Archives for October 2015

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Solving The Wedding Woes

October 30, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 35 Comments

Hey Doc,

I have a question that is somewhat outside of the normal range, but I respect your view point and I have no one else to ask. In brief-ish, narcissist gas lighting mother is dating the guy that molested me as a small (under 5) child. I haven’t spoken to her in three years, and my dad in almost as long as his response when I tried to talk to him about it was “get over it already.” He is 2nd adoptive step-father, so he wasn’t around at the time. I am 36 and I have three younger siblings, 31, 24, and 18. The youngest is a senior in highs-chool, the 24 is so stunted (thanks mom!) he might as well be. The oldest has already once broken my rule about providing our mother with my contact info. That’s the history.

Here is the problem. I am getting married next spring. My initial urge is to not tell anyone. But I very much want at least one person at the wedding that has known me longer than 3 years. At my first (baaaaaaad choice) wedding, my sister closest in age was a giant asshole about the whole thing. Admittedly she was 14, but that’s just how she is about most stuff. In her 20s she threw fit on Christmas because the baby of the family got one more present than she did. She counted 15 vs 16. She is also the only person who could arrange for the younger ones to be here, as I live 1,000 miles away and have no money. I would also like to have my dad there, but I don’t know that I can trust him not to tell my mom. He is the epitome of the religious right wing privileged white man. Been supporting Huckabee since I was a teenager. Which is gross, but he does love me and would definitely hold a massive fucking grudge if he finds out later.

So….what do I do? Get drama llama sister involved? Sneak out the younger ones and hope they can keep a secret? Risk my mother crashing my wedding? I’ve spent the last three years undoing a ton of damage to my psyche and I desperately don’t want to invite all the bullshit back in. But I love my siblings very much. If none of them come, it will just be me and my partner’s friends and family. I don’t have any close friends, it’s hard to meet people when you are either crying or having panic attacks and can’t trust anyone.

Sorry so long and off topic, thank you for your time.

Something Blue

[Read more…]

Wednesday Open Thread: This Is Halloween Edition

October 28, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 53 Comments

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for the Doc to disappear into his hidden basement workshop and tinker on his unlicensed portable unclear accelerator. Meanwhile, the NerdLove interns and residents take over the comments section for their own nefarious purposes!

This week’s suggested topic: It’s less than four days until the greatest holiday of the year! Let’s talk Halloween and all things spooky. What are your plans this Halloween? What are you dressing up as? What was your favorite candy to get as a kid and are you one of the cool houses that hands out full-size candy bars? Been to a good haunted house?

You know the rules. No hate, no spam, no trolling. Have fun!

What To Do When You’ve Been Cheated On

October 26, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 335 Comments

Out of the many perils that couples face over the course of their relationships, the specter of being cheated on is one of the most common – and most anxiety-producing.

The second worst anxiety is "Is my wife secretly a lizard person?" — The second worst anxiety is “Is my wife secretly a lizard person?”

Infidelity within a relationship is one of the few sins that almost everybody agrees as being always wrong – upwards of 80% of people will tell you so. And yet cheating and being cheated on happens far more frequently than one might expect. Exact numbers are hard to gather – as you might imagine, cheaters are unlikely to self-report, especially if friends or family members are around – but the estimated numbers range from 30% to a mind-boggling 70%.

But while being cheated on may be seen as a universal negative, the question of what to do when your partner’s been unfaithful is a tough one. It’s very easy to decide what to do in the abstract – drop them like a bad habit, destroy their shit, stand by your man, forgive and forget, etc – and to armchair quarterback other people’s marriages (see Clinton, Hillary). But when it’s your relationship… suddenly what seems clear-cut and simple is actually a lot more complicated.

So what’s the right choice when it comes to dealing with being cheated on? What is the best way to heal afterwards? If your partner cheats on you, is it better to adopt a zero-tolerance policy or to put it all behind you?

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: I’m A Shy Virgin. Does This Make Me Creepy?

October 23, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 527 Comments

Hello, Doc.

I came here because it seems like the more “open to questions” place among feminists and women of my generation for men.

I’m not looking for advice for dating or sex but in relating to women as a loner, quiet, unattractive man. Specifically, at work. I’ve been reading several threads on Reddit among its female users that my kind of man is really looked down upon, even feared or looked at in disgust:

Which agree with my experience with women in the real world, and what they say in Twitter and Facebook and so on.

I really didn’t mind until yesterday, when my HR manager told me next week we were going to have “a talk” regarding my relationship with the female staff.

Now, I don’t treat women… at all. I try to avoid them. Since I started working 4 years ago female co-workers (except perhaps the mandatory-polite HR employee or recruiters) have been at best curt towards me. Which never bothered me, because that’s the relationship I have with women in general, both at college and outside. So I just ignore them and only just say “good morning” if I bump into them at the office kitchen or something and nothing else. Avoid even looking at them when they walk by me (and I make an EFFORT there, since I have terrible concentration and having them walk around my workstation all the time is really distracting). The few times I have to talk to a female coworker I do it in a polite, professional way, without betraying any sort of familiarity that might make them uncomfortable and jumpy or feel creeped out.

So when our new HR manager told me about this meeting I wondered if all those experiences these guys at Reddit talked about were real all along and it finally happened to me. I’m accustomed to being “the loner” and having women look down on me in social spheres or even try to avoid siting close to me in public transportation, but I never thought they would go out of their way to try to get me kicked out from work.

So what am I to do? Socializing with them is out of the question: I’m already 25, a kissless virgin with no friends or experience and, honestly, if it comes to being given the choice of being laid off or having to play the role of the pity-project or the laughingstock due to my inexperience and low social status, I’ll choose being laid off. I was hoping there was a way to just be ignored, or wondered if there was something that may have ticked them off about me. What could I have done?

—

JustTheGuyInTheCorner

[Read more…]

Wednesday Book Review: Neil Strauss Is Trying To Save His Relationship

October 21, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 19 Comments

It’s Wednesday, which is usually the Open Thread day. But since it’s the week of the release of my new book, I’ve got books on the brain. I’ve been sent a number of books by people hoping I’d read and give them a review and it seems a shame to not actually dig in to a few of them. This’ll be a somewhat irregular feature since a) I only have so many hours in the day and b) my to-read pile is fucking huge and and c) if I don’t like something, I tend to just not review it unless it’s egregiously bad and I can get some funny out of it.

(Don’t worry, I’m not talking about you. Or you. Or you over there in the back.)

But since today is also Back to the Future day, I thought it would be appropriate enough to start with a book related to my past – Neil Strauss’ The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships.

[Read more…]