Estimated reading time: 23 minutes Dear Dr. NerdLove: I’m an almost 39-year-old single straight white male. I was a late bloomer and never even kissed a girl until I was 22. Got my first “girlfriend” and lost the v-card at 24. After that, I spent the rest of my 20s and early 30s casually dating and sleeping around until I decided I was tired of that and not going to do it anymore until I found an actual girlfriend. And then it just never happened. I’ve had five “exes” (I think 3 of them would say we were just friends with benefits), and dated several other women, but nothing serious…

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes Dear Dr. NerdLove: I (45+ female) guess I am writing this letter from a place of loneliness. Maybe not so much in a romantic sense, but in the sense of just not knowing what to do. It might be that I haven’t had parents that I could trust to ever fall back on, I feel like I’m perpetually falling through space, no solid ground anywhere. Leaving this melodramatic start for what it is, let me get down to my actual situation. I’ve been together with my husband for almost 25 years, we have two children who are (almost) grown-up. They are still living with us…

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes Esteemed Dr. NerdLove I’m a 27-year-old cisgender man and I’m in love with one of my closest female friends, but she doesn’t love me back. My friend and I have known each other for around a year and a half and, when we met, I never thought that I would end up falling in love with her. That is the kind of thing that I have always experienced when it comes to romance, being both demisexual and demiromantic. About 6 months ago I realized that I have feelings for my friend and for a while, I thought that those feelings were reciprocated because we started…

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes Dear Dr. NerdLove, I have been approached by another man in my local autistic self-advocacy group. He knows I’m a kinkster and wants me to help him enter the scene so he can find a kinky girlfriend. The thing is, his digital footprint and the limited interactions I have had with him give off some serious Nice Guy/incel vibes. That’s not even getting into his politics, which are incoherent but very right wing-coded and drenched in military fetishization. He’s made a vague pro-dictatorship statement before. I’ve been in the scene long enough to know what would happen if he entered it, he’d be at the…

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes Hi Dr. NerdLove, I’ve messaged before and been a different alias here. I’m uh, messaging again because I find myself in this existential break point of whether or not it’s even possible to find love for someone like me who hasn’t really had much at 28. I currently disregard myself from it because I struggle with self-hate and while I’m trying to combat that (therapy, writing about it, etc.), it doesn’t feel like it’s enough, so I stay away from active attempts partially because of that but also, partially because I’m isolated and don’t know how or where to even go to meet someone. I’m…

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes Hi Dr. NerdLove, I’ve recently found myself in a new situation, one I’m completely unprepared for. I’m 32, and have been happily unattached since one moderately toxic and all-consuming relationship in my late teens and early twenties. I identify as ace, both asexual and aromantic. My social life is full of friends and family and I really value the ability to retreat to my own home where no one else goes at the end of the day. I have a very large preference for personal space, and very little desire to get close enough to people to touch or smell them. I’m not averse to the occasional hug,…

Estimated reading time: 18 minutes Dear Dr. NerdLove: I’m a 36-year-old trans woman who has been struggling hard with social anxiety, trauma from past bullying and depression. Lately I’d been making quite a lot of progress, including therapy, transitioning, facing my anxiety to go out and meet people. Then, a year and a half ago, I met her – let’s call her Julie, a few years younger than me, cute, sweet, funny, we had a great connection that clicked real fast. We started dating, and for a while everything was like in a dream. We got along really well, didn’t have any major conflict, had deep conversations, we’d go out…

Estimated reading time: 17 minutes Hi Doc, I’m in my first romantic relationship. I knew going in that it was statistically unlikely to work out, so I tried not to get my hopes up, but I’m still crushed. My partner and I have had a couple discussions over the past few months that essentially amounted to “we want lives in different directions and neither of us are gonna change our minds, but we’re still in love so let’s enjoy this while it lasts.” He’s one of the kindest, gentlest, most thoughtful people I know, and even though we’ve only been dating for a little less than a year, I’d consider…

Estimated reading time: 16 minutes Dear Dr. NerdLove: I grew up pretty isolated from everyone. My parents emphasized that getting good grades should be my first priority when going to school, and as such, I was able to get a lot of scholarships and attend a pretty nice college. But I feel like I missed a lot of opportunities to develop a dating life. I was involved in all sorts of sports and extracurriculars, and I could socialize with people just fine, but I never was really a part of any specific friend group, and everything stayed in school. Toward my later years, I got along with just about everybody,…