a big believer in couples having distinct and separate lives outside of their relationship, including going out on separate vacations. To return to Esther Perel for a moment, one of the insights from Mating In Captivity is how much familiarity is the antithesis of desire; love may be in the knowing, but desire is in the mystery. If you spend all of your time together – even if that time is separate but in the same house – then there’s no room for mystery, no room for discovery and no room for novelty. You don’t have as much to talk about simply because there’s not so much that’s happened that you didn’t experience at the same time. Taking time apart – as in vacations, not “we’re on a break” – can help rekindle that spark simply because that time apart means having different experiences. Those different experiences mean you grow and change in new and interesting ways and suddenly you have new things to learn about each other and to discuss with one another, new insights to share and new thoughts to plumb the depths of. It can also help ease this feeling of her being an almost-literal ball-and-chain.

The last thing I would suggest is that, before you talk to a lawyer, talk to a marriage counselor. Sometimes we can be too close to a problem to really see the size and shape of it. Having a third party to talk to, who can provide an outsider’s perspective and insight, can help identify where the issues are and help give you the vocabulary to dig into them.

It can also help you figure out whether you’re there to save your marriage or to start the process of winding it down. Sometimes the point of visiting a marriage counselor is to help everyone come to the understanding that this relationship has reached its natural conclusion and to create a path forward that makes untangling and separating your lives a less fraught and troublesome process. We all like to roll our eyes at terms like ‘conscious uncoupling’, but there’s a lot to be said for treating the end of a relationship with seriousness and consideration rather than a contentious or traumatic break.

So start with simply making an effort for your wife – treating her like you love her as though it were the start of your relationship instead of the culmination of decades. Give yourself a little space outside of your time together, so that the two of you can have lives of your own and develop new things for the other to discover and learn about one another. And then, as this goes on, talk to a counselor about the state of your marriage.

Just because things feel the way they do now doesn’t mean that they’re inevitable, permanent or signal the ultimate end. Sometimes it just means you need to recognize that you’ve stopped caring because you stopped trying.

Good luck.

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