use your words Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Why Am I Still Not Over My Ex?

December 27, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a 21 year old guy just about to finish college. During my freshman year, I met this wonderful girl (call her Alpha) – beautiful, smart, funny, everything one could hope for. She was in a relationship when we met, but it ended soon after. She was available, we got along swimmingly, and I found signs she might even be interested romantically. I just wanted to give her a couple weeks of space for her to get through her previous breakup first. So I did, and when I felt ready to ask her out, she was…with someone else.

This completely and totally crushed my self esteem. As someone who hadn’t really had much experience with dating in high school due to extremely restrictive parents and just general lack of self esteem, I felt amazing that finally, someone I was so attracted to seemed really interested in me. But when Alpha got with another guy, I felt totally opposite – how is it possible that we could have connected so well, yet she didn’t want to be with me? Clearly, the answer must be that I was ugly or otherwise unattractive, which spurred lots of positive life changes like fitness that eventually changed my life.

…Now, I know this reaction was highly disproportionate to what happened. Certainly, the problem was my lack of self-worth and inexperience, and the unhealthy extent to which I sought her approval. Since then, even though I haven’t been in a full fledged relationship, I’ve had a bit more experience and really good people have been into me (it hasn’t worked out purely for timing reasons but that’s a question for another day). No situation with another girl has affected me so badly since, and no situation will ever again.

But for some reason, the Alpha situation still does. Alpha and I have been good friends on and off throughout college, and she was in a relationship for the bulk of this time. Every time I’d see her around with her boyfriend or when she even mentioned him, I’d get these involuntary feelings of stress and anxiety and just general bad-feelingness.

Since September or so, Alpha has been newly single and has decided not to jump into a new relationship. I’ve since lost feelings for her after learning about some particularly negative qualities of hers throughout the years (even though I still think she’s hot as ever). We hung out a few days ago at her place and this hangout was…a bit more intimate than we’ve ever been before. We didn’t explicitly do anything sexual, but there was a lot more touching and cuddling than normal. This isn’t me being hopeful that she’d want to do something serious – again, no interest in dating her – but something casual seemed on the table. Then a couple days later, she tells me she made a Tinder and matched with my old roommate – one of those, tall, lanky, unreasonably confident types who literally stole everyone’s girl in high school. All of a sudden, the exact same feelings of stress and anxiety came flooding back, to the point where it hurts my head cause I’m constantly on edge.

So how can I understand why I still feel this way, Dr. NerdLove? I don’t have strong positive feelings for her, but I do experience strong negative feelings of jealousy, stress, and low self-esteem when I see any implication that she might be interested in or doing things with other people. I can’t really escape her because we have lots of common friends and are in the same major. But even if I could, I’d much rather diagnose why I have these feelings, why they cause me so much visceral stress, and how I can face them head-on to get rid of them instead of escaping or bottling them up.

I still struggle with self-esteem from time to time, but I definitely have a much higher opinion of myself now than I did back then. This is due both to external validation at times from other women and a better internal sense of worth and confidence. So I really feel like I’ve taken all the steps one would to get rid of these feelings, but they haven’t changed at all over the course of these four years. If I could get rid of these feelings, I think my self-esteem would skyrocket and I’d be 100% ready to enter the next phase of my life. I would be forever indebted to you if you could help me get there.

Sincerely,
Prisoner of Love

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Are They Not Interested, Or Are They Playing “Hard To Get”?

December 13, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi there,
I’m a young woman and I recently began working at a new job. Right from my first day working there, the confident popular co-worker, who is kind of a “bad boy”, (I’m going to call him C to make this quicker) showed interest in me. C was kind to me, flirted with me, always tried to touch me, and just did all the types of things you’d associate with attraction. I didn’t like him back though, if anything I kind of resented him for giving me all this extra attention when all I wanted to do was to be left alone. I can be quite shy and socially-awkward when I’m first meeting new people and am adjusting to a new environment.

However, as I continually showed zero interest in C, he persisted; although his efforts became less and less, it never went away. Later on, C was going through some personal issues, and he became very withdrawn and quiet. Eventually, he snapped out of it, but when he did his feelings for me seem to have disappeared. Also, during this period I had become much more confident and comfortable with my surroundings.

Although he pays some special attention to me now (not much), it is nothing compared to how much he used to. Lately, I’ve been thinking I might have some feelings for C, I miss the way he used to treat me. Does C still like me and is just giving me a taste of my own medicine by playing hard to get? Or has he really just lost interest? Does he not like me anymore because I’ve become less shy?

What should I do?

Thanks,
Hunted Becomes The Hunter

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Apologize For Being A Creeper?

November 25, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Doc,

Owing to my reflection on some recent events in my own life within the last week or so, it occurred to me that I may have accidentally creeped someone out a bit over time, and now may be facing some social consequences for it, to say nothing of feeling like an idiot.

For background information, the someone is a young lady who I have had an off and on fancy for, whom I happen to have shared a musical ensemble with for about a year and a half or so. She seems fairly shy and fairly hard to read, which has proven a bad combination with my social ignorance: she has shown interest off and on, e.g., randomly bothering me or asking what I am doing, even fairly recently, but I have not acted on her signals in a timely way. Consequently, our relationship has mostly consisted of occasional brief chats and awkward eye contact across the room, other than the occasional outings with the other ensemble members.

In the past month or two, though, I felt stronger feelings for her and, in what I now rather feel was a mistake, attempted to hang around with her more around campus as a puppy might. On top of that, in what I now know and believe to have been a terribly stupid way to try to signal my interest, I took to seeking more eye contact with her. I think this fawning may have backfired rather badly. I was more or less politely signaled to piss off with a round of “I don’t know where we’re goings” to what seemed to be a group meeting a few weeks ago. While there may have been other reasons, I now suspect that it was probably not unrelated to making her or others uncomfortable by my nonverbal social stupidity.

Fast forward to this week, more or less. Things seemed a bit better, and I was tired of my not making my intentions relatively clear, so I asked her by text to coffee with a firm option of Wednesday or Friday. After a notable delay, she said she was very busy and was not sure that she could manage anything. Given everything else, and my understanding that she had just quit her job, I figured she was just letting me down gently. However, things have been appreciably more awkward since, as may be expected. The main differences I have noticed with her is that she is now often blushing when I am around, but she also seems more averse to contact in general, though she does not present with obviously defensive body language or anything like that, and does seem to glance at me every now and then. I can’t help but wonder if she is actually trying to get my eye contact or is trying to check if I am looking at her. Feeling like I cannot win, I have tried to ignore her and give her space since that exchange, out of my fear of having creeped her out, but I find it hard to completely ignore her as she still confuses me. Now I worry that she was just trying to spare my feelings, and my reaction to that is sending the wrong message of my being angry with or otherwise insulted by her: this is on top of my concerns that I have become the “weird guy” in the group for the time being, which makes it difficult to assess how involved I should be with anyone for the moment.

So the rub of it is this: I would like for things to at least be cordial, if not amicable, between us and her social circle, as a lot of them are my fellow musicians. I believe I accidentally did some socially stupid things and may now be viewed with some suspicion or other form of disdain. I am tempted to apologize to her for having creeped her out over the last few weeks, but I am not even completely sure if I have offended her, and am worried that apologizing for what could be nothing could make me appear to be an insecure and paranoid person, which I admittedly am to a degree. Asking her if I have bothered her seems like an even worse idea. However, I also rather naturally would prefer to not be a pariah in the group on account of all of this, and would like to correct things as smoothly as possible.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

Did I Err?

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Friend Doesn’t Tell Her Partners She Has Herpes. What Should I Do?

November 11, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

Three years ago, I met a girl that I’m going to call J, and she quickly became the closest friend I’ve ever had. We have the same hobbies, same taste in music, and same sense of humor, and I’ve never had as much fun with anyone as I’ve had with her. To this day I still don’t know what I would do without this girl in my life.

When we first met, J had recently been cheated on and dumped by her boyfriend of four years. She was going through a lot of heartbreak and self esteem issues at that time, so she was kind of sleeping around. A few months after we met, she was diagnosed with genital herpes. My heart broke for her when she told me, and I was as supportive as I could be. I remember her telling me that when she got the news, her doctor told her she had to disclose this to every partner before having sex with them.

I vividly remember the first time after her diagnosis that she hooked up with another guy. She had texted me saying she was going to his house to hang out. I said something like, “Oh, so if you guys end up having sex, you’re gonna have to have the conversation?” And she said, “I’m not going to have sex with him.”

A few hours later, she texted me saying, “That was the worst sex I’ve ever had.” I asked, “How did the conversation go?” She never texted me back.

Ever since then, I’ve been painfully aware of her sleeping with many other guys without disclosing to them. I’ve tried talking to her about it multiple times over the years, but she doesn’t seem to take it seriously. I think her way of coping with it is pretending she doesn’t have it. It has always bothered me, but lately it’s been eating me alive.

She just got into a serious relationship for the first time since her ex of four years. His name is D. I don’t know him super well, but I’ve met him a few times, and he seems like a really nice guy with a good head on his shoulders. She’s been sleeping with him without any form of protection for the last 3 months, and he has no idea he could easily get a lifelong infection from her.

A few weeks ago, they somehow got on the topic of STDs. He mentioned that a friend of his has herpes, and then he literally told her that if she had herpes and didn’t tell him, he would dump her as soon as he found out. She was upset when telling me about this and acted like she knew she had to tell him and was going to figure out the best way and time to do so. I told her that sooner is better than later and that she should not have sex with him again until she tells him, because he would be even more upset if she continued having sex with him after that conversation. She agreed and said she would.

A week went by and I hadn’t heard anything. I also knew she had spent the night at his house at least once during that week. I reached out to her again with a long text message listing all of the consequences of not telling him. She said she had thought of all of that and that she would tell him as soon as she was ready.

Another week went by and she texted me saying something about having sex with him in her car. I was super upset and could not believe she was telling me that after everything I had expressed to her.

I can’t do this anymore. I feel like I am an accessory to a crime. What is my obligation in this situation? I feel awful standing by silently while he is in danger of contracting this incurable virus. I also do not want to lose this friendship. Please don’t tell me to end my friendship. If I tell him myself, my friendship will end. If I threaten to tell him myself, my friendship will end. What should I do?

Innocent Bystander

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: My Ex Won’t Accept Our Break-Up

November 8, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc,

I apologize in advance for the length of this letter. I’m just so baffled. I’m in one of those situations where you break up with someone, but they don’t take it seriously.

This dude. Just. Cannot take responsibility for his own emotions. I would appreciate any kind of advice or confirmation that I’m not completely insane (or if I am insane, let me know).

Back story:

I met this guy in Feb 2019. We had some things in common and were basically a couple of weirdos in a very conservative town, so we got along swimmingly. We dated for TWO WHOLE MONTHS and had a FWB thing going on for about seven months. I quickly discovered that he can’t function independently, is a giant man-child, and is completely unable to feel emotions in a healthy way.

Well. We officially broke up at the beginning of September. He actually initiated it. We both agreed we would be better off as friends, as we were completely incompatible in a relationship (something we discussed later as well). I told him I was ok with a FWB arrangement moving forward, but nothing more. He agreed. Well… despite all of this, he didn’t take the breakup seriously. He continued to treat me like we were dating and expected me to “come around” and take him back.

This made me uncomfortable because what he was saying and what he was doing were two very different things. It culminated in a discussion last week where I had to actually sit him down, look him in the eye, and give him T-Swizzle’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Ever)”. I had to say “I do NOT want to date you again” multiple times before it really sunk in. He left, obviously feeling not great. But that’s what happens when you break up with someone.

Once he left, he messaged me and asked “when did you suspect I still had feelings for you?” and I was like… since we broke up, it was pretty freakin’ obvious, my dude (I was nicer about it when I told him). That did not go over well. He immediately blew up and directly blamed me for leading him on. Here are some direct quotes for your context and entertainment:

-“I am upset that you knew I had feelings for you and never directly addressed them before looking elsewhere.” (WE BROKE UP MY DUDE)

-“It sounds like you figured out how I really felt and you still allowed me to hold on to you like that while you were looking at other people.” (WE BROKE UP ALMOST TWO MONTHS AGO)

-“I would’ve rather you went no contact before you talked to other boys.” (IT’S NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE DECISIONS FOR YOU)

-“You don’t seem to care that I’m struggling with this particular aspect.” (WE BROKE UP, YOUR EMOTIONS ARE NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY)

-“What you did was wrong, and I’m not engaging in any form of friendship with you until you’ve apologized.” (WAT)

-“You’ve been such a good friend, and I’m having a hard time… I basically can’t believe I called you my friend while you were doing that.” (MANAGE YOUR OWN EMOTIONS)

-“If I was aware of something I was doing that could hurt a friend, a romantic partner, or a family member, I would either 1. Not to do it or 2. Talk to them about it until we were on the same page and come up with the best solution to make sure no one got hurt.” (WE BROKE UP DUDE IT’S GOING TO SUCK. THERE IS NO SOLUTION WHERE NO ONE GETS HURT.)”

-I just feel really bad that I was seeing you the way I did while you were sending whatever my imagination can come up with to other people.” (COOL STORY BRO)

I keep replaying these messages in my head and I’m just… so confused. This does not fit my understanding of an adult relationship (and I’ve been reading your blog for y e a r s). Am I nuts? Am I wrong for expecting him to manage his own emotions and, if he had an issue, cut things off himself?

I super appreciate you and your time,
What Planet Is This

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