cheating Archives

How Do You Tell If Someone Is Just Playing Games?

September 24, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’m a gay man. In my tennis group there is a 32 year old guy that I find very attractive, who I have known for about 3 years. We were never close friends, but rather just friendly acquaintances.

About 6 months ago, out of the blue, he started sending me direct messages, such as “good morning”, “how’s your day going”, “good night”- daily, several times a day. The conversations were short, but consistent. On several occasions I would lightly flirt with him. He would thank me, but he would never flirt back. So I assumed he was not interested in me beyond just being friends.

After a few weeks of receiving his daily text messages and me hoping for more, I finally flat out asked him if he would go out on a date with me. He politely turned me down. I was disappointed, but also relieved to at least have a concrete answer. In this same conversation, I apologized for flirting with him thinking that it probably had made him uncomfortable. He said, “no, I definitely hope that doesn’t stop”

Knowing that he was not interested in me but that he enjoyed my light flirty comments (by light, I mean a level 2 out of 10), I felt the freedom to increase the flirting level to a 5 out of 10. So now, instead of just complimenting him physically, I added a sexual desire component without being raunchy. This continued for a few more weeks. Still the flirting was one way traffic.

Then, one day, he flirts back! And not only that, but he escalates it by sending me a half nude picture! It caught me so by surprise that I started shaking with excitement. I told him that I was confused, that I didn’t think he was interested in me in “that way.” He said that he was attracted to me, but that he has a “policy” of not dating anyone from the tennis group.

Since then, for the past two months, the flirting is now two-ways and has progressed to video-cam sex twice a week… Our sexual interaction is exclusively virtual. When we see each other in person on the tennis courts, we’re just friends. No one in our group knows we have this virtual side thing going. He keeps saying that “soon” we will have actual sex. However his reasons are pretty flimsy as to why it hasn’t happened yet, so I assume he probably just doesn’t want to take it to that level. Yet every time I think we have reached the limit of how far this is going to go, he eventually pushes it to the next level. It’s just been such a f…n long, slow process… Ugh!

Is he just playing control games? Or is he the type of person that just takes a long time to develop a relationship? Seems that every time I try to define the relationship, I get turned down, but yet things do seem to be progressing, which leaves me confused because I want a “normal” relationship – and this feels more like a game, which granted I have been a willing participant.

Meanwhile, I keep meeting other people on dating apps, hoping to find someone that wants to date me as much as I want to date them. But no luck yet.

Do I do nothing and continue allowing him to dictate the pace and depth of the relationship? Or is there a level of toxicity already that makes it hopeless to expect it to ever be healthy and I should instead just end this now? Or is there a compromise solution that you see?

Ready Player Two

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Why Does My Boyfriend Lie About Texting Other Women?

August 6, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc…

So I was in a relationship for 6 years. I had step-kids I love and I thought everything was going well. At least, until my now ex-fiancé decided to cheat on me with my 2 “best friends” and a girl he knew I didn’t like. I ended up leaving him, getting back with him a few weeks later, leaving again a year later for a year, and then going back for 4 months to leave him again. We are completely over now but I am left with SERIOUS trust issues and major self esteem issues.

Recently I started dating a friend I’ve known for a few years. I moved across country to be with him and we’ve been living together for about 7 months now. Because of the trust issues, I went through his phone and found out that he was on FB Dating. I confronted him and he deleted it. Or so i thought. He was previously in an 8 year long super toxic relationship too, so he has some issues from it.

I looked at his phone again and found him messaging several women on FB Dating AGAIN. I confronted him again and he said he was just “giving me something to find” since I want to be disrespectful and look thru his phone. But here’s the thing… If he never gave me a reason to be suspicious in the 1st place I wouldn’t have done it. And regardless, he’s still actually talking to other women and COMPLETELY disrespecting our relationship and me personally. And he’s doing it to play a game, basically. I don’t respect a liar or a cheater, but I feel like maybe that’s all I’m worth. I’ve always been cheated on so maybe there is something wrong with me… Maybe I’m not good enough to be loyal to.. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am really sad. I’m very confused. I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted, and I could really use some advice. If I leave him, I don’t even have anywhere to go. I have no family here and I’m new here so all of my friends are his friends. Please try to steer me in some direction. Please! I’m so anxious and so lost.

I’m Just Not Worth It

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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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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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Help, I’m In Love With A Married Man

June 30, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr NerdLove,

About 12 months ago I met a man. I instantly had a crush on him but I didn’t know why. It didn’t make sense. Whenever he was in the office, I was excited to see him. I would express this, thinking that this was just a friendship thing.

About 6 months ago we were walking away from the office together. He pointed at the hiking shoes I was wearing, and asked me to go hiking with him. I thought that it was a little odd, given that he was married. But I was pretty depressed at the time. I was just happy to have a day not thinking about how alone I felt. So I said yes.

And then all of a sudden we were inseparable. We found any excuse to spend time together. I told myself this was innocent and we were just friends. I told myself it was only me that had feelings. Then one evening, as he was driving me home, his wife called. This was a real wake-up call. She sounded hurt. She asked him when he was coming home. So I decided to confront him. I told him we were crossing a line. I asked him why he had the emotional space to do so. He asked me to come for a walk with him the next day and we would talk about it.

The next day we sat down under a tree together, admiring the view. He opened up about his wife. He said that around 10 years ago she got depression. He supported her through it but she had become a completely different person. They didn’t really have a relationship to speak of. He didn’t enjoy her company anymore. Being around me made him feel like he was alive again. I asked him why, if the relationship was so bad, he didn’t just leave her. He was afraid of being alone. He said that we should just enjoy each others company. Have a nice time together. That we both needed some light in our lives, and that we could give that to each other. It felt wrong at the time but it felt like just what I needed. Nothing happened that day. When I went home, I realised how crazy this was and broke it off.

But then he asked me for one last dinner. Before I left. I was moving interstate the next week so one last dinner couldn’t hurt. I figured I was leaving anyway, so that would be ok. One last dinner to say goodbye. He picked me up, I got nice and dressed up, and we went to a really nice restaurant. He lavished me with attention. He spent the whole evening looking me in the eye. It felt like he was looking inside of me. He listened to all of my stories and told some of his own. It was the nicest “date” I’d had in years. Or ever, really. That night we kissed for the first time. I was instantly drawn to him. The sexual energy was amazing.

The next few days before I left, we were inseparable again. We had the most amazing sexual chemistry, and that was just the beginning. We spent the next 6 weeks on the phone daily. He even visited me once. I’d asked him to not talk about his wife too much. But one thing he did say was that he hadn’t seen his family more than one day a year since he was married to her. Because the fallout from him seeing them was too much to handle. She didn’t like it. So I encouraged him to visit them. I taught him to be selfish in bed. He didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted, and wanted to make it all about me. I taught him to speak up for what he wanted outside of the bedroom as well. I taught him that his feelings mattered.

I would often ask him how he could have an affair. Why he didn’t feel bad about it. He said he needed to be sure about me before leaving her. I made the point that he couldn’t be sure it was over with her, because he hadn’t left her. And if he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave her, he shouldn’t be with me. His thoughts should be about whether he wanted to leave her, rather than whether he wanted to leave her for me. And then he finally made the decision to leave her. He was coming to be with me. It was a glorious morning. I was so relieved it was over. And then it wasn’t.

He had told her about the affair, he had told her about leaving her, and he had left her. But then she’d realised what she was missing and promised she would change. I spent the next 6 weeks having half a relationship with him. He was attentive, kind, exciting and interesting when he was with me. But then he would go back to stay with his parents, and nothing. He said he needed some time to figure things out. I spent 2 hours every morning trying to drag myself out of bed. Trying to stop crying. Trying to do some work. I got at most 4 hours of work done every day. This was a really critical part of my career too. And it really really didn’t go well. I tried breaking it off with him around once a week. I tried explaining how much my work was suffering. I had to break it off to save my job. And every time. He would wait, and then ask me if I was sure. Or he’d text me, or call me, and just chat with me. And I wasn’t. It was impossible for me to get away from him.

And then I lost my job. And he left me. He went back to his wife. But wait. There’s more. We still kept talking. We were communicating daily. For hours. And then one day he went cold. He told me that day he was driving with his wife. I wasn’t sure for how long, but around 8pm I called him. I thought he would have finished driving by then. But apparently he hadn’t. His wife got angry (understandably) and told him he wasn’t allowed to be friends with me. So we had minimal contact for 2 weeks, and then all of a sudden we were back on. Talking. Every day during the week.

By now I’ve given up trying to break it off with him. I know it’s impossible. I’ve tried so many times. He’s tried. We’re in separate states, so nothing physical can happen. But I’m just so devastated. I’m still depressed all the time. He’s been so selfish. He’s only thought about himself. He’s hurt us both. He’s just kept on being selfish about this. Not considered my feelings. How much he’s hurting me. Or her. I feel like I’m in some kind of jail that keeps shrinking down outside of me. And I don’t know how to get out.

I’ve given him another month. If he hasn’t left her in a month, we’re over for good. But I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I have it in me to leave him. I need help.

The icing on the cake is this. I’ve had some sexual desires that have gone unexpressed for my entire life. So has he. We’ve discovered that we have the same desires. It feels like I’ve finally discovered my sexual preference. I’ve finally made a sexual connection with someone. I’ve spent my whole life wondering whether I was straight, gay, bisexual, because I would just get so bored with men. I liked women, but not their genitals. I didn’t know what was going on. But with him, I finally discovered that I like being a sub, and he likes being a dom. And this is not just vanilla “we can play with this for a bit”. This is full blown I need to completely submit my body to him. I have so many needs that I thought were just fantasy. I can’t go back to what my sex life used to be. It’s so hard finding someone who is both highly intelligent, sexually compatible, and who I can laugh and be silly with. We talk for hours. We love arguing about the world and life and politics. And we love telling each other our stories. I’ve never found anything that comes close to this. So I feel like it’s my fate to love a man who may or may not be with me. Who may or may not leave his wife. He talks about it as if it’s inevitable. As if we will be together soon. As if he’s leaving his wife. But if it was inevitable, and if he was so sure, he would have already left her. So obviously, there’s some doubt.

I’ve always found it easy to break up with people. To the point where I actually enjoy it. I enjoy how free I feel after breaking up. This has never happened to me. I just don’t know how to get out of this. Or whether I want to. But I’m depressed.

The Other Woman

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