DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m probably a tad older than your typical readership (36) and have been on my journey to get better at dating/women/relationships for a long time. While I’ve certainly improved, I do still struggle. I’m about 6 months out of a relationship that really wreaked havoc on me. I’ve come to realize that one of the consistent factors in most of my relationships is that I end up playing a care taker role for people who are more than happy to have me care for them. In the end my needs end up taking a back seat to those of my partners.

Now, at this point a little bit of background would probably be helpful. I am an only child and grew up with a father who was emotionally abusive to my mother (I was spared his aggression, but I understand the trauma of witnessing it). My mother was, and still is, a pretty fragile person. She attempted suicide once before I was born and once when I was a teenager. My mom unfairly confided in me as a kid and I became her confidant and care taker. So, this role is one that is well worn for me.

My question is, how do I stop attracting people who need a care taker? A number of friends have told me that one of the first things that they noticed about me is my kindness and compassion. It worries me that I may be putting something out into the world that screams, “I’ll take on your burden”. Now, I should also say that I don’t think I come across as a doormat and I have a strong identity, but what am I doing wrong? I’ve actually brought this up with my therapist and he basically said that eventually I’ll start recognizing the signs earlier. I found that to be a pretty dismal prospect. What are your thoughts?

– These Wheels Be Spinnin

DEAR THESE WHEELS BE SPINNIN: Kindness and compassion are desirable traits in a potential boyfriend and husband, TWBS. But there’s a profound difference between being kind and compassionate and being a White Knight, and I suspect you’ve got tendencies towards the latter. Now, I’ll be the first to remind you that Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor of any kind, but it’s pretty obvious to me that if this has been something that you’ve been doing as a child, it’s going to be something you’re going to keep doing as a grown-up. Doubly so if – as it seems to be in your case – that behavior is tied into gaining people’s approval and validation.

Nobody screws you up quite like your parents and it sounds like at your age you were tossed into an unfair relationship with your mother, reversing the roles of parent and child. As a kid and teenager, you barely have your own sh-t together; expecting you to take care of — and be the sole emotional support system for – a parent at that age is, mildly, beyond messed up. Some people would be within their rights to call this borderline abusive, if unintentional. But intent doesn’t matter as much as outcome does and you’ve grown up with a lifetime of love and approval being conditional upon taking care of other people.

(Incidentally, you might find it interesting to read Neil Strauss’ The Truth and see how Strauss’ relationship with his mother resonates with you.)

But the past is the past and this is your present. What are you doing that puts out this “I will take care of you” vibe? Well, I strongly suspect it has a lot to do with boundaries. Specifically: you don’t have them. Users, abusers and drama queens recognize and prey upon people who have low or non-existent boundaries. There are people who are excessively needy or who crave the drama of perpetually being a victim or a broken bird and needing someone to do all of the emotional heavy-lifting for them or someone who can be guilted or manipulated into doing their bidding and never leaving. Don’t get me wrong: this doesn’t mean that people are tracking you down because you look like free lunch and smell like free money, nor does this translate to an overt, mustache-twirling “I will bend you to my will” levels of coercion. They may not be conscious of this behavior on their part; they simply latch onto people who don’t question them or don’t push back. They may have a long list of evil exes or people who’re continually being selfish and rude to them or abandoning them in their (continual) hour of need or a never-ending list of reasons why things never go their way or they can’t do anything.

Note that this is different from people who have legitimate issues but also don’t put full responsibility for handling those issues on their partners. There’s asking for help on occasion when it’s needed and then there’s expecting your honey-bunny to do all the work for you.

So how do you quit dating these people? Well, first: develop your boundaries. It’s good to be kind. It’s good to be compassionate. It’s not good to be somebody’s sole support, to be their enabler or to try to take on responsibilities that aren’t yours. You need to practice being willing to draw firm lines on what you will and won’t do and stick to them. It can be hard – you have to resist your own good nature and the tendency for people like these to wield guilt like a weapon. You’ll worry that by saying “no”, you’ll be putting undue burden on them. You’ll fear that it’ll damage – or even destroy – the relationship. You’ll have plenty of times when you’ll be wondering if you’re making the right choice or not. These are, in fact, all pretty good signs that you’re dating a user.

But the fact of the matter is: being a partner means just that: a partner. Equals. There’s lending a hand and then there’s replacing a limb. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for somebody is let them develop their own strength.

The good news is that once you’ve started getting in the habit of establishing and maintaining strong boundaries, you’re less likely to run into those emotional vampires and hard-luck cases. By maintaining your boundaries, you’ll be warding them off long before they can get firmly latched onto you.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: In July 2014 I met “B” out social dancing. A week later he found my profile on an online dating site and asked me out. We continued to see each other for the next 9 months – dating, hanging out & physical intimacy. He always gave me enough to believe he was interested in me via words and actions but never enough to make me feel confident about his true feelings. He was busy working full time and finishing his PhD while I was busy working full time, traveling 40% of the time, so it was sometimes difficult but would always make a point to see each other as soon as we were back in town, every week or two. I hesitated to initiate the Defining The Relationship talk as my past experiences have been guys getting freaked out and running the opposite direction if I bring up the DTR, even though I am a highly independent woman, very organic about how relationships progress and am very reasonable in the conversation. 

At the 9 month mark, he finished his PhD and got a job cross country. I helped him with the drive/move and at the end put my foot down and had the DTR. I made sure to be clear I was interested in him but had not made assumptions in terms of what had been between him and I – I simply wanted to communicate so we could be on the same page. Unfortunately, he totally freaked out, saying he didn’t promise me anything and saying I was being unreasonable. This was shocking to me as I never said he promised me anything, on the contrary, actually. I couldn’t have been more fair or reasonable in my wording. He stopped talking to me which was upsetting that not only was he not interested in me but didn’t even care about the really meaningful friendship we had spent 9 months building. Regardless, I am not the type to try to convince someone to be with me, much less treat me with basic respect, so I took the hint, deleted him from my phone and told myself it wasn’t meant to be.

Fast forward 6 months, I was offered and accepted a job not only in his new town but at his company. Because the company has 25k employees across severals locations, I figured the likelihood of our paths crossing was slim to none as we worked in totally different groups. I did not tell him I would be moving to his town or working at his company…of course, within my first two hours, I ran into B and he was shocked to say the least.

I always told myself I would never give him anything to hold against me, so I was kind, smiled, said hello, made small talk, etc. He pinged me a week or so later to ask how I was doing. He also asked me to get coffee with him about a month later, which I agreed to. At coffee, he pretended like nothing had gone down between us and I was beyond confused. I’ve been there for about 2 months now and see him in passing about once a week so this won’t be ending anytime soon!

I’m a huge communicator don’t like leaving elephants in the room and it seems he’s the opposite. I would like to have a conversation to understand and put to rest what happened between him and I as there was zero clarify but I fear he’ll shut down once again and unfairly point fingers at me. Oh yeah, and I still am very much attracted to him, but unless he learned to communicate, could never see a future. 

I’m so confused on what to do! Do I say something? Do I act cheerful and stupid and not try to force this 32 year old grown man to have basic communication? Do I reach out to him occasionally to say hello or do I let him do the reaching out?

Please help!

– Confused 

DEAR CONFUSED:Let me ask you something: what’re you hoping to get out of this? An explanation of what happened? Confronting B over this isn’t necessarily going to give you answers you want, nor is it likely to provide you with anything meaningful. You know what happened: you tried to get on the same page as him with regards to your relationship and he freaked out. Clearly he thought you were asking for something, panicked and slammed his fist down on the “relationship self destruct” button. It wasn’t the most logical or reasonable responses to someone trying to just trying to get some clarity, to be sure, but the end results are the same. Now, considering how this seems to happen to you fairly regularly, then it’s entirely possible that the way you have the Defining The Relationship conversation throws dudes off… or it could be that you’re regularly choosing guys who are seriously averse to commitment.

B’s not gonna have the perspective to tell you which it is. For that particular answer, you may want to talk to friends who know you better and be more reliable outside observers.

But that’s for future reference. You want to know what’s going on in the here and now. And the simplest answer is: B’s trying to be cool about the fact that the two of you used to have a nebulous “thing” together and it ended badly. Which, in fairness, is a pretty smart approach. He’s trying to let bygones be bygones and be co-workers without making things awkward or uncomfortable for everyone. He may be trying to avoid making you feel weird about things. Hell, he may be embarrassed about the way things happened between the two of you and is trying to just let it go instead of going over it again. Or he may be trying to give both of you space in order to establish a new status-quo before bringing up events of the past.

And while I understand that you want answers and an explanation… you may just have to accept that you aren’t going to get them. You can’t force someone to relive your past arguments and break-ups in order to get closure or answers. The fact that he may not agree with your need to talk the issue to death doesn’t necessarily mean he’s incapable of basic communication, it may mean he just doesn’t want to. He may simply want to let the past lie and feel there’s no real point in re-litigating what happened. He may feel like an a——hole and would prefer to put it behind him as an ugly part of his maturation process. Or he may feel like he hasn’t done anything wrong and you were being unreasonable… and there may well not be anything you can do to shake that belief.

You may want closure, but you’re going to have to make it yourself.

Meanwhile, the best thing you can do is continue as you are: being polite and friendly. If he starts making noises or motions towards rekindling your relationship, then you can try to parse out what the hell happened between the two of you. If not? Then let it go, make your own closure and let the new relationship be whatever it’s going to be.

Good luck.

Dr. Nerdlove is not a real doctor. Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:, first off I’m a big fan of your site and really appreciate all the healthy dating advice you give. I’m a 26 year old straight male and I’ve basically had intense shame about my sexuality for my entire adult life. It’s really held me back and makes it extremely difficult/impossible for me to seek out relationships.

Some background, and apologies if this is a bit long. I got my first girlfriend back in college when I was 17. We dated for about 10 months and I didn’t realize it at the time but it was an INCREDIBLY unhealthy relationship. I’m now fairly sure she had something like borderline personality disorder, but being naive I mostly just took it upon myself to change to make her happy. She was extremely jealous and passive-aggressive, would accuse me of cheating if I so much as talked to another girl, would constantly explode at me over the tiniest things, made me basically cut most of my friends out of my life, etc. She also very early on (within a few months) started to frequently pressure me to agree to marry her, which I was extremely uncomfortable with but eventually gave in to and said I would consider it. But the worst of the problems revolved around sex.

Initially she seemed very interested in sex (she was not a virgin) and would talk about some kinkier stuff she wanted to eventually try. To my surprise, she said that she didn’t want to have sex until 6 months into the relationship, which I fully respected. However, she would somewhat frequently perform oral sex on me (never on my request, it was always her initiating) but would always turn down my offers to reciprocate. After 6 months we did start having sex, though it was very infrequent (I think maybe 4 times total). She always acted into it before/during, but afterward she would immediately call her mom and talk in front of me in Chinese (no idea what she was saying but it was very uncomfortable), and would seem upset/passive-aggressive for a while.

She had some really nasty sex-negative views which we would frequently disagree about. For instance she believed that a woman should only have sex with a man who was willing to marry her, otherwise she would be “devalued”, and that sex was a thing that women did for men to keep them happy. She would also slut-shame girls who dressed in revealing clothes.

Eventually, near the end of our relationship, she revealed that she apparently hated sex, thought kissing me was disgusting, and didn’t even like hugging me. Rather than being flattered/happy that I found her attractive, she basically took it as an insult. I said that we didn’t have to have sex or kiss anymore if she didn’t like it, so we stopped.

I should also note that during this time, my dad dumped my mom after 20 years of marriage for a woman 20 years his junior. It had devastating effects on my family, particularly my mom, and I hated my dad more than anyone in the world. I promised to myself that I would never be anything like him.

Finally after maybe a month or so of no sex, my girlfriend and I broke up, and she said some of the most hurtful things I’ve ever heard in my entire life: that I didn’t love her and that I only used her for sex, and that I was “just like my dad”.

Honestly, hearing this was my worst nightmare come true. Here’s why:

If a woman says no, I will absolutely 100% stop whatever it is I’m doing, and won’t push it.

If a woman seems hesitant but doesn’t say no, I will absolutely 100% stop whatever it is I’m doing and ask her if she wants to continue.

If a woman says yes/seems enthusiastic then I can trust that as a great sign to continue, right? … except I can’t.

Apparently for all those months, my ex-girlfriend hated sex and felt used/forced into doing it but said nothing. This is so incredibly horrifying to me. I was basically… forced to rape someone for months without realizing it.

On top of this, what my dad did, and the accusation that I was “just like him”, have caused me an incredible amount of shame over the mere fact that I’m sexually attracted to women in general.

After breaking up with my ex-girlfriend, I didn’t date or have sex or any relationships for over 5 years. I went into a pretty terrible depression and eventually got therapy for over a year.

I finally managed to find a girlfriend via online dating and we dated for a bit over a year and it was a MUCH healthier relationship.

However, it’s been about 9 months since we broke up and this deep-rooted shame is still really holding me back. I occasionally work up the courage to introduce myself to women and I’ve managed to go on a few dates via Tinder, but I’m absolutely incapable of making any sort of romantic/sexual moves, so the dates all just go nowhere.

In my mind, making a move = creepy, sexual assault, unwanted sexual objectification, irremediably insulting. I know it’s not rational or true, but it’s what I’ve been conditioned to believe. (It probably doesn’t really help that in an attempt to learn how approach dating/sex in ways which are respectful toward women, I spent years reading radical-feminist-esque dating “advice” articles which were basically just big lists of all the ways men should stop being horrible, but no actual advice on what is desired/considered okay.)

Honestly at this point I don’t know how to move past this. I know that it’s unhealthy to focus on the worst possible outcome, and besides, as everyone seems to say, what’s the worst that could happen? You try to make a move but get rejected and it’s a bit awkward, right? Nope, the worst is FAR worse, and I know because it was my experience. I take rejection incredibly well. In fact, I almost prefer being rejected because at least I know that “no means no”, which is way better than “yes but secretly I feel violated/used/raped and I won’t tell you until after/possibly ever”. To make a move on someone means risking that they may feel violated, even briefly, and after my experience with my ex-girlfriend, taking this risk just seems completely incompatible with my drive to be a good person.

At the same time, the fact that I feel this way makes me feel like a nasty sexist asshole because it implies that women are fragile flowers who are incapable of handling a moment of discomfort. Obviously I don’t believe this on a rational level, but it’s the logical conclusion of my deep-rooted fear, and this also makes me feel like a bad person, because I do not want to be sexist.

In the words of Andy from The 40-Year-Old Virgin: “You know what? I respect women! I love women! I respect them so much I completely stay away from them!”

As I mentioned before, I did therapy for a while and it helped me sort out the reasons why I have all these hang-ups, but ultimately I can’t seem to move past the fact that my worst fears were actually proven true, and could happen again.

Do you have any words of advice to offer?

Sincerely, 

- A Guy With Issues

DEAR A GUY WITH ISSUES: Before I get too deep into this GWI… I’m so sorry all of this happened to you. You were in an emotionally abusive, toxic relationship. The behaviors you list at the start of your letter – the explosive jealousy, the way she isolated you from your friends, the emotional mood-swings that always left you afraid to set a toe wrong – are all classic signs of an abusive relationship. The fact that she didn’t hit you or physically abuse you doesn’t change the fact that you were abused.

The things your girlfriend did to you are not your fault. Your ex – and thank all the stars that she’s your ex – was hitting you where you were the most vulnerable. She was going out of her way to make you feel as though you were the bad guy in a relationship. Maybe she legitimately believed it. Maybe she was being deliberately manipulative. Doesn’t matter. She was abusing you and this was not your fault.

Maybe she changed her mind about sex. Maybe she had a bad association with sex. Maybe she was sexually active at first because she had to be but later realized she was asexual. Maybe she was dealing with religious or cultural shaming around sex. Still doesn’t matter.

She was abusing you and this was not your fault. 

You weren’t “forced to rape someone”, GWI. You were dating someone who was at best, dealing with a head full of bad wiring and emotional issues. At worst, you were dating someone who decided to leverage your anxieties against you as a means of control and punishment. You were abused and this was not your fault.

Your father leaving your mother was a tragedy and – again – I’m sorry it happened to you. But what your father did is nothing like what happened with you and your girlfriend. Your feelings around your father were another hammer that your ex used to hit you with. She leveraged the things that you feared and hated most and turned them around on you because this is what abusers do. They gaslight you, they convince you that you’re the bad guy, that you deserve the abuse because of all of your sins and crimes against them. They isolate you from your friends and loved ones so that you don’t have anyone else to turn to, who might have more influence over you than they do. They keep you off balance so that you can never feel comfortable or secure; you have to remain hyperaware of their moods lest they explode at you again. They make sure that they are the only thing you pay attention to or else.

You were abused and this was not your fault. 

You need to accept that damn near everything your ex told you was a f---ing lie. You can’t trust anything she told you to be real because it was all part of the patterns of abuse. It was a way of controlling you and punishing you and keeping you compliant and servile.

I’m not the least bit surprised that you’re carrying around scars and anxieties from this, GWI. You were hurt, badly, by someone who you trusted and cared for. She deliberately inflicted pain on you in the most damaging way that she could. The shame you’re feeling isn’t real and it isn’t deserved, it’s the after-effects of what has been done to you.

But knowing this doesn’t make it easy to shake off. Those scars run deep, and the scars you can’t see – the ones that are inflicted on your mind and soul – are the hardest to overcome. This isn’t the sort of thing you can just will yourself past, nor is it something that can just fade with time. To really start healing from what was done to you is going to take professional assistance, preferably someone who has been trained to deal with these specific issues. It’s good that you went to therapy, but if you didn’t tell your therapist that you were coming from an abusive relationship – especially if you didn’t or haven’t realized it yet – then you weren’t going to get all the help you needed.

You need more than a loudmouth with a blog, GWI. You need someone who’s trained to help victims of emotional abuse and sexual trauma. Fortunately, you can find them. I suggest that you go to the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists website; they have a directory of therapists who specialize in issues surrounding sexuality and sexual shame. Find one in your area who deals with victims of abuse. And don’t forget: you can fire your therapist. A relationship with a therapist is like any relationship; if you two don’t click or get along, then it’s not going to help. If the one you’re working with isn’t helping you or you’re not comfortable with them, then find another one.

Don’t let the fact that you’ve been traumatized by this fool you, GWI. The scars you are carrying don’t mean that you’re weak. Quite the opposite: you’re strong. Stronger that you realize. They’re a sign that you survived. You got out of that relationship and you realize that you need help. That’s an incredible strength. You can heal, you can feel better.

Give yourself permission to take time out from dating. Forgive yourself for what your ex did to you. Forgive yourself for buying into her lies. Recognize that you were abused and this was not your fault.  Find yourself a therapist and focus on your healing for now.

You will be better. And write back to let us know how you’re doing.

All will be well.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I want to help my best friend of 10 years. Let’s call him S. He’s gay, came out of the closet back when we were in high school (2009/2010), and has a very supportive family. However, S has always had some self-esteem issues and many of his partners have cheated on him. He often uses dating apps to find his partners.

Just over a year ago he started seeing this guy, we’ll call him D. For the record, I haven’t met D, but I’m my S’ confidante and have seen text messages etc. There are a number of reasons I haven’t met D, the primary one being that he is currently cheating on his live-in girlfriend and no one in his life knows about his relationship with S. If that wasn’t bad enough, he also has 3 kids from two other different women. He doesn’t have custody of any of them (yet), but 1 who has some learning disabilities is moving in with him this summer.

There are a number of excuses that D uses for why he can’t be with S but why he continues to see S anyways. They include: the fact that his girlfriend co-owns the house with him, the fact that he doesn’t want to upset his kids because they are close with the girlfriend, and his business related ventures that always make it an inopportune time to break up with the girlfriend. S stays because he is madly in love with D and because D claims that he’s from an older time and can’t possibly come out of the closet (even though he’s had sexual relations with men before S).

I have called bullshit on D, and explained that at the very least he could leave his girlfriend without coming out of the closet but S always makes excuses for his behavior. I get that kids are involved and should come first, so that part of D’s behavior I can forgive, but it still comes down to the fact that S is clearly the lowest on D’s priority list. I’m also worried about S because whenever they fight D preys on S’ insecurities and often will gaslight S telling him that he’s being too demanding or crazy when S questions D’s feelings for him.

How do I get S to see that he’s just wasting his time and is going to eventually have his heart broken again?

Sincerely, 

Already Tried Intervening

DEAR ALREADY TRIED INTERVENING: So you know that Percy Sledge song “When A Man Loves a Woman”? It kind of applies here: a person in love is often willing to overlook all kinds of BS because love isn’t just blind, it sticks its fingers in its ears and goes “LALALALALALALALALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”. And that is intensely irritating for everyone around the fool in love because sometimes you’re yelling at them that they’re about to do a Wile E. Coyote off a cliff.

Unfortunately, you can’t force someone out of willful blindness. Because that’s what’s going on here: your boy S is being willfully blind. Maybe it’s sex-fueled thinking, maybe it’s issues about deservedness that lead him to chasing after someone he knows he can’t have. Whatever the root cause may be, S has chosen to pursue this guy and you can’t make him change his mind. S is going to keep walking off that cliff until the day he looks down and gravity kicks in again. Which will happen.

It’s glaringly obvious that D is not going to leave his girlfriend or come out of the closet. This puts S’s relationship with him on a timer that’s going to run out, sooner rather than later. It’s only a question of when it ends – likely messily and all over the place.

You can’t argue S out of wanting to be with him, nor can you stick toothpicks under S’ eyelids to force him to see. He will always point to D’s reasons. But D’s reasonings – whatever they may be – don’t really matter. They’re just excuses. What matters is that D is hurting the people in his life – S, his girlfriends and also his kids. And someone who’s willing to do that to people who love and care for him is someone who has stamped themselves with DO NOT DATE.

The only person who can make S realize that… is S. Pushing harder against this will ultimately run the risk of pushing S away because let’s be real: nothing makes love more appealing than when the world is telling you that you can’t have it. Sex almost always wins in the end. And the last thing you want to do is push S away because when this blows up – and it will – he’s going to need you, more than ever. So have one last conversation with S on the topic. Point to the ways that D is signaling that he will never leave and that the relationship will never be what S wants. And then… drop it. Let him know that this is the last time you’ll discuss it with him, but you love him and support him and you’ll be there when – not if, when – he needs to talk with you over this.

And when it does blow up… don’t tell him “I told you so,” ATI. He’s already going to feel used and humiliated; don’t rub it in. Just be the friend he needs – even if he didn’t listen to you when he should have.

Good luck.

Dr. Nerdlove is not a real doctor. Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)