DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So I had a decade long relationship  with a lady (We’ll call her B) which came to an end. We both realised we needed to do things for ourselves and work on becoming better more mature people emotionally for each other. In order to work on some of our toxic habits within the relationship, we took a break from the relationship. But the reality is, we weren’t sure if it was a permanent break up or not.

Fast forward a year after, we continued talking and having fairly regular friend-sex, but I made a huge move away. We had spoken about wanting to get back together for months, but we both believed we weren’t quite there yet. We see each other as the one and only of our lives, but we had been dating for the entirety of our adult lives, and sometimes it felt like things were missed outside of our relationship . I have started to become needy and concerned in my time away wanting to talk to her more but I was busy with work and worried she would see me as needy and annoying. I was also scared that she was seeing other guys.  Getting so scared about it made me feel very insecure, selfish and immature, wanting her to myself even though I moved away from her.

For some context, I have had sex and some teenage experiences before being with her, but I was her first and only experience for the last 10 years and I think that slightly adds to my insecurity. She has used that slightly as a reason to wanting to see what it was like to sleep with others.

After moving, she continued sending me things like nudes and telling me to hurry and visit because she’s getting “desperate” —  just all playful flirty fun to get me rushing back sooner I guess. But last night I tried to call her wanting to catch up and talk about the “us” situation.

Well it ended in her missing my calls and telling me later she has been having sex with some other guys specifically that night while I was calling her and other nights before this, she would reaffirm that nothing was serious, I was still special and important and saying things like no one gets her or makes her feel like I do, especially sexually. She also said that a lot of what she’s been doing has been to due to depression; she has a history of self harm and ended up replacing it with sex, sex that I could no longer give her since I moved.

(I was unaware of the self harm coming back up until recently; she had only continued in the last few months.)

I guess my question is: how do I come to grips with all of this? I truly believe she still loves me and I know I still love her. After a long up and down night, we seem more determined than ever to get back together and make it work in the near future.  Of course, the geographical location side of things being eventually dealt with as well.

But I feel so horrible and like a fool. It’s brought me to tears every day, I feel angry, replaced and unneeded, but also jealous and somewhat envious. She was happy for me to see other girls but I can’t bring myself to even try now, I don’t see myself as someone who could get laid or do the dating thing anymore. Not to mention I’m still madly in love with her and don’t want to string other girls along just for sex to even some sort of score between me and B.

I am dealing with all sorts of emotions daily now and plan to make regular visits to her until it either we break up for good, or one of us makes the move and we get back together. I want to feel important and special, and she says all the right things but I am having such a hard time getting over her experiences while we weren’t together. I wanted to be mature and understanding but I’m struck with jealousy and anger like nothing else.

She tells me she doesn’t want to keep sleeping with guys after talking to me, that she wished I was more needy and spoke to her on the phone more, that might have made her less wanting of finding other temporary guys. I wish I put in the effort now, I feel like an absolute fool for trying not to bother her constantly when she tells me now that’s what she wanted, that she hasn’t thoroughly enjoyed sex without me and misses talking to me.

I just wanna be the better man and believe she wants me over anyone else and be better for her, that I don’t become resentful because of her interest in experimenting out there during our “break”. Help?

Break Up or Break Down

DEAR BREAK UP OR BREAK DOWN: So I’m not gonna lie: I hate “we were on a break” with the firey passion of a thousand suns. I hated it when it became a punch-line on Friends, I’ve hated it when couples suggest “taking a break” as a means of dealing with issues in their relationships, and I hate how it never seems to have gone away.

Straight talk: there is no such thing as “taking a break”. It’s one thing to, say, decide that you’re not going to see each other for a little while because you both need space — and hey, every couple needs space on occasion. We can’t expect our partners to be all things to us and trying to make them fit into that role is a recipe for stress. Plus, even the most loving couples will turn into rats in a cage if they’re cooped up in too small a space. Even Gomez and Morticia have a mansion, graveyard and haunted forest in which to do their own thing.

But “taking a break” is a very different beast. “Taking a break” is what you say when you don’t want to admit the truth: you’re breaking up. You may be breaking up under the assumption that you’ll get back together some day in the future… but you’re still breaking up. And unless you have specifically talked about what this does or doesn’t mean and how long you think it’s going to last, then everyone involved needs to understand that it’s functionally a break up and to respond accordingly.

Amongst other things, that means understanding that you can’t expect your partner to be celibate during the time you’re broken up. They may or may not decide to exercise that option, depending on circumstance… but the fact remains that they have it. As do you. Your relationship is functionally over; holding onto the expectation that they’re going to continue acting like you two are still together and the rules still apply is a recipe for heartbreak.

Now in your case, things can feel a little complicated. You two were still talking and hooking up. This isn’t entirely unusual; there are plenty of couples who had great chemistry and affection for one another but couldn’t make things work as a relationship. They may have broken up, but they still talk, hang out and have sex on occasion.

(In fact, for some couples, the problem was the relationship. Take away the relationship label and the attendant expectations and suddenly things work so much better and they’re much happier with one another)

However for you, this blurred the lines; it felt like “taking a break” was more of a formality rather than a break-up. As a result, you continued to behave and think about B as though you two were still together. This is the source of the conflict because B didn’t. She treated this like a break up and as though she were single again instead of just waiting to run down the clock to get back together. That right there is part of the problem; that dissonance between what you thought you two were doing and what she thought you were doing has lead to your feeling hurt and betrayed by the fact that she was also seeing other people.

To be fair: she really didn’t help things by telling you that she missed your call because she was banging some other dude. In fact, her telling you that was both unnecessary and needlessly cruel. All she needed to say was that she was out or busy; the additional detail was pain that could have easily been avoided.

But regardless, the fact that you didn’t treat this like a break up may have also blinded you to an important point: she still loves you. In fact, she was making it clear: she still loves you, desires you and that you’re incredibly special to her. Her having been with other guys — whether it was a matter of self-harm or not — doesn’t change that. Sex isn’t a zero-sum game; her having slept with other guys doesn’t make her feelings for you any less real or special. Hell, she’s telling you, straight up, that none of it was as good or exciting for her as it was with you. If you had treated this more as a break-up and not a temporary interruption in service, you might not be putting the same emphasis on her having slept with someone else. It may still have stung — it can be hard to hear our exes have started dating again — but you wouldn’t be feeling like it was a betrayal or a referendum on you as a person and lover.

All of that having been said: the problems you two are having now — from whether this was temporary or a break-up to what she wanted and needed from you to what your expectations were — come from a lack of communication. You two may have been talking, but it doesn’t seem like you were saying the things that needed to be said. You weren’t sharing what you needed from one another or what you expected to come of this break. So you need to start having those conversations now, at length and in great detail. If the two of you want to get back together and make this work, then you need to have a series of in-depth, awkward conversations about where you are as individuals and as a couple. You need to make sure you’re both on the same page about what you want, what you need from each other and — even more importantly — what you see as being the issue or issues with your relationship. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much you two may love each other; if you don’t resolve the issues that lead to this in the first place, all you’re doing is setting yourself up for the extended dance remix of your first break up. And that one will be a lot harder to pull back from.

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 need some clarity on some judgmental comments a friend said to me. She in essence called me out for being selfish and manipulative after I told her about a weird falling out I had with two friends months ago. My question is: Am I selfish and manipulative just because I chose to ignore their relationship drama, even if I knew it was related to me?

First, some context and background: For the last year or so, my relationships keep ending abruptly, with the whole unfollowing and unliking on social media and then no contact ever again. I’m bi, and I was dating a girl and a guy at the same time last summer. I was openly dating, but was hoping the guy would turn into a relationship. The girl told me she was frustrated when I was not responsive to texts even though I usually text back within a day or two. She eventually said she ran out of energy trying to maintain a connection and moved on. The guy and I did a back and forth thing. His father died, and I worried it would kill any chance of a relationship with him. It did.

Then I met another guy through a dating app, and his whole life fit with mine in all the right, weird, wonderful ways. But after several months together and saying “I love you” and going Instagram official, that ended abruptly too. He still lived with his ex, and I guess my protests bothered him enough to tell me that it was over and not to come over anymore.

In between all of this, my friendship with a couple kept growing. I still worked with the guy, and his girlfriend had left the same company the year before. His girlfriend and I hit it off after he brought me around them and their friend circle. We planned to work on some independent creative projects together. He and I had a more intimate friendship. I cried in front of him more than once about my relationship issues. He was always very affirming and a good listener, so I liked being around him, especially given how difficult my dating life was at that moment. He made me feel like my opinions and issues were valid, no matter how much I was crying or felt like I was saying something crazy. I do admit that I thought he had romantic feelings for me, but it felt good to be welcome and maybe even wanted in someone else’s regard. I figured I didn’t want anything besides the attention, didn’t really see any value in pursuing anything more with him than conversations and good feelings, so I wasn’t encouraging an affair or looking for trouble.

One night, we were all out at a bar with several friends, and it was clear when the night was almost over that the girlfriend was upset about something. She was quiet, weird, shifty-eyed. I went home and didn’t think much about it until a few days later, when he asked to get lunch and talk about something. He said we couldn’t flirt anymore like we had that night, and that it was inappropriate because we were both seeing other people. I asked if his girlfriend was upset about something, and he said no, he just felt weird about our interactions that night and wanted to draw some boundaries.

I didn’t really buy it, but I tried to be respectful. I talked to her and said I told him nothing would ever happen between us. Things seemed fine. She and I kept working on our projects, and he and I settled back into a comfortable routine. But, after she got frustrated with me for what she said was my lack of effort and responsiveness on those projects, she said that I needed to be more aware of how I impact other people and to be more honest about my intentions and bandwidth. I got frustrated and responded to that with something like, “It’s not my fault your boyfriend likes me”. So she and I stopped talking after that, but I tried to maintain a friendship with him, including a few texts asking him about where I should solo camp, if we could get lunch together soon and whether or not I deserved to feel wanted by the men I was dating.

I liked the way he made me feel, and I liked feeling heard when I was around him. I never said anything overtly flirtatious or said that I wanted anything more than to be friends. My friend (the one who said I was being selfish and manipulative) said that I didn’t have to say it. She said that the things I told his girlfriend were clearly a power play because I didn’t like being told I wasn’t living up to my promises (really, I think it was because I didn’t want her to threaten my friendship with her partner, even if I shouldn’t have said it). My friend also said that me continuing to try to continue the same level of intimacy and friendship I had with him before I had that blowup with his girlfriend, and after I made it clear I knew she was insecure about how he felt about me, showed a clear disregard for the damage I might be doing to their relationship. She also said it seemed like I felt entitled to his attention and affirmations. My thing is that they are both adults, that he could have told me to back off if he really didn’t want to talk to me, that I only said what I said to his girlfriend because I earned my friendship with her boyfriend and that it really ISN’T my fault if her boyfriend liked me that way. I didn’t ask for the attention, even if I enjoyed it.

I usually think of myself as a good person, even if I can be a bit cat-like. But my friend’s comments really bothered me, and I don’t want to believe it’s true. So I’m hoping for your outside perspective. So, am I selfish and manipulative? Or just someone who doesn’t like giving up things that make me feel good?

Relationship Rashomon

DEAR RELATIONSHIP RASHOMON: So I’m going to admit to something here: one of my favorite ways to procrastinate when I should be working is to read the Am I The A

hole? sub-Reddit. I enjoy the weird arrays of drama, the opportunity to vicariously yell at folks who are ignoring more red flags than the running of the bulls in Pamplona and the truly bizarre twists and turns to some of these narratives, whether they’re real or not.

But part of what I enjoy most about them is that more often than not, there’s a clear yes or no answer. In fact, more often than not, it’s so screamingly clear that the post becomes a prime example of the ways men and women are socialized to handle relationships. Men have a tendency to want confirmation that they were right to insist on having their way while women have been trained to never trust their own instincts and second guess even the starkest black-and-white scenarios possible.

Occasionally though, we’ll get a scenario where it’s not entirely clear just who is the a

hole, or to what degree. Sometimes there’re no a

holes detected. Sometimes everyone is the a

hole. Sometimes there’s the little a

hole and the bigger a

hole.

Then there’s the point of “Look you weren’t the a

hole when you STARTED…”

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that in your case… you weren’t the a

hole at first. And if you’d stopped at several different points in this story, you would’ve been fine. You didn’t exactly cover yourself in glory, but it would’ve been ok. But you didn’t stop and it’s the fact that you’ve continued that changes the equation.

Let’s start with the obvious: you knew that your relationship with this guy was borderline. You had reason to believe that, at the very least, he had a crush on you and that he was in a monogamous relationship. You also liked the attention and the validation that he was giving you. And hey, that’s fine. Folks get crushes, even people in happy relationships, and there’s nothing wrong with flirting and attention. But that’s the sort of thing that can turn into a less-than-cool scenario if you’re careless… and it sounds like you were pretty careless about some of this.

Similarly, you are correct: your friend is a grown-ass man, and he’s perfectly capable of handling his own affairs (as it were). You aren’t the guardian of his relationship. It was as much on him to handle his attraction to you. But at the same time: you knew that this was causing problems for him and you were prioritizing your desire for a relationship with him over his desire to not blow up his relationship with his girlfriend. And when you were confronted over it — in relatively mild terms — you decided to throw his attraction to you in his girlfriend’s face. Worse, you did so in a way that positioned you as the better, more desirable person. It’s pretty hard NOT to see “I can’t help that your boyfriend likes me” as meaning “Likes me better than you“. There’s pretty much no way that this wasn’t going to get read as an insult to her, a not terribly subtle “it’s a shame you’re not as hot/desirable/nice/whatever as me”.

So yeah, that’s a pretty s

tty thing to do.

Now, like I said: he’s a grown-ass man. He’s fully capable of managing his relationships and his feelings, even inconvenient crushes. You can’t force someone to NOT feel. But you can avoid flirting or inappropriately intimate behavior, especially when both he and his girlfriend has said “hey, we need to draw some boundaries here”. And right now, you aren’t really taking ownership of your contributions to this. You’ve chosen to ignore things when they don’t line up with what you want. You downplay his desire to set boundaries because you felt like he didn’t really mean it. You’ve chosen to ignore that you are a source of conflict in his relationship and do nothing to make things easier for him because hey, you like it when he’s paying attention to you. But y’know… that’s a pretty s

tty thing to do to someone you consider to be a friend. Just because you didn’t set the fire doesn’t mean that it’s ok to keep throwing fuel on it because you like how it keeps YOU warm.

Part of the way that you’re doing this is that you’re painting things into extremes. You’re saying “I would back off if he told me he didn’t want to talk to me”, but there’s a wide spectrum between “cutting off all contact” and “continuing exactly as we had before.” And frankly, he was doing exactly that: he was telling you that you two couldn’t continue the way you had and he needed to set some boundaries. But again: you were choosing to believe they were less valid because you didn’t want to believe that this was something he wanted. To you, it was something being imposed on him from his girlfriend and thus less legitimate.

So yeah, I think you’re being selfish here. Friendships are supposed to go two ways. His friendship may make you feel good, but your friendship with him is causing problems. If you’re going to be a good friend to him, then you should dial things back. And frankly, you should apologize to his girlfriend; blowing up at her like that was extra-crispy rude.

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 am having a bit of a problem with online dating. I don’t know exactly how to make a conversation exciting enough which would lead to a date. All I do is simply ask basic get to know you questions such as where are you from, what do you do for a living etc. The end result is always the same… either they lose interest or else I get bored and give up on the conversation entirely. Other times I ask them out and they say that its too early.

The only question is how do I simply make an online dating conversation worth my time and my match’s time? I am trying to invest my time in online dating because chatting up women in clubs and bars is something that I find terrifying. To tell you something about myself I am an introverted 27 year old guy who has never had sex and who has only kissed 1 girl in his life. I find it hard to come up with a conversation sometimes or banter/jokes to keep a conversation stimulating. I have friends and work mates who are awesome and I have hobbies and interests and have travelled sometimes so I am not exactly someone who has never set foot out the door.

Can you please assist?

Thanks again

Frustrated Somebody

DEAR FRUSTRATED SOMEBODY: Your problem is right there in the letter, FS; you’re asking really basic questions and everyone’s getting bored. That’s the entire issue. When you’re trying to meet people via online dating, you don’t have a lot of the same options that you have when you meet people in person. There’s no chance to build intimacy via touch, no way to build a connection through physical excitement. All you have are your words to woo women and as a wise man once said: the purpose of language was to woo women and in that endeavor, laziness will never do.

The point of online dating is to meet people in person. To do that, you want to give them a reason to want to see you, to be excited to meet up with you. And if you’re just asking boring questions… well, they’re gonna get bored and decide they want to  see someone who’s more interesting.

Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t ask “getting to know you” questions, nor does it mean that you have to be putting on a performance to get her to like you. But you do want to flirt and be entertaining so that she enjoys talking with you and wants more. And when it comes to language, the easiest way to be more attractive is to be fun to talk to. One of the surest ways to be more fun and engaging is through humor.

Of course, there’re all kinds of ways to do this. You can be playful in your flirting; since apps like Tinder now let you send animated gifs, you can use those to create playful banter. A Spongebob meme or Archer saying “Hey, phrasing” can be a way of playfully engaging with what she’s said by having an exaggerated overreaction.

Alternately you can play games “two truths and a lie”. Or you can find ways to react to things that she put in her profile. A Harry Potter reference could lead to, say, joking about the two of you having to write and direct a new Potter film and the conflicts that would result (because of the simmering sexual tension).

You say that you have a hard time coming up with banter or jokes to keep the conversation stimulating. There’re a few ways to learn how to be better at bantering or good at having the right thing to say at the right time. The first is to learn to stop trying and just start going with the flow. Improv classes might be worth your time here; you want to learn how to be in the moment and how to react instead of trying to plan for every contingency or find the most clever thing to say. The best flirting humor is often the least planned; when it feels forced, it’s rarely as fun or organic.

But the other is to immerse yourself in humor and things that you think are funny. That may mean mainlining comedies and stand up specials on Netflix as you try to get a feel for the rhythms and pacing of jokes and story telling. It may mean a steady diet of funny authors like Terry Pratchett or Carl Hiassen. It may mean paying attention to naturally funny people like Ryan Reynolds or Ali Wong, Mel Brooks, Craig Ferguson or Kevin Hart. The more you pay attention and learn from them, the more you’ll figure out the styles of comedy and humor that work best for you and for your flirting style.

These will make you more fun to talk to and that, in turn, will make it easier for you to keep up the emotional momentum you need for successful flirting and dating.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I really appreciate your ideas on dating and social interaction in general. Too bad your channel wasn’t up 20 years ago, that would have prevented a lot of heartaches.

Which leads me to my current situation. I’m in my late 30s and developed a crush on a new co-worker recently. It came very unexpected and the last time I felt this way was over ten years ago. At first I was somewhat amused about my feelings and expected them to go away sooner or later. I enjoyed spending time with her at work and we became Facebook friends.

That was one month ago. We haven’t seen each other lately, but I’ve developed a form of Oneitis since. I became obsessed with what she posted, who her other friends are and how she reacts to my posts. Because I’ve struggled with similar situations in the past, I was looking for ways to get her out of my head. And that lead to the stupidest idea ever: I unfriended her on Facebook. I regretted my decision immediately but as you probably know there is no way to undo this one button click.

Best case would be that she doesn’t really notice, worst case that I hurt her feelings and made the situation thousand times worse.

Now I’m thinking of ways to get back to normal. I could send a new request and tell her that I unfriended her by accident. But would she believe me? Or I could wait and see what she tells me the next time we meet each other, probably in two weeks, when a mutual friend of ours will have a gig with his band. And after that we will still have to work together from time to time. What bothers me is that I sometimes have the tendency to push away people that get under my skin. I really think I can get over her and just have a work relationship or friendship with her. But I just don’t want to make another bad decision.

Thanks in advance for your time and for your feedback,

Friends or Not

DEAR FRIENDS OR NOT: Yeah, you kinda overreacted here FoN. You had a lot of other options to limit just how much you saw of your crush. You could’ve set up groups and filters on your Facebook page that would let you see folks you wanted to see but not show you as many posts of hers. You could have set her posts to a lower priority so that they didn’t show up in your feed as often as other, closer friends. You could have snoozed her for 30 days, which may have been enough time for you to process those inconvenient feelings and get to a place where you weren’t feeling so obsessive about her. You could also have just muted or unfollowed her, which would have kept her posts out of your feed but kept your connection on Facebook, allowing you to quietly refollow her at a time of your choosing.

But it is what it is and you did what you did and there’s not really a graceful way of undoing it.

However, while there isn’t a graceful or subtle way of re-friending her… it’s not irreversible, or even all that bad. Mostly you just have to be willing to eat some crow and deal with her knowing that you unfriended her and now you want to refriend her. But there are still ways of managing that that don’t require you to say “yeah, so I kinda got obsessed with you…”

One of the (few, dubious) benefits of Facebook being such a black box system is that it glitches and f

ks up in any number of ways. If you were to, say, re-friend her and just tell her “yeah, I noticed that some of my friends got dropped from my account,” the odds are pretty good that she wouldn’t question it at all. Alternately if you tell her that you were paring down your friends list and she accidentally got caught up in the mix, she would probably take that at face value.

But honestly, the best option would be to leave out the excuses and just say “Yeah I unfriended you and didn’t mean to,” and leave it there. Unless she is absolutely, totally monkey-s

tting bananas about social media and monitors her engagement and friends list like a hawk, I doubt she’ll give it more than a second’s thought before reaccepting you as her friend online.

And then if you find you’re not over her yet, you can immediately snooze her profile for 30 days and give yourself some time.

Good luck.

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