Dr NerdLove
Hi, I have a problem. I was dating for nine months with a girlfriend who was negative. I broke it off but felt bad about it.
When dating she would say I was lazy, she didn’t date fat guys. In order to get me healthy, she called me pathetic man cause I couldn’t get here bar off one time during sex. Anyway I want wanted to get back with her and she said yes but we have to be friends first. When we have been friends for three weeks and one day I ask what she was doing and she used having sex as a joke . I didn’t let on that it hurt me but I thought I was rude. Now I I’m in a place where I don’t want to give up on her (cause she had bad experience s with other exes, where they have cheated, etc.) , she has told her family and me she see us dating again. I’m starting to feel I should see other people but I still have feelings of getting back with her because of her saying we can get back together.
Please help.
2nd Time Around
Sweet suffering Jeebus, why the hell would you want to get back together with this woman?
Dude. The way she was treating you is not cool. Constantly insulting and belittling you – even in the name of “helping” is straight-up abusive behavior. It’s one thing when you and your honey can banter back and forth and have little teases. It’s another thing entirely when she goes for blood and starts aiming straight at your self-esteem.
There are plenty of reasons why one might think about getting back together with an ex: you’re better together than when you’re apart, you both really care about each other, you broke up when you were young and stupid and now that you’re older and wiser, you can overcome those previous problems…
None of these apply in your case.
Having bad experiences with her exes isn’t an excuse for being a shitty person, nor is it a reason to stick together; that’s her problem to deal with, not yours. Her saying “Yeah, we can get back together” is similarly NOT a reason to get back together.
Your instincts are telling you to see other people. I’m telling you to RUN MOTHERFUCKER and don’t look back.
Find someone else, someone who actually respects you and cares for you. You’ll be much happier.
Doc, I know you rarely have questions from married man but I have one. My wife and I have been together for six years and married for four. We have a son who is about to turn two in a few weeks and we have been having marriage problems since February of this year. No sex and constant fighting.
We sought out marriage counseling which has been helping a lot since June and still going. Still no sex though. She wants to and I want to but neither one of us can force it to happen. She has even bought some lingerie to help make it happen.
Here is why I can’t and where the advice is deeply needed. I know she has a crush on her boss at work and has been flirting with him for a while. I asked her about it one day and she said it was nothing. I broke the golden rule and looked in her phone and texts. Her best friend and her talk about it and I read about her flirting with him and she told him to run away with her and how she wishes he would touch her. All of this is between her best friend and her. She doesn’t text him, email him, or facebook him. I looked there, too.
Should I man up and confront her and tell her I looked or should I lie and say at the Halloween party your best friend told me you wanted him or maybe should I take advice from another friend and just let it go? What should I do doc? I have been cheated on before in the same fashion. Girlfriend had sex with a married man who had three kids and this is the same situation but now my wife and I have a son.
I forgot to mention how the man is similar to her dad and she says she could never be with a guy like that and he is religious and for several years my wife has said she is not but in her texts with her friend she claims to have some religion in her. She likes buddah and this guy is a, Christian who goes to church three times a week. Not to mention he has three kids and is having marriage problems, too.
I will take any advice I can get. I have been tempted to just walkout many times but can’t because we have a son.
Desperate Snooper
Good for you for going to couple’s therapy! I’m glad to hear that it’s been helping… but your neglect of your sex-life needs to be addressed.
First of all my standard disclaimer: I’m against invasions of privacy, whether it means snooping through someone’s email, texts, Facebook messages, computer files, whatever. As a rule of thumb, you’re almost never going to like what you find, even if you’re already suspicious.
Now, that having been said, you’ve gone and done it already and now it’s time to deal with the fallout.
So all you’ve found are texts back and forth between your wife and her best friend – no indication that she’s been having contact with this guy outside of work, no smoking gun that she’s actually cheating on you, just gossip and the indication that she’s at least fantasizing about it. It’s normal, even amongst happily married couples, for one or the other to develop a crush on someone – a co-worker, the cute guy at the Starbucks, that hot woman you see at the gym every Tuesday; it’s a heady emotional rush of teenager-y giddiness, especially when you’re in a long-term relationship where the initial passion has faded into a less-frantic but more intimate companionship and love. When you’re having relationship problems – as you and your wife are – that crush can be intoxicating, leading someone to feel like they haven’t in a long time.
Absent other indications – no smoking gun emails, prolonged absences, long nights at the office, sudden changes or improvements to her appearance – I would hedge on the side that your wife is enjoying the flirting and the emotional rush of an office infatuation but hasn’t stepped over the edge into actual infidelity… yet.
Confronting her on this would be a bad idea. First of all: so far, you only have gossip to go on. Second: you got this gossip through snooping through her stuff. All this is going to do is turn the conversation from “Are you cheating on me” to “How dare you violate my privacy”, which will only make an already tense situation worse. Trying to cover your snooping by dragging her friend into it isn’t going to help or cover your ass; the first thing her friend is going to do is deny saying anything to you, and lying is only going to compound the problems.
I’m not saying that you should only confront her when you have the means to win, I’m saying that a confrontation isn’t going to do anything to help. Neither, for that matter, is “just letting it go”. If you care for your wife and your relationship, then yes, you need to man the fuck up up… but not by accusing your wife of infidelity. You need to confront your problems and work with her to fix them.
I know it’s tough, even intimidating; you’re having flashbacks to your previous girlfriend who cheated. But this time you have the chance to stop it before it happens again.
Men and women cheat for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that their emotional or sexual needs aren’t being met… which is exactly what’s happening here. You’re both stressed – two-year olds are bundles of stress-inducing behaviors, after all – you’ve been fighting and, critically, you haven’t been fucking.
You want to. Your wife wants to. But going by your letter, you’ve been the hold-out because you’ve got this fantasy of her and her boss in your head. This is what needs to stop. Her emotional and sexual needs aren’t being fulfilled by you, so she’s been indulging her crush. She’s enjoying the flirting because it has all of the thrills of a new relationship – that giddy mix of nervousness and excitement – that she hasn’t felt in a while and that she isn’t feeling in her relationship with you.
If you don’t want her to cheat on you, be the man she’d cheat on you with. You need to seduce your wife.
Remember all of the little things you used to do early on in your courtship when everything was new and wonderful? You need to summon that back and remind her just why she fell in love with you in the first place; the little compliments, the gifts for no reason, the unexpected sweet moments, the passion. Don’t let the sex just happen, make arrangements in advance. Call a babysitter, rent a hotel room, make reservations for a romantic dinner and give her the full-court press. Force the image of her and her boss out of your head however you have to – hold back from masturbation until you’re so horny you could fuck concrete, having a drink, smoking a joint, whatever – and make the moment happen. Sweep her off her feet and back into your bed.
Things may look dire, but they’re not hopeless. You’ve got a chance to save your marriage – even to make it better than it has been in a while – if you’re willing to take it.
Good luck.