rejection Archives

How Do I Stop Leading People On?

December 7, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

This is a pretty minor problem compared to a lot of the ones that you deal with, but I’ve really valued your advice over the years, so I thought I’d send it in anyway.

I was very nervous and awkward as a teenager, but I have spent the last decade working actively on my social skills. I’m proud of how far I’ve come! I’ll always be a bit dorky, but I am able to have conversations with a wide range of people. I have an upbeat personality and really like getting to know people, but I am also a bit over accommodating.

This leads to a dating problem—I feel like I lead guys on. When I’m on a date I tend to smooth over any conversational rough spots, get enthusiastic about their interests, and actively listen to the things they want to rant about. If someone isn’t engaging with me and I have to carry the entire conversation, I can and will do that. I can tell that a lot of guys leave our dates feeling like they’ve really connected, only to be completely blindsided when I reject them. I feel like I’m the woman on the other side of every story about how “I thought it was going so well, I just don’t know what happened.” Rejection hurts, and it especially hurts when you didn’t see it coming. I’m sure all women experience this to some extent, but my I-Don’t-Want-To-Date-You conversations can get super messy and make me feel like the bad guy.

I’m not trying especially hard on dates and never promise anything–it’s my default conversational style that’s the issue. I really want people to have a good time, and don’t know how to do “lukewarm.” To a lesser extent this is also a problem in my friendships, as it’s become a pattern that other people get much more invested in me than I do in them. I think sometimes by trying to be nice in the short term I end up hurting people in the long term, and I feel awful about that.

Do you have any advice on dialing it back? Should I learn to let awkward silences hang and invest in a resting bitch face? I know that there’s got to be middle ground between “what I’m doing now” and “actively being mean” but for some reason I’m finding it hard to navigate. Or should I just accept that part of life is sometimes accidentally hurting the almost stranger that you are eating a giant plate of tacos with? I don’t want to close myself off to other people.

Thank you for your time!
Feeling Rotten About Unrequited Desires

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My Fiance Cheated on Me. Now He Wants An Open Relationship.

November 16, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi there Dr NerdLove,

I’m in a mess. I was supposed to get married this summer until we postponed for COVID; then two months ago my fiancé confessed to cheating on me. Not like once or twice, but probably twenty times with maybe a dozen different women, from one-night stands to hookups with a friend of his who I always distrusted to paying for blowjobs at a strip club, happy endings and prostitutes, to more one night stands and bar make outs, to an acquaintance of his (I had seen him flirt with her which feels awful), and lastly with a friend of mine several times after he moved in with me!! Ha!! This was mainly in the first three years of our relationship though earlier this year, while in pre-marital counseling, he ditched me to hang with some poly friends of friends and made out with a woman, though he confessed after.

My last ex cheated on and gaslit me terribly, which fiancé knew. Meanwhile, I knew my (ex?) fiancé wanted to explore sleeping with other people and I did try to have the conversation about how to make it safe for me. Obviously it was never going to be because he was dishonest and had disrespected me and been unethical. Also he never responded to my many efforts to open up a conversation around it, the most serious of which all happened after most of the cheating. Now he says he still needs an open relationship, and he seems to not want reconsidering that to be open-ended. We are living separately and in couples counseling; I’ve told some friends and family but my parents still think I’m engaged. Also, I’m about to be 37, and we were off birth control when he told me and in theory moving on to being open to having kids. I certainly can’t see opening anything up unless I feel radically safe and heard and prioritized which I never have been, and what’s way more important to me is having a secure foundation for being parents. I in theory can be down with sexual exploration but in all honesty it’s just not a priority. (I should also say that in our relationship I had the higher sex drive for years before lowering my expectations, and I almost never said no and I believe when he tells me I gave him the best sex of his life).

Obviously I loved him and wanted to be with him before I knew; when I found out I could clearly see the behaviors I had been ignoring and looking past and could kick myself for tolerating it, and him for letting me go down this path with someone who was being dishonest. I honestly don’t know if I can forgive the laundry list of betrayals, which still make me mighty mad.

Can I forgive him and also deal with his sleeping with other people in future under some theoretical framework that I question he could honor? Even less unsure! I guess I’m just looking for an outside opinion on what to do. He confessed out of guilt and has been willing to apologize and work on things, though some projection and resentment have popped up from him along the way that haven’t helped. He fundamentally shuts down when I need support a lot of the time, so maybe I just can’t at all be with him despite the other times together he made me happy. It sucks and I kind of can’t believe I have to deal with something this egregious again (but like, more so).

Heart Needs a Second Chance?

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I Want To Find a Friend With Benefits… But I Don’t Know How.

August 28, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc,
I am not currently in the mental state to be in a long term, committed relationship, but I would like to be intimate with a woman/women. But I have no idea how this even happens. How does it start? And especially, how does a guy even bring up this idea without being labelled a douchebag/creeper/fuckboy?

I’ve asked similar questions to this online on multiple sites, just simply asking how a guy looks for this without being creepy, and have had answers along the lines of “it’s impossible, because FWB is creepy”, or “you’re basically asking how do I do this creepy thing without being creepy”, or “you don’t think she’s good enough to date but you’d still fuck her, you don’t see her as a person”. I don’t think I said anything to warrant this kind of reaction, so it seems to just be that they don’t like the idea. It would be one thing if this was just a matter of personal preference, but they seem to carry the implication (or in some cases, explicitly remark) that any guy who would want this or look for this is creepy, predatory, misogynistic, and awful.

So it seems like, when finding someone, that I have to be lucky enough to:

1. Not have any hangups about the idea, not think that it’s inherently creepy,
2. Not have any hangups about me in particular asking

and that’s in addition to

3. The whole thing with approaching in general, that she has to be fine with both my approach and the venue.

And of course, there’s no way of truly knowing any of this without asking in the first place. And these three things are just what I need to not be seen as a reprehensible creep for this, not even to actually FIND a FWB. At this point, it seems less like finding someone and more like playing the lottery.

So, how does this happen, and how does a man do it without being seen as evil?

Benefits Package

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Should I Tell Him I Know About His Kink?

August 3, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. Nerdlove,

I (35F) recently got up the nerve to ask out a guy (40M) who I’ve been good friends with for almost a year. We ended up Skyping a ton during quarantine because we both lived alone and enjoyed talking to each other. I caught feels pretty quickly after we started having hours-long conversations, gaming together, watching movies together over the Internet, texting all the time, etc. There were a lot of signals on both sides that more might be on the menu.

Finally, one night, I’d had a bit to drink during our Skype session and it was enough to give me the courage to ask him out. He said he was flattered, but he didn’t want to ruin our friendship because “women tend to stop liking him once they start sleeping with him.” Obviously, this could very well be a polite no that I’m reading too much into. If so, I’m perfectly happy to be just friends — this guy is awesome and I love spending time with him, and I’m not so far in the feels that I can’t respect platonic barriers.

The thing is, though — before COVID, before I started having feelings for him, I was house-sitting for him while he was out of town and I came across some of his porn collection. I really wasn’t snooping, I swear! I was sitting at his desk and I spilled my drink, and while I was frantically trying to move all of the papers out of the way before they got ruined, I uncovered a stack of printouts of erotic stories that indicate that he has a very specific kink that is generally frowned upon. Nothing illegal or dangerous, but I can definitely understand why a lot of women wouldn’t be super excited about it. I, however, am interested in giving it a try — it was something I’ve already considered trying myself but haven’t pursued. Since at the time his sex life wasn’t something I thought much about, I put the stories back where I found them and never mentioned them.

But now I’m wondering if that’s what he means by people not liking him after sleeping with him. So I guess my question is, is there any way to let him know that while I’m happy to just be friends, if he said no because women have dumped him over this kink and he thinks I would too, that’s not going to be an issue? Is there any way to say this without admitting that I found his porn, which I’m sure he would be super embarrassed by? (He’s never mentioned the kink in conversation, so there’s no way I could have known about it without stumbling across it in his house.) Or should I just accept the no on face value and move on with my life? I don’t want to push if he’s just not interested, but I also don’t want to miss out on something that could be great because he thinks I wouldn’t be into it.

Any advice would be appreciated!

More Adventurous Than He Thinks

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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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