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Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Parents Like My Ex More Than Me

January 25, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc!

I broke up with my ex-girlfriend “Sam” about a year ago. It was a super serious relationship: timeline for having kids/holidays with each other’s families serious. The official reason for said breakup is that I was tired of long distance (Sam has a temporary position in the neighboring state).

Reality is more complicated.

1. Sam was really insecure about the fact that my ex-boyfriend was my best friend as it wasn’t “normal” to stay in touch with your exes. It got to the point that she banned me from talking about him and refused to meet him and his husband/son when they came to visit. We had planned a trip to the city my ex lived in right before we broke up and I was having panic attacks about bringing it up.

2. Sam had a lot of internalized misogyny from her more conservative, Christian upbringing that led to some judgmental statements about my past.

3. I have some mental health issues that I treat with medication and therapy. They’re well managed but if anything flared up, Sam would insist I find a new therapist because the one I had wasn’t “curing” my issues. She said I was being lied to when I stated that therapy is not a cure.

4. We’d have what I took as “Let’s agree to disagree” moments about X which she’d then bring up in later unrelated disagreements about Y. She’d usually do this in front of others, with a laugh and an eye roll.

5. Towards the end of our relationship, Sam informed me she wasn’t sure how she felt anymore. She wasn’t sure she wanted to move back because there was no guarantee our relationship would work out and she was afraid she was wasting her time with the long distance. She asked me to convince her it would work.

At some point, we had a dumb argument, didn’t speak for three days. I realized I was relieved to have a break from reassuring my girlfriend about our relationship. I was exhausted trying to give Sam a kind of security no one could. I broke up with her the next time we spoke on the phone. After some time, Sam and I started casually texting. I’m able to cope as the emotional stakes were waaaaay lower. I love her sense of humor and I do take pride in maintaining friendships with former partners. I have zero interest in anything non-platonic with Sam.

Sam and my parents/brother have stayed in touch. They became close while we were together and this normal behavior for my family (they’ve stayed in touch with my aunts and uncles’ former SOs). I’ve tried to explain to my family why we broke up but they spin it some way where it’s never anything Sam did wrong in the relationship and that I’m being too picky.

Recently, Sam has pressed me to visit/come see me. My family is ecstatic about this and asked her down for the holidays. She thankfully already had plans. Unperturbed, my parents got her a Christmas present. Not just any Christmas but fancy alcohol. Which they legally can’t ship. So I’m expected to hand deliver it and I’m not sure I’m ready to be in a room with Sam.

I’ve considered the nuclear option but doing so risks damaging the close relationship I have with my parents and brother. I’ve gone with the flow up to this point. I don’t care that my family maintains contact with Sam (okay, I care a little), but I don’t want to be in the middle of it.

Questions: Is there a tactful way to extricate myself from the love fest between my family and my ex-girlfriend? Have I screwed myself by being non-confrontational up to this point? Am I being too picky? Should I have given into my instincts and chugged the 12-year-aged Scotch I’m giving Sam in two days, consequences be damned?

Didn’t Ask to be Santa’s Helper

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: What If I CAN’T “Just Be Friends?”

January 7, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

I basically need some advice about how to move on from an ex. I dated a guy for about two and a half months. I’m in college, he just finished a few weeks before we started seeing each other. At first it seemed he was very enthusiastic and making all of the moves first. He was the first to suggest we be exclusive, constantly telling me how much he enjoyed dating me, etc. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the start of the relationship as I knew I had a previous problem of expecting too much of partners and moving a relationship too fast, but this constant independent reassurance let me relax and by the two month marker I was beginning to see it as the start of something long term.

Then I left to visit family for a week, and on the coach back home he called me and said he felt nothing towards me and wanted to break up, but still wanted to be friends (he had wanted to do it in person but we weren’t going to see each other for a while so it wouldn’t have been fair any other way). I also then made some time to meet him, given that this was a pretty big thing I wanted to talk about, and I let him know my feelings and how much I really, really liked him. He told me I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t being too clingy or too distant, and he was sad it didn’t work out because he didn’t know why he didn’t feel anything. But he emphasised over everything that “I still want you in my life”. The whole thing came as a shock but of course you can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t like you (duh) so I said sure, that’s fine, I would be friends.

It’s now been four months. I haven’t brought anything up to do with our relationship or asked to get back with him, etc, even though it’s constantly at the back of my mind no matter how much I try to process it, repress it or tell myself it’s impossible. We’ve seen each other a lot, hung out together on our own and in group situations, and been to plenty of parties, etc, together. But it still hurts, every time I see him and every time he messages me. I know he will never “take me back” or anything like that, and he owes zero explanation of why he didn’t feel anything towards me: sometimes that just happens, and it’s happened to me. But realising that hasn’t made me stop loving or liking him any less, and some tiny tiny part of me still hopes he’ll ask me out again. I know it’s impossible and keep telling myself that, but I keep making excuses – for example, maybe he still wasn’t over his serious relationship he got out of a couple months before me, and he just needs time to process that before coming back to me, and if I stick around enough maybe it’ll happen. (Of course it won’t, but my brain keeps entertaining these kinds of fantasies.) But every time he says how lucky he feels to have me in his life, or compliments my appearance, or anything, it just adds to that impossible little spark of hope. I should be grateful I have such a great friend who values and appreciates me, but it also just makes me feel so sad I can’t be with this amazing person romantically.

I also knew it would be tough seeing him date someone else but a mutual friend messaged me over the holiday break to say she had slept with him and that they would be dating and that she hoped it wouldn’t upset me because she valued me as a friend. I told her that’s of course fine and why should I ask anything of them on behalf of my stupid unrequited feelings? I want to be happy for them, and for them to be happy too – all I’ve ever wanted was to make him happy. I have also been dating other people in the months since we broke up, and he knows this, so it would be completely unfair for me to say this upsets me. But I do think it hurts realising a mutual friend knows how much I love him and still do, since she helped me through the break up, and has still decided to do this. It shouldn’t, I know this isn’t healthy or fair, and my past shouldn’t stop her seeing anyone she likes. But the thought of it just makes me well up and I’m not sure I could ever see them together in person. I don’t want to stop them being happy together but it hurts far too much to think about the whole thing.

Basically, I just want to ask for a second opinion on should I keep trying to be friends? Or, ideally, how do I make these feelings go away? I’m so emotionally drained and sad about it constantly, which also isn’t fair on anyone I try to date, so I’ve cut off or declined anyone asking me out in the last few weeks. I would love for us to be friends, more than anything in the world. But I don’t know how to describe how much it hurts seeing him and not being with him, or being there for him as a partner when he’s sad, or just being with him. We act much the same as we did when dating, messaging probably even more, but all without the benefits of being in a relationship.

Tl;dr: How do I move on healthily from my ex who has ended up being one of my best friends, or how do I cut him off, even though this would also hurt immensely, without upsetting him too?

Yours
Trying To Be Friends

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Am I Ruining My Chances By Being A Snob?

December 24, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Greetings from a longtime reader, first-time writer. Thank you for all you’ve written and done over the years, which has done wonders for my confidence. I’m 29, with no real relationship experience to speak of, but I’ve finally started a real dating life. That said, I’m still figuring out what I want in a partner, and I was wondering if you could speak to one aspect that’s been bothering me.

This weekend, I went on a pre-date at a coffeehouse with a girl I met online – let’s call her “Maxine.” I enjoyed our initial texts; she was genuinely interested in my profile and seemed bright and kind. Our talk over coffee was pleasant, and though we enjoyed sharing pictures of our dogs, there was no spark. At one point I mentioned that I don’t watch much TV these days, at which point she asked “So as a millennial, what do you do for your entertainment life if you don’t binge-watch Netflix?”

We kept the conversation up for almost an hour after my confession, but I knew that date had reached a dead-end. I don’t think the question was a joke; Maxine implied that she watches Netflix plenty. For starters, I did not appreciate being stereotyped (by someone of my own generation, nonetheless), nor do I feel obligated to structure my entertainment choices around a Silicon Valley giant. More to the point, her question reflects a concerning trend I’ve observed in online dating profiles: so many of them are dull carbon copies of the stereotypical millennial. Perhaps even the entitled millennial. On Coffee Meets Bagel, for instance, the most common entries I see in the “I like” section are probably: food, travel, and yes, binge-watching Netflix.

I like good food as much as anyone but we need food to survive, so to name it as your favorite thing is redundant. Most of us only have time to travel a couple times a year if that, and there may be plenty of great stuff on Netflix / Hulu / Amazon but most of it just doesn’t interest me now. The answers to my date’s above question are instead: I photograph stuff with a DSLR, play video games, read literature, and go to the symphony. Naturally, I’m looking for someone who can appreciate and respect those activities. They don’t need to pursue those same activities themselves – that would be boring – but I definitely lean towards the intellectual type. Not an arrogant overachiever, just someone smart and passionate about her own intellectual or artistic pursuits. Those troves of profiles – with no interests beyond food, once-a-year travel, and streaming – are not an encouraging sign. Even Maxine, who is clearly intelligent and put care into her profile, turned out to be a disappointment.

My question is: have I set my standards too high, and am I in fact searching for a girl to fit an impossible template rather than just accepting people as they are? If so, how can I recast my ideas about what I want in a date, and if not, is it rude to be more direct? For example, one of my closest friends (“Carly”) explicitly stated in her old profile that she would only date men with a Master’s degree or equivalent levels of education, or higher. This was not a hard rule, but a way to increase the odds of connecting with someone smart. She met her husband online and they now have a beautiful 8-month-old. Like her, I now want to tread the thin line that separates the snobs from, well, people who think my interests are unsexy or don’t care. I just don’t want to come off as a snob myself while doing so, because that seems to be a weakness of mine. For reference, when I was crafting my own CMB profile, I considered writing that I would appreciate if my date could hold a conversation without abusing “like” as a filler word. Carly was sympathetic but dissuaded me.

I have several friends with similarly arcane interests who have had trouble forming relationships, and so I think any advice you can offer would benefit them as well. Looking forward to hearing back!

– Born in the Wrong Century

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Can I Avoid Being An Accidental Creeper?

November 26, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

A lot of discussions and articles about creepiness often say many things on what not to do. It starts to feel like “Here are 30,00 ways to not approach or flirt with women, don’t do any of them and you have a chance at not being evil”. And it also gets worse when there are also many things that just MIGHT be creepy, and that’s even worse when you’re not good at reading body language, and it makes any social anxiety or self-doubting you may have get even worse.

So what are some examples of ways to approach and flirt with women that are definitely not creepy?

Creep-Anxious Dude

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Did Porn Ruin Our Sex Life?

November 23, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

My husband (to whom I have been married for nine years) and I haven’t had sex for more than two and a half years. When the dearth began, it seemed mutual. Our physical connection had never been strong, and he was highly interested in his hobbies (mostly watching movies and television). Because our connection had not been strong, I didn’t mind a short break. I just never dreamed it would last as long as it has. It is looking as though I will never have sex again, barring an affair or a divorce. (We do not plan to get a divorce, not so much “for the sake of the children,” but because we both wish to remain an intact family with those children. We like our family life, appreciate each other’s co-parenting, and could not afford to live separately.)

I have known for longer than the length of this dry spell that my husband is a porn user. I never liked it, but I also didn’t predict that it would cause an absolute end to our sex life. The very young women featured in his preferred porn look nothing like me; however, his choice does, at least, indicate that he is heterosexual, and I was under the impression that very many men managed to enjoy porn and also have sex in real life.

My husband is highly apologetic for his inability to have renewed interest in sex. I remain confused about his absolute lack of sex drive. His testosterone was somewhat low when tested a few years ago, and it probably became lower with age. However, it seems to be the case that his interest in porn is deep, but sporadic. He is trying to quit because he says it is a bad use of his time and he feels bad and dirty about it; he is politically progressive and does not (intellectually/politically) support the porn industry. He can go a month or two without using, but when he does use it, he maintains a real web presence about it, sharing with other men on various social media sites. He has a screen name and a persona. I would normally think that someone with such a deep interest in porn would, after denying himself for a few weeks, be willing to try real-life sex, as an alternative to nothing.

Based on what you know of men, sex, and porn, does this add up? I keep wondering if there is a reason for his reluctance that he is not telling me. I can see that he is lacking the vitality and lustfulness I have seen in other men. In a way, it is believable that he has no libido. Why, then, the very strong interest in porn?

FWIW, I spent the first half of this year trying to press the issue, by forcing him into a discussion that he strongly resisted. I then decided to seek therapy (just for myself), and through self work, I have reached a level of acceptance. I have learned to be nice about it. His answer is “no,” and I no longer press for discussion. I am largely focusing on other areas of my life, with the idea in the back of my mind that I will treat myself to a discreet affair once per decade until I am so old that it is impossible. That’s at least three affairs, if I maintain The Golden Girls as my inspiration. (I could have up to five if I channel my inner Sophia.)

I understand that you will not be able to endorse my plans for infidelity. Can you, though, offer insight into my husband’s sexuality?

Yours truly,

Puzzled Over Porn

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