DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been a fan of your website for a while now, and a lot of what you  write really speaks to me. I was wondering if you could help me out with an issue I’ve been having. I am, by all objective accounts, a pretty attractive guy. I’m a little on the short end, but I work out a lot, dress nicely enough, and I stay well-groomed. I am, after all, an Officer in the US Navy.

However, I can’t get out of my own head when it comes to dating. Any interaction with a woman turns quickly into over-analysis followed shortly thereafter by self-loathing. My internal dialogue ends up being along the lines of, “This girl is not being receptive because I’m too fat/short/ugly,” or “I am too fat/short/ugly to talk to this girl.” This has not worked out too terribly for me, as I am not a virgin, and have had girlfriends in the past, but it’s no way to meet someone I could actually settle down with.

A week or so ago, in an attempt to expand my comfort zone, I went on my first Tinder date. I thought it went phenomenally. We bantered, we laughed, we talked about our families and our hopes and dreams and at the end she said that she’d like to do this again. We texted a couple times after that, but then she stopped responding. I quickly went from elation to self-loathing and complete preoccupation with this girl. The fact that she didn’t respond reinforced all my initial aversion to talking to women. I fear rejection not because of public humiliation or anything like that, but rather the fact that rejection makes me hate myself. My question is what do I do about this? How can I get myself to a point where a rejection or a fade-away doesn’t make me question my worth as a human being, or more specifically, a man?

Thanks,

Bad Lieutenant

DEAR BAD LIEUTENANT: BL, you’ve got a nasty case of jerk-brain going on. You know, objectively, that you’re a good-looking dude. You know how to present yourself, you dress well… it’s just that you don’t let yourself believe it. As soon as you’re feeling even vaguely good about yourself, that little bastard voice in the back of your mind pipes up and repeats all of those little insecurities and doubts and shoots your self-esteem down in flames. Doesn’t matter that objectively, you’re a catch; your jerk-brain is there to kneecap you as soon as you think you’re making any progress.

This is one of the reasons why I point out that 80% of dating success is attitude – not just how you treat other people but how you treat yourself. I see this all the time in guys who’ve made sudden transformations. They’ve gotten in shape, they’ve changed up their wardrobes and have otherwise gotten their acts together looks-wise… but they still have the same doubts and anxieties they had before, and it slows or even stops the progress they’ve been making. You have to work on adjusting who you are insideas much as your outside.

Part of the problem you’re having here is that you’re making a lot of assumptions based out of low self-esteem and confirmation bias. But unless you’re Charles Xavier, you’re not a mind reader. You have literally no idea what’s going through somebody’s head. Your Tinder date, f’rex, may well have decided you were too short. However, it’s just as likely that she may have decided that there wasn’t any chemistry there. You may have let your anxiety get ahold of you and got a little pushy… or she might have decided that dating someone who’s active-duty might be too complicated for her. Or she may have been seeing other people as well and decided to pursue a relationship with one of them. There are dozens of potential reasons and very few of them have anything to do with you. Unless she straight-up tells you, you don’t know why she pulled the fade, and even then she might not be giving you the real or whole answer.

Rejection and the fade are all part of the dating game. Everyone experiences them. It just becomes a matter of learning how to handle them.

To start with, I suggest meditation. Mindfulness meditation can be great for getting a handle on how you feel and why, which is the first step in controlling those issues. It also helps to consciously reframe the situation whenever your jerk-brain pipes up with being too what-ever. When you start thinking about all the reasons why you were rejected, you have to remind yourself “no, I don’t know that,” and that this was a sign that the two of you weren’t compatible. The fact that things didn’t work out doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means you’ve eliminated one potential mis-match and now you’re free to find someone you do work with. Couple this with developing an abundance mentality and you’ll find that yeah rejection isn’t fun but it’s nothing to fear. There’ll be someone else just as amazing (if not better) later on and now you’re free to pursue her instead.

You’ve built up your exterior, now spend some time building up your interior. Remember: your brain is lazy and wants to stay in the groove it’s already in. Carving out a new, positive groove can be difficult but it can be done. And once you do, you’ll find that your dating life will be much more satisfying.

Good luck!

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: One of the big criticisms I’ve heard about the manosphere/The Red Pill/Pickup Artistry is that it doesn’t deal with the issues of men of color, especially East Asian and South Asian men. Yet as an Indian guy, the only people I’ve found who are willing to even discuss this issue are these very groups. Don’t get me wrong, they handle it in a very toxic, macho way that kind of ends up being along the lines of “get swole, buy our book for $34.99 and you’ll be able to conquer white b

*hes,” but that’s the only advice available for us; many “liberal” circles put the issue to “oh well most Asian/Indian men are very conservative and misogynistic,” which I feel to be something of an excuse, especially because a lot of first-generation Asian and Indian men tend to be disproportionately more liberal (at least from my own observations).

To make matters worse, an Indian-American acquaintance of mine bought into PUA/TRP-esque thinking, and has managed to have a surprising amount of success with women, despite previously getting rejected a lot. I’m honestly quite worried that my race will hold me back when dating (even many Indian women voice hesitation at dating us, and when I was younger, I heard “I don’t date Indian guys” a lot more than I’d have liked), but the alternative of buying into very misogynistic ideals that portray white women as the “prize” isn’t very desirable to me either, since it goes against many of my personal values.

I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I can choose to be alone (or at least be severely handicapped in the dating game) or I can become a person that I’ll hate. Could you potentially direct me to some resources that deal specifically with Asian and Indian men’s issues without a lot of the vitriol from TRP, or at least address this somewhere on your blog?

धन्पवाद (Thank you),

Secret Asian Man

DEAR SECRET ASIAN MAN: OK, I’m going to preface this with the reminder that as a white guy, I’m not going to have the same in-depth knowledge, insight and experience into what it means to date as an Asian man. I’ve got, at best, second and third-hand information based purely out of my observations, so I don’t want to speak to other people’s experiences as though I’m an authority. Take everything I have to say on this topic with appropriate levels of salt. If I miss something, misstate it, leave something out, get things wrong or just inadvertently offend, then I apologize in advance.

Now with all that being said: the issues surrounding people of color of any ethnicity and dating in the US are incredibly complex because it’s all part of a giant tangle of issues surrounding America’s history with… well just about everybody.

OKCupid founder Christian Rudder mined the data on OKCupid and found that Asian and black men had a distinct disadvantage in online dating outside of their race.

(Meanwhile, black women had the greatest penalty of all, even from black men – a troubling issue in and of itself).

It’s easy to write this off as “people are racist”, but it ignores the tangled web of issues surrounding the history of minority races in the US.

One of the biggest issues is Asian men –  including Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Korean, Burmese, Malay, Filipino, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. – face when it comes to dating is how they are perceived and portrayed in society and the effect that media has in determining our standards of beauty. For a very, very long time, Asian men were coded as un-masculine, if not completely sexless. Jokes about penis size abound, piled on top of stereotypes of academic obsession, sexual and social naïveté and an obsession with white women. The popular image of Asian men in media is the polar opposite of the hypermasculine ideal that we’re sold; brainy, doughy men are hardly men at all, etc.

Media representation doesn’t help either, not when the recognizable Indian face in the media is Apu from The Simpsons. Indian men in tv and movie are far more likely to be seen as Taj in Van Wilder, taking over the sex-obsessed foreigner role from Sixteen Candle’s Long Duck Dong. It’s rare that you’ll find Asian men presented on the same level white men, either as ass-kickers or as lovers in media. The few martial arts heroes are the exceptions. The fact that Steven Yuen’s character Glen in The Walking Dead was as much of a capable figure as Daryl or Rick – not to mention being able to be in an interracial relationship with Maggie – is depressingly unusual and rare in American television. There’re even fewer when it comes to portrayals or representation of South Asian men.

There has been some changes in the way Indian men are portrayed in media – iZombie’s Ravi is portrayed as a desirable catch for example – but on the whole those stereotypes get reinforced regularly. Even the Asian men who are portrayed as attractive are coded as being less “ethnic”; Ravi, for example, has a posh British accent rather than Bengali or West Indian accent.

Combine that with other issues regarding Western standards of beauty and attractiveness – especially surrounding skin color – and in-group stereotypes (the “Indian/Asian men are conservative/chauvinistic” beliefs you mentioned earlier) and you’ve got a perfect storm of post-colonial issues that can combine to make dating more difficult for Asian men.

But “difficult” isn’t the same as “impossible”.

With this all of this in mind, let’s talk about your circumstances, SAM. Right now, you’re falling into a common trap of a false dichotomy. You’re not stuck choosing between toxic TRP/PUA misogyny and being sexless. You’re falling for the same line of s

t that many other men have fallen for – the idea that in order to be successful with women, you have to be an ass

le who treats women badly. It’s bulls

t, period, end of story. There aren’t women out there who are thinking “Man, I really wish I could find a guy who would treat me badly, dismiss my desires, wants and fears and treat me like his personal Fleshlight!” Disrespect isn’t an aphrodisiac, no matter what people tell you and acting like a hypermasculine d

kbag isn’t the key to sexual success.

(Of course, it doesn’t help that the top results for “dating advice for Indian men” includes such luminaries as Return of Kings and Stormfront (!?)…)

As I’ve said before: the advantages presented by so-called “bad boys” are in presentation, not in the behavior. Confidence and assertiveness are attractive; arrogance and disrespect are not. Being willing to put yourself out there, to not shy away or be diffident has far more to do with dating success than negging or playing status games or treating every woman like she’s a club-going party girl. Treating your ethnicity as a handicap to overcome is going to sabotage you from the get-go; feeling as though you have to apologize for being Indian or Asian or overcompensating by acting like a hypermasculine douchebag is only going to sabotage your chances.

Now this isn’t to say that you won’t have challenges, but challenges can be overcome.

Sometimes it may be a clash of cultures, especially if you come from a traditional background and you’re trying to date people who don’t share that background. Sometimes it may just that people you’re interested in may not be willing to date a South or East Asian man; as frustrating as it may be, this is good for you. After all, if they’re willing to dismiss you based solely on your race, why would you want to date them at all?

Online dating may not work for you if you’re interested in interracial dating; as the OKCupid data has shown, people may be less likely to respond to someone of another race. This means you may want to prioritize meeting people in person and let online dating be your back-up.

The great thing about meeting people in person is that folks tend to be more open to serendipity in ways they often aren’t when it comes to online dating. We’ll often be attracted to folks we’ve met in person that we might have passed on if we saw them on an app, because we got a chance to know them as people first. That means that we’re more likely to encounter the qualities that draw us to them that we might never have known about if we just read their profile instead. They may not be our perfect match on paper but in person they’re just right.

Prioritizing meeting people in person gives you the advantage of playing to your strengths and using them to overcome any knee-jerk responses they may have on an app. Being able to win them over with your personality, your charm and your humor gives you a leg up when you can demonstrate it in the flesh instead of hoping that someone pauses long enough to read up on you before swiping.

That will help you find the success you want rather than being a misogynist assbag.

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 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)