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I Just Discovered My Boyfriend Is Living a Double Life

May 22, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove

I’ve been involved with a guy for a little over 5 years. We actually met online. I still remember the night I clicked on his profile. Based on looks, he wasn’t the kind of guy I would typically date, but from his profile and the small chats we exchanged online, he seemed pretty cool. The only problem was that we lived in different states.

Although Philadelphia and New York aren’t so far from each other, at the time it seemed like a world away. Nevertheless, we both agreed to meet each other after a few weeks. Long story short, we hit it off pretty well. And quickly became very close.

In the first few years of dating, we honestly didn’t get to see each other more than 1-2 times a month. But despite that we called, texted, and video chatted every day. In my mind, the relationship was real.

There was never any indication that he had anyone else in the picture. He seemed very transparent about his life.

Fast Forward towards the end of 2018. I decided to create an Instagram account to promote a small startup business. His profile popped up as a suggested follow. I decided to scroll through his page (I chose not to follow simply because I didn’t want to seem like a stalker). Most of the pictures on there were pictures/videos that I had either taken of him while we were out together, of activities we both did together, or things that he’s already shared with me through regular chats and messaging. However, I have to say that I was taken aback by the fact that he had no pictures of us anywhere on his profile. They were all pictures of him, or his nieces and nephews.

Anyway, I had seen a few post of his latest “nephew” who was born earlier that year, around the same time I began to notice a shift in our relationship. When I clicked on the picture, not only did he identify the child as his own but the child had his same f**king name.

I will never forget how heartbroken and crushed I felt when I discovered this.

What was even worse was that I found out that besides me there were two other women in his life. The mother of his child, and another woman who he had been dating for as long as me.

I tried to break things off with him, but it seemed like the more I pulled away the more he drew me back in. And within time we ended up becoming closer than ever. Our 1-2x a month visits literally turned into at least 3-4x a week (with both of us taking turns to make the back and forth travel). He made every effort to show me that he was done with the other women, and even had me speak to the mother of his child directly.

Everything seemed okay until a few months ago when I found out I was pregnant. He was adamant that I needed to get an abortion and that he didn’t want a child (even though he already had one). Initially, I was considering an abortion myself simply because I didn’t think I was ready for a child. But when I thought about it more, I didn’t feel comfortable with the process. I told him that it wasn’t something I wanted to go through with. Instead of trying to understand my perspective, he literally went into a rage and told me that if I didn’t have the abortion he would want nothing to do with me. I thought this was all just talk, that he was just scared, and would eventually come into his senses later on. But he meant every word.

I don’t know what to do. There are moments when he’s randomly super sweet to me, and acts life everything is okay. Then there are back to back days where he sends me long rants of how I ruined his life by not having an abortion. I’m completely baffled by this monster that I used to call my boyfriend. A part of me thinks that the reason he is so mad is because he’s still leading a double life.

What should I do?? I’m honestly scared of this man. But at the same I still do love him.

Btw, the baby is due in October.

Pregnant and Lost

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Should He Tell His Ex He Wants to Get Back Together?

March 2, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I’ve been a long-time reader of your articles, and after so many years, I now find myself in need of your advice. It’s a bit of a long story. For context, I am a single 27-year-old man, and the woman in question is my ex, and is about to turn 26. We both work in the same profession. I’ll start with the background first.

In the fall of 2018, my ex and I first met when we were working together at a new internship. We clicked instantly, and the attraction was mutual. We began dating almost immediately. I have no doubt about the sincerity and genuineness of the relationship at the time; I have never been happier, and she loved me and appreciated who I was and what I could provide. Having said that, I need to say that at the time, she was married — to a man who I later found out was emotionally abusing her, before and during our own relationship.

Unfortunately for me, this was also my first ever relationship, which means I made some mistakes of my own, and those mistakes — combined with her renewed desire to try to make her marriage work — resulted in her ending our relationship in December of 2018. I was absolutely heartbroken.

This was not just some work affair or side thing for me — she was my girlfriend, and I was devastated. So much so that I ended up making the mistake of playing the “We can still be friends” card on the table, and ended up locking myself into that emotional prison for a further four months, until in April of 2019, she finally made me promise not to contact her anymore, because she was committed her decision and wanted to focus on that relationship. And I agreed, because I wanted her to be happy, and because I could understand where she was coming from.

And so it was for nearly eleven months. As I’m sure you know, going no contact cold turkey from a person you WANT to be with is one of the most horrible experiences a person could have. In my case, I developed depression, felt lonely and miserable, and I even sought help in a support group for failed relationships to find solace. Not one day went by that I didn’t think about her, and — surprise surprise — I was, and am, still in love with her. After so long without hearing from her, I eventually wrote an acceptance letter to her which I did not send, and I’m quoting myself here, “because I had to let her go.” That’s where I was.

Imagine my shock, then, when she did reach out to me! Almost eleven months later! It felt like a miracle. She wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear from her (she couldn’t have been more wrong), but she said that she was finally leaving him for good, due to the continued emotional abuse, and that she thought of me. We have been texting daily since (as of this letter, almost a week), and have even had a short phone call. I haven’t been this happy in a long time. I missed having my friend in my life. But I also miss having her as my girlfriend. And that, finally, is where my question begins.

Dr. NerdLove: I am still in love with my ex, who is now formally separating from her husband. I want her and I to try again. I want us back together. Should I tell her? How should I tell her? When? And is there any hope for us, in such a complex situation?

I have been happy talking to her as normal, and discussing our work and so forth, but when she left, I told her that I loved her and would always welcome her back; surely she’s at least considered the possibility of trying again, otherwise, why reach out to me at all? I can tell she’s a bit different now: she seems a little distant and sad, and a tad overworked, perhaps as a coping mechanism. I want to support her, but I’m not sure how.

To make matters even more complicated, right now, my ex is still located near me, but when she graduates from school, she will be moving back home to Texas, and then after that, when she acquires her license, she will be moving one state over from me (I’m in Virginia) to begin her dream job. Which means even assuming that she wants to actually rekindle our relationship– which is still a huge unknown and may not even be a possibility — it’s going to be forced to take on a long-distance component very soon. But I can deal with that. After having once gone fourteen months without seeing her, there’s very little now I wouldn’t do to be able to be with her.

Doctor, is there any hope for us? And is there anything I can do to let her know that I don’t care about the past, but that I do want to be there for her in her future? I love her so much, but I feel like a compass that doesn’t know where true north is anymore.

Thank you for reading, I know it was long, but if this is or can be a second chance, I want to do it right this time, and any advice or insight is appreciated 🙂

Still Waiting

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Was His Girlfriend Cheating On Him With Her Toxic Ex?

January 17, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

My girlfriend says she was emotionally abused by her ex boyfriend. He had anger and jealousy issues. He would isolate her and dictate the activities they would do together. He would even say hurtful things to her like that she’s not marriage material or that she’ll be alone forever. They dated for about two years and then she broke up with him. He tried desperately to get her back. He would write long elaborate love notes and even drive 4 hours to show up at her front door unannounced. This went on for about a year. She started to date other people and she slowly cut him out of her life.

About a year ago, she received a job offer at the same job that he works at. This would mean they would work in the same city and the same building. This was her dream job so she said yes. When she moved down here for the new job, they began communicating again. Deep feelings for him began to resurface. She discovered that he had a new girlfriend and it really hurt her. She cried for days when she found out. She was confused why she felt like this after the way he treated her in the past. She tried to get back into a relationship with him but he refused because of his new girlfriend. This hurt her even more.

She decided to just try to maintain a professional working relationship. She began dating again and a few months later, she started dating me. She told me the whole story of their relationship. As we began to become serious in our relationship, she decided it was a good idea to keep our relationship a secret so that he does not cause drama at work. I also work in the same building as them.

The next few months was a struggle. He would call her almost every day and she would pick up the phone every time. He would send long texts apologizing for the past and saying that he would like to get back together. She was very transparent with me about these conversations. She said it was important to maintain a professional relationship with him because they work together but it was clear that he wanted more than just a professional relationship. She said she was working on cutting him out of her life but she needed time and to do it her own way. I obliged and allowed the communication to continue between them. They would speak almost daily.

Our relationship continues to progress and by this point, we are serious about each other. We are saying “I love you”, meeting each other’s parents and even talking about the future. Yet, during this same period of time, I would catch her lurking on the new girlfriends social media page. If the ex would post a new photo with his girlfriend, she would see it and her mood would immediately be ruined. They would have phone conversations where they would argue and cry about the past for hours. She said what she was feeling has nothing to do with romantic feelings and everything to do with the aftermath of the emotional abuse she received. I was very confused by this but she confidently said that she was never in love with him. It still hurt when I would see her continue to have these conversations with her ex and see how bothered she was by his new girlfriend.

I did not like how she was handling the situation but I also tried to remain empathetic. I urged her not to text back or answer his calls but she simply could not. She knew that their communication made me uncomfortable. I was often frustrated and it would lead to arguments. When she couldn’t go no contact, I felt that she cared about his feelings more than mine. It seemed that she had this attachment to him. I began to feel like I was being emotionally cheated on. Yet, she always remained very adamant that she was in love with me and not him. She attributes her feelings and tears to the emotional abuse. She knows he wasn’t the one for her.

I told her that he it is unhealthy for them to be in contact and it would be best if she blocked him from everything. It took quite a bit of convincing but she eventually did. We’ve now been together for 6 months and she hasn’t been in contact with him for about three months.

We are still in love and she firmly maintains that she never felt the same love for him. I believe her but I wonder if there are feelings that she can’t fully understand because of the pain she went through?

I know that it can be very hard to detach from a manipulative ex and I admit that I don’t fully understand the effects of an emotionally abusive relationship. I write this because I want to understand how a past emotionally abusive relationship can affect a current loving relationship and how to navigate those difficulties.

I worry that her ex was like a drug, responsible for her highs and lows, and she was going through withdrawals while dating me. I worry that she has been so conditioned by the emotional abuse that she has come to expect it. I want to be assured that I was not emotionally cheated on. I think that is my biggest fear.

Is it possible that she simply did not have enough time to heal from him? I feel like I had to push her to make the decision to block his number. If she was truly over him and healed, wouldn’t she have willingly blocked him for the betterment of our relationship? I recently asked her to unblock him because I felt that blocking him was just an easy way of not having to confront the problem. I never seen her not text back or not pick up his calls and that is still the one thing that makes me believe she was not over him. Unblocking him was my way of testing her to see how she would react if he does reach out again. Was this a bad idea to unblock him? It seemed to be working but I always wonder how far the communication would have gotten if I didn’t push her to block him.

I feel stuck and don’t want to question her anymore. I don’t want to smother her in pursuit of this clarity and understanding that I crave. Please help me understand all of this.

Stuck In 3rd

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: We Had a Passionate Affair. Why Doesn’t He Like Me Anymore?

December 6, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I have a problem. My marriage was failing, and I fell in love with our Jiu Jitsu instructor (we’ll call him Ethan). The biggest problem was that I was still married and he was somewhat friendly with my husband (we will call him Rick). But Ethan and I clicked right away. I had an instant attraction to him, but I did my best to squash it.

As time went on, Ethan ended up being there for me during a rough time, emotionally when my husband wasn’t. Eventually, I told Ethan my feelings for him and he reciprocated. We ended up having a sexting relationship that was hot and heavy, but also filled with true emotion. However, he started getting pressure from another friend, who ended up causing a big scene and telling my husband what was going on before I could even process what was going on myself. My husband freaked out, and we’ve spent the last two and a half years trying to make it work. However, he’s ended up having his own infidelities numerous times while I did not.

We’ve decided to separate and then divorce. I recently reached out to Ethan to apologize for how everything went down, and he responded saying he had just been thinking about me that morning. It was a very sweet conversation. He told me that he thinks about me all the time and that we should get a drink soon. He was at work and I was about to take my son for a walk, so I suggested we carry on the conversation later. He agreed. Then I didn’t hear from him again until the next afternoon when I asked him a question about his gym. He apologized, and said he left his phone at work (hmmm).

We talked a bit more about everything that happened. He told me how he felt badly and that it was just recently that he got out of his funk from the situation between us. I respond with a few things and, after an hour or so, noticed that he saw the message and didn’t reply. I asked if I had said something wrong and then he disappeared again for 24 hours. He responded the next evening with “No you’re good, just super busy the past couple of days”. I ask him what he’s been up to not long after he sent that message, and now I haven’t heard from him again. He hasn’t even viewed the message. I haven’t contacted him since.

I spoke with a mutual friend of ours and he told me to be patient, that Ethan leaves him on “read” for days all the time. I asked him if he knew if Ethan was dating and he said he had heard nothing.

Here’s the thing, after doing some social media snooping, I see he’s been hiking with a girl these past days. Now, they don’t mention each other in their posts, she seems to go hiking a lot with other people. And it seems like he’s doing it for exercise based off of what he has said in the posts. It seems like they have been friends for while and work together. He liked a photo of our mutual friend and I today, but hasn’t responded. Is he trying to play it ultra cool, or if he doesn’t have the guts to say he’s dating someone else. I’m not glass, I wish he would just say as much. How long is an appropriate time to wait until I attempt to message him again? Should refriend him on social media? Should I just file this under it wasn’t meant to be?

What should I do? Thank you!!

Left On Read

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: I Cheated. Now She’s Threatening To Blow Up My Marriage.

December 2, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

Long time reader, first time emailer. This one is a bit of a doozy, and I am very much at fault, but I need your advice on how to move forward.

My girlfriend and I (let’s call her K) have been dating for nearly 5 years. We’ve going through a tough year. We both moved back to our old town after a few years away for work, but have struggled to reacclimatize. The city just isn’t quite the same, moving was a nightmare, but we hate our new jobs (she’s stuck because she needs to work off a student loan and I’m stuck because there’s very few options in my field of tertiary IT education in my country). As a result, we have constantly been up and down in our relationship this year, and every time I felt like we got to a good place, something would come and set us back again. We really love each other though, and we’re committed to making this work through all the shit.

A recurring issue in our relationship is sexual imbalance. K is a highly sexual person and, though I used to be, the stress of moving and work the last 3 years has killed my libido and made me pretty vanilla (to the point where I was scared of toys because of the threat they posed to my shitty fragile masculinity, even though I know that’s not actually the case). I will admit I’ve probably gotten too comfortable in my relationship. Every very time K would bring up this issue, I really would try to be more attentive, but would eventually fall back into old habits. It’s hard to maintain a healthy sex life when I’m feeling like shit in my work life, but maybe that’s just an excuse. I know sexual incompatibility is another bad sign, but like I said, we’re committed to working through it.

Now for the really shitty bit. About 6 weeks ago, I knowingly cheated on K with an old flame (let’s call her Z). Z and I had kept in touch bit from time to time (first mistake). She texted me saying she wanted to come over to see me on the pretense of seeing my dog who is really cute (first red flag). So when K went away on holiday, I invited Z to our house. I didn’t really want to, but she kept pestering me, and I kinda wanted someone to talk to about K – we were in another rough patch dealing with the sexual issues. So she came over and we had a few drinks (though we weren’t drunk) and spoke about our respective relationships and their struggles (Z is polyamorous, but had been struggling with her partner being very stressed, affecting their sex life).

It felt really good to open up to someone about K, especially the intimate things, because I often kept this stuff bottled up. We were getting physically close through most of these conversations, and at some point she started spontaneously giving me a massage (second red flag).

And then it all went downhill. We started kissing, which very quickly led to sex. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was being selfish and in my head I really just needed a win because of my issues with K being because of me. I figured she was in a similar mindset, though she knew full well what she was enabling me to do. I guess we both needed a win.

I thought that was the end of it once she’d left. I knew what a shit thing I’d done. I’ve been struggling all year with depression and self sabotage is a bit of a pattern in my relationships (though not with cheating). So I kinda hated myself for it, but it did give me perspective. I loved K and wanted to throw myself into our relationship as penance for what I’d done.

Soon after, Z texted me again, feeling terrible that she’d helped me cheat on K. I needed to fix this, she said – which meant telling K about what I had done. My stance on this was that no, K didn’t need to know about this thing that was once, meant nothing at the end of the day and was over. She blackmailed me saying that if I ever proposed to K, I better have told her first, or she would. We fought back and forth over text, ended up basically telling each other to fuck off and blocking each other on all social media. I thought that was the end of it.

Now comes the really fucked up part. To cover my tracks, I blocked Z on all of my, AND all of K’s social media (through access to her phone). Like I said, I took the approach that not telling K would be the best option. It was over.

Fast forward to this past weekend, K and I are back in a good place, and went down to somewhere we used to live for the weekend. Knowing this was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I proposed to her, and she said yes. I wasn’t thinking about Z, and I thought I’d covered my tracks well and was working through my own self destructive behaviour by being a better person for K.

Turns out I’d forgotten to block Z on K’s Instagram, and the day after our social media announcement I got a text from Z that she hoped I’d told K first , because she was going to. I hopped out of bed, took K’s phone while she was sleeping (wow, I’m a dick) and scoured it to find Z following K on Instagram. I blocked her immediately (no traces of any threatened message) and thought I would be okay. Until Z started making multiple alt accounts and following both of us. She was on a warpath.

Backed into a wall, the weight of my actions crashed down on me and after much deliberation, I caved into Z’s blackmail. I told K before she could.

K was terribly hurt, and I’ve put her in a shitty position now – she can’t take back all the well wishes on our engagement, or tell anyone about my infidelity because there’s no way they would let her stay if they knew. She says she forgives me (to an extent) and understands the cocktail of shit that led me to this shit show. We are both pretty much going through the five stages of grief about this.

I have promised to be better, and am taking steps to go and see a therapist to work through my fucked up psyche (about a year too late but better late than never) and we’re going to see K’s therapist together later this week for couples counseling.

The only bright side to this is that Z has thankfully disappeared (I don’t even even want this to be posted on Kotaku in case she sees and it stirs up a shit storm), and that K loves me (and our dog) enough to want to stick around and try to work through this.

It’s really hard. I am wracked with guilt. I love this person and I feel like we can build our future together on a clean slate now that everything is out in the open. She loves me, but worries whether love is enough. I keep asserting that it is because I don’t want to lose her. Uncoupling also brings with it a host of logistical problems that aren’t worth it, especially if we can (which I believe) work through this.

I know it will take time, and that I’m probably doing most of the good things to fix things already. I just feel like shit, and I guess I’m looking for some sort of affirmation that this will pass and we’ll be okay. I know that’s not your job and I’m probably going to get realtalked into the ground, but even typing this out has been cathartic, so at least that has helped somewhat.

I feel like shit, I need help, and I can’t bear to lose her.

Engaged Pile of Poo

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