oneitis Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

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

[Read more…]

Why Am I Still Not Over My Ex?

December 27, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a 21 year old guy just about to finish college. During my freshman year, I met this wonderful girl (call her Alpha) – beautiful, smart, funny, everything one could hope for. She was in a relationship when we met, but it ended soon after. She was available, we got along swimmingly, and I found signs she might even be interested romantically. I just wanted to give her a couple weeks of space for her to get through her previous breakup first. So I did, and when I felt ready to ask her out, she was…with someone else.

This completely and totally crushed my self esteem. As someone who hadn’t really had much experience with dating in high school due to extremely restrictive parents and just general lack of self esteem, I felt amazing that finally, someone I was so attracted to seemed really interested in me. But when Alpha got with another guy, I felt totally opposite – how is it possible that we could have connected so well, yet she didn’t want to be with me? Clearly, the answer must be that I was ugly or otherwise unattractive, which spurred lots of positive life changes like fitness that eventually changed my life.

…Now, I know this reaction was highly disproportionate to what happened. Certainly, the problem was my lack of self-worth and inexperience, and the unhealthy extent to which I sought her approval. Since then, even though I haven’t been in a full fledged relationship, I’ve had a bit more experience and really good people have been into me (it hasn’t worked out purely for timing reasons but that’s a question for another day). No situation with another girl has affected me so badly since, and no situation will ever again.

But for some reason, the Alpha situation still does. Alpha and I have been good friends on and off throughout college, and she was in a relationship for the bulk of this time. Every time I’d see her around with her boyfriend or when she even mentioned him, I’d get these involuntary feelings of stress and anxiety and just general bad-feelingness.

Since September or so, Alpha has been newly single and has decided not to jump into a new relationship. I’ve since lost feelings for her after learning about some particularly negative qualities of hers throughout the years (even though I still think she’s hot as ever). We hung out a few days ago at her place and this hangout was…a bit more intimate than we’ve ever been before. We didn’t explicitly do anything sexual, but there was a lot more touching and cuddling than normal. This isn’t me being hopeful that she’d want to do something serious – again, no interest in dating her – but something casual seemed on the table. Then a couple days later, she tells me she made a Tinder and matched with my old roommate – one of those, tall, lanky, unreasonably confident types who literally stole everyone’s girl in high school. All of a sudden, the exact same feelings of stress and anxiety came flooding back, to the point where it hurts my head cause I’m constantly on edge.

So how can I understand why I still feel this way, Dr. NerdLove? I don’t have strong positive feelings for her, but I do experience strong negative feelings of jealousy, stress, and low self-esteem when I see any implication that she might be interested in or doing things with other people. I can’t really escape her because we have lots of common friends and are in the same major. But even if I could, I’d much rather diagnose why I have these feelings, why they cause me so much visceral stress, and how I can face them head-on to get rid of them instead of escaping or bottling them up.

I still struggle with self-esteem from time to time, but I definitely have a much higher opinion of myself now than I did back then. This is due both to external validation at times from other women and a better internal sense of worth and confidence. So I really feel like I’ve taken all the steps one would to get rid of these feelings, but they haven’t changed at all over the course of these four years. If I could get rid of these feelings, I think my self-esteem would skyrocket and I’d be 100% ready to enter the next phase of my life. I would be forever indebted to you if you could help me get there.

Sincerely,
Prisoner of Love

[Read more…]

NERDLOVE Q&A: How Do You Meet More Women?

December 11, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Listen Here
Download Here

Book A Private Coaching Session With Dr. NerdLove

Don’t forget to subscribe and review us on iTunes , Stitcher and on YouTube.

Like the podcast? Become a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.www.doctornerdlove.com/books

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Life Is Great. So Why Am I Miserable?

October 21, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I am at a point in my life that I know something is not right with me. The problem is I can NOT nail down what the underlying issue is. My guess is that I am going through a mid-life crisis; I am NOT really sure if it’s a mid-life crisis or not; but if I have to guess, I would say that. But the one thing I am sure about is that I feel mehhh / blah regularly. Other times, I feel like I am going each day robotically. What drives me crazy is that I don’t know the exact issue to combat this. These feelings or mental state I am in happens regularly when I am alone. And it doesn’t help that I think a lot as well.

I did a lot of research online but information from the internet regarding mid-life crisis wasn’t that much helpful and doesn’t provide information on how to manage / deal with it. I am hoping you can provide some guidance or know of organizations who I can reach out to for help on what I am feeling. I am sure I am not the only one feeling this way.

If it matters, I am in my early forties, have a good stable job, and have the basic necessity. I am normally a positive happy person but this state I have been in continues for over two years already. Some days it’s hard to get through than others. I am single and have friends / family but none seems to be going through what I am going through and they are busy with their life that I don’t want to take time away.

I am into self – help and any insight / help you can provide is greatly appreciated. I just want to be happy again and it’s hard when I can’t pinpoint what exactly is going on with me. I will be happy knowing what is going on with me; then at least I will work toward resolving it.

Wanting to be happy again,

Jack’s Sense of Ennui

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: We’re On A Break. What Does That Mean?

October 14, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Dr. NerdLove,

So I had a decade long relationship with a lady (We’ll call her B) which came to an end. We both realised we needed to do things for ourselves and work on becoming better more mature people emotionally for each other. In order to work on some of our toxic habits within the relationship, we took a break from the relationship. But the reality is, we weren’t sure if it was a permanent break up or not.

Fast forward a year after, we continued talking and having fairly regular friend-sex, but I made a huge move away. We had spoken about wanting to get back together for months, but we both believed we weren’t quite there yet. We see each other as the one and only of our lives, but we had been dating for the entirety of our adult lives, and sometimes it felt like things were missed outside of our relationship . I have started to become needy and concerned in my time away wanting to talk to her more but I was busy with work and worried she would see me as needy and annoying. I was also scared that she was seeing other guys. Getting so scared about it made me feel very insecure, selfish and immature, wanting her to myself even though I moved away from her.

For some context, I have had sex and some teenage experiences before being with her, but I was her first and only experience for the last 10 years and I think that slightly adds to my insecurity. She has used that slightly as a reason to wanting to see what it was like to sleep with others.

After moving, she continued sending me things like nudes and telling me to hurry and visit because she’s getting “desperate” — just all playful flirty fun to get me rushing back sooner I guess. But last night I tried to call her wanting to catch up and talk about the “us” situation.

Well it ended in her missing my calls and telling me later she has been having sex with some other guys specifically that night while I was calling her and other nights before this, she would reaffirm that nothing was serious, I was still special and important and saying things like no one gets her or makes her feel like I do, especially sexually. She also said that a lot of what she’s been doing has been to due to depression; she has a history of self harm and ended up replacing it with sex, sex that I could no longer give her since I moved.

(I was unaware of the self harm coming back up until recently; she had only continued in the last few months.)

I guess my question is: how do I come to grips with all of this? I truly believe she still loves me and I know I still love her. After a long up and down night, we seem more determined than ever to get back together and make it work in the near future. Of course, the geographical location side of things being eventually dealt with as well.

But I feel so horrible and like a fool. It’s brought me to tears every day, I feel angry, replaced and unneeded, but also jealous and somewhat envious. She was happy for me to see other girls but I can’t bring myself to even try now, I don’t see myself as someone who could get laid or do the dating thing anymore. Not to mention I’m still madly in love with her and don’t want to string other girls along just for sex to even some sort of score between me and B.

I am dealing with all sorts of emotions daily now and plan to make regular visits to her until it either we break up for good, or one of us makes the move and we get back together. I want to feel important and special, and she says all the right things but I am having such a hard time getting over her experiences while we weren’t together. I wanted to be mature and understanding but I’m struck with jealousy and anger like nothing else.

She tells me she doesn’t want to keep sleeping with guys after talking to me, that she wished I was more needy and spoke to her on the phone more, that might have made her less wanting of finding other temporary guys. I wish I put in the effort now, I feel like an absolute fool for trying not to bother her constantly when she tells me now that’s what she wanted, that she hasn’t thoroughly enjoyed sex without me and misses talking to me.

I just wanna be the better man and believe she wants me over anyone else and be better for her, that I don’t become resentful because of her interest in experimenting out there during our “break”. Help?

Break Up or Break Down

[Read more…]