DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am 27 years old. I have this friend named D. I have known this girl since I was in high-school. The thing is, I have never actually met the girl in person. We have talked a great deal since getting to know each other and now we have become pretty good friends. Well, just recently, as in last year, our conversations began to become slightly heated. We have begun to talk more in depth about fantasies of being together. We have talked about this before, just not so intensely.

I should point out that D is married and already has one child by her current husband. I understand that finding an attraction to someone else’s wife is morally wrong. But I really do feel an attraction to this woman and I’ve told her so. Her response to me expressing my feelings to her were to ask me why I waited to tell her how I felt. The truth was, I wasn’t ready to tell her because I always believed that until I felt confident that I could support a significant other I didn’t want to express myself to someone like that. I should also point out that another reason I waited to tell her was because of the distance. She and I live away from each other by a distance of several states. Also, we’ve never actually met, although I’ve expressed significant interest in coming to visit her for at least a few days.

So back to my story. Recently the conversations have become more heated. Early this year, we decided to cross the line into sending each other explicit texts and pictures. Not much, but one or two is certainly enough to tease. That is not my only drive or reason for sending you this letter. I honestly feel that I can communicate freely with her and tell her whatever is on my mind and not have to fear anything that she may back. I feel as though we understand each other on many levels. I have already expressed my desire to be with her and just whisk her away to a world that currently only resides in my imagination. My question, and this is a big question, is… is it worth it? I’d be making a huge leap of faith here on my side.

I am already established in my career where I live and she’s established in hers. I have asked her what she would do if I decided to take the big leap and seek out a relationship with her. She expressed a desire to stay close to her family, which I understand since I have a close relationship with my family here. This would seem to leave me with the big decision of either uprooting my own lifestyle and trying to adapt to hers. Or maybe I could ask if she would be willing to move out to me.

I understand it would be gambling a lot and the two of us could stand to sacrifice big initially. I certainly don’t want to break into a marriage unless I was sure it could work, although I believe I already crossed this line somewhat when we started sexting. She has expressed discontent in her current living arrangement with her husband though. I don’t know if this means I am truly able to have a chance with this girl or if I’ve somehow just conveniently become her outlet while she is at a low point. I really want to believe that she has feelings for me the way I have for her. I’m just curious to know if all these feelings are worth making the leap to see her though.

Would it be better if I made a short trip to her area and talked with her? I am not looking for someone to make my decision for me. But seeing as you have given much sound advice in the past, I feel that you are a fantastic person in which to ask their opinion and get an outside view into the situation I am facing. I would appreciate any advice you can give to me, no matter how brief or long the advice is. I thank you in advance.

Leap of Faith

DEAR LEAP OF FAITH: Slow your roll, son.

This isn’t gambling; gambling implies that there’s a vaguely reasonable chance you could win. This is buying a scratch-off ticket and hoping for the million dollar jackpot.

Let’s start with the fact that you don’t really know this woman. You are talking about uprooting your life and completely disrupting hers (and causing not inconsiderable levels of trauma to her kid) when there’s a critical stage that you haven’t hit yet: meeting her in person.

Now look, don’t get me wrong: I believe that successful relationships can and do start online. I know people who met on World of Warcraft and got married in real life. I’ve got friends I’ve known for over a decade now that I met through an online forum and I consider many of them lifelong friends. But the thing is: I’ve met most of ’em out in meatspace. I’ve eaten with them, gotten drunk with them, danced with them been to movies and cons with them, I’ve sold comics with them, helped them hit on women (and men), even been to (and officiated at) their weddings and they’ve been to mine. There are several of them who I haven’t actually met in person yet and while I consider us friends, it’s just not the same as having met in the flesh.

And that’s a critical issue here. You may know each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. You may have had long text and IM conversations into the night. You may have run up insane phone bills talking to one another, but you still haven’t met in person. And to be perfectly honest, there is no substitute for that. No amount of phone calls, sexting or Skyping or trading photos back and forth is going to equal the experience of actually being in the same room at the same time. Yes, the Internet lets us build connections, even relationships with people from all around the world but we’re still animals and no matter how much we may connect on an intellectual level, that physical connection is absolutely vital. I’ve met people I’ve had insanely flirty emails and phone conversations with but when we met in person we had all of the charge of a damp squib.

And you really don’t want to find this out after she’s initiated divorce proceedings and you’ve quit your job and moved half-way across the country.

Of course, this is all before you factor in all of the other issues.

Could a relationship between the two of you work? Sure. Someone’s gotta win the MegaMillions jackpot, after all. But it’s pretty goddamn unlikely. You two may love each other as much as you can without actual physical contact but, frankly (and now this song is going to be stuck in my head) but love just ain’t enough. You’re coming into this with some serious problems – you live across the country from each other, you’re both firmly established in your own lives, she’s married, has a child with her husband and, like I said, YOU HAVE NOT MET IN PERSON YET. Any one of these is going to cause problems in a relationship. Put them all together… well, I hate to be blunt but I wouldn’t be betting on you crazy kids making it work. You’d be banking on being the exception rather than the rule and the odds of that are next to astronomical.

But hey, I get that when you’re in love, you’re in love and you want to give it a shot no matter how ill-advised.

So if you’re determined to ignore me and actually try to pursue this (DON’T), then my advice to you is to put everything about a relationship on the back-burner. Hell, I’d recommend putting it all back into the damn pantry for now. Start slow. Try taking a trip out to just visit her – not to have the “defining the relationship” talk, not to decide who’s moving where – hell, not even to sleep together (which, considering that she’s married, is another topic entirely). Just go and see  how the two of you do in person. Even if the two of you get along like a house on fire when you’re together in the flesh, do not start making relationship plans. There is a profound difference between seeing each other for a weekend at a time and living together as many a long-distance couple has found to their sorrow.

And believe me, visiting her is going to be difficult enough, what with the aforementioned husband and child. Unless the two of them are in an open relationship, it’s going to be pretty damned awkward for her to get some serious alone time with a dude from the Internet she’s never actually met in person before. You’re going to be lucky if you manage to get a movie together, never mind quality naked time.

You have feelings. Fine. But feelings aren’t going to make a relationship work, especially a relationship that requires disrupting your lives to the degree that this would. Take some time – a lot of time – to make sure this is a relationship that has legs in the real world before you make any hasty and life altering decisions.

(Side note: there’s nothing morally wrong with feelings, even if you have feelings for someone who’s in a relationship. It’s what you do with those feelings that matters.)

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I recently had a one night stand with some talent coming through my city. It wasn’t a drunken escapade, and it was an overall very pleasant experience. We cuddled, almost as much as being otherwise entertained, and he was really affectionate. He was leaving for the next venue the next day, and he stayed with me until he had to leave, I dropped him off with hugs and kisses and he said he’d like to keep in touch and will probably be performing again in a few months. I joked he has my number too, and wished him safe travels. 

So my question is this: am I deluded to think he actually wants to hear from me? Isn’t that how one night stands work, the cliched, “I’ll call you?” Are all single incident escapades that … intimate, for lack of better word, even after the sex?

I actually like him, despite living in different states at the moment, and would like to text him. What do I follow up with? 

(And for the record, I did go into the experience knowing it would probably be the only time I see him, and am okay with that, however I had a wonderful time and connected more than I expected, so why not reach out?)

Sleepless In San Antonio

DEAR SLEEPLESS IN SAN ANTONIO: There’s no law that says that hooking up with someone can’t be emotionally intimate as well as physically. Many an amazing relationship started as a one-night stand, even long-distance ones. Sometimes you get a friends-with-benefits relationship. Sometimes you end up as friends who had a fling. And sometimes that one night stand just doesn’t end. Over the course of my dating career I eventually made the decision that I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone, even just for a one-night stand, that I couldn’t see myself being friends with… and I’ve ended up with some great friends that way.

Clearly the two of you had great emotional chemistry as well being hot for each others bods. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t make at least an overture to stay in contact; send him a text and say “hey”. You don’t need any elaborate excuse to get in contact, just ask him how life on the road is going. Keeping it light, friendly and open-ended is the key.

Just keep your expectations reasonable and open; going in hoping that this is going to turn into a romance to last the ages is going to be a recipe for heartbreak.

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 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)