DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been dating this girl for 2 1/2 years now. We live in two different cities separated by a two hour drive. We keep talking about moving in together, but one thing or another seems to get in the way.  We both traveled a lot, i mean a lot, for our jobs, etc.  But up until recently it seemed we were both dedicated to the relationship.  Now, what I feel are weird behaviors are starting to happen. 

It’s been a few weeks sense we seen each over but we kept in daily communication as per norm. It was a nice warm day out, the first time this year, and she mentioned to me that she was going to head over to a local park by her place to get some sun and read. Later on in that day she tells me she meet some guy (who is married) with a kid and they had a nice conversation. I guess the kid kept kicking a ball toward her so the guy had to go get the kid.  She left it at that, mentioned that she enjoyed the talk. (I felt weird about this encounter).

Well, fast forward three days later and we are talking on the phone just before bed. We said our good nights and hung up. A few minutes later I forgot to tell her something so I called back, we ended up getting into a difficult conversation (see below) and after I ask what her plans were for tomorrow. She said get a hair cut, she then starts talking about that guy and tells me that they are going to meet up. I asked if his wife was going to be with them. Nope. Just them. It turns out this guy asked her out for coffee that day at the park and she give him her phone number and accepted. She tells me she doesn’t see anything wrong with this.  Am I crazy?  Is this normal behavior of someone in a relationship?  I wouldn’t do this, unless I was seeking something new. It feels like a slap in the face to our relationship.  

Long Distance Romeo

DEAR LONG DISTANCE ROMEO: I’m not going to lie to you LDR, this is a tricky one. There’re a lot of ways this could be interpreted. A lot of this is going to depend on how you answer two questions.

First: do you trust your girlfriend?

Second: Are you capable of having a discussion with your girlfriend about how you feel without a) being accusatory and b) telling her who she can and can’t be friends with?

Let’s start with the obvious: you’re worried that your relationship is in danger because… well, because she’s going to go hang out with a dude. By herself. In a public place. That’s a hell of a leap to make with the evidence you’ve been given thus far.

Can I be honest here? On the one hand, yes I can completely understand how this could seem sketchy.

On the other hand, part of the reason why you’re leaping to the conclusion that something’s about to go down is because you don’t seem to believe that women and men can have a platonic friendship without one or the other having an ulterior motive of getting into somebody’s pants. But maybe I’m wrong. You tell me.

Let me ask you a serious question. You say you wouldn’t do this – presumably you mean give a girl your number or meet up with her for coffee  – unless you were planning on jumping ship or banging out with some new strange. Does this mean that you – as a matter of principle – have not hung out socially with other women for the last two and a half years? I’m not trying to call you out on being a hypocrite, I just want to know where your head’s at on this. If you’ve been able to hang out with women who aren’t your girlfriend – without their significant others in tow — then it should stand to reason that your girlfriend would be able to hang out with a dude without it being a threat to your relationship.

Now, neither of us have no way of knowing what’s going on in the married dude’s head. He could very well be trying to pick up your girlfriend. He could also just be interested in being friends with someone he happened to meet and have a cool conversation with. But there’s no profit in trying to read this guy’s mind, especially when everything you know about him is coming through the filter of a third party. It doesn’t matter if he does have nefarious plans… you have to trust in your relationship and in your girlfriend. Presumably she’s smart enough to know when someone’s trying to weasel in on her and isn’t going to fall for his bulls

t and/or isn’t going to cheat on you regardless.

So let’s look at a known quantity: your girlfriend. What’s her interest in meeting up with this guy? Is she getting ready to slam her fist on the relationship self-destruct button or is there something else going on here?

Well, let’s look at things logically here. From what you’ve told me, she’s been straight forward with you about all of this. She told you she met a dude and had a fun conversation with him. When you asked what her plans were for the day, she told you that she was going to meet him for coffee. She didn’t try to hide it from you. She wasn’t playing the pronoun game and trying to obscure that she was going to hang out with a dude. You didn’t have to pry this out of her like you were trying to find the location of the secret microfilm.

These are not the behaviors of a woman who’s trying to sneak around your back.

But hey: maybe she’s trying to send you a message. Maybe she’s sending up a warning, saying “I’m not ready to leave you yet, but if we don’t sort things out, I might be.”

Is this likely? Hell if I know. I’ve seen people do it before, but it sure isn’t common behavior. You’re the only one who is in a position to know whether this is a reasonable interpretation of events.

The other possibility is that maybe she’s just lonely and wants a friend.

Real talk: long distance relationships – even ones that aren’t that long distance in the scheme of things – are very goddamn difficult. Even with Skype, phone calls, Facebook, Snapchat, FaceTime, e-mail, instant messaging and texts, it’s hard to have your emotional (nevermind physical) needs met; hanging out over the Internet is just not the same as being in the physical proximity with someone. It could very well be that she’s feeling a lack in her life because of the long distance and she’s appreciating the attention that this guy is giving her and is using him to get her emotional needs met while still staying true to you.

So how do you determine this? Well… you start by using your words. The key to any relationship is communication, communication, communication. This goes double for when you’re long-distance. If you’re feeling like there’re problems or that something untoward may be going on, then you need to talk to your girlfriend about how you feel. The key here is that you need to be very careful not to sound like you’re accusing her of cheating on you or making it all her fault for failing to manage your emotions for you or for demanding a veto in who she can or can’t be friends with.  “Honey, I have to admit – I feel uncomfortable about your hanging around this guy because I’m worried that it means something’s wrong,” not “I don’t want you hanging with this guy”, “You’re making me uncomfortable” or “You’re cheating on me, aren’t you?” The last thing you want is to put her on the defensive; there’s no profitable discussion to be had when she feels as though she needs to defend her actions… especially if she hasn’t done anything wrong. That’s a very good way of turning a minor problem into a major one. 

Talk with your girlfriend. Explain how you feel and why and see what she has to say. It could very well be that she didn’t get how this was going to make you feel and will be better able to reassure you that everything’s on the up-and-up. Or it could be that this is a symptom of an issue in your relationship… and if so, now you know that the problem is there at all and you’re in a better position to do something about it.  

TL;DR version: if you want to know what’s going on, you need to talk to her. Explain how you feel. Get her side of things. Err on the side of more communication and proceed from there.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been off and on with someone who I’ve been in a long distance relationship with. We’ve known each other for four years going onto five and we haven’t seen each other.

We’ve been on and off mainly because he was mentally unstable, depressed, and elusive. Fights would happen, then he would disappear for almost months and randomly text me. We would fall back in love with each other, then he would promise to make an effort to handle his mental health, not confuse me, and work on his finances so that’d we’d be able to see each other. Last year, I had the money to come down and see him but he did the same thing again. The trip was delayed because I didn’t want to waste money on coming to see him if our relationship wasn’t in good shape.

This is the beginning of year five, I’ve found myself another job for the spring and summer and I’ll be going back to college in August. My boyfriend seems to still be pretty depressed. still talks about a writing project he and his friends were working on to get money coming in, and every once in a while, he’ll tell me that he’s looking for jobs. Most of the time when I video chat him, he’s smoking weed or playing video games in his living room/bedroom. The only thing I seen a change in is that he does check in on me more often and asks if I am okay, tells me he is here for me, etc. Either his mom seems to be okay with his current state or either he emotionally manipulates his mom into cutting him slack by blowing up and threatening suicide.

(He did that to me in the past when I spoke on things he needed to actually work on and stop waiting for his blessings to come in).

Knowing him for four years, I know he has a good heart but there’s little action or effort to what he says or promises me. I’ve been contemplating on whether I should visit him this April to kick things off, or wait until he’s financially stable to pitch in the expenses.  I know I will be upset with myself and him if I go out my way to visit him for the first time just to see that he still isn’t going to make an effort to get a job. The last thing I want is to be the only one making moves.

Also, I know that visiting each other won’t be the cure to his depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies, but I worry about investing emotionally in someone who may continue to not put any effort into bettering his mental health. I want to see him because it’s been too long. but at the same time I don’t know if I should delay seeing each other for the first time again or let him go because of the lack of progress.

Should I break up with him or take things slower until I see progress?

Leaving On A Jet Plane

DEAR LEAVING ON A JET PLANE: First of all, LOJP: you’re not in a relationship with this dude.

I’m a great believer in the ability to make friends over the Internet. Back in May, I went to the U.K. to see friends I’ve known for twenty years that I had never met in person. I’ve had people who I only know via Discord, Twitter and Facebook help me make massive leaps in my personal and professional development.

But I don’t believe that you can have a romantic relationship with someone you have never actually met. 

The issue isn’t the distance. It’s not even that most of your relationship is conducted online. It’s that you have never actually been in the same room together.

This is, in no small part because – to quote the sage – love isn’t brains, children. It’s blood, blood screaming inside you to work its will. Every romantic relationship, even amongst asexuals, has a physical component to it – a sense of intimacy and connection that doesn’t exist in a purely mental bond. You’ve never spent time with him in person to know if you like how he smells or the way he fits into your arm or the sense of his presence in the room even if you aren’t touching. You haven’t discovered if you like how he kisses, how he touches you or even if you’re sexually compatible. It doesn’t matter how many Skype sessions you’ve shared or even the amount of phone-sex you may have. We are physical beings who need touch and physical contact. Without those… well, all you have is an emotional connection… and a relationship isn’t going to work without a physical one too.

But let’s put that aside and talk about the relationship you do have with him and what you should do about it.

That having been said: I think you need to dump this guy. Because even if you did have a fully-fledged romantic – albeit long-distance – relationship… this is a relationship that’s already on life-support. One of the signs that a relationship has already started to die is when you have the same fights over and over again and nothing changes. Over the span of five years now, you’ve had the same arguments with this dude, and he’s made all the same promises. He’s going to get a job, he’s going to take care of his mental health, he’s going to contribute equally to this relationship. And for the last five years nothing has changed. He’s still making the same noises about waiting for his ship to come in and those baller moves that’ll bring him all the money and you’ve got sweet f

k-all to show for it besides Skype sessions involving weed and video games.

The past may be prologue and people do change but in this case? Past performance are pretty indicative of future results. And while sometimes I will advocate using the threat of a break-up as the pre-cursor to belting someone upside the head with the Chair Leg of Truth, I don’t think you can trust this dude to actually make any lasting changes. I think you will get one of two results if you threaten to dump him. Either he’ll do the “I can change, I can change I can change” dance until he figures he’s got you off his back or he’s going to throw a fit and make threats of self-harm until you back down. This is something he’s done to you before, and he knows it works, so he has no reason to not try it again.

Although to be perfectly honest: the fact that he’s pulled that crap before is, in and of itself, a reason to dump him so hard his grandparents get divorced retroactively. It’s bad enough that he just straight-up ghosts you for months after a fight. Using threats of self-harm are incredibly low and cynically manipulative and folks who pull that s

t need to be kicked to the curb with a quickness.

So I think the best thing you can do, LOJP, is save your money, your sanity and your soul. Cancel the trip, cancel the relationship and block this dude on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Skype and any other way he has of reaching you. The last thing you need is this dude to shamble back into your DMs and texts like a horny zombie.

This relationship died a while ago and it’s been rotting ever since. It’s time to put two in its dome and call it. You’ll be happier in the long run.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This is a very tricky situation for me. I’m 18 and I’m in my first relationship, with a woman I’ve been dating for a year and 7 months. I know it is unlikely that a relationship will last at this young of an age, but I really love her and I really feel that I want to spend the rest of my life with her and she feels the same way.

Lately though, I have been getting a crush on her best friend, who is dating my best friend, and I don’t know what to do. I know that there is almost no possibility of anything happening between us, but I can’t stop thinking about her and having fantasies about her. This has happened before with another one of my girlfriend’s best friends; I had a crush on her and had fantasies about her to but that only lasted like a month. The current one has been going on for about 3 months now.

I’ve been trying to get over it and keep telling myself it’s just a crush, but I really don’t know what to do. I] have felt so bad about feeling these things, just like I did the last time. Even though i know it’s wrong I can’t stop feeling like this. 

Help!

Unfaithful Brain

DEAR UNFAITHFUL BRAIN: OK my dude, let me give you some advice that is going to make life infinitely easier for you: you will always want to bang other people. The fact that you’ve got the horn for your girlfriend’s BFF has nothing to do with the state of your relationship. It has nothing to do with the depth of your feelings for her or your commitment to her. All those feelings you feel right now? Those sweaty dreams and alluring fantasies? Those are just signs that you’re a mammal with a sex-drive.

That’s it.

Love isn’t magic. It isn’t going to make you blind to every other woman out there, nor is it going to disconnect signals from your eyes to your junk. A monogamous commitment, likewise, isn’t a spell of Protection From Attraction 10′ Radius. All an exclusive commitment means is that you’ve promised that you wouldn’t sleep with anyone else. It doesn’t mean that you won’t want to.

The way you’re feeling right now, with these crushes that’re causing you so much anxiety? That’s the perfectly normal reaction to seeing a woman you find attractive. It’s something that happens to everyone, man, woman, or enbie, gay, bi, pan, or straight and that’s fine. Feelings and attraction are inherently neutral. Having fantasies is neutral too. What you get up to between your ears is between you and your hand. It’s only when you act on those attractions that things start to get messy.

So what do you do about all of this? Well honestly… nothing. There’s nothing to do about it. Trying to repress your feelings is a mistake. It’s akin to using a stress-ball; squeezing it down will only make it come squishing out the sides and gaps. Instead just let yourself feel it. Note that you have a crush, name it – “oh right, this is my crush on Emily” – and just let it be. There’s nothing wrong with having one, and to be honest, crushes are fun. Take some of that energy, plow it into your relationship with your girlfriend but otherwise just feel it and leave it. As with your previous crush, this will fade in time on its own.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Recently I found out a girl I work with was into me and I liked her too. We began texting and I asked her out on a date to which she agreed.

The night before the date we met up and eventually one thing led to another (I had my arm around her, etc) until we began making out.

She texted me later that she had a great time and was excited for the date. However, the next morning she texted me that she was sick and was sorry that she had to cancel. We rescheduled the date (when asked if she wanted to she replied “yes!”) However my question is how do I keep that momentum going between us. The date is a week away.

Don’t Stop Not Stopping

DEAR DON’T STOP NOT STOPPING: All things considered, I don’t think you need to worry about anything DSNS.

But if you’re especially worried, just shoot her a flirty text. “Hey, were you at $PLACE yesterday? Because I may have seen your evil twin” or “I just had the weirdest dream about you in a koala suit so I wanted to say ‘hi’. Oh, and stay out of my dreams” both make for cute, low-key flirting that can help keep the momentum going.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a twenty-something-ish woman and I broke up with my ex-girlfriend “Sam” about a year ago. It was a super serious relationship: timeline for having kids/holidays with each other’s families serious. The official reason for said breakup is that I was tired of long distance (Sam has a temporary position in the neighboring state).

Reality is more complicated.

1. Sam was really insecure about the fact that my ex-boyfriend was my best friend as it wasn’t “normal” to stay in touch with your exes. It got to the point that she banned me from talking about him and refused to meet him and his husband/son when they came to visit. We had planned a trip to the city my ex lived in right before we broke up and I was having panic attacks about bringing it up.

2. Sam had a lot of internalized misogyny from her more conservative, Christian upbringing that led to some judgmental statements about my past.

3. I have some mental health issues that I treat with medication and therapy. They’re well managed but if anything flared up, Sam would insist I find a new therapist because the one I had wasn’t “curing” my issues. She said I was being lied to when I stated that therapy is not a cure.

4. We’d have what I took as “Let’s agree to disagree” moments about X which she’d then bring up in later unrelated disagreements about Y. She’d usually do this in front of others, with a laugh and an eye roll.

5. Towards the end of our relationship, Sam informed me she wasn’t sure how she felt anymore. She wasn’t sure she wanted to move back because there was no guarantee our relationship would work out and she was afraid she was wasting her time with the long distance. She asked me to convince her it would work.

At some point, we had a dumb argument, didn’t speak for three days. I realized I was relieved to have a break from reassuring my girlfriend about our relationship. I was exhausted trying to give Sam a kind of security no one could. I broke up with her the next time we spoke on the phone. After some time, Sam and I started casually texting. I’m able to cope as the emotional stakes were waaaaay lower. I love her sense of humor and I do take pride in maintaining friendships with former partners. I have zero interest in anything non-platonic with Sam.

Sam and my parents/brother have stayed in touch. They became close while we were together and this normal behavior for my family (they’ve stayed in touch with my aunts and uncles’ former SOs). I’ve tried to explain to my family why we broke up but they spin it some way where it’s never anything Sam did wrong in the relationship and that I’m being too picky.

Recently, Sam has pressed me to visit/come see me. My family is ecstatic about this and asked her down for a long weekend. She thankfully already had plans. Unperturbed, my parents got her a belated Christmas present. Not just any present but fancy alcohol. Which they legally can’t ship. So I’m expected to hand deliver it and I’m not sure I’m ready to be in a room with Sam.

I’ve considered the nuclear option but doing so risks damaging the close relationship I have with my parents and brother. I’ve gone with the flow up to this point. I don’t care that my family maintains contact with Sam (okay, I care a little), but I don’t want to be in the middle of it.

Questions: Is there a tactful way to extricate myself from the love fest between my family and my ex-girlfriend? Have I screwed myself by being non-confrontational up to this point? Am I being too picky? Should I have given into my instincts and chugged the 12-year-aged Scotch I’m giving Sam in two days, consequences be damned?

Didn’t Ask to be Santa’s Helper

DEAR DIDN’T ASK TO BE SANTA’S HELPER: Let’s tackle the most important issue first, DASH: you don’t chug 12 year old Scotch. That’s just a crime against alcohol. That Lagavulin didn’t do anything to deserve such treatment!

Now,  with that out of the way…

Y’know, DASH, this may be one of the few times that I’ve been grateful that the only involvement my family has with most of my exes is to randomly bring up how much they didn’t like one specific one while I was dating her. If I was having to hear about how amazing she was and how I was a fool for letting her get away, I probably would blown a fuse trying to decide whether to throw them or myself out a window.

The problem here is three-fold. The first is a simple bias in perception. Your family only saw a small sliver of your relationship with your ex. They got the highlight reel, where Sam was sweet and brilliant and just Captain Fantastic. Meanwhile, you got the unedited footage, with all of the flaws, gripes, headaches and legitimate “woah that is NOT goddamn cool” of a relationship that ultimately needed to end.

Now to be fair, it’s understandable that you and your family have this split view of things; it’d be a little freaking weird if they were so deep into your relationship that they got front-row seats to your fights about your history. But that doesn’t really excuse them for insisting that you have to be part of their friendship with her.

Which leads to the second problem: your parents are suffering from one of the classic Geek Social Fallacies, the most famous of which is Ostracisers are Evil but only slightly less well known is this: that Friendship Is Transitory (And also Magic). Your parents are treating their friendship with your ex as a transitive property. They have a relationship with your ex, they have a relationship with you, therefore YOU should have an equal relationship with your ex! The fact that you aren’t going along with this is, in their eyes, a betrayal of these self-imposed Rules of Friendship. And it’s all a lovely idea except for the fact that your ex is an ex FOR A REASON, and while they’re welcome to their friendships, they don’t get to demand that you have to manage yours accordingly.

Which is what brings us to the third problem: you have some weak boundaries with your family around this issue. This is totally understandable. It’s one thing to stand up to people you don’t like and don’t have to see  regularly. There’s nothing easier than telling people who will have no meaningful impact on your life to take a flying f

k at a rolling donut. It’s another when it’s people you care about, who you presumably want in your life and who you want to get along with. Drawing a line in the sand can be harder because there will be consequences! Doubly so when it feels like your family cares more about your ex than they do about you! If you take a stand and insist that you be excluded from this narrative… well, what if they decide to take Sam’s side instead of yours?

But that fear you feel? That anxiety about standing up to them over this issue? That’s precisely why you need to stand up. Because as much as you would prefer this to just blow over and go away… it’s not gonna. Nothing is going to change on its own unless you make it change. And that means telling your family that you don’t want to be pulled into their friendship with your ex.

However, none of this means that drawing and enforcing a boundary is going to be a confrontation, complete with arguments and hurt feelings. All you need to do is tell them – firmly – that you don’t want to see your ex. No, not even to drop off a fancy bottle of Scotch. That’s it. You don’t need to explain why. You don’t need to justify your decision, nor should you.  Your limits are not up for public debate and your boundaries aren’t up for public vote. They don’t get to override your boundaries if your reasons for having them aren’t to their satisfaction. You said no and – as I always say – “no” is a complete sentence.

They may tell you that you’re being selfish. Yup, you are. They may tell you that you’re being unreasonable. Damn straight. BE unreasonable. All they need to know is that you don’t want to see your ex, period, the end.

If your family wants to be friends with your ex, that’s great… but that obligates you to exactly two things: jack and s

t. And Jack left town. You and you alone get to decide how much contact that you do and don’t want to have with your ex. If they want her to have that bottle of Scotch, they can courier it over themselves or they can make arrangements for her to pick up a bottle in her city.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been trying to use OKCupid in search of dates, hookups etc. However, I am nonbinary, and the majority of other people I “like” are also nonbinary and I find that I always have to send the first message. If I don’t send a message, then they never message me. I know the standard advice you give is for men to do the approaching of women but I am not a man, the people I am interested in are (usually) not women, I’m not sure what the etiquette is.

Also, feel free to blame my need for external validation but being the one who always has to initiate + carry conversation is bumming me out, it makes me feel like I’m not worth approaching or liking. I list several interests and potential question prompts in my profile, why won’t anyone try to court me beyond swiping right? What am I doing wrong? It’s my face isn’t it

Know-Nothing Non-Binary in NYC

DEAR KNOW-NOTHING NON-BINARY IN NYC: One of the things that’s perversely fascinating about dating apps is that as much as they were supposed to be this disruptive, revolutionary event… they essentially recreated many of the same social dynamics of approaching people out in the physical world. For all that we’re living in the future, we’re still holding to old-fashioned gender roles when it comes to dating.

It’s not that much of a surprise; socialization is a motherf

ker and God knows there’re plenty of folks – mostly men, but some women too – who react badly when people flout gender roles. But where things get interesting is the intersection of non-traditional expressions of gender and the very gendered dynamics of dating. And one of the gendered aspects is “who makes the first move”.

Over in my column at Kotaku (kotaku.com/c/ask-dr-nerdlove), my friend (and ACTUAL doctor) Dr. Liz Powell refers to this as “lesbian sheep syndrome”, where both parties stand around waiting for the other person to make the first move. And since nobody is willing to be the one to initiate things… nothing happens.

You’re nonbinary, KNNYC and so are many of the people you’re into. You and your preferred partners are all choosing to ignore the dynamics of gender… but unfortunately (in this case) this often means being willing to ignore who is or isn’t supposed to start things off. But somebody has to make the first move if anything is gonna happen. So it may as well be you.

The key here is that you need to learn to decouple being the initiator from your sense of validation, because who makes the first move ultimately doesn’t have much to do with your worth. As with many aspects in dating, you’re assuming that this is about you and not about what’s going on in their own heads. They could be shy. They could be afraid of how people might respond if they made the first move – there are folks out there who can be sh

ty to enbies and gender-nonconformists, after all. They might think you’re hot as a five-alarm fire and they’re too intimidated to make the first move because they think you’re out of their league. They might not have even seen your profile.

Similarly, making the first move isn’t necessarily validating; ask any female-presenting person about the dudes who shotgun generic, copy-pasted first messages to literally everyone.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s definitely a thrill when someone digs you enough to say “hey, I like you! Let’s chat and see if it’s mutual!” But who says it first isn’t the end-all, be-all. Someone responding to your message with “woah, you’re pretty cool, how YOU doin’?” is just as validating and potentially more meaningful.

TL;DR: it isn’t you, it’s a whole host of things surrounding dating, many of which have nothing to do with you personally or even in the abstract. So go ahead and make the first move. You’ll make somebody’s day.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)