DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:  I, a man, have struggled with my weight for years, and so has my husband. We’ve both gained a significant amount of weight since we’ve been married, but I’m trying to mitigate that with diet and exercise. The problem is, he isn’t; and every time I try to talk with him about it, he makes me feel like I’m the bad guy for bringing it up.

Look, we’re both approaching 40, and I know we’ll never be the “twinks” we were when we met, but I’d like to be better than I am, and I am finding it very difficult to get healthy without his support. He’s pre-diabetic. He has sleep apnea. His sex drive is nowhere near it was when we met. And it’s frustrating because all of this is correctable and he’s refusing to even try. It’s like he doesn’t care.

I love my husband. I will never “fat-shame” him, and I know my weight struggles aren’t his issue. But I would find it a lot easier to tackle this if I feel like he were more supportive, and if he would try to be healthier too. I don’t know what to do, short of giving him an ultimatum: it’s me or the sugar, dude. Take your pick.

Concerned For His Health

DEAR CONCERNED FOR HIS HEALTH: One of the universal truths is that time and gravity make fools of us all in the end, CFHH, and everything we do is ultimately fighting a delaying action. This gets harder as we start hitting our 40s and 50s, when our metabolisms take a massive hit. Suddenly, the exercise that used to keep us in fighting trim no longer works like it used to and the foods we used to be able to eat with abandon turn on us.

That’s when everyone has to make a choice: is it worth it to them to change things up and work at pushing back against the inevitable? Or do we prefer the more immediate pleasures of food and relaxation?

Of course, this comes with consequences too. While it’s certainly possible to be fat and healthy, it sounds like your husband isn’t. That’s concerning. What’s slightly more concerning is that he doesn’t care.

This is where it’s time to start using your words and figuring out just how he’s feeling. His deciding to let himself go could be a symptom of – and trigger for – depression. One of the ways that depression manifests is the feeling that you’re a worthless pile of garbage and there’s no point in trying to do anything about it. Then as your physical state deteriorates, you take that as proof that you are, in fact, garbage, which reinforces those feelings. Alternately, if he’s on any medication – especially certain antidepressants – then the side-effects could be sapping his energy or desire to change things. He might be reacting to trauma or a sudden change in his life like the death of loved one or the loss of his job. Or he might have just decided he no longer gives a damn.

But he’s the only one who can tell you just what’s going on. So the best thing to do right now is sit down and have that Awkward Conversation – about your needs, his needs and just what’s going on. You’ll want to emphasize that part of what you want from him is his support for your goals, as well as your worry about his health. Sleep apnea, for example, can lead to potentially fatal complications. So let him know: you want the two of you to be there, not just for a good time but for a long time. And you want that time to be together.

The sooner you have an idea of how he’s feeling – and he understands what it is that you need from him – the sooner you two can figure out a way for both of you to get your needs met.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am a 27 year old male with very limited dating experience due to a combination of mild disability, career focus and self-limiting beliefs. I’ve put in a lot of work to improve things, and as a result, my confidence and energy are up.  I’ve even been approached by gay men. Being straight, I wasn’t interested, but it certainly increased my confidence in being able to land a good woman.

Some members of my friend group, possibly having noticed my increased confidence and energy, and have recently made remarks of how me and a single friend of theirs should ‘totally get together’. I’m not sure if they’re joking or legit trying to set the two of us up. She and I are compatible (similar views on money, similar interests, trust each other, have never had drama, approach conflict in a similar way) and we like each other on a platonic level. This friend group even already contains couples, so it wouldn’t make anything awkward in that regard.

The problem here is I have never seen her in any romantic way, and as far as I can tell she has shown no signs of romantic interest in me.

I’m not sure what to do. Should I make a move? See if flirty behavior builds feelings for either of us? Ask one of our mutual friends if they’re just joking about the whole thing? Accept the relationship as platonic and find someone else entirely? Ask her how she feels about the situation and act accordingly? Something else?

Thanks,

To Ask or Not To Ask

DEAR TO ASK OR NOT TO ASK: Slow your roll, TAoNTA. You aren’t just putting the cart before the horse, you don’t even have a cart or a horse yet. The fact that your buds have been making comments about how you and their friend should get together may well just be that: stray comments. Observing that there’re two single people in the social circle isn’t quite the same as actively ‘shipping the couple or trying to set the two of you up as an item. Taking this as anything other than idle chatter is getting so far ahead of yourself that you’ve looped back around like a weird sociological mobius strip.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that your friends really do think that you two would make a good match and are actually, actively trying to pair the spares. Like I said to STSC, your relationships aren’t a democracy. Other people don’t get a vote in who you date or who you’re attracted to. The fact that they think that you and she might be a good couple in no way obligates you to actually give it a shot, especially if you aren’t interested in her. The last thing either of you need is to go through the motions of trying to date because other people want to see it happen. That’s a great way to cause all kinds of friction in the social group – the kind that causes hard feelings and tears friends apart.

And on top of that: this is all very one sided. Right now, you have no idea if they’re telling her this as well. She may well have no idea that they’re playing Cupid. And for that matter… she may well have perfectly good reasons for not wanting a relationship right now and would seriously resent her friends sticking their noses into things.

Now, if we had some data on any of those points, we could start to see whether it’s worth doing some exploratory flirting and see if anything develops. But we don’t.  As it is: you’re not feeling it for her in the first place, which means that you don’t really have any reason to try to pursue things with her. Right now, that would come off far more like trying to fill a hole labeled “girlfriend” with an available warm body instead of starting a relationship based on mutual attraction and respect.

So with the facts on the ground being what they are, I think the best thing you can do is just laugh it off and ignore the whole thing as a joke. And if it bothers you, tell your friends to back off with the jokey-jokes.

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 was wondering if you could help me out with friendship dynamics.

I met this really cool girl, we’ll call her Zoe, about 3 months ago. We hit it off immediately: 3-hour conversation, lots in common, super easy to talk to, soul-sister kind of feeling. She’s a much more extraverted person than I usually hang out with, but that made me excited because she’s connected with this big group of other cool people. When I first met her, I got a weird feeling about her personality, but it was hard to place why and because the connection felt good, I brushed it off as me having too high expectations for people.

This girl and her husband host a weekly get-together at their home, which they use as a sort of open house to connect with their friends. The first time I went, it was amazing. Fun games, great conversation, etc. All the people were nice. In addition, Zoe came over to hang out with me at my house a few times and we hit it off just like the first time we hung out.

The problem is that the connection seems to be tapering off, and I don’t know why.

I got sick recently, starting about a month ago, where I can’t drive and the doctors aren’t sure what’s wrong (I’m not contagious). So I haven’t been able to really get out of my house and I haven’t been able to make it to any of the weekly get-togethers or other things my new friend group has planned, such as hiking trips and other social events on the weekends. I told my friend what was going on with me around the time I first got sick, and she seemed concerned and sympathetic in text messages, but that’s as far as it went.

This is kind of where the issues started. I haven’t seen her in a while because I can’t drive. My sickness makes it hard to be out and about so I haven’t risked catching a ride to her place. I invited her over to my place to hang out but she said she was busy and was so sorry. After a while, she started not replying to my texts as much (I send one maybe once a week and she replies about half the time). She also never checked in on me to see if I was doing ok, and it started to feel awkward reaching out to her, knowing I was probably going to get rejected, either by being turned down for hanging out or just not receiving a response at all. I know that she’s been extremely busy socially lately as well.

I don’t know if my expectations are unrealistic, but here they are so it’s clear where my mind goes when I’m anxious: A good friend would have checked in on me to see if I was getting better from my sickness. She hasn’t. A good friend would have tried to see me or reschedule knowing that I can’t go anywhere, but she has not. A good friend would have responded to my texts eventually, even just to let me know she got them, rather than ignoring them entirely. She’s apologized for not responding to my texts in the past, saying how much she cares for and misses me, but the behavior doesn’t change and I don’t see any actions supporting her words.

I know this friendship is young (again on the order of a few months), but I can’t help but get the intuitive hit that this girl is more self-centered than she initially let on. I have another close friend who said he’s seen similar patterns in people. Essentially, they make sure that you’re attached to them and love them and go over to their place to hang out, but once they know you’re hooked, they sit back and relax. I don’t want to believe this is the kind of new friend I found. I’d hate to lose this friend because she’s sort of the self-titled “leader” of this new group and I like a lot of the people I’ve met within it, but it feels really crappy being ignored, especially when I’m sick. And to be honest, I miss her. Again, she’s cool and fun to hang out with.

Are my expectations too high? Do I have a blind spot that I’m unaware of that’s making me the problem in this situation? I’ve often suspected I have social dynamics struggles since I haven’t been able to maintain friendships for more than 2-3 years since I was little, and I also know that I’m super sensitive and have some anxiety that gets in my way. I also have a tendency to assume people don’t like me and don’t want me around, when in fact I’ve been told I’m a joy to be around and very socially calibrated (I think I just learned the motions and can act well). So I know these things are increasing my anxiety around the situation and I’m wondering if it’s not just me and my own issues.

Any insights for me? Assuming there’s absolutely nothing wrong, and this is normal for new friendships, do you have any tips on how to maintain connection? I haven’t accused her of anything because I don’t even know if she’s done anything wrong!

I don’t want yet another new friendship to fizzle simply because I don’t know what I’m doing. This has happened to me before, and in the past I’ve just stopped reaching out altogether, losing the friendship entirely.

Sincerely,

Sick and Abandoned

DEAR SICK AND ABANDONED: There’re a couple of possibilities here, SaA.

The first is that you may have rounded up the level of the connection that the two of you had. This isn’t all that unusual; we feel the thrill of New Relationship Energy with platonic relationships just as often as we do with romantic or sexual ones. You met someone who’s really cool and you really enjoyed spending time with. It’s understandable that you’d feel strongly about this new connection you had. Unfortunately, the fact that we may be excited about a new relationship – regardless of the type – doesn’t always mean that the person we’re excited about feels the same way. It could well be that while you were super-hyped to have this awesome new person in your life, she didn’t feel the same way. Not that she didn’t like you or didn’t think that you were cool, just that she didn’t necessarily see you as her new BFF.

The second possibility is that your absence meant that the two of you weren’t able to keep the friendship going to the same level. One of the things we rarely think about is that friendships take both time and maintenance. It can take weeks or months to really solidify a friendship beyond being acquaintances and even then, those friendships have to be maintained. It takes seeing each other at least once every couple of weeks to keep a friendship going and preventing them from starting to fade. Considering how recently you met her and how much your illness has incapacitated you, the fact that you haven’t been able to put in those keeping-the-connection-going moments may mean that your friendship meter started depleting. This has nothing to do with you and everything to do with just the way humans form and build social networks. Without active maintenance, they start to go away. Since she’s been planning more active outings that your illness has been preventing you from attending, then it’s that much harder for you two to get together and cement those bonds.

Another possibility is that she’s a little benignly self-centered; she tends to prefer things on her terms, including when and how she sees her friends. If her open-house events are her preferred way of maintaining those social networks, then the fact that you haven’t been able to make it – through no fault of your own – meant that she simply didn’t think of seeing you more often.

Along the same lines, if she’s a real social butterfly, it could well be that she’s topping out at the number of friendships or connections she can reasonably maintain; we all have only so much emotional bandwidth and we can only reasonably maintain so many social connections before some of them start to fade.

It could also be that your illness makes her uncomfortable, or that she’s just selfish and doesn’t like putting herself out there for folks she’s not already close to.

There’s not really any way of knowing, and speculating past a certain point isn’t helpful. It’s too tempting to blame yourself or go down unhelpful roads that aren’t actually connected to reality.

Now all that having been said: I think the likeliest explanation is that your connection wasn’t as tight for both of you. Not everyone bonds with other folks super-quickly and you may have had expectations that she wasn’t going to be able to fulfill at this stage in your friendship. Which is a damn shame, to be sure.

But what I wouldn’t do is assume that this is because people don’t like you. As with romantic or sexual relationships, sometimes we’ll meet people who we have insane chemistry, but we simply aren’t compatible with on some fundamental level.  And it may well suck, because they’re awesome, but it circumstances mean that it just can’t work out. Similarly, just as with romantic or sexual relationships, not every friendship is meant to last forever… or even for terribly long.

If your illness eases up or you find a treatment that makes it easier for you to get around, then it may be possible to rebuild that connection and even put in the time it takes to solidify things. Or it could well be that, circumstances being what they are, this is a friendship that you may have to let go of and prioritize ones where your friends are more willing to make space for you and your restrictions.

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 find myself having a bit of an issue as the current political climate here in the US gets more and more tense.

I’ve been in a relationship with a guy for about four years, living together for most of that time. We have our typical couple ups and downs, but mostly things are good between us. He and I have never seen eye to eye politically, but he was always willing to engage in meaningful discourse.

Recently, and I think in large part due to some new friends he’s made, I have noticed my boyfriend's social media account become more and more vitriolic and hateful. He’s been following and supporting the likes of Ben Shapiro and other extreme-right personalities. He’s been spouting the extreme right talking points like gospel across his social media platform (though he never directly posts or shares these things, he is active in comment sections perpetuating this BS). It hurts me that someone I love is being so openly sexist, racist, and classist. I’ve tried talking to him about it, but he shuts down discussions with “I guess we just have to agree to disagree”.

I’m at my wits' end. Even though he doesn’t treat me any differently, with every comment I read it’s harder to see the man I fell in love with. I guess my question is should I be willing to ignore s

tty opinions if they aren’t being brought into the relationship directly? But if he’s willing to say that people like me (disabled, economically disadvantaged, female) are trash in social media posts, what does it say about what he thinks of me as a person? Should I just get off social media so that I don’t see these things anymore? I’m just a little lost and confused right now. I could really use an outside perspective.

 Left Behind

DEAR LEFT BEHIND: It's never easy when someone you love seems to have lost their goddamn mind, LB. Especially when you can see them doing that long, slow slide towards fascistic thinking, enabled by self-proclaimed suuuuuuper geeeeeeeeniuses, lobster daddies and failed gorilla-minded pick-up gurus. It's a pattern that's unfortunately not uncommon, especially for people who spend a lot of time getting caught in a YouTube spiral by an algorithm that is custom-built to be gamed by bad actors by equating conflagrations in the comments section with "engagement". It also doesn't help when the stalking horses for the alt-right are the faux-civility "Come, let us REASON together" types who insist that they are ever so civil and logical despite having no actual arguments beyond incoherent shouting. It helps create the illusion that the person in question is somehow being "reasonable", while, in fact, saying horrendous s

t and demanding that people engage with them in bad faith. The arguments are solipsistic garbage, the reasoning are pure appeals to emotion and all of it is a matter of playing to pre-existing prejudices while insisting that they're very smart and iconoclastic for saying things that actual, rational society has deemed as racist, classist and frankly unacceptable.

It's something of a design flaw in white male operating system that they can be so easily duped by someone in a suit saying something confidently over and over again. Even when it makes no goddamn sense.

Part of what makes this so sinister is how much this preys on actually reasonable people's cultural programming to avoid conflict. Case in point: the fact that your boyfriend insists on never engaging with you - likely because he knows that's a game that ends with his no longer having a girlfriend. He's relying on your having been acculturated to wanting to avoid causing offense or make trouble by making him upset. This is why he shuts the conversations down with "agree to disagree". It lets him continue the illusion of being "reasonable", while not actually challenging his beliefs or admitting to how he actually feels. He knows at some level that actually engaging with you about this is a losing game. If he did so, he would have to confront the hateful things he says apply to you just as much as the made-up "other" he's railing against online. In that case, then one of two things happens: either he starts to put a human face (yours) to the stereotypes he insists are ruining America and change his views... or you drop kick his ass to the curb so hard that it goes back in time and his grandparents get divorced retroactively.

Here's the thing: he is bringing those beliefs to the relationship; it's just that he's currently not doing anything directly to you. It's not as though he's an entirely different person from the screed-writing hate-monger he's being online. He's not the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll until someone puts a keyboard in front of him, whereupon he turns into the Intellectual Dark Web's Mr. Hyde; he is the exact same person, even when he's putting a smile on and pretending that he didn't just deliver a rant about degenerates that just happens to include people like you.

(Hell, I'm willing to bet a not insignificant amount of money that you're his defense against getting called out for his hate. "Well I can't possibly be X, Y or Z, I'm dating Left Behind!")

So no, in no way, shape or form should you ignore his sh

ty opinions. The fact that he participates in the behavior that makes social media a damned hellscape and contributes to hate against marginalized folks isn't something you can compartmentalize off just because he isn't doing it to you yet. It's part of who he is and part of his identity. And frankly he doesn't get to pretend the stink doesn't stick to him just because so far he keeps it to online spaces. Much like folks who reside in troll farms that insist that they're just doing it "for the lulz" or "ironically" and that they don't mean it, "ironic" hate is still hate. You can roll your eyes while you f

k a goat, but you're still deep in ungulate.

You may want to take some time to watch the Alt-Right Playbook series of videos by Innuendo Studios on YouTube. It'll give you an idea of not just how he became radicalized, but how the alt-right's arguments work. It won't necessarily show you how to change his mind back, but at least you'll understand how someone you loved got seduced by bigotry and hate.

But to be perfectly frank, I think you should dump this guy with the quickness; you're not going to be able to deprogram him with your love or your body. One of the first rules of dealing with cult members is that you don't debate cultists. You aren't going to change their mind and they're going to have a much easier time backing you into a corner where you feel like you're obligated to go along with their bulls

t. You don't want to try to out-logic them because they don't care about logic. Logic, to them, means "I make you upset by saying horrible things and you react to them like a reasonable person would." Actual, demonstrable logic and honest intellectual discussion would require them being willing to acknowledge things like the systematic nature of racism or how many racist ideas are post-hoc arguments about situations that minorities were forced into by the ruling class following the abolition of slavery.

He ain't gonna want to do that.

More to the point though is that logic won't change his mind because logic didn't change it in the first place. It was an appeal to emotion that got him there. Now if he was going to actually engage with you about his views - instead of just shutting you down - then you could point out to him what you said to me: that he's calling you, specifically, trash. When he argues that you're different, you can press him for just how he doesn't mean you when he says that the other people - who fit the same description as you - are any less valid or real. Maybe, maybe, it might make him realize how full of s

t he is.

But I doubt it. Unfortunately, our brains have robust defense systems that reject ideas that challenge our perception of our identity. Since he's put himself in the position of being both the aggrieved party and the Superior Man Who Is Speaking Uncomfortable Truths, he's going to ignore the inconvenient liberal bias of reality and respond with insults while he doubles down on his beliefs.

What you need to do is stop letting that cultural programming keep you in a situation you know is untenable. It's time for you to quit worrying about not causing a scene; you should be causing a scene. This is the exact sort of situation where causing a scene and making trouble is called for. Your boyfriend started becoming a bigot. That's a dealbreaker and he needs to face the consequences for those actions... including getting bounced so hard he achieves low-Earth orbit.

I think you should move out and dump him. And when you do - preferably from a safe distance - let him know, in no uncertain terms: you're leaving him because of his hate.

Maybe seeing what this has cost him will make him reflect on his choices. But that's on him to do. You need to do what's best for you, and what's best for you is to GTFO.

Good luck. And write back to let us know how you're doing.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This year started out pretty rough for me. The girl I had been dating, we shall call her M, and I decided it was best to break up (more like she decided she didn’t want to be with me anymore and I simply felt like I couldn’t make her stay in a relationship she didn’t want) She offered to stay friends but whether it was my pride or my stubbornness I wanted nothing to do with it. I still loved her and being friends was off the table for me. We never spoke since the breakup.

The months that followed were rough. I would keep scrolling through my photos and look at pictures of her and I together and would fall into feeling of loneliness and depression. I decided to head out and hit the gym and spend time with friends. I’ve lost weight to the point that I had to buy new clothes for I went down two sizes. I also decided to apply for a new position at work and got offered an even higher position than the one I initially applied too. I’ve also started talking with other girls and have gone on dates. It feels like life is turning around but, I still can’t stop thinking of M. I do find myself wandering into her instagram page and seeing her life going well without me, and I am happy she is fulfilling all of the things she told me she wanted to do. Contacting her is out of the question as she shut that door, locked it and threw away the key. Sometimes I think I miss the idea of her, the feeling of having another person that connected with me like she did. It got to the point that the excitement of my new job wore off and I felt lonely again.

Is this a normal feeling? How do I overcome it? It just feels like whenever I take a step forward I end up taking two steps back. I’ve tried living my life without “checking up” on her but I get anxious not knowing about her.

In Love With (Her) Ghost

DEAR IN LOVE WITH (HER) GHOST: I hate to say it ILWHG, but you're kind of the author of your own misery here. The reason why you aren't able to get over her is because you keep reopening those wounds. You keep taking a step forward by focusing on some post-breakup self-improvement, and you're making strides physically but you keep undoing all the emotional work you've been doing. Every time you go strolling through her Instagram, you're summoning the Ghost of Futures Past, a painful reminder that the future you two would have had together no longer exists and that hurts.

But here's the thing: the reason why you get anxious about not knowing about her? It's because you're still holding out hope that she's still single. That she hasn't moved on yet. That she hasn't replaced you. You dress it up as being concerned about her and wanting to see that she's living all the dreams she said she was going to live... but it's ultimately about holding onto the hope that maybe there's still a future where the two of you get back together.

Small wonder you're bleeding away all that progress. You're never going to get over her if you're constantly double-checking to see if she's still single or if she's dating someone else or comparing yourself to her new guy.

Part of why this still hurts is that you're still defining yourself by the fact that you are her ex. Getting over someone means putting your relationship with them behind you and moving forward. You aren't doing that. You may be part of her past, but she's still very much part of your present, and that's killing your forward momentum. Every time you build up a head of steam and start making progress, you sabotage it by checking in on her.

You're never going to get over her until you can let go of her. And you're never going to do that until you stop angsting over the inevitability that yes, she will be dating someone else. And I am here from the future to tell you that when it happens, it's going to kick you square in the junk like you just got dumped a second time for funsies.

So it's time to do the only reasonable thing: you need to let her go. And to do that, you need to do the one thing you haven't been willing to do: you need to give yourself closure by taking the Nuclear Option and block her Instagram, her Twitter, her TikTok, everything. It's not that she dumped you and now she's dead to you, it's that you are never going to heal if you keep picking at the wounds. As long as you're going back and letting the ghost of your relationship haunt you, you're never going to be able to put her behind you. This chapter of your story has come to it's natural conclusion. It's time to start writing the next one.

Block her accounts and move forward. It'll be ok. I promise.

Good luck.

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