relationship drama Archives

I Love My Partner. So Why Do I Want To Be Single Again?

October 4, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

So, I lived very happily being single for some time – and I also had my quota of serious relationships in the past. But after some time being single, I met this girl in my home country that I really feel comfortable with. Then, fate happened: I moved to another country on another continent. Although I was still feeling comfortable by myself, after some time dating at a distance and a few very expensive plane tickets, we decided that it could be cool to live together here: at least as a test… we never lived with a couple before so it was a new experience for both of us. It was really a pain to bring her here, because of COVID bureaucracy, the fact that she came with her cat (and I had mine)… but we finally made it.

So, it’s already been a year since she arrived, and I’m still comfortable with her. The thing is, I’m really missing the fact of being single: particularly in the fact of dating other random women.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel really sexually satisfied and happy with her right now, but I do miss the fact of getting out there, trying to seduce other bodies, other voices, other personalities; even if that sometimes derived in a not-so-satisfying sexual encounter, the fun was in all the process.

We had a very short conversation about “opening the relationship” but she was 100% against it, so clearly “going rogue” would definitely hurt her a lot. But I really feel very tempted…

Any suggestions here?

Cheers,

Abroad Guy With Single Thoughts

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Do Men Really NEED To Be Needed?

October 1, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’m a 42 year old woman who has had one long term relationship in my life, that lasted about 10 years but ended over 10 years ago. Other than that it has been a series of dates here and there, but generally the guys just ghost or tell me that they aren’t feeling a spark. And this has been the case my entire life. I didn’t date in High School because nobody would ask me out even though, in the years since, a lot of my former friends from that time told me they had crushes on me, but they were intimidated. My one boyfriend broke up with me because he felt like I didn’t really need him, and that I would be better off without him. (I guess he was sort of right, after the relationship ended I quit the job I hated, but kept because it worked with his schedule, and went to law school and became an attorney).

I want very much to be in a long term monogamous relationship, hopefully marriage. I am on dating apps. I try to always look cute even if I am not conventionally attractive anymore (but I was very hot as a teenager and I still couldn’t get dates, so it can’t just be my looks). I am in therapy to work on the grieving process I feel about not being married by now (and the fact I probably won’t be able to have biological children) and he has had me ask my friends and family about why they think I’m having issues in this area. The thing that keeps coming up is that I have a big personality, have carved out this full life for myself, and that I am always doing lots of stuff to stay busy, and that guys are scared by that because they don’t see where they would fit in my life.

Is that something guys need? It doesn’t make sense to me because if I meet a guy who seems to have a “girlfriend shaped hole” in their life it freaks me out. I don’t want someone to be auditioning me for a part they already have written to see if I fit, I want someone to get to know me and build something with me. Is that unusual? Do guys need to feel needed, and if so how can I build that life so that I need someone who may, or may not, ever exist?

Running Solo Build

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How Do You Tell If Someone Is Just Playing Games?

September 24, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I’m a gay man. In my tennis group there is a 32 year old guy that I find very attractive, who I have known for about 3 years. We were never close friends, but rather just friendly acquaintances.

About 6 months ago, out of the blue, he started sending me direct messages, such as “good morning”, “how’s your day going”, “good night”- daily, several times a day. The conversations were short, but consistent. On several occasions I would lightly flirt with him. He would thank me, but he would never flirt back. So I assumed he was not interested in me beyond just being friends.

After a few weeks of receiving his daily text messages and me hoping for more, I finally flat out asked him if he would go out on a date with me. He politely turned me down. I was disappointed, but also relieved to at least have a concrete answer. In this same conversation, I apologized for flirting with him thinking that it probably had made him uncomfortable. He said, “no, I definitely hope that doesn’t stop”

Knowing that he was not interested in me but that he enjoyed my light flirty comments (by light, I mean a level 2 out of 10), I felt the freedom to increase the flirting level to a 5 out of 10. So now, instead of just complimenting him physically, I added a sexual desire component without being raunchy. This continued for a few more weeks. Still the flirting was one way traffic.

Then, one day, he flirts back! And not only that, but he escalates it by sending me a half nude picture! It caught me so by surprise that I started shaking with excitement. I told him that I was confused, that I didn’t think he was interested in me in “that way.” He said that he was attracted to me, but that he has a “policy” of not dating anyone from the tennis group.

Since then, for the past two months, the flirting is now two-ways and has progressed to video-cam sex twice a week… Our sexual interaction is exclusively virtual. When we see each other in person on the tennis courts, we’re just friends. No one in our group knows we have this virtual side thing going. He keeps saying that “soon” we will have actual sex. However his reasons are pretty flimsy as to why it hasn’t happened yet, so I assume he probably just doesn’t want to take it to that level. Yet every time I think we have reached the limit of how far this is going to go, he eventually pushes it to the next level. It’s just been such a f…n long, slow process… Ugh!

Is he just playing control games? Or is he the type of person that just takes a long time to develop a relationship? Seems that every time I try to define the relationship, I get turned down, but yet things do seem to be progressing, which leaves me confused because I want a “normal” relationship – and this feels more like a game, which granted I have been a willing participant.

Meanwhile, I keep meeting other people on dating apps, hoping to find someone that wants to date me as much as I want to date them. But no luck yet.

Do I do nothing and continue allowing him to dictate the pace and depth of the relationship? Or is there a level of toxicity already that makes it hopeless to expect it to ever be healthy and I should instead just end this now? Or is there a compromise solution that you see?

Ready Player Two

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Can This Broken Friendship Still Be Fixed?

September 3, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc,

Longtime reader here, first time writer and not a native English speaker so please excuse any mistakes. You sometimes tackle the topic of friendships instead of romantic love so I wanted to get an outsider’s perspective on my situation.

For context, I (29/f) attended private schools throughout my childhood thanks to different scholarship, but that meant I was smart, nerdy, of lower economic status than my peers, extremely shy and, to top it all off, my body started to develop early (which lead to insecurities about my body that I haven’t quite managed to overcome). Needless to say, I was bullied mercilessly. I have no experience with male bullying but female bullying is… I guess I’d call it insidious. I had instances when sometimes other girls pretended to be my friends only to gossip behind my back and I was isolated and lonely. Now that I’m an adult, I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t care what others think about me but, at the time, I was naïve and trusting. So, tl;dr: I didn’t have any friends at all for several of my formative years.

When I was about 12 years old, a new girl joined my school and we hit it off right away. We developed an extremely close friendship and she became my first true friend. All the way until I moved to college we stayed in constant contact and I considered her my sister. I moved to a city not too far away, (about 3 hours) and I went back to our city 2 or 3 times a month to visit my parents so I absolutely tried my best to keep in touch. I sent her e-mails weekly talking about my experiences and asked her to respond, I scheduled lunches and tried my best to keep her in my life. Even with all of my efforts, we started to grow apart and, when she married, she invited me to the wedding but I was not included in any part of the planning. I didn’t demand anything and was always open to help in whatever capacity I could, but it hurt me deeply that she just wasn’t working at all in our friendship.

I was so emotionally involved with her as my friend that some people though I was in love with her or that we were in a romantic relationship, however that wasn’t the case at all. For the longest time, I even thought I was asexual and aromantic (I’m married myself now to a wonderful guy). She is an active poster on social media but I don’t like social media sites and I’m of the idea that if someone wants me to know something, they should tell me directly, otherwise relationships lose that personal touch. So, over the years we lost contact. She stopped responding to my messages and I couldn’t bear the idea of stalking her on Facebook or Twitter. It is very difficult for me to form close attachments, so to this friendship I gave it my all, tried to be supportive of her even if sometimes I disagreed with her (example: even though I believe her husband was not the best option for her I kept most of my opinions to myself after ). In the end, I let if fade away and moved on with my life.

There was a few years ago a situation in my city that made it to the news and she sent me a message through FB to check on me but I didn’t respond, first because I didn’t see it right away and then, because I was hurt by the radio silence and wanted to get back at her (petty, I know). Some more years pass until last year she sent me a message again asking if we could talk. I answered her and we started discussing the usual, how was I, how was my family, her family and such. I learned that a close family relative of hers passed away (maybe that was the reason she contacted me again in the first place) and eventually, we started to talk about our friendship and the reasons behind our distancing. She told me that when I moved to college, she became jealous of me and my new opportunities and that that was the primary reason behind her closing off and excluding me from her life. The comment cut deeply and opened wounds that I thought had closed. I started crying and trying to understand where we went wrong and in the end she promised to keep in touch because she wanted to rekindle our friendship, she told me that she missed me and that she didn’t have any other friend that knew her as well as me.

She didn’t keep her promise to contact me again at the time. She sent me a message again a few months ago so petty me decided to not answer in a futile attempt to hurt her back because obviously she doesn’t care as much about me if she can’t keep her promises. So, after the novella-length letter, my question is: Is it worth it to try and rekindle the friendship? Should I try to contact her again? Should I open myself to further heartbreak if this doesn’t work? I miss her a lot and she knows things about me that very few do. And, apparently I haven’t gotten over this issue as much as I thought if months pass and I still think about what to do. She lives in a different country now so meeting in person would be difficult, it would be a long-distance friendship.

Thank you for your time reading my rambling letter.

Best regards,

Broken Friends Forever

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Will Moving Save Our Marriage… or Ruin It?

July 30, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dr. NerdLove:

My husband suggested recently we move to a cheaper city so we could by a house in cash, free and clear. He also detests this area for a number of reasons, homelessness, high cost of living, etc. But the way I look at it, it would disrupt a pretty good situation we have right now, and there are other options that he refuses to consider.

We rent in a major west coast city with our adolescent daughter and two dogs. Cost of living is exorbitant and since I started my own firm it’s been a struggle to survive financially, but we have a very large reserve to tap for a few years. Also my firm is starting to show success and I’m seeing life at the end of the tunnel.

My husband has a decent contract with local government, loves his manager and has a good opportunity to get a full time job with excellent benefits. Finding a job he likes has been a major struggle the 14 years we’ve been married so the fact he loves management is huge.

Our daughter is thriving at her middle school where she’s one of the top students and beloved by many there. The school navigated the pandemic very well and our daughter made some very close friends.

So I was stunned when my husband became committed to leaving this area ASAP because he “hates what this area represents”, seeing how many people struggle with housing (he works with the homeless). I’ve tried my best to come up with alternatives:

Move later, once my firm is stable enough to make a decent monthly income. He says that may never happen and he doesn’t trust that I’ll move if it is successful.
He moves first, buys a house, either a) with our daughter or b) without our daughter and we’ll move later. That would require my finding a cheap apartment. Again he says we should stay together and he doesn’t trust I’ll move and/or having two homes defeats the purpose of saving money.
I move first to establish my firm and he stay with our daughter here. Again we’re split up and two locations.
Find a cheaper place here but it would not be as nice as we could get in another city. But this doesn’t work because he hates the area.

My husband says I’m unwilling to compromise because his true dream is to move to Europe where he’s from but will stay in the US since I can’t run my firm from there for regulatory reasons (otherwise I’d explore it). Since I don’t want to close my firm, his compromise is staying in the US. He’s furious with me for not making a definitive answer quickly and I admit I’m all over the place, saying maybe it would work and then changing my mind when I think about how:

He’d have to quit and get a new job which he’s not good at doing.
We have limited health insurance due to his contract situation but we’d have no health insurance if we move.
He only has a network in our current home city and that took him ages to cultivate since he’s introverted
His distrusting me, saying I’m not working with him and that I won’t “prove my love to risk” a move.
That he has sacrificed too much by moving here to be with me and now it’s my turn.

My issue is not the moving part, it’s the timing and his attitude—all or nothing but seems to be characterizing me as the selfish one.

Do I risk it? Am I being too fearful? The ironic point of it is that he’s recommending towns where I have lots of relationships and could possibly build a client base (although premature). I’m likely to be the best off after a move but adding an unemployed, angry husband who doesn’t trust me and a teen who is totally against moving makes it less interesting.

He’s flipped out since our discussion that went really wrong since he won’t believe I’m willing to compromise and because I throw out different options he sees that as stalling. It ended with some really awful things said.

What do I do? I don’t want to split and we are in the best financial shape now so moving out for either of us would make things even worse. I said let’s make a decision next year and he said no it has to be in 3 months.

Torn to Pieces

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