DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m having a hard time maintaining a post-breakup relationship.

This is the first time I (she/her) am making an effort to stay friends with my ex (he/him). We’ve been together for three years, sharing an apartment for 1.5 years. I ended things 4 months ago and moved out 1 month ago.

Since the breakup, he has asked me multiple times in different ways if I could imagine some form of cuddling/sex and I have always clearly said “no”. This was even a source of arguments when we were still together because I hadn’t been sleeping with him for some months…

A few days ago we spent the first evening together as really just friends and just the two of us and contrary to my fears it went pretty nice! We cooked, talked, listened to music. To me it felt nice and friendly, not too close or boundary crossing. Two days later he messages me “I guess this still doesn’t change the fact that you don’t want us to be closer? Sure, we had tasty food, a bottle of wine, listened to some cuddle-compatible music…”

My first instinct: Damn it, I shouldn’t have done that! I was getting his hopes up with this atmosphere.

On second thoughts: Wait, I told him a million times that I don’t want to get physical with him. Do I really have to engineer our time in a way it does not get too cozy or send any ‘vibes’? Can I only put on death metal when we’re together so that there won’t be ‘that kind of mood’? Noooooo? Is it simply too soon to be friends like this?

So I messaged him that I feel like I have to state clearly for one last time that I won’t ever kiss him again or anything and that it stresses me out that I have to repeat it.

His reaction (in short): Stop mind-reading me, I was asking a question! Stop projecting your worries onto me! You don’t understand me anyways.

Grrrarg. Am I overthinking this? Am I mind-reading him? In a way I shouldn’t? I have a really hard time understanding his message any other way than “Is there a tiny chance we can bang now that we drank wine and listened to some mellow music together”? Am I crazy?

Thank you so much

Navigating Muddy Waters

DEAR NAVIGATING MUDDY WATERS: No, you’re not overthinking this. Your ex is invested in the idea that you’ve changed your mind – or that you will, eventually – about sex with him. He has his desired outcome – sex with you – and is working backwards from there. There’s literally nothing you could do that your ex isn’t going to take as a signal. If you were drinking Topo Chico and listening to Gorgoroth, he would still find some way to frame it as your sending him a vibe somehow.

This is a form of Nice Guy behavior; he knows what the answer is, but he’s trying not to hear it. He wants the answer to be yes – or at least “eventually” – so he will twist himself into logical pretzels to justify holding on to hope that your resolve is weakening. He will take almost anything as proof that maybe things are finally coming up Milhouse. Whether it’s the fact that you drank wine instead of beer or soft drinks, the music that was playing or just the tone of voice when you said “no”, he will latch on to anything that he can point to to say that you’re changing your mind. This way, he can frame himself as a romantic hero instead of a habitual line-stepper.

The problem is, well… you’re refusing to play along with his fantasy. You’re stubbornly refusing to heed the siren call of his boner and so he’s getting frustrated. Moreover, he also knows that his place in your life is precarious; as much as he keeps stepping over the line, he realizes that if he pushes too hard, you’re going to run out of patience. Since his plans to get you back in bed are predicated on maintaining this “friendship”, he knows that he needs to keep you from kicking him to the curb. Except you’ve just called him out on his crap. So he does what many, many lame dudes have done before: he puts it on you. You’re imagining things. You’re reading too much into it. You never understood him and that’s not what he’s like at all. It’s bulls

t; dude is as transparent as glass. But we live in a culture that continually teaches women to not trust their own instincts or even their own lived experiences and so you get that nagging feeling in the back of your mind. Is he right? Are you sending him mixed messages?

No. No you aren’t. You’ve been clear about your boundaries and that sex is never, ever going to happen. He just doesn’t like the answer.

And here’s the thing: under other circumstances, somebody wanting to make sure they weren’t catching a vibe would be reasonable. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a person double-checking about whether they were reading things correctly or not. But those aren’t the circumstances in your case. You’ve been saying “no, nein, nyet, nu-uh” over and over again. You have smacked him upside the head with a clue-by-four with the words “NOT INTERESTED” carved into it and he’s chosen to not pay attention.

So since the Clue By Four didn’t work, it’s time for the Chair Leg of Truth instead, and the Chair Leg of Truth is wise and terrible. This dude is going to keep pushing at your boundaries because he isn’t interested in being told no. So you need to tell him, for the last time: Not just no but HELL NO and not only do you not appreciate his constant pushing and line-stepping but the way he tries to put that on you instead. And if he’s going to keep acting like this, then you’re going to have to make sure he gets the message by choosing the Nuclear Option and dropping him like 5th period French.

You can give him a last chance if you really feel the need. But just between you, me and everyone reading this, I am here from the future to tell you: he’s going to pull this crap again. He’s a habitual line-stepper. It’s what he does. And I think you’ll be much happier in the long run if you kick him to the curb with the quickness.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So a girl I’ve hung out with constantly for the past 7 months turned me down when I asked her out for a date. I was cool with it and now she seems angry that I moved on and is trying to make me jealous on social media and showing up places I go with other guys. My guy and girl friends confirm this seems to be the case.

Why is she acting like this when she rejected me?

If it makes a difference, she’s really shy and introverted

Thanks.

Shot Down In Flames

DEAR SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES: There are two possibilities here, SDIF.

The first is that, as someone who’s shy and introverted, she changed her mind and doesn’t know how to tell you. So now she’s playing these weird games to try to get you to ask her out again instead of muscling up and using her words like a grown-ass adult.

The other is that just because she didn’t want to date you doesn’t mean that she didn’t like the attention, SDIF. Some people get a thrill about knowing that somebody’s got a thing for them, even if they themselves aren’t interested. It’s a boost to the ego to know that somebody’s into you and some people dig the sense of power it gives them over that person.

It sounds like your friend is one of those people. So while she may not have wanted to date you, she enjoyed the attention you were giving her. When you took “no” for an answer like a gentleman and moved on, it meant that she wasn’t going to have that same hold on you. So she may not want you, she doesn’t want anyone else to have you either. So now she wants you to get jealous and start competing for her attention and affection.

Either way, it’s a stupid game. And when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. These aren’t the actions of someone with high social and emotional intelligence. Even if she is having second thoughts about turning you down, these games are a strong indication that you lucked out when she turned you down.

You made the right choice when you moved on. I suggest you keep on moving and leave her and her games behind.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m taking a big step this spring and moving in with my boyfriend. After a year of long distance, we can’t wait and it’s the first time either of us have lived with a significant other. But last night, as I clipped my toenails in bed, I asked myself – am I gross?

Being away from him, relishing my privacy, I might have picked up a few indecent habits along the way. And what about the rest of my adult life? My underwear is ancient (I’ve had it since high school). I really like the taste of anchovies. I pop the occasion zit. You get the point.

Should I clean up my act? Or expect him to embrace my foibles?

Sincerely,

(Probably) Kinda Gross

DEAR PROBABLY KINDA GROSS: Not gonna lie, PKG, I cringed a little about clipping your toenails in bed. Not the activity, just the location; I mean, the idea of those suckers getting caught in the sheets and scratching you as you’re trying to sleep? Geh.

But honestly, you seem, to be conflating “being gross” with “having a body and existing in physical space”.  We’re sacks of tapioca and bacon piloting meat robots, which means we’re going to experience the weirdness that flesh is heir to. You’re going to need to trim your nails. You’ll have ingrown hairs in inconvenient places that need to be taken care of. You’re going to fart, belch and piss. Unless you’re dating someone who is under the impression that you’re an incredible simulacra of a human being, biological processes are going to happen. Trying to pretend they don’t is just idiotic.

Now in fairness, there was a point where women were expected to pretend that they didn’t fart, sweat or require any maintenance whatsoever. There are women of our grandparents’ generation who would get up hours before their husbands so that their husbands never saw them without makeup on.

It was absurd then and it’s even more absurd now. Part of living together is the increased comfort and intimacy with living with someone. That means learning to adapt and live with their picadillos and all the various ways that our bodies do weird crap. And with that increased comfort comes increased acceptance that goes from “afraid to acknowledge that you use the bathroom on occasion” to “Hey honey, come look at this incredibly messed up thing.” Because there’s only so much pretending that you don’t have biological functions that you can do before you start getting weird.

To be sure, there are some things that are reasonable things to ask for. Cleaning one’s hair out of the drain in the shower, making sure one doesn’t miss the toilet in the middle of the night, not leaving snotty tissues on every flat surface… these are all things that should come standard when you’re shacking up with someone.

But loving somebody and living with them means accepting that they’re meatbags, same as you. That means there’re going to be times when one of you will rip a fart in the shower that’s so loud, the other will hear it in the kitchen. And then they can either pretend that they‘ve never had a gastrointestinal system… or you can give them the highest of fives.

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 26 year old man in an open marriage that’s recently become long distance. This letter isn’t about my relationship with my wife; going long distance has been stressful and problematic but we’re finding ways to cope. There’s also a clear timetable for us to return to co-habitation.

Instead, this is about my former secondary partner, who I first met around the same time as my now-wife. She is a few years younger than me, and at the time that we met had only had one sexual or romantic relationship, while I was considerably more experienced. We quickly settled into a very close friendship with elements of casual sex and BDSM. She always knew about and was incredibly supportive of my relationship with my now wife.

This continued for around 18 months, until my elopement – which she was invited to, and initially planned to attend. She cancelled at the last minute, and we had to scramble quickly to find a replacement witness. A week or so later, she ended the sexual aspect of our relationship.

Fast forward eight months or so, and we rekindled that aspect of our relationship, but it didn’t last long; she started seeing someone new very shortly after, and chose to take a step back again, before starting to ghost me. After a few weeks of relative silence, I called her out on this behavior, which she acknowledged she had been doing; when pressed as to why, she pointed to “a

hole”-like behaviors of mine that I didn’t think were new aspects of our interaction.

At this point, I should point out that I have Asperger’s – which she knew about for a long time, and has experience with family members with the same diagnosis. I apologized without reservation for anything I had done to make her feel uncomfortable and asked for her help in mending any broken bridges. She refused and we haven’t spoken in the four months since; I chose to prioritize self-care as I was going through a difficult period between jobs, arranging my “official” wedding, moving country, and starting a new degree course.

Now that the transition period is over, I’m in a different country from my wife, and I’m finding not having the close friendship I had with my former partner to be very stressful. I miss the role she played in my life, but I also miss her just as a person. I don’t know if there’s any point in trying to talk to her again; when we last spoke, it felt like she made her decision to distance herself from me long before I challenged her over it.

Any ideas on how to fill this gap?

Lonely Poly

DEAR LONELY POLY: I have seen situations like yours before LP, so I’m wondering about a detail you left out: was your secondary partner interested polyamory before you two got together?

I ask because there’s a tale as old as… well, modern poly relationships anyway… where one party of the triad or quad or what-have-you got dragged into being in a polyamorous relationship as the only way of being with their partner. They aren’t happy with being poly, doubly so if they’re not primary, but they take it as a price of entry into the relationship with their snugglebunny. For a while everything tends to be fine… right up until their partner and his or her primary decide to be serious. Maybe it’s getting married, maybe it’s deciding to have a kid or buy a house together, but some form of “this is now a serious relationship” has taken place.

The problem is that, up until this point, the reluctant poly person was able to handle things. Maybe they harbor the fantasy that maybe they’d be primary. Or – even better – they may believe that if they stick in there, they may finally get to be the exclusive partner. But now that the primary pair have solidified their commitment, the secondary is in a quandary: either they have to give up on the fantasy that things will change or they have to give up on the relationship.

More often than not, they tend to choose the latter.

Is this what happened? I don’t know. The timing of your secondary’s exit – both from your wedding and the relationship – certainly implies this. The fact that your rekindled relationship didn’t last and she proceeded to start cutting you out also suggests to me that she tried again and just couldn’t handle it.

But again, I could well be wrong, and correlation isn’t causation. I’ve only got what you tell me to work with, and you kind of elide over certain details like what those “a

hole behaviors” were. It could just as easily be that she got tired of your s

t (you know, the “usual aspects” of your relationship) and the fact that things hadn’t changed meant that she decided to “Nope” the hell out again afterwards. Your behavior running up to the wedding could just as easily have become insufferable and while she was leaving you in the lurch, “that’s all she can stands ‘cuz she can’t stands no more,” to paraphrase my sailor grandpa.

The only person who can tell you the real reason is your friend and… well, she doesn’t seem to be in a sharing mood. Her continued radio silence is likely her own form of self-care. Maybe she’s still pissed at your behavior. Maybe she realized that she’s the Martha to your Ten and had to get out of a situation that she knew was bad for her. Either way, you’re probably going to have to accept that she’s gone. It’s good to want to be friends after a break-up but some people won’t want it back. Sometimes there really is no bridging that particular gap and there’s nothing left to do but just accept it and move on.

So as much as it sucks – and it really sucks when a treasured friendship ends –  you may just have to let this friendship go. If you can learn from it and not make any mistakes you may have made the next time, then that’s some value you can take from it. But unfortunately, the best thing you can do now is let her go and find some new friends. If she ever decides to come back, it’ll be her decision and on her terms.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m dealing with a guy who won’t take a hint, and it’s starting to freak me out. Imagine the most “Nice Guy” of nice guy behaviors, and you’ve got this fellow. I’ve worked part-time in a cafe for about three years, and he started working there about a year and a half ago. After a few months of working together he decided he had a huge crush on me. I rejected him, and he physically assaulted me by trapping me inside a booth against the wall at a bar and hugging me until I literally started screaming. (I was there with my friends, and he just decided to invite himself. I don’t know how he got the info about where we were.)

About eight months ago he told me again that he has a huge crush on me. I tried my best to deflect.

Fast forward to now. He’s been pushing his friendship on me really hardcore in the past six months or so. I try to keep it at arm’s length (I will never trust someone who has so blatantly ignored my “no”) but I’m non-confrontational and I’m definitely feeling the effects of my female socialization to “keep the peace,” despite the fact that I *hate* feeling like that. I partly thought that was a safer option because he’d been seeing someone else so I assumed he stopped liking me. Unfortunately, when I’m at work and he’s chatting my ear off or when he’s incessantly texting me, sometimes it’s easier to just reply than to ask him to back off. Because when I do put my foot down he throws a big “woe is me” party and is impossible to work with, not just for me but for everyone.

In the past month he’s been bending over backwards to try to hang out with me alone. No amount of me saying “I’m busy,” “I already have plans,” “no thank you,” or even “I have a date tonight” has hindered the attempts. This behavior clued me in that his romantic feelings clearly hadn’t died, but I tried to ignore it in a naive hope that it would go away. Then he recently sent me a long text message not just asking me out, but extolling all these reasons he likes me and thinks I’m basically more awesome than other people. (Ugh. I don’t want to be anyone’s unicorn.) Though he included a bit about respecting my friendship regardless of my answer, I’m (justifiably) skeptical about that.

I wrote him back and firmly said I’m not interested. He appeared to accept my answer. Since then, though, he’s texted me several times and mentioned the situation in a roundabout way, always implying that he wants to hear from me. Normally I would write back and tell him, straight up, that he needs to respect my boundaries and leave me alone. I’ve done it with people before. But because we have to work together I’m afraid that if I say something direct, he’ll just throw a tantrum and I’ll end up suffering. (For context: I told my manager about the physical assault, but because it didn’t happen at work there wasn’t much the manager could do other than ask me how to make work more comfortable for me.)

I KNOW I need to stop catering to him when he pushes his friendship on me, and I need to stand firm and tell him to respect my boundaries. I want to tell him to back off, but all I can think about is last time I rejected this dude I got physically assaulted. By the way, I’m 27, and he’s a decade older than me.

Seriously…please help me. I don’t know how to do what I know I need to do.

– Respect. My. Boundaries.

DEAR RESPECT MY BOUNDARIES: OK I’m going to start this with a HOLY HOPPING SHEEP S

T PINNING YOU IN THE BOOTH LIKE THAT IS GODDAMN NOT ACCEPTABLE. Jesus Christ, I’m kind of astounded you don’t mace the guy on principle at this point.

<ahem>

You know what you need to do, RMB, and I think you’re asking me for permission to do it. So… permission granted. You need to tell him, straight up, to step off. No soft “no’s” – he clearly gets them, he’s just ignoring them. No, you have to draw on your training in Kun L’un and focus your chi until your “no” becomes like unto a thing of iron. Leave no room for doubt: you don’t like him, you don’t want to be friends, you definitely don’t want to date him and you really don’t appreciate the bulls

t he pulls to get your attention. And then you go full nuclear on him: block his number, his Facebook account, his Twitter feed, everything.

Now, when you do confront him, you may want to have a friend (or two) for back-up. He’s already assaulted you once when you rejected him; it’s not unreasonable for you to be worried that he might do so again or – worse – escalate. So enlist some friends to be your brute-squad and, if necessary, run interference if he tries to roll up on you again. It may also be a good idea to tell your manager that this is an ongoing problem – one verging into harassment. Looping them in may well be a good idea, if only so that you can do things like get scheduled to work completely different shifts from this guy. If he does starts to get threatening or pushy after you’ve told him, then it’s time to seriously consider talking to the police and the wisdom of a restraining order.

What you shouldn’t do is shoulder any responsibility for what he does. Dude is a grown-ass adult; if he throws a tantrum or has a public sad, that’s on him, not you. You’re not responsible for managing his fee-fees, nor are you there to pick up the slack if his pity party makes him unable to do his goddamn job. Either he can put on his big-boy pants and deal with the rejection or he can suffer the consequences of his own behavior. You are not responsible for him in any way, shape or form. 

So. Tell him off (with backup), tell your manager and leave him to have his sad. And if he gets worse: talk to the cops.

Good luck, RMB.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Love your site and it’s definitely been an inspiration, I just recently bought your book New Game+ and have been reading through it to try to get more insight into all the areas of social interactions that I never understood.

Your story regarding being “The one who wasn’t good with girls,” really hits home for me. I’m 26 now and I feel like I’m struggling with trying to become a better version of myself as quickly as possible so I’m doing too much at once just so that I can attract women because I feel lonely and honestly go through long stretches of dry spells which compounds everything. It feels like I’m not being authentic and I don’t know how to get the constant drone of “Sex, sex, sex, sex,” from out of my head. The ironic process theory struggle is real, so any insight or wisdom you could offer on re-calibrating my goals and/or fixing my mindset so that I can actually progress would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for making an awesome site!

New Man Plus

DEAR NEW MAN PLUS: It’s awesome that you’re putting in the work NMP! But – as paradoxical as it may seem – the best thing you can do right now is ease back on the throttle. I get that you want to improve as quickly as possible, but it gets really easy to take on too much at once and end up not doing any of it well. Start by recognizing that this is an ongoing process, a marathon, not a sprint. You want to conserve your emotional and mental energy so that you don’t gas out midway through. This is a lifestyle change, not a crash diet; slow changes are easier to absorb into your life and make it part of you. Plus: as much as you may want to get to the end goal as fast as you can, enjoying the process of improvement can be critical… especially since you may find that what you want changes as you do.

So take a breath. You’ve started down the path. You’ll get there, as long as you don’t exhaust yourself in the process.

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 heterosexual male who is about to turn 26 in a few days. I’m an average guy on good days (I don’t pass the Grimes Test with flying colors) who has never been in a relationship. I consider my social skills to be below par than a lot of people, especially when you consider the fact that I haven’t even had a single friend from the opposite sex in my entire life.

Up until this point, this might sound like any other letter that you receive but this is where it gets interesting.

I have had type-1 diabetes for over a decade and a half now. To add to that, just before I turned 20, I was diagnosed with AIDS (not sexually transmitted).

I know that you repeatedly mention that you are not an actual doctor and I acknowledge and completely respect that. Moreover, you have covered some extremely complex issues, including stuff like living with STDs and chronic illnesses in some of your articles. But this letter is about something else. This is about the practicality of pursuing a relationship while living with such issues.

As I mentioned before, I am an average guy living with 2 chronic illnesses (3, if you consider the psychological issues that come with them). Whenever I look online for advice on whether someone with chronic illnesses should pursue love, relationships, a social life and all of that, the standard answer is that we deserve to be as happy as anyone else and therefore, we should go for it. But the fact that you have a tendency to delve deeper into such issues beyond the obvious, here is what I’d like to know from you:

How fair is it for the person living with something like AIDS to pursue a relationship with a person who may not have it? Consider the number of single guys out there who are looking to be in a relationship with any given girl (I know about oneitis but generally speaking). Out of all those guys, there must be some who are at least comparable to what I am and what I can provide in the relationship. But they do not come with the 2 chronic illnesses, one of which can threaten the life and well-being of the partner. So, why should a girl choose me over someone else who does not have my illnesses, considering that I do not bring anything special to the table? Now, add to that the issues like stigma that the disease brings with it, the other person will be made to go through troubles that they will never know when being with a healthy person.

More importantly, how right is it for someone like me, morally speaking, to even try to look for someone to be in a relationship with when I cannot ensure the health and well-being of myself, let alone my partner?

So in a nutshell, is it even practical for me to try to pursue a relationship?

Thank you for all your help,

Patient Zero

DEAR PATIENT ZERO: Right, so I’ve got a lot of questions right now – not the least of which being why you’re talking to me and not a real doctor, because Dr. NerdLove is NOT a real doctor. But let’s focus on the big ol’ elephant in the room here: the fact that you’re HIV+. This is an area where you really need to talk to your primary-care physician because… well, I think you’re missing some information, PZ. Like, really important information.

To start with: people who are HIV+ do, in fact, date, have sex and marry. Quite regularly, in fact. There are even dating sites out there specifically for people with HIV to  do what’s known as serosorting or dating other people who are also HIV+. So that’s one option available to you. But here’s something you don’t seem to have heard: the guidelines surrounding sex and HIV transmission have actually changed. To start with, people who are at high-risk of exposure to the HIV virus can go on what’s known as PrEP or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis. When taken consistently, PrEP reduces the chances of transmission of the virus by up to 92%. When PrEP is combined with other safe-sex practices, including the correct use of condoms, the chances of exposure become minimal.

Moreover, scientists and doctors have been agreeing that people who have maintained undetectable viral loads – fewer than 200 copies of the virus per milliliter of blood – for six months or more don’t transmit the virus during sex. (https://nrdlv.co/2I4jdiC)

Now of course, this requires strict maintenance of one’s drug regimen in order to keep the virus suppressed in one’s system and getting careless with the meds can cause the viral load to rebound. But we are at a point where not only is HIV not a death-sentence, but the odds of transmission have also been radically reduced.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that there’s not still a lot of stigma out there when it comes to STIs in general and HIV in particular. Many states criminalize not disclosing your status to your sexual partners if you’re HIV+. And, quite frankly, you’re going to have a lot of people who are going to opt out of dating someone who’s HIV+. That’s not fun, but it’s reasonable; folks have a right to decide if even a managed risk is one they don’t want to take. But the fact that someone is HIV+ is just one piece of who they are, and as I’ve said, people with HIV have and are dating and marrying. It’s not a condemnation to a life of celibacy or becoming a social pariah.

Now getting to you, specifically PZ. You say that you don’t pass The Grimes Test. Which, hey, that happens. Now the question becomes: what are you going to do about it? Because just as I’ve talked about how dating is a skill that can be learned and not an essentialist binary, so too is The Grimes Test. If you don’t pass The Grimes Test (https://nrdlv.co/2D16zwO), then you have two options. You can throw your hands up and decide that life has cursed you and there’s nothing you can do… or you can take control of things and start becoming somebody worth dating.

This isn’t to say that you don’t have disadvantages. It doesn’t mean that things can’t be difficult. But difficult isn’t the same as “impossible”. It all depends on how badly you want it. You can accept your life as it currently stands or you can build the life you want, find things that you bring to the table and give yourself the opportunities to find that special someone, someone who’s not going to be put off by the fact that you have a chronic condition.

It’s not easy… but nobody promised you easy. But it is worth it.

The choice is yours.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m in a long distance relationship with a poly girl back home, and I am not poly. This is the first open relationship I’ve ever been in, and we kinda moved into this when I moved away about a month ago. I met her at the start of this year and we immediately had the best chemistry I’ve ever experienced with any person. In terms of interests we were pretty much exactly aligned. We had an amazing 8 months of exclusivity together, but being fully monogamous was clearly taking its toll on her, so we agreed to go our separate ways (at least relationship-wise) following my departure from the country. At that time I never thought that I’d be able to deal with her seeing other people whilst we were together, because no matter how hard I tried to believe that her loving other people did not detract from her experience with me, I just couldn’t.

Of course the problem was that in these 8 months this girl had also become my best and closest friend, so once I left we still talked pretty much daily. This meant that neither of us moved on much at all from one another, but this, of course, manifested in different ways for the mono in me and the poly in her. For me, this meant that I was (and am) completely disinterested in pursuing females over here, whether it be for a fully fledged relationship or just for a casual sort of arrangement). By contrast, for her she moved onto new hookups within a week. I was quite torn apart by this but we talked about it and she explained that she had “moved on” so quickly because she didn’t really consider me to have disappeared from her life.

Fast forward a bit, and after a few more hookups (which she always told me about because she said she wanted to be able to talk about these sorts of things with her best friend) I was slowly becoming more and more okay with her seeing other people. At this point, the whole her being poly thing had been marinating for quite a while, and I’d done a lot of research as to whether a mono person could work within a relationship with a poly person. We’d been talking every day since I’d left, and one night she said that she really wanted to be dating me again because that’s what it felt like we were doing. At first I was a bit reluctant: what changes would being “together” actually enact? We would just be able to call each other by different names, and I would feel even more reluctant to explore other options in terms of dating. I also didn’t want to enter into anything formal, because the lack of rigid formality had allowed me to relax a bit: she could do what she wanted with her body, because we weren’t a thing, and I could afford to not care sometimes. Nonetheless, I really love this girl, and I agreed that we’d been treating each other just like we were together, so I agreed to an open relationship with some restrictions (mostly to make me feel better): she could explore other people sexually, but she was not to enter into parallel relationships. I felt like since I wasn’t there to satisfy her sexually, it would be too much for me to say that she couldn’t have repeat experiences with particular people.

Two weeks later and I feel like she’s only following rules that she wants to follow. She talks to me about a person she met a week ago like she wants to date them (they talk all the time, have talked about sexual stuff they wanna do). I kinda feel terrible asking her to slow down with all that and remember the conditions of our arrangement because I don’t want her to feel like her being poly is ruining our relationship. But at the same time I am suffering. How can I trust her to follow the rules when she’s already ignoring them? Also the ease with which she is able to hook up with people around her is beginning to take a toll on me because of my own lack of success thereof since I’ve been here (it feels like she’s shoving it in my face).

On top of all that my friends are beginning to lose patience with me because they have always counselled me to escape from the relationship as fast as I could. Because this was also the perspective of my parents, I mostly decided to ignore it because I thought if I was happy that was the only thing that mattered. It just takes its toll when everyone around you is unsupportive of my situation.

So what do I do? When entering into this open relationship, I said I’d try my best for a month, and if I couldn’t make it happen, it was never going to happen. I’ve thought about expressing my desire to downgrade the nature of our relationship to purely casual (whilst I’m away at least) but if that happens I don’t know if I’ll be able to avoid staying connected to her. Do I just bite the bullet and completely tear her out of my life? Whilst I’ve been here she’s been one of my only connections back home and has helped me through the hard new city experience.

I’m just beginning to feel like I’m losing my own sense of self value the longer this goes on; like I’m not deserving of a relationship where I’m as happy as my partner.

Thanks,

Lost in My Own Head

DEAR LOST IN MY OWN HEAD: Hoo boy.

Hey, LIMOH, I’m here from the future and I have news for you: this relationship is only going to get worse. Here’s why.

First: you’re really bad at establishing boundaries with your partner. It’s great that she wants to be able to share everything with her bestie. However, her best friend also gets a say in how much gets shared. Just because ya’ll are BFF’s doesn’t mean that you’re both automatically cool with 100% radical sharing – especially in your case, when you’re still dealing with having just broken up with her and the wounds are still raw. If her talking about the dudes she’s sleeping with is bothering you, you are fully within your right to ask her to stop telling you about it. This doesn’t mean that you’re not friends or that you’re Doing Poly Wrong or what-have-you, it just means that you, LIMOH, don’t like hearing about your partner’s sexual adventures.

Second: she’s not following the guidelines you’ve set up for your relationship. And it’s not even “you’ve been doing this for a while and she’s starting to realize that maybe these restrictions don’t work for her” but “it’s been two weeks and she’s already breaking the rules”. That is less of a red flag and more of a seaof red flags at the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. And the fact that you don’t feel like you can call her out on this? Bad. Bad. Sign.

Look my dude, I’m all in favor of whatever flavor of non-monogamy that people want to negotiate between themselves and enter into. But frankly, I think you did what a lot of people do: you agreed to something you don’t actually want because you saw it as your way of holding onto a relationship that, frankly, wasn’t meant to last. Not every relationship is going to end with one of you dying in the saddle, nor should it be. It’s ok to have had a relationship that was just for a little while. Trying to stick the electrodes on it to keep it alive past it’s natural span is just a recipe for heartbreak and misery. And that’s where you are with this. You’re not the first dude I’ve seen dragged into being poly kicking and screaming and you won’t be the last, but the fact is that I don’t think non-monogamy is for you. Certainly not like this and definitely not with her.

Straight talk: she seems… very careless with other people’s feelings. That alone isn’t good. But the fact that she see’s oblivious to your pain, ignores the rules you two had agreed to and doesn’t seem to give much of a damn about how what she does makes you feel? That’s a sign that you should be running from this relationship like all of Hell and half of Hoboken is after you.

Break up with her, dude. This isn’t a good scene and it’s only going to get worse for you. And start working on establishing and enforcing your boundaries while you’re at it.

And for future reference: if you’re ever in a position where you’re contemplating doing a non-monogamous relationship again, I highly suggest you do your research first. I recommend you check out Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino and More Than Two: A Guide To Ethical Polyamory by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert. These’ll help give you some structure and vocabulary if you ever want to negotiate an open relationship in the future.Good luck.

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