boundaries Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

How Do We Tell Our Families We’re Polyamorous?

September 28, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc –

My wife and I have been together for 11 years and have 3 great kids. About three years ago my wife’s friend moved in during a tough spot and never left – we have been a ‘throuple’ ever since and she gave birth about a year ago. After our daughter was born we even had a ceremony and signed a living will to make us all ‘married’.

Here is the issue: She won’t tell her family. They all think we took her in during a rough patch and let her stay after she got knocked up by a dude they have all made up in her minds she was dating. They think it’s cute that she and my wife call me ‘daddy’ when they hand me the baby (‘go to daddy’ etc). My mother and sister know and are, broadly speaking, supportive. My wife’s family adores my “second wife”* and daughter.

*Yes we need better language than that but it’s the best I’ve got.

I get that her family is very conservative but I am not comfortable hiding our deal. I am in love two beautiful women and have great kids. Let’s shout it from the mountaintops or, at least, speak it in conversational tones from a well sized hill.

How do we come out to her family? I’m not comfortable hiding.

Thank You,
Three Some and More

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When Is It Time To Let Someone Go?

September 11, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,
So about a year ago I met this girl, we’ll call her K. K was the new girl at work and we had a “will they/won’t thing” for bit. We did go out for a bit but it didn’t work out. The problem was we kinda went back into a “will they/won’t they routine.”

It was a frustrating experience, sometimes she acted like she wanted to try dating again other times she acted like she didn’t really want to do anything with me. Eventually the dance ended when we out for a Valentine’s dinner (neither of us has ever had a date for Valentine’s Day so we decide to be each other), and at the end of it she told me she had feelings for a different guy. Our relationship really hasn’t been the same since, because whenever she’s around me she sometimes still acts like she’s interested in me.

The only that I can think of that explains her behavior is that she misses the attention I used to give her but doesn’t want anything more than that. Which comes to my question should I drop her from my life?

She’s not a bad person but the constant back and forth just hurts me to be honest. Like I know we are never going to be thing, I really don’t want to be a thing with her after all this. The whole experience has left me feeling confused.

Any advice you could give me would be nice.

Thanks

Round and Round

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Should I Reach Out To My Ex, Even After They Dumped Me?

August 31, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doctor!

I’m a recently turned 30 cis woman. I am also a recovering alcoholic who worked at the rehab that helped me. Recently I relapsed, due to several factors, but the big one was helping a fellow person with substance abuse.

This man went to the same place shortly before I did, and was one of two people I trusted to get in a car with. I drove him to detox in May, and before the end of June he had relapsed. I had done nothing sexual with him (even though I wanted to) for over 3 years, but I have loved him for nearly that long. I never met anyone I connected with more, and I was the only person he could talk to about his drinking, nerdiness, and trauma as his use drove everyone away but me. He would go months without replying, but I always sent him “I hope you are doing well” text at the beginning and end of each month.

After he relapsed, I had a bunch of hits in life and relapsed on the 4th of July with him, even though he didn’t know I was drinking. We had sex, fun, and nerded out. Best I had felt in years. However, when I was honest and told him and tried talking, he acted like I had corrupted myself and treated me with disgust and hurt. I tried to apologise and talk to him, not very often, just once every two weeks like I had before. He finally responded and he asked I call him. I did and got too emotional by crying and shedding “crocodile tears”.

He informed me that I was now blocked. I can take rejection, but he is going to kill himself drinking. He is at least 20 pounds underweight and has had multiple seizures when trying to quit. I am the only one who knows how bad he is. I blame myself for not being more patient and just waiting again.

Do I have a duty to tell anyone about how bad he is, or should I just cut him out like he has me? I don’t want him to die or worse. Do you have any advice?

Regrets, I Have A Few

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Why Is My Husband Lying To Me About His “Friend”?

August 5, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello, Dr. NerdLove

I want to begin this message by commenting on how much I truly appreciate your humorous and kind article on dating advice for short men. As a 23-year-old man of 5’6 with some acne and no romantic experience to speak of, I need all the self-esteem boosts I can get. I wouldn’t say that I’ve got a huge chip on my shoulder about it, but I fear that I may be headed in that direction.

That said, I believe my predicament goes further than my stature. You see, I am currently in grad school at a relatively rural college town full of young persons aged around 18-22, a prime demographic for height prioritization and uninteresting conversations. There don’t appear to be many women older than myself on Tinder, and though I get frequently 4-5 matches every two 2 days or so, no one ever responds, and if they do, the conversations eventually peter out anyway.

Though my program is fully funded and provides a sweet stipend, I found myself having to move back home with my folks for the summer, and this will likely be the case for the remainder of my twenties (I’m aiming for a doctorate), since my field typically doesn’t fund students over the summer. Of course, I can’t really do much to work on dating when I live at home, since living with one’s parents as a young man is considered unbecoming, and also because I will be moving back to school several hundred miles away in a few weeks. With all of that in mind, I could use your help in figuring out where to meet women this next school year. I’ve always been told to “get out there,” but it is not clear to me where “there” is. I don’t believe bars would be the best fit for me (for the aforementioned reason concerning my height), and there aren’t many opportunities for meeting grad students in other departments. I do love visiting the university’s art gallery and nearby bookstore, but those seem like unpromising settings to encounter the same person routinely and strike up an acquaintanceship that could lead to something more, don’t you think?

One last thing. Though I am a little awkward and shy, my sense of humor has always been an immense social asset. I have always been the hilarious guy in any group, and I have always had many female friends or acquaintances, but I simply don’t know how proceed. I thank you very much for your kindness and willingness to help me out with this.

Piled Higher and Deeper

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Fixing The Missing Stair — With Cliff Jerrison

July 10, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

DOCTOR’S NOTE: Today’s column is by Cliff Jerrison of The Pervocracy.

In 2012, I wrote a blog post about the missing stair – a person who is widely known within a community to be dangerous, but is allowed to stay while everyone else works around them. Welcome to the club, we meet Thursdays, the bathroom’s down the hall, call Alice if you’re locked out, and if Bob invites you to his house you should say no because he’s kind of our resident date rapist.

It’s like living in a house with a missing stair, where the inhabitants have become so used to taking that one extra big step, they’ve forgotten it’s a problem at all.

But it is a problem, and sooner or later someone’s going to break an ankle. Not everyone gets the whisper warning, sometimes being forewarned isn’t enough to protect you, and even if Bob never touches you, it’s not exactly a welcoming vibe. A lot of women quietly withdraw from the community. A visible dividing line emerges between Bob apologists and the Bob-wary. Because of this one person, and the well-intentioned actions of the people who work around him rather than against him, the whole community is poisoned.

My experience with missing stairs has mostly been with men who sexually harass and abuse women, and that’s the context I’m writing this post in, but similar dynamics can emerge with other genders, with people who have explosive tempers, racists, financial scamsters, and so forth. The details are different but the pattern of a community silently reshaping itself around a half-open secret is the same.

So that’s the problem. Harris has asked me to write about the solution. This is where things get messy and uncertain. There’s no single formula for fixing communities stuck in this pattern, I haven’t always had success with it, and a lot depends on how much the people with the most influence in the community are willing to help. But here’s some things you can do besides entrust lives to the whisper network.

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