relationships Archives

How Do I Relearn How To Date?

March 4, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,
So I’m 31, nonbinary, and somewhere between demisexual and non-sex-repulsed ace on the asexuality spectrum. I was in a long-term relationship off and on (mostly on) from 2009-2018, before we finally admitted to each other that our life trajectories were heading in diverging directions and our incompatibilities (primarily that we’re two very different flavors of neurodivergent, as well as the fact that they’re pansexual with a high libido and I’m asexual with a low libido) were too much to overcome as partners. I’ve been on three first dates in my life, and the other two weren’t terrible but there was no chemistry.

So while I took time to be single and re-evaluate, especially during 2020, now I have no idea how to date folks, since I haven’t first-dated since me and the ex had a break in 2014. The previous relationship has made me want to take sex off the table entirely rather than be unfair to a potential allosexual partner, which limits my dating pool to aces, but like you’ve mentioned in other posts, there’s far more allos out there than aces and I’m very physically affectionate and panromantic otherwise.

Add the whole trans layer and I’m really not sure how to even approach people. Pandemic makes warm approaches difficult (though I did have a crush on an online friend for a bit, before they mentioned offhand they weren’t up to dating anyone for the foreseeable future), and cold approaches are as uncomfortable to me as they likely would be to pretty much anyone I’d be attracted to.

Advice?
Patchwork Dating Experience

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My Hobbies are Ruining My Marriage. What Do I Do?

February 28, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor NerdLove,

I’m a longtime reader, first time submitter, writing because of concerns about my marriage. My wife and I have been married for four years. We have a child together at this point, we own a house together, and I thought things were going pretty well.

That was until my wife recently came forward to me, saying she was at a breaking point with my collecting, and that I needed to “stop acquiring more stuff” because she couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve always been a pretty hardcore collector, whether it’s toys, movies, video games, comics, specialty drinkware… pretty much if it is collectible I may have some interest in it. This has never been a secret and she was well aware of this aspect of who I am since before we even started dating, let alone being married. It’s just part of who I am.

Mind you, I’m not a hoarder. I do go through my collections once or twice a year to do a “purge” of items that I no longer feel a connection with or that I feel no longer serve their purpose to me. If I’ve upgraded movie to a new format or a toy of a character to a newer version I like better, I usually sell the old one to both make space and to keep costs down when it comes to my collecting. My bills are always paid and it has never caused a financial problem.

My wife recently had a breakdown and one of the key talking points was that I need to stop bringing stuff into the house. Obviously in the larger picture, my marriage is more important than my stuff, but I’m not sure if I could ever just STOP collecting entirely or quit cold turkey even if I wanted to. This hobby is just such a big part of who I am and what I do.

When I suggested that I could get rid of a lot of stuff and downsize, she shot that down saying that she knows these things make me happy and that it’d just cause me to resent her (which I can’t even argue against entirely, because I previously downsized my collection in a relationship and tried to stop buying new stuff, and it did cause resentment later).

I want to try and meet in the middle to accommodate her because I don’t want her to feel like I’m just disregarding her feelings, but I’m not sure how to go about doing this. Just stopping collecting entirely feels impossible.

She said “I still love you, but I don’t know if I can do this anymore” and implied divorce was on the table. After some talking and things calmed down, she asked me to go to marriage counseling, which I happily agreed to because I don’t want to lose her.

Here is where the second part of my problem kicks in. I have rarely been sure of anything in life. I’m super indecisive a lot of the time. But with my wife, I knew right away when I met her that she was the person I wanted to be with. She’s the only thing I’ve ever felt 100% confident about. But now that she has come forward and put the possibility of divorce out there, it’s got me in a weird new headspace filled with doubts about our future for the first time.

While things have calmed down for now and seem to be hopefully on a good path with counseling in the plans, it has me panicking and thinking about “well what are my backup plans if this goes south” for the first time in this relationship. It has me scared for the future of our marriage for the first time in my life, and now everything I was “certain” about for my future is a lot of “well hopefully, but on the off chance it isn’t I should have a backup plan”. What can I do to settle these feelings? Should I even be trying to settle them? Because in my mind, feeling like I need to have a backup plan means I feel like I’m one foot out the door already, and I don’t want to live like that.

I love my wife, I want her to be happy in our marriage too, but now that she cast potential doubt on our future I’m worried about continuing to be “all in” on our marriage like I always have been, and being anything less feels disingenuous.

Help me Doctor NerdLove, you’re my only hope!

The Collector

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I’m Not Broken, So Why Do Men Keep Trying to Fix Me?

February 25, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc!

Long time reader first time writer. Your column has hit really close to home many times and I figured it couldn’t hurt to get your take on my situation.

I am a hyper-independent female with a relatively active social life and am good with the opposite sex and dating. Sounds great right? Where’s the catch you ask? My problem starts when the sexy time ends and attachment begins.

To be super cliché, I don’t do love, rather I don’t feel love, at least not the hearts and flutters and serotonin that I am told people usually feel. I tell people this up front, and it has gone unheard time and time again. And in the end, it always goes badly and someone always gets hurt. I generally get called a cold unfeeling bitch. Because how can I not feel the same?! Or worse I will be told, then “I’ll just have to teach you how to love”.

Needless to say, I hate everything this implies. I have been in many long term unhealthy relationships because, maybe one day I’ll feel it, right? No dice. Can someone be aromantic but not asexual? And is there any way at all that I can be considered relationship material with out the love connection? Or am I going to be stuck with short term because people assume that I don’t feel anything just because I don’t feel as strongly as they do? Help!

Not A Fixer-Upper

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Kanye West Is No Laughing Matter

February 21, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

It started – as it so often does – with a DM.

“I’m assuming you’re already 15 paragraphs deep on an article Kanye’s behavior…” wrote my good friend Squirrel. Squirrel has long been a sounding board, supplier of memes, Reddit links for column material, and choice, sweet yet devastating dunks delivered in the way that only East Texans can.

So of course, I had to start digging into the latest mess.

Caucasian man in a suit gets angry and smashes the keyboard on the monitor. — Are they *really* your friend if they think you have enough rage in your life?

I’ll be honest: I hadn’t paid that much attention to Kanye’s latest antics. While I was a passing fan of Kanye West’s music – more individual tracks than entire albums – I’d grown tired of the constant “LOL, ‘ye’s off his meds again” tone from social media whenever it was clear he was having a manic episode. It’s hard to feel good giving any oxygen to the latest point-and-laugh controversy when that person is clearly having a mental health crisis. And when Kanye had rolled a truck filled to the brim with roses to his estranged wife’s house… well, ok, it was an incredibly ill-advised Grand Romantic Gesture in an attempt to get his soon-to-be-ex back, but not really something I felt like diving into.

And honestly, after years of incidents like this, it’s been really easy to just roll your eyes at it all. After all, it’s not as though we haven’t seen West do similar over-the-top and ill-advised stunts, from upstaging Taylor Swift to his bizarre, last-minute presidential bid; you could be forgiven for thinking this is just Kanye being Kanye again.

Except it wasn’t. Those roses were part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against Kim Kardashian, one that’s been ongoing since Kardashian filed for divorce over a year ago… and one, it seems, distressingly few folks have been taking seriously. “He’s fighting for his family!” many have said. “He’s just being a provocateur,” others have said. Many have even speculated whether this was a bid for publicity for the release of Donda 2.

But if we’re all honest, it’s glaringly obvious what this is; the only reason we don’t take it seriously is because of his fame, his money and his fans.

Your ex posts about you to their hundreds of followers in ways that make them look like a great parent and make you look like a negligent, terrible parent, but they have to lie or misrepresent the truth to do it

— Jennifer Drake (@drakejenn) February 17, 2022

Let’s talk about why Kanye West’s behavior is no laughing matter, and why we should be paying attention.

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How To Protect Yourself From a Broken Heart

February 2, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove 231 Comments

Doctor’s Note: this column was originally published on 9/18/17

It’s not a stretch to say that dating is something of a contact sport. Signing up for it means that you’re accepting that you might get hurt. Opening yourself up to people means being willing to risk a broken heart. No matter how carefully you plan or how much you try to protect yourself, eventually you’re going to have to learn to deal with pain and rejection. Sometimes you see it bearing down on you like a freight train. Other times it sneaks up on you and hits you square in the ghoulies.

But while pain may be inevitable, suffering is optional. You may not be able to avoid getting hurt, but you can avoid unnecessary pain. . And the cold truth is: a lot of suffering in the dating process is self-inflicted. One of the keys to dating without getting a broken heart is to understand how to protect yourself, emotionally.

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