DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My partner and I are non-monogamous, and I know that it would be ok for me to be with someone else, but I’m scared to.

I don’t feel this way about my partner dating and I don’t get jealous. But any time I have feelings for someone outside our relationship I get filled with self-loathing feelings. I worry over hurting my partner. I feel like a traitor. I become scared of loving someone more than them or neglecting them for someone else.

My partner encourages me and wants me to date additional people if I so choose, and I want to as well. But I don’t know how to deal with these feelings.

What do I do?

Less Than Two 

DEAR LESS THAN TWO: As strange as it may sound LTT, you’re not the first or only person I’ve heard from who has issues like this. A lot of folks are in open or poly relationships where only one person is choosing to date other people, while the other won’t. Not can’t, or doesn’t but won’t. And often, the reasons for why they choose not to are for the reasons you’ve listed here: they’re worried about hurting their partner or that they are betraying their relationship somehow. It doesn’t matter that their partners are fully ok with them dating other people. Nor does it matter that their partner doesn’t feel threatened or upset by the possibility that someone they love may also have feelings for other people. It’s just a line that those folks can’t bring themselves to cross.

So I think it’s worthwhile to dig in and do some soul-searching and start asking yourself the hard questions.

I think the first question you need to ask is: are you actually poly? One of the reasons why you’ll occasionally find lopsided arrangements in non-monogamous relationships is that only one partner is actually interested in openness or is polyamorous. Sometimes the other partner is what Dan Savage calls “poly-under-duress”; that is, they’re open only because that’s the only way they could stay in a relationship with their partner. But other times, it’s because they’re just not interested. They’re perfectly fine with their partner sleeping with or having relationships with other people; they just don’t want it for themselves. It’s not about jealousy or betrayal or selfishness, it’s just that they’re not interested in other people.

That could be one thing for you to consider, LTT. Is it possible that you’re just not interested in others? Is it possible that you’re feeling self-loathing or worry, not because you’re afraid of hurting your partner but because you feel like you’re supposed to want these things but don’t? Are you feeling like you’re betraying your partner by NOT dating other people?

(The non-poly folks are shaking their head at this but trust me: it’s a thing.)

The next question I think you have to ask yourself is: what, exactly, is stopping you from trusting your partner when they say that they’re cool with your dating other people? Hell, they’re encouraging you to do so. So why don’t you believe them? Do you worry that they’re just telling you what they think you want to hear? Or, alternately, is it possible that you’re worried that they’re pushing you away? That encouraging you to explore relationships with other people is the first step in an admittedly convoluted plot to end the relationship? Are you afraid that your loving someone more is the end goal?

(Again, this seems like the sort of thing that’s more for baroque CW teen dramedies or over the top shoujo manga, but people will get weirdly aggressive in trying to push their partner to be the one to pull the “end of relationship” trigger instead of doing it themselves.)

Another possibility is to ask yourself: are you worried that this is going to expose fault lines in your relationship? That if you do pursue a relationship besides your primary partner, you’ll recognize that maybe you’ve already reached the end of your relationship and you just don’t want to do face that?

Unfortunately, there aren’t any easy ways of getting answers to most of these questions; they’re ones that are going to really require that you sit with your feelings for a while and dig deep while you try to decide just what you’re feeling and why. But there are a few things you two can do together to get answers.

To start with, you can address some of those fears head on. One of the ways that open and poly relationships will deal with issues like neglect or getting caught up in that new-relationship energy is to establish some clear boundaries and open lines of communication. If you deliberately carve out time for just the two of you, then you can help make sure that neither of you are neglecting the others needs. Similarly, having some strong boundaries, especially at the beginning, can help keep you from getting so caught up in the thrill of the new that you don’t neglect your primary relationship in the process. And by keeping your lines of communication open and clear, then the two of you can keep each other appraised about how you’re feeling or if the emotional “check engine” light’s come on and you need to address things.

But if it’s more of a question of trust or acceptance, then maybe what you need to do is shift the game a little. If, for example, you’re worried about playing outside of the relationship might cause pain, then maybe you should consider swinging, rather than polyamory for a while. You may find it reassuring to engage with people, not just with your partner’s permission but their presence. If you two set guidelines, like “we only play as a couple, never separately”, or attend sex clubs or swingers parties together, then you may find it easier to accept that not only is your partner cool with your seeing other folks, but that it makes them happy too. In fact, one of the surprisingly common side-effects of opening up the relationship has been just how much more satisfied couples were with their primary relationship. Plenty of people in open and poly relationships find that they get a thrill or feel good because of their partner’s satisfaction and pleasure — a phenomena known as “compersion”. It doesn’t happen to everyone or in every relationship… but it happens far more than most folks expect.

However, it’s also possible that this is just not a relationship style that’s right for you. If you’re cool with your partner seeing other folks (while respecting their relationship with you) and your choosing not to, then that’s a perfectly legitimate choice. You can have an asymmetrically open relationship if you’re down with that.

More than anything, you and your partner need to do some talking and some soul searching. And if you haven’t already, then you and they should be doing your due diligence and read up on polyamory and open relationships. I recommend checking out “Building Open Relationships: Your hands-on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond!” by Dr. Liz Powell (full disclosure: Dr. Powell is a friend of mine) and “Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships” by Tristan Taormino. These will help give you and your partner the tools and the vocabulary to really dig into the things you’re worried about and decide how best to move forward.

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: This is unusual, because after reading all your blog posts about toxic relationships and such I’d like your insight on my previous toxic relationship. The twist : I think I was the toxic one.

I was in a relationship with a girl for 3 years. She was madly in love with me in the beginning and would do almost anything to please me (mistake #1). I was less into her at that stage but I figured hey what the hell she’s cool to hang with and the sex is great so why not. There were things about her I didn’t like and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things, because of mistake #1.

Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. I didn’t keep away from them out of fear or jealousy. I kept her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.

The same applied to her friends. I kept her from the ones I judged as irresponsible drunks, and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said “Go and enjoy yourself” and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.

I did always use the “Then we should break up” when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around. I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.

Eventually it ended and now she wants nothing to do with me. I miss her dearly and recognize that I’m not in a good place to make an informed decision about whether it was in fact a good relationship with bad parts that I’d like to fix or if it was terrible.

I want to know whether I should blame myself. Was she just not the right type of woman for me? Do I have to be with someone who has mature friends and a loving family? Did I ruin her life and leave her with more bitterness than I could ever make up for? Finally, is there a way to move on without always feeling like I should go back and try to make amends?

I did contact her to try and just set up a normal coffee meeting where we could chat about normal things, because I figured “talk is cheap” and saying “I see where I went wrong” was less useful than showing it but she refused and I could hear the bitterness in her voice so I accepted the no and said goodbye.

Blaming Himself

DEAR BLAMING HIMSELF: Let me sum this one up in advance, because I’m pretty sure you know what I’m already about to say:

Holy hopping sheep-s&&t YES you were being the toxic one.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s break this down a little, shall we? This is going to be harsh but, honestly, I’m not sure you quite get the magnitude of what happened here.

Let’s start with mistake #1. The mistake WASN’T that your girlfriend was madly in love with you and would do anything to please you, it’s the way you took advantage of it. “There were things about her I didn’t like, and what I didn’t like I fixed by giving her my advice and of course she changed those things.” 

Um… do I need to point out how incredibly goddamn creepy and manipulative that sounds? Because that sounds unbelievably creepy and manipulative. People are not repair projects. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean that you get to customize someone to fit your specifications. Nobody – not Brad Pitt, not Drake, not Taylor Swift, not Nicki Minaj, nobody – gets 100% of what they want in a relationship. You get 60%, 70%, even 80% and you round up to 100% because that percentage is so damn awesome that you’re willing to accept the rest as the price of entry. If you’re not willing to accept those imperfections and flaws, then you break up and find someone whose flaws and imperfections you can accept. You don’t try to mold them into the perfect person as though they don’t have a will or personality of their own.

See, it’d be one thing if, say, she’d come to you and said “You know what, I’m not happy with X part of my life, would you help me fix this?” That’s part of being a supportive partner. It’d be equally understandable if it was a case of maintaining your boundaries and saying “I don’t appreciate it when you treat me like X”. However, unless you miswrote things, that isn’t what you were doing.  You were telling her “I don’t like X part of your life and if you loved me, you’d fix it.” And seeing as you weren’t staging an intervention for her alcoholism or substance abuse or something equally destructive, then holy crap does that start to border on emotional abuse.

And I don’t use that term lightly, because of what you say next:

“Her family didn’t mesh well with me mostly because some of them would treat her badly. I didn’t keep away from them out of fear or jealousy. I kept her away because they would degrade her in their drunkenness in front of 30 other people and I couldn’t handle that. So I started to keep her away from them.”

Which you then follow up with:

“I kept her from the ones I judged as irresponsible drunks, and when she wanted to hang out with the mature ones who had normal lives and wanted to take her to coffee I said ‘Go and enjoy yourself’ and didn’t go with her so as to give her some space.”

Want to know why I’m singling these out? Because isolating someone from their friends and family is one of the key hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Dude, I’m sorry if her family were a bunch of drunk a

holes, but it’s not your place to take it upon yourself to decide things for her! You can advise. You can give your opinion. You can tell her that you don’t like how her family treats her. You can suggest that it might be healthier for her to not spend time with family members who’re going to treat her like s

t and encourage her to stand up for herself and her boundaries. But “keeping her away from them” is not your call.

The same goes for isolating her from her friends, because her friends don’t meet your approval. I’m sorry you don’t like her friends. Too goddamn bad. You don’t get to tell someone who they are and aren’t allowed to hang out with.

Using isolation, controlling who she sees, what she does, who she talks to and gets to spend time with are hallmarks of an abusive relationship; it’s the sign of someone controlling and dominating their partner to keep them under their thumb.

The fact that you were doing this out of supposed “concern” for her well being instead of jealousy doesn’t make it better or any less coercive.

Then there’s this:

“I did always use the ‘Then we should break up’ when arguments go heated and she told me that I was the only person who made her so upset and angry that she would start throwing things around.”

These are more tactics of abusers, one that some even call “Dread Game” — weaponizing the fear of losing the relationship as a means of control. Constantly holding the state of the relationship over her head is not a way of handling an argument in a relationship, it’s a way of controlling someone. That’s not a relationship, that’s someone trying to train someone into never complaining. No, her throwing things isn’t the best way of handling things either but Jesus f

king Christ, I’m not entirely surprised that it would escalate to this level.

“I think my being calm when she was losing it made her even more angry.”

Or maybe it’s because you were constantly threatening to break up with her instead of trying to resolve the argument.

Here’s a free hint: arguments are about engagement. Standing there and acting like the stern, disapproving parent isn’t how you resolve things even if you’re 100% in the right. All that’s going to do is piss people off even more.

And oh look, she refuses to have anything to do with you? GOOD.

It’s a damn shame that you miss her, but I find it hard to believe you can’t tell whether it was a flawed-but-fixable relationship or just terrible.

Because, SPOILER ALTERT: it was terrible. And while she may have had her flaws, there is literally nothing in this telling me that this was a case of “picking the wrong partner.”

Well… at least not for you. For her, it very much was.

Should you feel terrible? YES.

Should you be dating someone with a mature and loving family? My dude, if you think that was the problem with your relationship, you really missed the point.

Did you ruin her life? That I can’t say, but you were DEFINITELY an abusive, controlling piece of s

t to her.

Now as for your question about going back and trying to make amends?

Here’s the thing about making amends: it’s only useful if trying to make amends won’t cause even more harm… and that’s exactly what trying to contact her again will do. I simply don’t believe that your desire to make amends is about actually helping her heal so much as an attempt to salve your conscience and convince yourself that you’re not the bad guy here.

No, if you want to move on, you need to change.

The good news is that you’re at least starting to question your behavior. That’s how change starts… but that’s not where it ends. Where it ends is after you’ve gotten help to recognize not just how your behavior was abusive but why and how to start taking responsibility for it. And that’s not going to be a quick and easy transformation.

Here’s what you need to do: you need to call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE and talk with some of the counselors there. They’re there to listen, to help and to make recommendations as to how and brainstorm with you to find possible courses of action. But you need to be completely honest; giving excuses or rationalizations is only going to make any progress take longer.

Here are signs – adapted from author Lundy Bancroft – that you’re making progress:

Admitting fully to what you have done

Stopping excuses and blaming

Accepting responsibility and recognizing that abuse is a choice

Identifying patterns of controlling behavior used

Identifying the attitudes that drive  abuse

Accepting that overcoming abusiveness is a decades-long process and not declaring yourself “cured”

Not demanding credit for improvements you’ve made

Not treating improvements as vouchers to be spent on occasional acts of abuse (ex. “I haven’t done anything like this in a long time, so it’s not a big deal)

Developing respectful, kind, supportive behaviors

Changing how you respond to their partner’s (or former partner’s) anger and grievances

Changing how you act in heated conflicts

Accepting the consequences of actions (including not feeling sorry for yourself about the consequences, and not blaming your partner or children for them)

You’re admitting that you’ve made mistakes. That’s a strong first step. Now you need to take the next one and get help. It’s going to take time – a lot of time. It’s going to take work. But you can do better.

It’s time to BE better.

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 writing to you from a position of slight desperation and I’m really, really hoping you’d help. I’m a 33 year old grad student at one of the leading universities in the USA. I’ve never had a girlfriend of any sort and in fact am still a virgin. One of the reasons for this is my staggering reticence with women; reading your blog (which I cam across last week) was a mind blowing experience as I see so much of my younger self of the Platonic Back Door tactic. Older, and maybe a little wiser, I now know it to be nonsense and this summer I finally decided to try and do something.

The object of my affection is a fellow grad student at the same university; she is in her late 20s, incredibly cute and fantastically smart. Most of all she is my match in wit and banter. I’m a very outgoing, sociable person and it was fantastic to meet someone who can give as good as she gets, tirelessly, when it comes to a bit of teasing. More than anything we have a lot in common and I can genuinely see myself being quite happy with this woman for a long time. I’ve known her since last year, so we’ve been friends – good friends – for about a year. 

Discovering I was attracted to her came completely out of the blue at the beginning of the summer. I finally plucked up the courage to ask her out for a date last week. We went on that date a few days ago and it ended in catastrophe. After a pleasant enough evening I casually mentioned that I would like to kiss her. She totally froze up and, after a few moments of silence, said that it would feel like kissing her brother. After a few more moments of chatting it became clear that all bets were now off and this would be our last date.

I’m perfectly aware that my error was moving too fast; I was extremely angry with myself afterwards and spent much of the rest of the evening beating myself up in my head. I couldn’t believe that what could have worked with frankly the most amazing woman I’ve ever met had ended up in the toilet over one single misplaced sentence. I was perfectly aware of the fact that transitioning from friend to romantic partner required time and yet I got carried away and blew it. I told myself firmly that this was it and that at very least I’d tried, and decided to move on.

The problem is – for the first time in a long time, I don’t want to. Usually in these situations I am true to my word and would not pursue this any further. But I am a real believer that in picking our partners in the long term compatibility is far more important than romance. I’ve never met anyone with whom I am as compatible as her, and I’m just not prepared to let this go over a misplaced move right at the beginning. The challenge facing me, I guess, is how to escape the friend zone with this one. I’ve never really done that before – but I’m prepared to make the effort for her. I guess on some level I’ve realized that she is, most definitely, the one for me. 

Could you possibly help?

Friend Zone Parolee

DEAR FRIEND ZONE PAROLEE: Let me correct you real fast, FZP: you didn’t really make an error here. You didn’t move too fast or really do anything wrong. All that happened is that you went out with someone and she decided that she wasn’t attracted to you. That’s really all there is to it.

I mean, you can dress it up as transitioning from friend to lover or what-not, but it all comes down to the simple fact that she’s just not into you. And that’s a risk you run into when you’re asking people out, whether you’re friends with them first or not. I am questioning whether she knew this was a date or just the two of you hanging out as friends… but I suspect that if you were clearer about things, then she wouldn’t have said yes in the first place, so it would be a wash all around.

You are, however, overreacting to all of this. I get that you’re inexperienced and you really like this woman, but your despair and self-anger is seriously out of proportion to what actually happened. It’s not a catastrophe, it’s just an awkward moment at the end of a date that ultimately went nowhere. That’s it. Everything else you’re dealing with is entirely self-inflicted. Right now you’re giving yourself a nasty case of Oneitis; you’re turning her from someone you like into The One, with a capital T and O. Except: she’s not. She may be wonderful and amazing, but she’s not the only woman out there who you’re compatible with or who you’ll be attracted to. There are literally millions of single women out there and there will be plenty who are just as awesome and smart and gorgeous and all those other qualities that make your heart stutter when you see her. You will find others – and more importantly, those others will like you back.

Can you get out of the Friend Zone? Yes. You just have to be willing to walk away and date other people. Can you get out of the Friend Zone with this person specifically? Well, it can happen… but honestly, I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you. You would be much happier in the long run to recognize that you’re lucky to have someone awesome like her as a friend and move on to pursuing other people. And there will be other people.

I realize this sounds harsh, so let me end this with pointing something out: you did well here. You got over your shyness and your aversion to asking women out. You cowboy’d up and asked someone out. And then, towards the end of the date, you made your move. That is goddamn huge. Yeah, it didn’t go the way you hoped but dude, could you see yourself doing any of that a year ago? Or even six months ago? That’s some serious progress! Yeah, getting rejected sucks, but that’s how you build up your skill points, man. You’ve just shown that you can do this. You should be proud of yourself.

So do yourself a favor. Take a day or two, feel your feels and then let ’em go because you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished here. Take that to heart and start looking for those other awesome women. You’ll find them. And you’ll find the ones who like you too.

You’re doing great, man. Remember that.

Good luck.

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