communication Archives

Why Do I Keep Hurting Myself?

August 25, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: this column includes discussion of self-harm

Hi Doc,

I don’t know how to explain this, so I’ll give some background. I’m a 25 guy who never kissed a girl or held hands and so on. I’ve been rejected all my life and in many mean ways, always being told I was too ugly, hideous, disgusting, etc. Of course that hurt me a lot back then and destroyed what left of my confidence and hope that maybe someday someone would like and love me. Now I can imagine myself trying to approach someone again, because I’m scared to death that they will say something like that again and I don’t want to bother them if I’m just not good enough.

That’s normal I guess and I would be somewhat ‘fine’ if I just never tried again talking to girls in a romantic way. However, for some reason I keep repeating myself those words and phrases and keep hurting myself emotionally. I tell myself ‘you’re hideous, no one will ever love you’ or ‘you’ll never get a girlfriend and you’ll die alone’ or ‘why you’re so ugly? kill yourself’ and so on. Or, for instance, at night I listen to romantic or some songs that remind me about girlfriends, love and relationships and I search ‘cute couples’ on google images and I spend hours crying and feeling awful and depriving myself of a good sleep (and the next morning, when I’m sleepy at work, I feel even worse for wasting time on that). Sometimes I go as far as texting myself awful things, just to make me cry.

I don’t know how or when I got this habit, but it’s something I deal on a daily basis. I’m going crazy? I’m just broken? This is a side-effect of my loneliness and being unlovable? I don’t know what to do. I can accept and being ok with people being mean to me, maybe I deserve it, but why on earth I hurt myself?

Bad To Me

[Read more…]

My Boyfriend Used To Date My Son And I Don’t Know What To Do

August 20, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I recently met a man on a dating site. He’s younger but I think I’m over that part. When we first started talking, when I asked his last name it sounded familiar and I asked if he had relatives near where my son lives. I mentioned my son’s name, and he said he knew him and his wife. And one of his grandkids went to school with my grands.

Fast forward to more intimate talks. Namely, a three way. After his divorce he had one. Not a problem for me, anything before me is none of my business. It’s who he had it with that is my problem. It was with my son and my daughter-in-law. So I’m having a BIG problem with that. Shocked isn’t the word for it. I would have thought they were the most vanilla sex people I could think of. According to the new guy they are on several hook-up sites, etc.

I haven’t seen them since I found out, that is going to be hard. I’m not bringing it up but just knowing is going to be strange.

Now back to the guy. I’m beginning to really like him. But how do I have a relationship with someone that slept with my family? We have agreed that the subject never comes up again. I’ve been a widow for 3 years, I’ve had a few dates in the last year but this is the only one that seems like it might go beyond dating.

Stuck In The Middle With Ew

[Read more…]

How Do I Tell My Partner I Didn’t Cheat?

August 11, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: today’s letter deals with rape and includes explicit descriptions of sexual assault.

Dear Dr. NerdLove: I had been with my partner for almost 10 years. Some significant things happened in my life and I hit a really low depression. Our relationship took a toll for it. Insert a mutual somewhat friend of ours. I liked him, he was funny, interesting to talk too, and charismatic. During our friendship he made a lot of advances. Sometimes I flirted back, but overall never let on that I was interested in having sex. My relationship with my partner was getting worse and worse. He was jealous of my relationship with this other person. He asked me to end it and I wish I had. But I stayed stubborn and ignored his request.

At some point my friend got too… suggestive. I told him I was more than just a sexual body. We stopped talking for a good while. This all took place over a year or so. During this time, I had plenty of opportunities to cheat but I did not want to. It was just nice in the beginning having someone find me attractive and more than just a mom of 3 that cleaned and did school projects all the time.

Well, my friend and I were a part of a group that ran a spring event in the woods. We saw each other during the meetings, I kept things platonic. The night before the spring event kicks off, we always have a staff night. Drinking, dancing, good food, just a nice stress reliever from all the planning. My partner didn’t come with me to the event that year. I was really sad, depressed, somewhat suicidal and I drink. A lot. I’m not a huge drinker and I was chugging this stuff back. At one point, I’m just dancing and joking around. But the night gets fuzzier and fuzzier. I remember at some point, 2 other people from my group dragging me along the pathway to the cabins. Then next moment, one of them is kissing me and taking my clothes off. I remember stumbling back. Then the next memory is one of them pushing my face into their partners genitals (unclothed). I remember gagging and throwing up a bit, swallowing it down. I got up and ran. I didn’t have a shirt or bra on. It was dark and I ran into my friend, asked him for help. I didn’t have a flashlight, didn’t know where my clothes were. I don’t know if I walked or he half carried me, but I ended up at my cabin. And next thing, we’re having sex. I didn’t say no. I went with it. Afterwards, I just laid there. Completely numb.

And then I made this dumb choice, after getting home, I messaged him about the event. Like, that I enjoyed it and when we’re going to do it again. But deep down, I felt grossed out and just dead inside. My partner found out, via reading the message. We separated and it’s been hell since. I never told him the fullness of that night. I was afraid because of what it mean to our group (the event group), that my partner wouldn’t believe me, that given all the events that lead up to it, it definitely looks like I cheated. And I feel like I did. But through therapy, I guess I’ve come to conclude it’s more complicated than that. How do I talk to my ex about this situation? I love him and want him home. I want to heal and move on from this.

What Did I Do?

[Read more…]

Am I Too Aggressive When I’m Looking For Dates?

July 23, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

Thanks as always for your tireless service! You are definitely still the best purveyor of dating advice on the internet. I think I have an issue that I haven’t seen you talk about before…

I (30, cis, straight, F) have been single for a *long* time, and in general I find that when I meet someone cool whom I’m interested in, I tend to be the one who does most of the heavy lifting (i.e. suggesting meetups, initiating contact, etc). That may or may not be a sign that I’m just setting my sights on people who aren’t actually interested – definitely a topic for my therapist but that’s not really what I’m writing to you about. The point is that I’m not shy to make the first move as a woman but am having zero success so far.

The issue is that I’m living in an area where people in general are quite restrained and well-behaved; everyone is friendly and kind and welcoming, but it rarely goes beyond that. People don’t really flirt or open up to you unless you really make an effort to get to know them properly, and even then it is borderline impossible to tell if someone likes you or *likes you’-likes you. There also isn’t really much of a vocabulary surrounding dating (the people here don’t speak English); there are no phrases for saying “Want to go out sometime?” or “I’d love to invite you on a date if you’re free next week” and so on. I asked a friend what they might think if someone up-front asked them on a date, and they said that sounded “way too direct”.

Generally this therefore means that I am in a pattern of inviting cool people for ‘drinks’ or ‘dinner’, only for them to interpret that as a literal invitation to go and consume food or liquid as acquaintances and then go home. I can’t think of an elegant way to make clear that I mean ‘drinks’ like ‘romantic flirty drinks’ rather than ‘two people ingesting beer in the same general area’. And because men here are very respectful of women’s boundaries, they sit politely on the other side of the table and keep their hands to themselves regardless of what kind of signals I try to send over. I think they are often quite nervous about potentially offending women by overstepping. I don’t want to violate their boundaries either so I don’t push it. We have a nice drink or dinner, go home, and nothing *ever* happens. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I guess I am wondering how I can make it clearer in my communication and body language that I am interested in these people so that things don’t just end up stuck in neutral like this. If anything, it would be good to get to a point where I can get an honest rejection from them so I at least know that I can move on and stop wondering. As it is, because I never get the up-front rejection, these things tend to stretch on for months and it can be quite emotionally draining.

Some people say that part of the problem is that guys don’t pick up on subtle signals like hair-touching and all that other stuff that women are told to do to show someone that they are interested. Is this true or is this just part of the usual ‘lol men are so oblivious’ genre of crap dating advice?

Ultimately the questions are:
– how do I make it crystal clear to someone that my invitation to meet up is a romantic move and that therefore they should say no if they’re not romantically interested?
– what are some things I can do as a female human to signal my interest, clearly enough that someone would get the message, without coming across as creepy or desperate? Or – worst of all – *intimidating*?
– what are some things I can do on these meetups to loosen up the vibe and encourage the other person to sit closer/reciprocate a touch/relax a bit and possibly even engage in some light flirting?

Thanks so much!

Why Don’t They Get It

[Read more…]

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

[Read more…]