DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Sorry in advance for some grammar mistakes, English is not my native language.

The tl;dr version of the letter is basically “How does an aromantic, very sexually confused autistic guy with an avoidant attachment style deal with relationships?” (and by relationship, I mean, friend with benefits with the emphasis on friend)

Now, doing things in order, I’m aromantic, meaning that I never felt any romantic attraction towards anyone. I do feel sexual attraction (more on that later), but I never had romantic crushes (or I can’t make the difference between them and friendship), so I suppose that in the 35 years of my existence if I never had them, I won’t have them for the rest of it. I’m not romance averse, as long as it’s not directed at me. If it is, then it feels icky.

Then, there’s my sexuality. And the shortest word to describe it is chaos (technically it’s abrosexual if you want the label, but it’s a weird one). It’s literally changing all the time. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I’d find attractive in the next 20 minutes. Trying to make sense of it makes me even more confusing, so it’s easier to go with the flow. But it’s not something that I can do with dealing with people IRL. That mysterious person wouldn’t be able to change their gender to match the chaos inside me (and still, they’d have to deal with the moments I’m not attracted to anyone anyway).

And finally, the attachment style. I’m avoidant, meaning that at first, I will seem to get closer to you, until one point where I’ll keep you at arm length. I can’t really pinpoint the moment where I’ll start do that though and it’s mostly unconscious. On the other hand, I do know that I do that, so I won’t go to the extreme of starting to ghost or block people out of it, but I can be a bit colder, especially, if you’re forcing me to get closer. There’s also the “funny” situation where I get more attracted to people who are unavailable to me.

The self-esteem could also be better. I’m finding myself annoying most of the time. But looking at the data, I can’t confirm it’s how other people see me, since I still have friends who visibly like to hang around with me. So not really sure how, but I’m doing something right there. And I even had some people admitting having a crush on me (somehow???), not that it’s great with my situation.

So how to find someone with that? An easy answer could be some one-night stands, but that isn’t too interesting to me to begin with and then the autism and the social anxiety going with it wouldn’t let me live that down (my brain would scream danger to me for the entire thing). So, a longer thing is necessary to me. That’s why I talked earlier the friend with benefits, with the emphasis on friend.

How can I do that to a person? Basically, it would be asking of them: If you fall in love with me, I won’t be able to return your feelings, I’m not sure when I’d feel attracted to you and if you get too close to me, I will start running away while giving mixed signals. Who the hell would want that over any other decent relationship? I’m to the point where when one of those people who had a crush on me said that they found someone else, I felt relieved. Like “Good, you have found happiness without having to deal with my BS”.

I know I can work on the avoidant attachment style issue (working on it very slowly, because it’s hard), but the rest stays a puzzle to me. How can I work with that, without causing heartbreak for the other person and guilt on my part?

The Most Complicated Guy

DEAR DATE OR DIE: And here I thought I’d seen every permutation of relationship questions out there. Congrats, MCG, this is a new one for me. 

OK, so this one’s a mess, in part because I think you’re asking the wrong questions here. Your problem is that part of what you’re asking for at the end – how do you find the perfect relationship but also ensure that you don’t ever cause someone to get their heart broken – is not just impossible, but also seriously putting the cart before the horse.

Hell, I’m not entirely sure there even is a horse at this point. Or a cart. Mostly just an IKEA kit, a bunch of parts, fasteners and an Allen wrench in a pile and instructions that make no sense.

I know I sound like I’m being dismissive, but what you’re asking is kind of like saying “I want to start running, but I’ve got flat feet, shin splints and reduced lung capacity; how can I find a run club where I won’t completely outshine everyone else in the club?” You’re presuming a whole lot of conclusions before you’ve even gotten to the point of knowing what kind of relationship would even work for you and whether people you would connect with are even at risk of falling in love with you in the first place.

I mean, right off the top, you can’t guarantee that you won’t hurt someone or that you could keep them from falling for you. Not if you’re going to have any sort of intimate or emotionally connected relationship. That’s not how people work, and assuming that there’s some way to thread that needle perfectly is naive at best. Admirable, but naive.

Again: that’s not my saying “bold of you to assume that anyone could love you”, that’s my saying “let’s start with focusing on some basics before we worry about your being such a Casanova that you leave a trail of broken hearts and shattered lives behind you.” Because, quite honestly, I think you’re thinking a little too heteronormative in terms of relationships when you’re anything but. A traditional relationship – even the kind of FWB relationship you’re imagining – isn’t going to work for you. Certainly not under the conditions you’ve described.

I talk a lot about finding people who are right for you, and a big part of that requires knowing what, precisely, you want and what kind of relationship you’re actually open to. Then you would want to look towards finding people who are more likely to be receptive to that kind of relationship. ��So let’s roll it from the top, starting with the easiest part: being aromantic. Aromantic people – that is, folks who don’t feel romantic love – can and do have relationships; I know someone who’s aro who is currently juggling about three or four partners, depending on the day. They genuinely care for their partners, but don’t necessarily feel what most of us would call romantic love for them. Which is fine, honestly; there’re many different kinds of love, and romantic love – agape – isn’t the always the most important part of a relationship.

It is entirely possible, for example, to have a relationship that’s founded on fondness, affection, respect and sexual connection, but not romantic love. Romantic love isn’t the glue that holds a relationship together; it can be the motivator, it can be the intensifier or the reason why the relationship started, but God knows I’ve fielded plenty of questions from people who were wildly in love with their partners… but who couldn’t be in a relationship with them.

To the extent this is going to be relevant to your situation, it means that you’re going to want to prioritize things like mutual compatibility – especially in areas like lifestyle and sexuality – over a romantic connection. It may mean having that you’ll be a little more analytical in who you date or decide to start a relationship with than the average bear, but that’s fine. Data and Spock both had friends and companions throughout their lives. Hell, Spock was basically the third leg of a poly triad of platonic hetero life-mates.

The tricker aspect is your sexuality and your attachment style. I think it would be healthier �– or at least easier for others to grasp – if we referred to your attachment style as “feral cat” or “outdoor cat”. You’ll get close to others, but on your own terms and in your own time and only so close. You vanish for a while, but come back eventually like nothing’d happened. This can be a little frustrating for folks who are expecting a more traditional or conventional connection… but there’re also people who prefer this. There are a lot of folks who are more on the introverted side of the spectrum who could well appreciate a relationship with someone who doesn’t expect a lot of togetherness and who finds time apart as important as time together.

That being said, I wonder how much of this is a matter of a malignant sort of self-protection. You mention that you tend to fall for people who aren’t interested in you, but get cold towards people who try to push for more intimacy. That, to me, sounds like you may be subconsciously saying “I don’t deserve to have a loving relationship”, pushing people away who might actually return your feelings as you direct your attention towards folks who are “safe”. That is – folks who aren’t interested and thus won’t force you to deal with the idea that maybe you are deserving of love and affection.

Considering what you’ve said about your self-esteem, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case. A lot of folks on the autism spectrum tend to internalize messages about how they’re “annoying” or “hard to deal with” and take it as a sign that there’s something wrong with them, rather than a matter of society not understanding or being entirely accepting of autistic people. If you’re seeing your autism as being an inherent negative, instead of just being a part of who you are, I could easily see how that could lead to the sort of “go away a little closer” behavior you mention.

And then there’s the abrosexuality. I’ll be honest: this is the first time I’ve heard of it, and I wonder how much of it is truly a matter of “constantly changing” and more that it’s pansexuality with sprinkles. Human sexuality is often a moving target, less of a sliding scale and more of a multi-axis graph that can fluctuate over time. Someone who’s bi or pan, for example, isn’t necessarily equally attracted to two or more genders, nor do they necessarily feel both romantic and sexual attraction in equal measure for the people they’re attracted to. There’re plenty of bi and pan folks who may be sexually attracted to multiple genders, but tend to be romantically attracted to (or more likely to form relationships with) people of one gender or another.  

Hell, some folks have a sort of single-target sexuality, where exactly one person of a particular gender hits just right, but they aren’t into other people of that gender.

At the same time however, even people who have more fixed sexualities don’t necessarily find the same people attractive to the same degree at all times.  Folks who have a “type” – redheads, dump-truck butts, skinny goth disaster bisexuals, whatever – frequently find themselves into people who aren’t their usual “type”, and may find their types change over time. Likewise, people who need a lot of sexual novelty can find that their desire for a person drops dramatically over time, simply because the newness has worn off.

So I wonder if your abrosexuality is akin to that, but on a more chaotic speed and schedule.

But you’re the expert in your sexuality, not me, so take my thoughts with all appropriate salt and skepticism. Especially since functionally it would all lead to the same place: a traditional committed relationship, even a more conventional friends-with-benefits relationship isn’t going to work for you. Not, at least, with the way things seem to be operating right now.

If you want my honest opinion, based on what you’ve described… well, honestly, I think you’re going to have a hard time squaring this particular circle. An ideal setup would be less of a friends-with-benefits relationship but more of a sexually fluid social group who’re open to occasional sexual encounters, but where the relationship isn’t predicated on sex. The problem is that, unless you manage to live long enough that Dr. Mensah is born and Preservation Alliance is becomes a functional community, this is going to be like trying to find an okapi in the wild, without a map or guide – not impossible but exceedingly difficult.

You might �– and I stress might – find something akin to what you would need as a floater between various polycules in the queer community – a sort of neighborhood cat that everyone feeds and occasionally sleeps in people’s garages or on their patios, but doesn’t really belong to anyone. But again: I think that’s going to be hard to find and a hell of a lot harder to actually pull off successfully. 

If you want a practical answer with minimal drama… well, I’d suggest that this is time when developing an established relationship with a few sex-workers would be easiest. This has its own difficulties and complications, for obvious reasons. It would, however, be the simplest in terms of logistics and relationship management. While it wouldn’t be a “relationship” in the most traditional sense, it would allow for the way your sexuality and attachment style work without requiring that you seek out the Goldilocks of relationship-anarchists in Seattle or the Bay Area.

But I think some of this may need to wait until you work on your attachment issues and your self-esteem. I have a sneaking suspicion that self-acceptance and learning to lean into your autism instead of trying to work against it may help considerably. Once you’re not seeing yourself as being a walking, talking annoyance and being deserving of love, I suspect it’ll be a little easier to find relationships that works for you, without all the attendant drama and complications.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m in my thirties now and haven’t dated since my early twenties. Some of that has just been life circumstances, some of it has been excuses using those life circumstances, but I’ve finally ‘got’ to the place I want to be, and now I just have to face the naked truth: I’m f--king terrified of relationships.

It dates back to my main long-term relationship from my twenties. In retrospect, it basically followed a pattern of me trying to get her affection (both like comfort and sex) to little success, so I’d start pulling away or get annoyed, and then she would have a crisis that made me come back to comfort her and the cycle would repeat. At the time I thought I was just upsetting her and being a piece of s--t, sometimes I was when I got annoyed. Now she did genuinely have some serious going on and thinking back I know she just wasn’t really ready to be in a relationship, but at the time I was confused and thought it was my fault entirely. One time I really made plans to break up, and I was kinda s--tty because I liked another girl and wanted to ask them out, and then my girlfriend trauma-dumped a lot of stuff and I felt obligated to stay, which wasn’t great, but I didn’t know what else to do and felt I really would be a piece of s--t if I broke up with her after that.

Which made the break-up devastating – we moved in together with friends and in the first week she went really cold and distant with me until I confronted her about it. She said she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a relationship and had to think about it. So I gave her more time to think (I think I mostly wanted her to just be honest and say she wanted to break up) until I eventually asked her again and told her to give a yes or no. She did say no, and we had an argument, but it was a relief at least. Until a few days later where she started dating another guy in the house who until that moment, I had considered a friend.

I stayed in that house for ten months. Maybe a little out of some self-destructive pride, but mostly because it was an effort to get out of bed, then to not want to die, then finally not to kill myself. Eventually I nearly tried, but stopped myself by calling myself a coward and vowing to kill myself later. Later happened, and then I think I just started drinking a lot. Though in the past few months I’ve managed to cut that out.

That relationship in my twenties really messed me up I think. I’ve always known that, but the more I unpack it the more I realize how much it messed me up. By the time I walked out of that house I was thinking I was the bad guy, that I deserved it, that I must have been such an awful boyfriend for her to be so callous because nothing else made sense – I couldn’t blame her knowing everything she has gone through (and knowing I was the only one she confided about it, the new guy didn’t know) and the new boyfriend I thought was more just an opportunist than anything else.

I’ve spent the past ten years doing a lot of stuff, I’ve stopped and started, even living and working abroad for a few years, but mostly avoided relationships. Sometimes I occasionally tried or thought about them when I had a crush, but I just waited it out until interest died.

So I’m sitting here ten years on and that wound has festered. I’ve had therapy, but it’s expensive so can’t sustain it really. I’m on a waiting list for counselling, but it’s long. I’m on antidepressants, but it’s a carousal of raising doses and trying new meds.

I can drag it out of myself to admit I’m not a total monster who is unworthy of love and that I have things to offer, I am empathetic and want to support others, even if I’m terrible at receiving care and have never met a compliment I can’t pass on and say someone else deserves. I’m self-reliant and look after myself, have friends, like to get out and do things (I’ve found social deduction games are a great way to exercise the old hypervigilance). But even getting close to the idea of a relationship triggers every fear that I’ll end up in some kind of situation like I did before, and I don’t know if I’d survive it this time.

So how do you even start when dating feels like it could literally be life-or-death?

Date or Die

DEAR DATE OR DIE: OK, DoD, before I get too deep into this: if you’re dealing with thoughts that are triggering these sorts of panic attacks and you aren’t in a position to work with a therapist or counselor, I’d recommend looking into some self-directed cognitive behavioral therapy exercises. You can find these all over the Internet, including at sites like MoodGym, and they’re a good way of working towards getting intrusive and alarming thoughts and feelings under control.

Now with that being said, there’re a couple of things that need to be addressed here. The first is that a lot of this is in your head. And I don’t mean that this is all made up or that these feelings aren’t real or valid; how you’re feeling is entirely real and valid and understandable.

The issue is that this is you are reacting to ghosts of the past that only exist in your head and not out in the world around you. You are holding on to responses based on events that happened in the past, at a time when you had no real experience or even a role-model that you could look to that would say “this is a bad scene and you should leave.” But part of the problem is that you’re still responding to all of this as though nothing has changed – that you’re the same person you were back then, that circumstances are exactly the same and that you would respond the same way. 

You are, in a very real sense, locking yourself in the past by not letting it be the past.

And look, I get it. I’ve talked a lot about my formative relationships and how they f--ked with my head and it took time to process and learn some important lessons from them. But part of the problem is that I spent more time reacting to them rather than interrogating them. It was a long time before I actually said “OK, why did I act like this, why did I let X situation go on for as long as I did, why didn’t I do Y differently?”, and an even longer time before I could say “because I was afraid of A” or “I didn’t think I deserved B”, rather than “because I was a weak and awful person”.

Which brings up the second thing that needs to be said: your first relationship was toxic – please notice I say “toxic”, not “abusive” – and neither of you were conducting yourself as your best selves. Now here’s the thing: this was because you two were both ill-suited for one another, but also neither of you were willing or able to recognize that this was a relationship that should have ended long before it did. And again: I get it; I stayed in my first relationship for far, far longer than I ever should have. But this is a case where the toxicity is continuing, in part because you haven’t actually reckoned with the why of it all so that you can learn from it.

Here’s what I mean: part of the problem you were having in your relationship was that you had needs that weren’t being met – sex, affection, etc. – in part because you were with someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t meet them. She had her reasons that went deeper than “because f--k you, penis, that’s why”, but that’s not important right now. The point is that you were making a bid for connection and that bid was being rejected. Just as importantly though: what you were looking for wasn’t unreasonable. Wanting intimacy and affection from your romantic partner is entirely normal and valid, and is considered to be part of the basic relationship package unless otherwise stated.

Now, that doesn’t mean sex, intimacy and affection are available on tap; people aren’t soda fountains or vending machines after all. Sometimes a person isn’t in the mood, is upset, distracted, not feeling well or otherwise not in a place where they can respond positively to a bid like that. But when every – or even most – bids for connection are being refused, that’s a problem in the relationship that needs to be managed.

It’s important to note that some of the issue was undoubtedly a matter of your not necessarily understanding how to express that bid, and part of it was in how to deal with when that bid was refused or rejected. You would pull away and be petulant; I think we can both agree that this wasn’t healthy. Your girlfriend would then conveniently have a crisis that would draw you back in. That was her unhealthy way of responding to your pulling away, framing a bid for connection as an emergency; rather than addressing the underlying issue, she did the thing that she knew would get you back, even though it didn’t solve the problem for either of you.

Part of the underlying issue is that she didn’t actually want to be in a relationship but insisted on staying in one. Which meant that she was both refusing to end something she knew she didn’t want, but also wasn’t willing to fully commit to being in the relationship, which meant that she was leaving you in the lurch. You were under the assumption that you were both in this in good faith and for the same reason. And the fact that she didn’t want to break up or “let” you leave meant that you were only going to face rejection for the majority of your bids for connection.

It’s this cycle of bid/rejection/withdrawal/bid/acceptance that created this toxicity; you were both behaving in unhealthy ways that ultimately encouraged more unhealthy behavior.

But here’s the thing: this all happened in part because you were young and inexperienced. You didn’t know what you were doing. You were a couple of kids fumbling around in the dark and it’s not surprising that you both bumped your heads and jammed your knees. Making mistakes is part of how we learn what not to do. But in order to do that, you have to actually understand what the mistakes were and then learn from them so you can move forward and not make them again.

And you haven’t. In fact, you haven’t even moved on from them and from what I can see, you’ve learned the wrong lessons from them. 

Now here’s why this is continuing to be an issue: right now, I’m 100% certain that you’re reading this and hearing “…and this is why you were and are an awful person” and reacting accordingly. I will bet cash money that you’re looking at it and taking all of the responsibility for this on yourself. And this line right here: “I couldn’t blame her knowing everything she has gone through” is why I’m willing to make that bet. You’re taking 100% of the blame for something that wasn’t 100% your fault.

Here’s the thing: not letting yourself be upset when someone treated you badly is dumb. At best, you’re trying to pretend that you’re not feeling the things you very clearly are feeling. At worst, you are taking on responsibility that isn’t yours, for things that weren’t your fault, out of a misguided sense of nobility that ultimately doesn’t help anyone. It ultimately makes things worse for you because it hinders you from recognizing what actually happened and why, which means you can’t learn from it, you can’t grow because of it and you won’t move on in the way you should have.

Had your girlfriend gone through some s--t? Sure. Did that s--t leave her with some s--tty coping mechanisms, maybe some responses that weren’t healthy and caused more problems? Undoubtedly. Does that mean she wasn’t responsible for her side of things in your relationship?

Absolutely the f--k not.

History isn’t an excuse for s--tty behavior. Trauma isn’t an excuse for treating other people poorly. It can explain how someone’s come to behave a certain way. It can give context to why someone acts in a particular manner or provide insight into how it came to this. But at the end of the day, these are still choices that she’s making (or not making), and she’s still responsible for them. One of the most important commandments of being in a relationship with someone is “Handle Thine Own S--t”; if you have issues that cause problems in your relationship with other people, it’s your responsibility to deal with the problem, not to dragoon other people into managing it for you.

It’s a little like dealing with someone who has trust issues; while you don’t want to treat them with an absolute lack of care or concern, it’s on them to resolve the issues and to learn to trust again, not to expect the rest of the world to never let them feel a moment of doubt.

She had some awful stuff happen, which sucks and I’m sorry she went through it. But that doesn’t mean that s--tty behavior is no longer s--tty, nor that a toxic dynamic is no longer toxic. If you want to move forward, you have to be willing to take responsibility, yes, but only for the things that you are actually responsible for.

So, if we get back to the bid/rejection cycle, part of the problem on her end is that either she didn’t recognize the bid you were making (for sex, for affection, connect, etc.) for what it was, or how to respond to it in a way that wasn’t going to be a complete rejection. This was a conversation or series of conversations the two of you needed to have about your needs and wants and how you two could meet and manage them.

And if it was the case that this was going to be an issue – you wanted things from her that she couldn’t or wouldn’t give – then the right thing to do would ultimately be to recognize that you two weren’t right for each other and to break up.

That conversation didn’t happen – likely in part because I suspect you both knew that it would lead to a break up and neither of you were in a headspace to recognize that this is what you needed. Again: been there, done that, totally get it; breaking up feels like failure, like admitting you weren’t good enough or didn’t try hard enough. Not wanting to break up with someone because you didn’t to feel like The Asshole is understandable. And sometimes, even when you’re breaking up for the “right” reasons, you can still seem like The Asshole – to yourself, to your ex, to others.  

But that doesn’t mean staying together is the right call. There are times when someone needs to be The Asshole and, in those cases, it may as well be you, because nobody else is going to do it. And while it sucks to be in that position and nobody wants to break up, that may well be the least bad of a series of bad options.  

Sometimes breaking up is recognizing that while you may like each other, even love each other, that doesn’t mean you’re right for each other. Like the song says: sometimes love just ain’t enough.

That’s why the two of you flamed out in the way you did; things lingered and festered until one of you cracked. In this case, it was your girlfriend and she did you dirty in this case. She wouldn’t let you go, and she wouldn’t end things herself, but she wouldn’t and couldn’t be who you needed… so she waited until she had an opportunity that benefitted her and made it easier for her and did so in a very callous and uncaring way.

But you didn’t do yourself any favors by being petulant when you were refused, by not pulling the trigger earlier, nor in allowing yourself to feel the anger and frustration that you very clearly did and apparently still won’t let yourself admit to. You can say “yeah, I wasn’t being my best self” and also say “my ex done me wrong”. Both things can be true, neither cancels the other out.

Now, as harsh as all this sounds right now I need to emphasize something again: you were both very young and didn’t know what you were doing. That’s part of why you two f--ked this up. And you know what? You’re allowed to recognize this without thinking that this makes you an awful person. Yes, it was a toxic situation, but it doesn’t define you. You made bad choices out of immaturity and ignorance. Now you’re older, presumably wiser and you know now what you didn’t know before; if you encounter a similar situation, you will make different choices.

But only if you let yourself let go of this.

You aren’t wrong when you say that this has festered over the last ten years, and it’s festered because you haven’t actually dealt with the wound. The fact that you are still carrying around the guilt but not letting yourself feel the anger that you deserve to feel is like having debris in the wound. You need to drain that pus and clean and disinfect that wound if you want it to actually heal. And you don’t have to carry that anger forward. You can feel it, acknowledge it and then let it go. You can forgive her… but first you have to acknowledge that she’s done things that require forgiveness. And that means being willing to acknowledge that while you may not have been acting in alignment with your best self, neither was she. You were not the only person at fault here, and not facing that is what’s keeping you trapped in the past.

Once you can do that, you can then take the next steps of really digging into the “why” of it all. Sure, you didn’t want to break up with her because it would have made you feel like s--t… but was that the only reason? Were there other fears or insecurities lurking that influenced your decision to stay? Do you think that, knowing what you know now, you would end up in the same situation, or do you think you could advocate for your needs without feeling guilty for having needs in the first place?

That is the sort of thing you should be talking to a therapist or counselor over, because right now I think you need to hear someone else tell you that you could. But once you can recognize that your mistakes were made out of youthful inexperience and ignorance, that you aren’t defined by those mistakes and that you weren’t alone in making those mistakes?

I think you’ll be less afraid of falling into the same situation as before.    

All will be well.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m trying to figure out if I’m overreacting or if this is a reasonable response. 

I (M/27) recently stated seeing “Amanda” (F/25), after we met on Hinge. We’ve had a few dates so far and our chemistry and connection have been undeniable, so much so that I realized that I wasn’t really talking to other matches. When I mentioned this to her, Amanda said that she felt the same way and was likewise not interested in continuing to be on the apps. While we’re not fully exclusive yet, I think we’re definitely at the “talking about exclusivity” stage and trying to figure out what it means for us.

At least, I was. Now I’m not so sure. As I was going through and suspending or closing my dating app accounts, I did a last flip through on Feeld, an app I hadn’t had much call to try. That’s when I saw Amanda had a profile on there as well, where she mentioned, amongst other things, that she made content for OnlyFans. 

This caught me completely by surprise. She’d never told me that she had an OF account and I feel like that’s the sort of thing I’d have the right to know. I confronted her about it and she told me that she’s had it for a couple of years now, it’s been a big part of her income and she only does solo content (vibrators, costumes and such) and isn’t planning or interested in doing two-person content. She told me she was going to tell me before we became fully exclusive, but she’s neither ashamed of it nor does she plan to stop.

I don’t know what to do here. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t want to have to deal with other guys, maybe even including people I know, watching my girlfriend shove things into her babymaker. Am I overreacting to this? Am I being an asshole here, or do I have the right to end things over this? 

Sudden Unpleasant Surprise

DEAR SUDDEN UNPLEASANT SURPRISE: Quick question, SUS: have you taken a moment to sit down and really think about what’s bothering you about this? That initial knee-jerk response tends to be the reaction you were taught to have, not necessarily how you actually feel about it. So, I think it’d be a wise decision to give yourself a little time to actually breathe through that initial feeling and dig into how you actually feel and why.

Now, to answer part of your question: you absolutely can break up with her over this. You can break up with her over literally anything – what side she parts her hair on, how she snorts when she laughs, her favorite brand of deodorant, anything. Relationships are double opt-in; if one person decides to end it, that’s their right. Your reasons are your reasons; they may not be good reasons, but they’re yours and that’s all that matters. Other people can have opinions about it, but they don’t get a vote, nor do they get to veto your choice if you decide to leave.

But – speaking of opinions – it’s my opinion that you need to stop and think things through first. Let’s start with something obvious: I am willing to bet cash money that you, yourself watch porn; 99.999% of people do. Unless you’re exclusively into hentai or you are dealing with some weird fetish where you only spank it to AI videos, then real people are making the porn you’re watching. Porn that you find arousing and are perfectly content to get off to. If you’re going to seek out women who are putting on a sexual performance for you and then run them down for providing you with the performances you’re looking for, then I think the bigger issue is with you, not with them.��It’s a little like the toxic trope of how men’s value is increased by the amount of sex they have while believing that women’s value is decreased by the amount of sex they have; all you’re really doing is saying that sex with men is inherently degrading. Seeking out someone who’s doing the thing you want and telling them they’re awful for doing it makes you the s--tty person here.

This is one of the reasons why I think you need to think about what’s actually bothering you here. You mention your friends might (or possibly even have already) seen her content; what about that, precisely is the problem. Are you worried about how that’s going to reflect on you? Do you think it makes you less special because other people have seen her naked too? What if, say, she were a professional art model who posed for figure drawing classes? Would you find that so objectionable that you’d throw the entire relationship out? What if she posed for an artist who featured his paintings of her in a gallery show? Is that reason to freak out? ��Does the fact that other people see her content – whether videos or pics or what-have-you – makes her relationship with you less “real” or “special”? Why would the fact that she makes adult content take anything away from what you have together – whether she’s making videos by herself or with another person? Is the fact that other people see her in a sexual context the issue – folks “getting” to see something you think is inherently “yours”? As I said: you almost certainly watch porn; do you have the same reaction if your friends also watch your favorite porn star? Does that take away from you? And if not, why not? You aren’t exclusive yet, any more than you have exclusive rights to the porn stars you watch…

Presumably she’s had previous relationships; does that make her less of a viable partner? Would you be less freaked out if she were still putting on those performances, but for an audience of one? You, likewise, have presumably had a sex life before you met Amanda; are you saying that your sexual history would be reason for her to freak out? Or does that only matter when it’s you?��Do you feel like the fact that she makes money – good money too according to Amanda, which is no small thing on Only Fans – is going to make you look bad?

Obviously, I have my thoughts on the matter and I’m not exactly being subtle about where I come down on this. But it’s like I said at the top: at the end of the day, my opinion doesn’t matter. Yours is the only one that does… but it works best if it’s your informed opinion and not just your reacting based on that immediate reaction. Especially since I seriously doubt you ever actually stopped and thought about it for longer than a few seconds.

So take that time to really dig into those feelings of yours. How much does this really bother you and how much of this is about you, not about her? Ask yourself: does this make sense, or is it just a bunch of double-standards and a Madonna/Whore situation? Does her having an Only Fans actually change the connection you have with her, the intimacies you’ve shared, the mutual interests and the time you’ve spent together? Is this about you, about your values, about jealousy or about insecurities? Is this about what other people may think – of her, or of you for not judging or rejecting her for this?

If, after you’ve really thought about it, really examined it, you find that this is something that you can’t get past… well, fair do’s. You’re allowed to set your deal breakers and boundaries wherever you want, and if this is a deal breaker for you, then that’s all that matters.

But it seems pretty stupid to me to throw away a relationship that was full of undeniable chemistry and connection when you didn’t know about something that wasn’t affecting you; not without really thinking things through.

Your call, SUS.

Good luck.

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