boundaries Archives

How Do I Get Over My Partner’s Infidelity?

July 19, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

My partner (he/him) of five years violated the boundaries/understandings of our monogamous relationship by receiving a one-way sex act from a friend of his. While I’ve agreed to stay and try to move past it, I haven’t decided the long term and taken off the engagement ring. I’m having a having a really fucking hard time moving past the intrusive thoughts and the wanting to really understand why. Please help me?

Some context: my partner and I (she/they) are both queer, but ended up in a hetero relationship with each other. I am very sex positive but struggle with polyamory as a choice for myself because of certain past traumas. I actually see the benefits and could maybe come to an agreement after some targeted therapy and lots of communication. But for now, monogamy is what feels safe for me. My partner, at the beginning of our relationship and throughout, has said he feels the same. And consent-based relationships are incredibly important to me. My partner had a friendly acquaintance who is a professional barber who has cut his hair for about 7 years, the barber (he/him) is gay and very openly sexual with everyone. When we’ve run into out in public like at a restaurant, he’s treated me the same as he treats my partner (on the surface), which is to talk openly about his sex life and ask questions if they’re welcomed. I had no issues with their friendship until earlier this year but thought my partner respected my wish for him to not to put himself in situations that would be weird/inappropriate with the barber or accept his sexual advances (which came pretty frequently but I never felt much jealousy because I thought my partner wasn’t interested or at least wouldn’t agree to any of it).

The infidelity and messy aftermath: First the timeline that I know now, then how I found out. We moved from our apartment to a house in August last year, and some problems both old and new surfaced, but I thought we were working through them. Back in late September/October, the barber started asking about my partner’s plantar fasciitis that he mentioned during his last hair cut and saying that he had some sort of massage/reflexology training (the barber is just a barber, not a massage therapist) and thought he could help and offered a foot massage. My partner took him up on it, and they me. Sometime between that initial “let me help you” kind of offer and his next haircut in October, the barber offered him a happy ending along with the foot massage. My partner went over to his apartment after that haircut, stripped down to nothing (including underwear) and got in the barber’s bed. The barber then gave him a foot massage and then a hand job. My partner was supposed to be picking up groceries that time, and I called/texted asking where he was at some point (he’s not the type to stay somewhere longer than he has to). He said he got caught up at the store but was on his way home, and was home 45 minutes later. Didn’t think anything more until late March. We share a car, and he dropped me off to get a beer with a friend while he went to his hair cut appointment. He got his hair cut then, went to the barber’s apartment for a repeat of last time, stripped down and got on top of the covers, except this time it was a full body massage and a hand job. In between these two incidents, there was some flirtatious texting and an exchange of homemade porn (not featuring any of them, but some of the barber’s acquaintances) and a text discussion about the porn a month or two after the first incident.

He was supposed to meet me somewhere after his hair cut after the last incident in March, and we ended up fighting because he blew me off and didn’t answer his phone for an hour when I left where he was supposed to meet me and walked to the barber shop (I was taking up a whole table at the bar by myself and I didn’t know where else to go because he was my ride). He said at first that it took longer than he thought it would and that he had been looking for parking. I told him I walked past too many open parking spots for that to be true. He then admitted he went to the barber’s apartment after his hair cut but said it was just to fix his bike. He said he lied because he thought I wouldn’t have been comfortable with him going to the barber’s apartment alone. He said it was just to fix his bike and he was sorry for blowing me off. I told him the whole thing made me uncomfortable and I’d prefer if he found a different barber. He said he wouldn’t and that I needed to trust him to set boundaries.

After our fight, he turned down the barber’s next request for a naked happy ending massage and then later told him outright that he would just be getting hair cuts. But then I found out after seeing messages on our shared iPad that were incriminating that a massage had been involved and that the barber had seen my partner naked (I didn’t snoop. I was trying to add recipes to an app, the messages came up all at once when I turned the iPad on and I saw weird stuff on the display before reading the whole exchange to confirm I wasn’t crazy). Then, he told me it was just a massage, he was covered the whole time, only happened once, and he didn’t do it again. Then the barber sent me a DM that was apologetic to me but made it clear more had gone on. I told him to tell me everything, or that I would leave. Only then did I find out all of the above.

The lying is obviously an issue, and even if he’s done the “right things” since it all finally came out, I told him that’s the hardest part to get past and the part that is going to be the biggest obstacle for whatever decision I make in the long run. But that at least seems to make sense to me. He lied, I don’t necessarily trust him the way I did before. If he avoids lying to me in the future, I could learn to retrust.

But I’m still struggling to wrap my head around the why, even after several very open and honest conversations in the last couple weeks. He said he’s finally seeking therapy for self esteem issues and said he never initiated, but followed through because the attention made him feel good when things weren’t going well with us and the massages were genuinely fun, felt good and helped his feet (I asked him to be completely honest). Specifically what I’m having trouble getting past is the fact that he blew me off and took that risk of getting caught (why was it worth the risk, especially when he hates being late?), that he seemed proactive in enabling himself to do this by doing things like telling me he mixed up his appointment time so it would take longer (if you’re just passively accepting the attention, why be so proactive in deceiving me and setting things up so he could?), why he wanted to keep seeing the barber for hair cuts (if my partner says he’s just someone who pushes boundaries and cuts his hair, why can’t he just cut contact?) and that he knew on some level that it was wrong but let it go on for almost a year (started talking about the first massage in September, maintained sexual interactions a couple times in person and several times over text between October and the end of March, drunkenly called the barber at the beginning of June and then decided to cut it back to completely platonic.

I don’t know. I can acknowledge he’s genuinely been trying to fix it for the last few weeks, and it was honestly pretty seriously out of character for him. And if I haven’t reflected that in the paragraphs above, I am always deferential and want to believe people. And I want my partner to have meaningful, deep, affectionate connections with people that aren’t me. But that feels like a minefield of anxiety now. And how do I get past this deep wanting ache to really understand why, when he’s already answered for that for the most part?

Cuts Like A Knife

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Help, My Friends Are Sabotaging My Relationships

July 16, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Doc,

I’m 34, single and looking for someone to settle down with. In my younger days however, I saw a lot of sex workers—I lost my virginity to one (at 24) and used them to build my confidence up until I felt ready for a relationship. My best friend “Sam” is well aware of this, and because he has literally no secrets from her, so is Sam’s wife “Amy.” For the most part I get along fine with Amy—I was the best man at her and Sam’s wedding—but she is a rather extreme feminist who believes that sex work, while maybe okay in theory, is in our current reality exploitative of women and therefore evil. She wouldn’t even let me take Sam to a strip club for his bachelor party—I ended up not doing it because Sam genuinely didn’t want to, but I’m afraid this gave Amy a sense of triumph and power she doesn’t deserve.

I had been seeing a woman for almost four months who I was starting to think was the one, when she abruptly confronted me about my past with sex workers. When I admitted it was true, she dumped me and bad-mouthed me all over social media. Turns out she heard it from Amy, who “thought she had a right to know.” I ended up getting into a huge verbal altercation with Amy when she refused to either apologize for sabotaging my relationship or promise not to sabotage future ones, that ended with Sam ordering me out of their house with the threat of physical violence.

That was about two weeks ago. Sam and I finally just talked again, and we both really want to reconcile, but when I asked him to talk to Amy and ensure that she won’t tell any future girlfriends of mine about this part of my past, he said he can’t control what Amy says or does, and seemed to imply that I was some kind of Neanderthal for thinking a husband should have that kind of control over his wife. I don’t see it as control, just common courtesy and regard for others’ privacy. I have no intention of continuing to patronize sex workers once I’m in a long-term relationship, and don’t think any good could come of my future girlfriend/wife knowing about this.

But I don’t see how I can keep it a secret if I continue to be friends with Sam and Amy. And I really don’t want to drop them, especially Sam. I don’t have a lot of close friends—in fact he’s pretty much it. I love their two little boys to death, and I think their family has been incredibly valuable to me in terms of modeling healthy parent-child relationships, since my own family of origin was anything but. Now though, I keep thinking about how every time I’ve ever asked one of Amy’s friends out, I’ve been rejected, even when we seemed to have great chemistry. I’m paranoid she’s been telling everyone and that her and Sam’s whole social circle sees me as some kind of scum.

So what do I do? Do I need to find a woman who is cool with the fact that I used to see sex workers? That would narrow down an already narrow playing field even further, since I’m no longer looking for a casual fling or a party girl, but a woman with good values who wants a faithful monogamous relationship and motherhood. When and how would you suggest I tell a potential girlfriend this, to keep her from dumping me in disgust like the last one? Or do you have any other suggestions?

Dear Ex-John

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I Just Blew Up My Marriage. Can I Still Save It?

July 9, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dr NerdLove, I need some help figuring out what to do, and I will be upfront and say I fracked up and I caused this crisis in my life and I know I was wrong, but I still don’t know what to do next. I need you to do the thing where to tell me what my real problem is and how to fix it. In simple steps because I can’t handle big ones right now. (And please don’t tell me “I’m afraid there are no more things left to do.”)

The pandemic hasn’t been handled well here and I’m just getting my second shot next week; the percentage of vaccinated people where I live is dreadfully low. The rollout has been slow and there’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy here. My office was supposed to reopen at the end of July (I was so looking forward to it), but now that’s been pushed back to November and I can’t wait that long to get back to some sense of normalcy. I am going insane. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but I really think my brain has changed and I don’t know how to change it back.

Some background, I’m married to a man, we’ll call Luigi, and we have one kid. His brother, Mario, is married to Peach and they have 3 kids who like to play with ours. Mario, Luigi, and Peach are all very close. I asked Luigi when we started dating about their relationship and he explained they all bonded really quickly when they met, as Mario’s and Luigi’s parents died when they were kids and Peach’s parents gave her up, so they all had a lot of similar experiences. When I met Luigi, it was a little intimidating because they were all so comfortable with each other and had their own inside jokes and I have always been more socially awkward. But Peach really went out of her way to include me and explain inside references and be kind to me. Mario is friendly to me, but I always got the feeling it’s just because Luigi was into me; he never asked “get to know me questions” or expressed a real interest in me, but he’s ever been rude. Luigi says its because they moved all the time as kids and so Mario never really practiced forming proper friendships when they were younger. Luigi, on the other hand, wanted long-term friendships, but says he was perpetually disappointed when friends fell away after moving. As the years have gone by, I’ve grown closer to Mario and Peach, but I’ve never felt like I truly assimilated into their group, though that’s OK. I have never had tons of friends, but I have a couple close friends of my own and some “work friends”, and Luigi and I have a strong relationship, or so I thought until about 4 weeks ago. And I was never really jealous of Peach and her friendship with Luigi, because I never picked up on any overly flirtatious interactions between them. I never say any “red flags” and Luigi and I are pretty open with each other (i.e. we know the passwords on each others phones/email) and I never felt he was hiding anything from me.

I know this pandemic has been hard on everyone; I’m not unique in that respect. And I’m lucky I still have my job. Our pandemic bubble consists of just our two households. This is where I explain that I really think my brain is broken but I don’t know what to do. I am introverted, and I love my family of course, but it has been very stressful having my husband and kid home all day while I’m working. I’ve been working remotely from my bedroom for more than 18 months and I’ve had to pick up extra responsibilities because we lost someone on our team and haven’t hired anyone new. Added to that, my Dad, who I was very close to, passed away last year. We couldn’t hold a proper service for him because of the pandemic. Maybe I am just worse than everyone else at handling stress, but all of this has added together and I can’t focus anymore. I used to be able to sit and work. I could get through a lot of work and do it well. But now I sit at my laptop and try to start writing and my brain thinks of 100 things I need to do. I genuinely try to be productive, but my brain keeps going to the dishes or mowing the lawn, or do I have enough insurance, or when can we bring the dog to the vet. I’ve never been a big procrastinator before, but everytime I try to bring my focus back to work, 5 minutes later, its gone again. I am now finishing briefs and reports at 2am the morning before they are due, instead of a day early. And I know my work has more mistakes than it used to, which really bothers me, because I take a lot of pride in my professional identity. I am the first person in my family to earn a degree and a graduate degree (same is true for Luigi) and I’m used to being good at things. Now my work is mediocre and I’m worried my bosses are going to start noticing, if they haven’t already. Peach, actually, has been really nice, which kind of irritates me (I’ll get to why in a minute), and has been taking my kid during the day so I can work in the house more quietly. And Luigi has been trying to pick up more of the chores so I have time to catch up on work (which also irritates me). And this would be great, but I can’t seem to focus on work like I should. I need things to go back to the way they were before, but the “normal light” at the end of the tunnel just keeps moving further away. The adults involved are almost fully vaccinated, but the kids aren’t. And I can’t go back into the office until November. And the schools have said they plan to open in the fall, but it is still “tentative.”

Sorry, I know that was a long lead in. So what did I do 4 weeks ago to blew up everything? Well, while I was trying to write a brief, I thought, I really need to go through the boxes in the attic and throw out stuff we don’t need anymore. I told myself I would just sort some stuff for an hour and then if I got that done, I could focus on work. So I went upstairs and starting sorting things into trash and donate piles and I knocked over a box with Luigi’s old journals. He keeps a daily journal and I’ve never been tempted to read them before because I know that everyone is entitled to their own private thoughts and I am (was) a grown ass woman. So I put all the journals back in the box and went back to my laptop. And I got a few sentences on the page and then I could see in my mind’s eye that box of journals on a pedestal with a beam of light shining on them with a chorus singing in the background. Honestly, I don’t know why I fixated on them, but I didn’t go back to read them, that day. The next day though, while I sat staring at my screen, I just thought if I read just a couple pages of one, then I could put it out of my mind and then focus on my work. So I did the terrible thing and I picked up the one from last year and started reading. It happened to be a sweet recollection of spending time with my kid and I. I put the journal back, vowed to not do it again, and then went back to work, and then swept the floors, then back to work, then….. back to the journal, and then over the last few weeks all the journals in the box. And it turns out, as you may have guessed at this point, that Luigi is in love with Peach! That is the only explanation for what I’ve been reading and I don’t know how to move on now. There is no actual affair, and I would know now, but he’s been carrying a torch for her since they’ve met. Apparently, Luigi and Peach had one hot and heavy makeout session before she married Mario and she shut it down and told him it would never happen again and they’d never talk about it again. And he writes about how it was awkward between them for a bit, he felt bad about it, and it didn’t happen again. This was almost 10 years ago! And he’s still writing about her, or what things would be like between them now, more frequently when he’s stressed out over something or after he and I have an argument. Just….why? Why can’t he let this go? He obviously feels guilty about this, he wrote about feeling guilty about his feelings, especially in the earlier journals. Does she have some magic lips? Why does he still think about her? He doesn’t write about any of his exes. He’s an otherwise logical and self-reflective person, so why is he still carrying this torch?

And then of course I’m left to wonder what’s wrong with me. Why am I not enough for him to forget her? Am I just second place? I used to be confident in my appearance, I’m not a model, but I’m reasonably attractive. But now I am constantly comparing myself to her. And yes, she is objectively more beautiful than me. And I worry now that I am not Luigi’s “type”. I mean, if he is still hung up on her, Peach and I are different body types, different ethnicities. We have somethings in common, were both professional, accomplished women, though I may be losing my job soon. And we share a couple interests, but now that I’ve obsessed about it, Peach has more shared interests with Luigi than I do and she has more in common with Luigi than Mario. This has me second guessing everything in my relationship, and now I am wondering does he wish I was her when we’re together. Obviously this has affected things and it kills me that’s he’s noticed and trying to be considerate. He thinks its just stress from work and the dumpster fire of 2020/2021. It makes me so angry he’s being considerate because that makes it harder for me to be angry at him. I know that sounds crazy. It also makes me angry that Peach is being so nice because I want to hate her. And now I’m over-analyzing every joke or interaction I see between Luigi and Peach, I can’t decide if I should be angry that she’s not batting her eyelashes at him and he’s still into her, or happy that she’s not. Again, I know that sounds crazy.

I don’t want to blow up everyone’s life, but I want to yell at all of them. I want to scream at Mario that he needs to wake up. Why isn’t he jealous at all? I want tell Peach to back the frack off, but she’s not actually doing anything wrong. I want to punch Luigi and I want mindwipe myself. I thought Luigi was happy with me before and I thought I was what he wanted. I want to go back to feeling good about myself and stop feeling like a consolation prize. I know I created this mess, but I don’t know how to fix it. I can’t tell Luigi I read his journals because I know I committed a massive violation. I’m too embarrassed to talk to my couple of friends. I am falling more behind at work, I’ve grown more distant with all my family, and that’s not fair, especially to the kids, and the guilt over that is making it even harder to concentrate at work, but I don’t know what to do next. Can it still count as a fugue if you plan it? Please help.

Husband Is In Another Castle

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Why Am I Still Angry At My Ex?

June 11, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

This is gonna be a long one so I apologize in advance for that. I’ve been having some strong resentful feelings for my ex and I can’t seem to get over him. Let me explain.

At the start of last year I (m) started seeing a guy who I had a huge crush on for the longest time. I should also mention this is was the first guy friend I’ve ever had a crush on and the first guy I’ve dated. Originally he didn’t feel the same way about me. He actually had a crush on someone else at the time. This didn’t stop him from sleeping with me however at a party and after a few weeks of being patient he did tell me he was starting to have feelings for me as well and eventually we started dating. We went out for a few months then he broke up with me, stating he had mental problems and couldn’t handle a relationship at that time. Me caring about his well being was understanding and told him as soon as he’s better we could try again. Only I found out later that was a lie, he was just spoon feeding me some bullshit so he could go out with the guy he originally had a crush on. I was pretty devastated for a while after learning that. I felt betrayed and used. It seemed like I was only a placeholder until this other guy became available.

Anyway, after a few months I met someone else. We hit it off right away, started going out, and almost a year later we’re still together. I can honestly say that my relationship with my current bf is the best I’ve ever had. We connect on so many levels, we share a lot of the same interests and we love each other deeply.

So all in all things worked out for me in the end but here’s my issue. My ex, who I’ve blocked and unfriended on every social media site I can imagine is still part of the same friend circles me and my boyfriend are in, so no matter how hard I try, from time to time he still pops up in my periphery. And every time he does I just feel overwhelmed by feelings of anger and resentment. Before he and I even went out, I’d like to think we were pretty close friends and the way he led me on for a few months only to discard me as soon as it was convenient for him, like I was tissue paper just destroyed all that good will between us.

I know these feelings are unhealthy and that I’m better off with my current boyfriend, but I don’t know if deep down there’s part of me that still cares about him and that’s why I feel this way. I don’t want it to impact what I have now because like I said, we’re all in the same friend groups. Now that things are starting to open up again it’s inevitable that I’ll be running into my ex at some meetup and I don’t know how I’m going to react.

I’ve often thought about sending him a message and just laying it all out there to him and try to bury the hatchet so to speak, but I’ve had some friends tell me that’s a bad idea, that he can just claim no wrongdoing and turn it back around on me and make me feel even worse.

Sorry this was so long. I wanted to provide as much context as possible. I’d be forever grateful for any advice you can provide 🙂

Thanks!

Still Resentful For Some Reason

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How Do I Trust a Boyfriend Who Still Talks to His Ex?

June 2, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

My first two marriages ended badly, with my first being abusive and the second him being unfaithful. I’ve been with my current partner a few years now, but we got off to a rough start – long story short when we got together he had a drug issue that I wasn’t aware of. I found out when he tried to quit cold turkey and nearly died. I chose to give him an opportunity to enter a treatment program, and have no reason to believe he hasn’t been 100% compliant, but I still struggle with trust.

He has also remained close with many of his exes, which in general I think is a positive. There are times where it makes me a little insecure (like him keeping a pic of him and an ex on his nightstand, or him making slightly over the top comments on his exes Facebook posts) but haven’t considered it a big deal, and I don’t want to ask him to change if that’s just who he is.

A few weeks ago, something happened that made me nervous about his past drug issue. I was freaking out a little and I looked at his phone for the first time in over a year (he provided me the passcode towards the start of his recovery as a sign of trust, but did not give me explicit permission to look at that moment). Good news was no sign of a relapse, the bad was that a message caught my eye while scrolling through that contained graphic sexual content. I opened the convo – it was between him and an ex and was along the lines of them hashing out a sexual issue they had while they were together years earlier.

I then opened a couple of other convos between him and exes (I know, I know). While I found nothing that indicated there was any current activity or plans in that direction, there were things that made me uncomfortable. Examples include references to things he and an ex did sexually while they were together, comments about how beautiful and sexy they were/are, and in one case a description to the ex of a sex dream that he’d recently had about her.

I tried to bring the issue up in vague terms and he acted confused. I don’t know if I can trust my own judgement here – I am prone to making excuses for others and deciding that if something bothers me it’s my fault. Also, I don’t think a little flirting is necessarily a problem in an otherwise healthy relationship, I just think some of what I saw crosses a line. I don’t even know if confronting him would make me feel better, I don’t want to constantly police his phone, but at the same time I don’t know if I can 100% trust him and with my past, I don’t want to go back to a situation where there are gut feelings I’m ignoring. On the other hand, though, I am generally happy in this relationship and part of me thinks this is just something he doesn’t see the same way I do as I am definitely more sexual conservative.

Another note is that he referenced me frequently (and in positive terms) with all of these same exes, so I know he’s not being dishonest about our status together, and many of them are in committed and seemingly happy relationships as well. Do you think there is a possibility that this is just a difference in boundaries and comfort levels? Is there a possibility that he would find it genuinely surprising that something like this would bother me and if I brought it up as an issue he’d just be more careful? Am I making too much of this or am I, once again, ignoring a huge red flag?

Lines Lines Everywhere A Line

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