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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

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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

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Stop Being In Love With Someone?

September 2, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc,

I hope you can help me on this and I’ll start with some backstory: I’ve known this girl since…always. Her sister and I went to kindergarten, elementary and high school together and we’re close friends. I guess I began having feelings for her when I was 11-12, mostly because she was three years older than me and seemed like a woman, not just a girl. Time went on and over the years we became close friends and I discovered how amazing, funny, smart, laid back and friendly she was and I became more attached to her. She eventually graduated and moved out of to college. This really devastated me and I awkwardly confessed my feelings hoping that she would stay and marry me (I was 15, don’t get mad at me). As expected she told me she didn’t feel that way and that she liked me as a friend and a little brother.

She was great enough to give me some advice and told me to focus on girls my age. Of course, I didn’t follow her advice and kept liking her and everytime she came home to visit her family and friends and we would spend some time together I was the happiest man alive. My crush on her continued even after I finished college. A year ago I got my first job in the same city as her, so we hang out more often. Everything was great until she got a job offer in Europe. I’m sincerely very happy for her, because she’s not only good at her job, she algo loves it and living there was always her dream.

I know I’m being selfish, but I’m very sad knowing that she’s leaving and I won’t be able to see her for months. I highly value our friendship and losing it hurts.

How can I stop liking her? I know I should go out and meet other women, but in my 24 years on this planet I’ve never been interested in anyone but her, never kissed or been on a date and I’m not sure if I know how to flirt or ask someone out at this point and everytime I met someone is like ‘yeah, she’s cool, but she’s not HER’.

I know I’m just not right and good enough for her and we’ll never be more than friends, but I can’t see myself with anyone else. What can I do?

Hooked On A Feeling

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Stop Feeling Like A Dating Failure?

July 26, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’m starting to believe I’m not actually capable of dating someone and I’m becoming afraid of dying alone.

I was bullied most of my school life, I probably didn’t help myself much at the time but now I realise the experience left me socially isolated/awkward, lacking in confidence and self-belief and believing I had little to offer in life. I’m now 24 and all in all I really cannot complain: I have my health, I’m financially stable and I have the career I always aspired to which offers a fantastic work/life balance. I’ve always been somewhat introverted but I have my friends I see (as and when work schedules allow) I do socialise more now and have become a bit more self-aware and hopefully less awkward. I’m certainly no party animal and I choose not to drink. I prefer to spend my time away from work with outdoor adventure activities, exploring different countries, keeping fit, generally seeking to learn and develop in and out of work and charity/volunteer work.

However, my dating/love life has not had the same success, in fact much the polar opposite. I think this stems from a bad dose of what you’d probably call oneitis I had in school: in hindsight we were opposing ends of the social spectrum so it was an impossibility really. She was perfectly polite and respectful in her rejection but unfortunately once word got around it all fed more ammunition to my childhood tormentors and as is the way in school the majority sided with the socially dominant bullies. This has left me with crippling approach anxiety for fear not so much of the polite ‘No, thank you’ but more the nuclear explosion of abuse and psychological torture that historically followed. So I’ve hit 25 and not managed a meaningful romantic relationship. Not one.

Of the odd, irregular night out I enjoy bars and pubs but clubs are really not my scene. I suppose this limits the number of women I meet but I also think it’s probably better to meet them doing what I enjoy. I have many female colleagues as well (I realise work isn’t necessarily the best or even appropriate time to approach anyone).

My trouble is, if I meet a girl who I find attractive (personality, physically etc) the fear starts brewing. I automatically assume they’re already spoken for, wouldn’t be interested or could do better and I get tongue tied: either I end up saying something stupid or blanking them. Even worse, sometimes I manage a pleasant but platonic conversation when it’s just one-on-one, but cross paths with her with other people present, I panic and blank them. Probably as creepy as it is offensive and I don’t mean to be that way.

I have friends and colleagues who really have made a great effort to help. I regularly hear: “You’re not exactly ugly, impressive physique, you have a great career which involves helping people and you really can say you’ve saved more than one life, you’re passionate about your job and hobbies, well-travelled ambitious, intelligent, honest, well-meaning, pretty funny when you want to be AND you can cook! That’s quite the package to offer”
I go away feeling better about things but as soon as I’m faced with the pretty girl it all crashes back: Nope. I’ve got nothing to offer her. She’s out my league.

I’d love to follow the advice of just ask, nothing to lose, ask straight away before you’ve become over invested in the answer but, being a bit socially awkward, it takes a while for me to become comfortable talking with someone and by then I have overthought everything and convinced myself not to bother. On the incredibly rare occasion I’m seriously thinking of asking I don’t know how to, I can’t work out how to make the conversation more than just platonic chat or professional courtesy. On the even rarer occasion I’ve actually asked (unimpressively, timidly and stammering) it’s always a no. A polite and thoughtfully worded no (mostly) but still a no.

I’ve managed a few (we’re talking less than 5) dates in recent years. None successful. To be honest, none of them have even been enjoyable. She may be very beautiful with a great personality and I may have wanted to see her again but the pressure I seem to put on myself believing that I have to try and act like someone else because they clearly won’t like me just leaves me feeling deflated, defeated and exhausted. They never want to meet a second time. The reality is, I don’t enjoy the process of meeting someone or getting to know them (mainly due to my lack of self belief) but I don’t want to grow up and die alone. Unfortunately, in my work I see this happen scarily regularly and with every partially decomposed body that was only found cos the neighbour hasn’t seen them for a while it hits me every time that I’m possibly seeing my own future.

The internet is full of warped and contradictory “…treat em mean keep em keen…” advice filled with “infallible techniques and pick up mind tricks” and I’m buried under a belief that you need to be a psychological genius to work it out.

I guess my question is what do I do? Where do I start?

Feeling Like Failure

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Should I Tell My Friend I’m In Love With Her?

April 17, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Doc NerdLove,

Discovered your column and YouTube channel a couple weeks back and decided to write to you for advice about a pretty hairy situation I’ve found myself in.

Some background, I’m a single man in his late thirties who has been living in Louisiana for most of his life. Due a childhood where I suffered abuse at the hands of a stepparent, I have found it difficult to socialize, have difficulty talking about my emotions and have suffered from severe mental problems. Needless to say, my attempts at any form of romantic relationship have ranged from “went nowhere” to “complete disaster” and I’ve generally not sought anything of the kind for a number of years. Further compounding things is that I live in a very economically run down part of the state and therefore have difficulty finding steady work, am frequently broke and need to rely on my family for financial assistance. I have suffered frequently from depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts as a result of this. Things got particularly bad for me in 2015. Lack of response on job inquiries for several months, growing alienation from my conservative family, and just feeling lonely and like I had no future, that sort of thing. I was suffering panic attacks, losing sleep and was emotionally and physically exhausted. I felt like I couldn’t hold out much longer.

Then some woman-hating asshole shot up a movie theater in Lafayette and that’s where a friend of mine comes in. Let’s call her H. I had met her years before through a forum dedicated to B-movies and weird cinema. I found her to be an incredibly kind, funny and intelligent person and was delighted that she had similar interests to mine. Though it was a while before the two of us met off-line, we became fairly good friends through social media and chatting and now get together face-to-face whenever we can. A few years back, things had gotten to a point where I wanted to see if H was interested in being more than friends but a bad experience with admitting romantic interest to a friend in the past left me hesitant to do anything. When it came to light that H had hooked up with another member of our circle of friends — let’s call him D — I figured “Oh well, shit out of luck again” and I thought that was the end of that. We were still good friends, after all.

Fast forward to 2015, H was going through a bad time as well. Her father, who she was very close to, passed away, leaving her an emotional wreck. She was depressed all the time, her relationship with D was becoming strained, and felt as though everything was falling apart for her. Well, when she heard that there was a mass shooting in my neck of the woods and she couldn’t reach me all day (I was at my sister’s, babysitting my niece, and phone reception and internet service there was spotty) she began to worry that something had happened to me. When I finally got online that night, I found a message from her that read: “I really need to know that you’re okay.”

Getting that message shook me up. Here I was, thinking myself to be a burden on everyone and thinking maybe it would be for the best if I was just…gone…and here’s this person who lives halfway across the country, going through all that she was going through, worrying about me. It was a reminder that somebody gave a shit if I died and suddenly I found that I couldn’t go through with committing suicide. Those thoughts didn’t just magically go away, mind, but when they came, all I could think about was H, all the things she was dealing with and this little voice would tell me, “you do this and it will kill her.”

In the months that followed, as H and I did whatever we could to support each and help one another through what we were going through, I realized I was very much in love with her. And realizing this left me a little scared because you see, H and D moved in together back around 2010, have stayed together since, and despite some problems, anybody can see that the two of them are still very much in love with each other. Now, I’m not as close to D as I am H, but he’s been good to me for as long as I’ve known him and he recognizes that mine and H friendship is important to her. I really like the guy.

And so, I have never told H how she stopped me from killing myself, beyond some vague statements about “helping me through a rough patch.” I worried that if I told her about it, it would lead to her finding out about how I feel about her and I just did not want to dump that sort of drama on the two of them. (I figure if H finds out, D going to find out.) I didn’t want her to feel “girlfriend zoned,” y’know? I thought that if I kept quiet that maybe these feelings for her would just die down and fade away with time, and for brief moment it looked like they did, during a period where financial problems kept me from traveling for a while. Then I had finally gotten to where I could afford going to meet up with everybody at a B-movie film festival earlier this year and there she was. After being around her, seeing how happy she was to see me again and the great time we had, those feelings didn’t so much as come creeping back as they kicked down my front door and mugged me. I’ve been miserable ever since I got back from this trip.

Well, over the past couple of months, I’ve come around to the idea that telling H may be the only way to get over her. It took a ton of effort to come to this but I’ve attempted to write to her, explaining everything. (Figured she deserves something more personal than an e-mail but I’m worried I might lose my nerve if I tried face-to-face or over the phone.) Unfortunately, attempts to write this have felt like open heart surgery being performed without anesthetic. I’m scared of how my friendship with H and D will change once they find out, I’m scared of how this may affect our group of mutual friends, and I’ll admit, I’m terrified of how much letting go of her is going to hurt. So it seems that every time I make some progress on this, just when I think that I trust the two of them enough to believe they will be understanding and sympathetic, the doubts come roaring in. They tell me what an awful idea this is, how I shouldn’t be putting H and D in this position, that they’ll resent me for doing so, you’re going to make a fool of yourself etc., etc. Several times I’ve come close to taking everything I’ve written, tearing it up and keeping my damn mouth shut.

I’ve sought advice from friends outside of our mutuals and its ranged from saying that I should just tell her how grateful I am she helped me in the past but that telling her I’m in love with her would just cause things to go south to a friend who had been in a similar situation telling me that I should tell them everything for the sake of my mental and emotional well-being. I guessed that maybe I need some help on how to go through with this one more time before I finally finish it and that’s where you come in, as I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get it from a professional and impartial outsider. So here’s my question, Doc: am I doing the right thing by telling her and if so, how would you advise I go about doing so and maybe some idea on how to deal with any possible fallout from this, good or bad?

Sincerely,
Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t

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