break up Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Did COVID Just Ruin My Relationship?

October 12, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

Near the end of last year I started a new relationship with this incredible girl. Our chemistry was great and it honestly felt like I had found my “life buddy” (a term we called each other). She not only showed interest in the things that I liked but I was also interested in her likes and even when I didn’t understand them I was still able to see what she saw of value in them.

Fast forward to March of this year. Due to the pandemic we were both furloughed from our jobs and although we did our best keeping entertained for a month she felt homesick and moved back to KY with her family. The thought of going long distance was daunting but it was something we agreed we could attempt to do. After spending six months apart it feels like we both reached a breaking point. When talking about when our paths would cross again she didn’t seem very sure of were her life would be headed. Meanwhile, I had just started my graduate degree and returned to work. I had suggested she come down and visit me in FL, but she said she didn’t want to risk traveling. I was fine with this, until she mentioned she was also planning on flying to the Virgin Islands with her family. I brought this up to her on our last conversation, mentioning how it felt a bit of a double standard. She quickly admitted that she wasn’t happy and the long distance was taking a toll on her anxiety. She felt like we needed to call things off now while things were still good between us, than wait for the moment it reaches its boiling point.

It all hit me the next day. The apartment felt even more empty than it did before, probably because it was permanent now and she wasn’t coming back at all. I reached out to a friend of mine and we met up for drinks to which she showed me a message she received from my ex saying: “hey can you please check up on him this week”. I feel like I had no control over what happened and COVID just threw a very unexpected wrench into my relationship.

What happened? And what can I do about this?

Pandemic Paranoia

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How Do I Tell My Partner I Don’t Want to Sleep With Them Anymore?

October 9, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I’m a straight, non-monogamous male. I have a friend with benefits, X, who has been my lover for two years now. She’s also one of my best friends overall and even though a traditional relationship escalator-type thing is not on the table, we are planning long-term a co-housing project on a farm. X has never been my type physically, and even though I’ve enjoyed making love with her, she’s rather shy and passive in bed which makes the sex just average, not the awesome sex I’m aspiring to.

Now my attraction for X has been going steadily down lately because she’s been taking quite a bit of weight. I know society judges this as being fatphobic because most people believe that we have no influence on our weight and it’s not supposed to affect our attraction for others, but I can’t seem to help it. I look at X and even though I’m very fond of her, the sight of her stimulates my libido less and less as she is gaining more and more weight.

This problem is exacerbated by a new FWB I’ve been fucking, Y, and she’s not only more of my type physically, she’s totally GGG and I’m having the best sex of my life with her. This doesn’t affect the strong feelings I have for X but it does make the sex with her seem even less interesting.

Where the situation gets delicate is because X has low self-esteem problems, she’s self-conscious of her body and has a hard time accepting it. I’ve always been careful to make her feel beautiful by having very sensual sex with her and telling her she’s pretty, and I never made a single comment about her weight. I believe people should choose how to manage their body and others don’t have a say in it. My philosophy is that my choice is limited to taking people as they are or not taking them at all, and I shouldn’t ask nor expect them to change for me.

I think our relationship is heading towards phasing out sex from it but the problem is that I don’t want to exacerbate her self-esteem problem, I don’t want to make her hate her body even more and make her more self-conscious about it. So I don’t want to tell her that I’d rather stop having sex with her because I’m not attracted to her anymore. I don’t want to lie to her. And I’d rather not have sex with her that I don’t feel like having, just to please her. And above all, I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship and our project.

What should I do, Dr NerdLove? Is it me who’s wrong and I’m not supposed to be any less attracted to her even though she’s taking weight? If so, what am I supposed to do about it? If not, how can I detach my lowering interest for sex with her self-esteem issues?

– Seeking Humane Answer to Lowering Libido for Overweight Woman

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Why Does The Spark Keep Fading in My Relationships?

October 5, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

I have a question about relationships, especially the early stages.

That dopamine and oxytocin rush, that joy of discovering a new person and getting to know them, the excitement of exploring new bodies and new tastes in bed, the passion and effortless joy of early romance. All great. I love that.

And yes, everyone is putting on their best face at the start, but as things continue in this mould and we discover each other’s quirks and start to open ourselves up to each other more, it often feels like a punishment at best or a cruel joke at worst.

Because all that good stuff I mentioned at the start goes. Sometimes I get dumped, but not always. But certainly everything I love in the first paragraph is taken away — the big pyjamas replace the sexy lingerie; instead of discovering new things about each other, we settle into watching the TV we both like on sofa together; instead of romantic dinners, it turns into taking turns cooking of the same set of a few dozen meals, and so on.

As opposed to “effortless joy”, things move into the “routine warmth” mode. And whilst rationally I want to be satisfied with that, the relationship at that point often feels just like “good friends/housemates with occasional sex on the side”, and I find myself getting so very bored and wanting to get out and date again to get some novelty and excitement back in my life.

My friends have often told me that this is “real love” compared with infatuation, and it can be so much more fulfilling than the honeymoon period, but I don’t understand how at all. It feels to me like some cruel joke of attraction. Now, like I said, rationally, having a good friend and a housemate and a sexual partner all wrapped up in one person is clearly a good thing, but GOD, it’s dull and so much worse than the “honeymoon” period. I even tried long-distance relationships, where I hoped that only seeing each other two days a month meant that we would “use up” that budget of excitement slower, and “the good bit” would last longer (spoiler: it didn’t. I never said it was a great plan, but I’m running out of ideas!)

So how do I learn to accept that things will always turn dull in the long run, and not yearn for a new person, a new set of interests and drives, a new body, a new life, to discover and explore to get that “effortless joy” back?

Honeymoon’s Over

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How Do I get Over Being Used?

September 25, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

So basically I recently “broke up” with this girl. The reason I’m phrasing it like that is because we only dated for like a month. During the time I was dating her, I realized she had an abusive ex who gaslit her, was emotionally negligent and also implicitly fat shamed her by joking that she needs to lose weight. I was very empathetic to her situation and realized she was still healing from this abuser.

However, as I spent more time with her, I realized that she brought up her ex every time I was with her. She broke up with me because she had recently found out that her ex was cheating on her during a time in their relationship when things were going very well. She told me that she is not ready for a relationship and has issues trusting people who she doesn’t have any mutual connections with (we met through an app).

Now, our break up was very amicable (I even cuddled with her after and kissed her goodbye) and I really respect her decision to not dive into a relationship that she wasn’t ready for. However, as time passed, I realized that she might have used me as an emotional band-aid to forget about her ex. When she found out that he cheated, the wound just opened up more and I wasn’t enough to forget the pain. I don’t think she was being malicious or that she was doing it knowingly, however, I do feel a bit used.

To fully understand my situation, I think you need to know a bit of my backstory. I’m 24M, had a very sexually repressive childhood and socially awkward growing up. I had a transformation in college where I became physically attractive and confident and started hooking up with a lot of girls as a means to compensate for the lack of sexual gratification. I realized that that path was not going to help me, I worked on my self esteem and decided to give real dating a shot.

This girl was the first person that I decided to open up to romantically and I feel very angry and upset at myself as I didn’t see the signs. I don’t hold any ill will towards her and I think she’s quite wonderful, but I do wish that the first person that I opened up to didn’t inadvertently use me as a coping tool. I know life isn’t a fairy tale and sometimes things just don’t pan out the way you would’ve liked them to, but it still sucks.

Now Doc, how do I process these feelings of anger and resentment? More importantly, in the future, what can I do to potentially stop this from happening to me again?

Best,
Mr. Oblivious

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How Do I Break Up With Someone… Safely?

September 18, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: today’s letter involves discussion of suicide and suicidal ideation.

Hello Doc. I apologize in advance for how dark this is.

I’ve been in a long-distance relationship (my first real relationship) with someone for two and a half years. They (non-binary) have a ton of issues, in terms of mental health and personal baggage, and I knew part of that going on. Sometimes, they’re great, but other times it’s a nightmare. They tell me they’re going to kill themselves over things every few days, there’s one person they’re absolutely obsessed with and they push and push and push me to get that person back into their lives. It doesn’t work because I respect that other person’s autonomy.

They’re poly, (I knew this going in, I don’t have a problem with them being poly) but they occasionally try to meet someone IRL and when either nothing happens or things go sour, they start screaming at me over it and telling me they want to die. And sometimes making an attempt at suicide that doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve done a huge amount of emotional labor for them, and they do very little back. They talk about wanting “emotional support” but I can’t figure out what they actually mean by that because the definition seems to change at random. When they say nothing can ever get better, I try to say it can, but apparently that’s not what they want, but they won’t tell me what they actually want.

If I break up with them, they will try to attempt suicide and I don’t know how to deal with that. Intellectually I know that if they do follow through, it won’t be my fault, but I can’t take that last step. I’m miserable and I get stress migraines every day from this. I’ve done so much for them and it just makes me feel like a monster that I can’t fix anything and that they seem to constantly fight against attempts to make things better.

I need to break up with them but I don’t have the slightest clue how.

Thank you for listening,

Handcuffed

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