DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been dating my boyfriend for two years. During this time we have both been temping or unemployed. There will be months were we have a job and those have been more than the months without, but it is still stressful. In November, when it looked like my boyfriend was going to be hired full time, we asked my roommate if we could discuss him moving in. She instantly got mad and stormed off saying she’d think about it.

For background I know he irritates her, but it’s just because he’s a giant goofball and she doesn’t find him funny. He does the dishes or laundry when he’s here, he buys groceries, he watches the dog when we’re out of town. One time, when my friend who had left an abusive relationship was staying with us, I asked him to stay while my roommate and I were gone for two weeks because my friend is suicidal and I didn’t want them to be alone. (My friend was fine with this, they didn’t want to be alone either and they and my boyfriend get along great).

I am also a very anxious person and the thought of asking for something like this makes me want to puke. So this whole situation sets me on edge. When my roommate eventually got back to me, they said they wanted to wait until after the holiday’s. Over Christmas my boyfriend didn’t get the job he was temping at even though they said he would be hired when we got back from visiting my family for Xmas. He has savings of over $5,000 and it looks like I am going to be hired full time.

My roommate said no to him moving in and that wasn’t what I wanted. To be clear, I wanted a conversation where i could make my case or we could make a deal or something. She was very angry that I didn’t just take the no. I thought if I made my situation clear, then she would understand and give my boyfriend a chance, I suggested a trial month, where he has his computer so he isn’t in the public space as often, if at all. I said we could create a system where he says if he’s coming out of the bedroom to use the bathroom because she is concerned about privacy, but I think that is absurd because she has the bigger room and a private bathroom. I am willing to make any compromise she wants for just a trial month.

But she says that me continuing to ask, even though she never brings it up and I always have to initiate, is pushing her boundaries. But I’m really struggling here. Not only do I want him here because he makes my life easier and he makes me laugh, but him moving in would provide great financial relief. I would be able to stop asking my parents for money, I feel like I would be able to breathe. I’m 28 years old, I have a boyfriend of two years. Should I have to ask if my boyfriend can move in? Should I have to listen if she says no? She already limits the amount of time he’s here to weekends, when I bring him over she gets irritated.

My roommate is one of my best friends, I would, and have, done anything for her. But now I feel like that isn’t being reciprocated, like she isn’t respecting my emotional and financial needs. All I am asking for is a trial month. Am I asking for too much?

Sincerely,

Confused and Upset

DEAR CONFUSED AND UPSET: So there’s a couple answers to this: the legal answer and the “being a decent roommate and good person” answer. In the former: if your roommate’s name is on the lease, then yes: she gets a vote on whether your boyfriend moves in or not. If you’re one who’s technically on the hook for the apartment, then you could force the issue… but it’d be a deeply s

tty thing to do.

Leaving the legal issue aside though — or the risk of a COVID-19 infection from adding someone new to the mix: Yes, you need to ask before moving your boyfriend in. At the very least, it’s only polite, especially as it will directly affect your roommate as much as it will you. Yes, they can say “no” and make it stick. And yes, your bringing it up over and over again is pushing against her boundaries. 

Here’s the thing: you and your roommate are having two very different conversations, CaU. You are trying to have a negotiation about what it would take for your roommate to be ok with your boyfriend moving in with you. You’re thinking that the problem is one of convenience, privacy or other issues that could be surmounted with enough planning and compromises.

Your roommate, on the other hand, is trying to tell you that she’s already made up her mind and the answer is no.

Here’s the problem with this disconnect: you’re ignoring the cause and focusing on the symptoms. You’re looking at this as a case of “well if we could just discuss your reasons, we could work around them and get to a ‘yes’.” But that requires there being any circumstances under which you might get to a “yes”… and that doesn’t seem to exist. She isn’t giving you reasons why because the reasons don’t matter. It’s very much like when someone gives reasons why they “can’t” date somebody, and the other person treats that as the start of a negotiation, not a soft-refusal. The rejected person can’t logic or negotiate their way past the central problem: that the other person just doesn’t want to date them. The same thing applies to your friend: she just doesn’t want to live with you and your boyfriend. If she just dislikes him, his presence is like sandpaper on her nerves and nails on a chalkboard to her soul and the argument of “you’d only have to pay a third of the rent instead of half” isn’t enough… well, there really isn’t any bathroom usage rota that’s going to solve that problem.

She’s given you her answer in no uncertain terms. The problem is that you don’t want to hear it. By asking her over and over again, you’re trying to force her to change her mind, very much in the same way that constantly pushing up against somebody’s “no” in dating or sex is extremely not cool. And the roommate equivalent of “just the tip” isn’t going to make it any better.

It’s great that she’s your best friend and that you’d bend over backwards for her. But that doesn’t obligate her to live with a guy she can’t stand, even if he’s your boyfriend. And frankly: it’s pretty clear that you won’t do anything for her because you’re NOT doing the thing she has asked you to do: respect her “no”.

So you have a choice here. You can continue living with your bestie, or you can live with your boyfriend. You don’t get both. If you and your boyfriend want to live together and split the rent, then you’re either going to have to find a different apartment or a new roommate.

And under the current circumstances, that might be hard to do.

There’s no in-between here. She said no. It’s time for you to respect it and move on.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Straight cis female in her late 20s here. I don’t date a lot and sometimes crave physical intimacy, so when I do have sex a few times a year it’ll typically be with a friend I’ve noticed seems open to it (to be clear, different friends, not one specific person). Usually we’ll be drinking and hanging out and it turns into a sleepover. The past year, though, I broke this habit because I’ve lost some friendships this way — basically, they all ghost me after sleeping with me, even if we’ve been friends for years prior.

Tell me this: why are guys so weird about casual sex? As far as I can tell, it’s not that they develop feelings for me… it’s that they think I have or will develop feelings for THEM and therefore distance themselves so they don’t have to face the awkwardness of turning me down for a relationship. Problem is, I don’t want anything more from them! I just sometimes want to have a fun sexual encounter and would rather do it with a friend than a stranger, for a variety of reasons including but not limited to safety. I don’t think this is a bizarre or extraordinary concept, but I could be wrong.

It really feels like the guys I sleep with have been conditioned to assume the girl always “wants more” and it’s their job to fend her off. That in and of itself I find injurious, but it’s adding insult to injury knowing that these guys like me enough to f

k but not to date (irrespective of how I myself feel about them). Also, side note: the offense I feel about this might have something to do with a deep-seated insecurity about my weight — I take care of myself and I know I’m pretty, but I’m tall and generally large. (Think Ashley Graham but WAY less smoldering.) There’s this notion that fat girls are fine to sleep with but not be seen in public with, and I can’t help but let that tinge my thoughts sometimes.

If these friends DID develop feelings for me, I assume they’d do something about it, but none of them has ever asked me out after sleeping with me, so I come to that conclusion by process of elimination. If they weren’t weird about being friends after sex, this wouldn’t bother me, but as it stands, it just magnifies their lack of interest in me as a whole person, with both sexual and social needs. So I lose a friend and feel undesirable. Super fun.

Recently I messed up and slept with a friend of 2-3 years I had always told myself I wouldn’t sleep with. When it was clear that’s where things were headed one drunken night, I said I wanted to keep being friends even though I knew sometimes things can get awkward after intimacy–I didn’t want that to happen because I value our friendship so much. I even paused while making out (pre-sex) because I was really worried it would mess up our friendship. Ultimately we kept going because I knew acting so torn probably WAS seeming weird and anyway we had already started down that path, so even if we stopped then it probably wouldn’t have made a difference in terms of what happened between us afterward. (I didn’t voice any of that last part, just reasoned through it in my head.)

Surprise surprise, now things are markedly weird between us. He’s gone completely AWOL on our friendship–we used to see each other every couple weeks and occasionally text in between, but he hasn’t responded to any of my 2-3 texts over the past month about random, innocuous, friendly things. I also recently ran into him at an event we used to sometimes attend together with other friends. He always used to invite me if he was planning to go, but clearly isn’t doing that anymore. Essentially, I acted the same way after we had sex as before we had sex… and apparently there’s something wrong with that? I know better than to ask him why he’s being weird; guys loooove gaslighting in response to that question, as I’m sure everyone knows.

Am I crazy for having the expectation that I can maintain a friendship after sex? Is there something wrong with wanting that? My solution these days is to not sleep with friends anymore, which is fine and easy and not a problem, but I still can’t get over the baffling pattern I encountered over the past few years. It could very well be I’m in denial and either REALLY bad in bed or somehow otherwise deficient, but I’m pretty self-aware and have decent self-esteem, so I doubt this would be the case–then again, if it’s happening every time, maybe I have a giant blind spot to something really crucial.

For what it’s worth, the most recent sexual encounter (the one detailed above) was good. Not the best I’ve ever had, and I’m guessing he’d say the same, but we both got off and I, for one, had a fun time. So why would he ghost our friendship like this? Why do they all?!

Thanks,

No, She Doesn’t Want More From You

DEAR NO, SHE DOESN’T WANT MORE FROM YOU: These sorts of questions can be difficult NSDWMFY because there’re a number of possible causes for the guys ghosting you.  Yes, it could be a case of dudes who have an issue having been with a big beautiful woman and they worry about people giving them s

t if anyone found out. Or it could be that these guys feel weird and awkward about having crossed a line in your friendship and they don’t know how to discuss it with you. It could be that you aren’t sticking the dismount afterwards and something about your behavior is making them think that you want more. It could be that they worry that you’ve had a thing for them all this time and you functionally Nice Girl’d your way into their pants. Alternately, it could be that the fact that you don’t want anything afterwards weirds them out and they don’t know how to process it. Hell, treating it like nothing happened afterwards could be disconcerting to them and they decide that they’d rather ghost than actually talk about this.

Without my being on the scene like a relationship David Attenborough, it’s almost impossible for me to say.

That having been said, there’re a couple things in your letter that set my Spidey-sense tingling.

To start with, there’s the fact that alcohol is usually involved. That’s quite likely a contributing factor. While booze isn’t Jekyll and Hyde serum — it’s not going to turn someone into a different person — it can lead to people making decisions they would otherwise not make in sober circumstances. The disinhibiting effects of drinking don’t unlock secret desires so much as turn down the volume on the parts of the brain that says “hey, this is probably not a great idea.” As a result, a guy who might have reasons that he wouldn’t want to sleep with a particular person might find themselves thinking “why yes, some oral sex WOULD be nice tonight,” after a few drinks and cross a line that they would otherwise have never gone near.

This is especially true if you’re having the “no wait, I really don’t want this to mess up our friendship” in the middle of making out. If the volume on the “this is why I wouldn’t do this” was turned down AND they’re in the middle of things, it’s a lot harder to hear the part of your brain saying “yeah, maybe call it a night, chief.” A drunk hard-on has a tendency to ignore a lot of warning signs.

Plus, if they’re worried that they took advantage of you… well, I could see why guys would be freaking out about this and just vanish.

At the same time, however, your letter gives me the impression that you’re not actually talking with your friends about this — either before you have sex or afterwards. And I don’t just mean a “here’s what this would mean” conversation beforehand, but your general outlook on casual sex and FWBs. If your guy friends don’t know that you’re open to a casual hook-up, then they might be forgiven for thinking that this means far more than it actually does. This is especially true in the light of your not dating much. If all they know is that you rarely date and you two hook up, it’s understandable that they might think that you’re more invested in that in the first place. They have no idea that their qualifiers are “Well, you’re convenient, available, safe and attractive enough,” and so they may think that this is the precursor to your treating this like the start of something serious.

And frankly, as a general rule, if you can’t talk with them about sex in the abstract, you probably shouldn’t be sleeping with them in the first place.

But just as importantly,  you don’t seem to talk about things afterwards. As much as you mention the stereotype that guys will assume that a woman — especially someone they may think is attractive in a non-conventional way — will just get clingy and needy after sex, it seems like you’re starting with the assumption that guys aren’t going to be honest with you if you ask them what’s up. And while there are guys who will either not want to come clean, or may even not know why they feel weird about things, you can’t be sure that all your f

kbuddies are like that.

All things considered, I’d start with the most immediate commonality in your encounters: the booze. While it may be a social lubricant and one that might facilitate hook-ups for you, avoiding hooking up while either or both of you are buzzed would be a good start. At the very least, you’ll be sure that your guy friends are doing something they want to do, not something they might regret in the cold light of sobriety. Not all guys are necessarily going to want to f

k a friend, even if they are legitimately attracted to her. Some folks prefer to keep pretty distinct lines between friends and potential partners.

The next is that I would talk with folks about this — before and after. If they know that this is just a hook-up, that you’re good at compartmentalizing and have no problem having casual, FWB style relationships, then your seeming ease after sex might seem less disconcerting. If they’d be down for a no-strings fling in general, they’d be much more likely to be into it if they knew that’s exactly what you’re looking for. And talking about things afterwards, especially giving dudes non-judgmental space to express themselves if they’re feeling a little weird about it might ease any tension or lingering “wait, did I do something wrong” anxieties.

TL;DR: leave the booze out of it and use your words — early and often. That should help cut down on the guys who seem weirded out the morning after.

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: Been pondering on how to get some advice on this for a while. So I finally made up my mind to write you.

My girlfriend and I have been together for almost 3 years. I’m 29, she’s 28 and she’s my been my first serious relationship ever.

Now, I am a total nerd. I like sci-fi, video games (duh), anime, all that stuff. I’m also kind of a loner. She is way more sociable, always wants to be around people, me especially, and she likes corny rom coms, cooking shows, and is kinda addicted to social media.

When we started dating we learned about one another and watched and did what the other one liked. But, as our relationship developed things have changed. It’s come to the point where I can’t play games around her because she wants my attention (we’ve played some coop games but not for a while now) and she can’t watch the movies she likes because I don’t like them. So we end up in this weird middle ground where we watch some mediocre TV show because we both compromised.

The conversation has devolved as well. We know so much about each other that it’s starting to get uninteresting. Like for example I keep my conversation short about a new game I’m playing because I know she is not really into it. But she does like to know I’m happy about it. Or she’ll call me to know how I am but she doesn’t really have anything else to say. I’m both thankful and annoyed by this.

I want to know how to approach this subject with her without sounding hurtful. She is the most caring and loving human being I’ve ever met, but she is really sensitive as well. What I want is to be able to share our passions with one another, but I know that will not always be possible.

I hope I didn’t ramble too much. Anyway thanks for helping me out. Even writing this has helped a bit I think.

Sincerely,

One Confused Geek

DEAR ONE CONFUSED GEEK: There are two things to talk about here, OCG.

The first is how much we need to have in common with our partners. As much as I talk about how our commonalities and similarities are what bring us together, it’s very easy to get stuck in the idea that we need to have everything in common with our partners. It’s the idea that our partner is supposed to not just be our lover but our best friend, our primary confidant and the person with whom we experience everything together. And honestly, that’s going to burn out a relationship very quickly. That puts a lot of pressure on a person and can lead to feeling like even the slightest division is the death of the relationship.

In reality, having separate interests and separate lives is a good thing for relationships; not only does it keep you both from feeling smothered, but it also allows you to have interests that your partner doesn’t share. This way you don’t feel like the only things you’re “allowed” to enjoy or participate in are things that you both love. You can have your gaming time, she can enjoy her cheesy rom-coms and you can come together over the things you both enjoy instead of trying to cram the metaphorical square peg into the round hole.

The second thing that needs to be discussed is that, frankly, not every relationship is meant to last forever… and that’s a good thing. Some relationships are meant to be temporary; they have an allotted natural lifespan, where they serve the needs of the people involved and then it comes to it’s organic end. That doesn’t mean that the relationship was a failure; it just means that you two have come to the end of this particular chapter in your lives and it’s time for the two of you to find the next chapter. Nor, for that matter, does it mean that you weren’t right for each other. You were right for each other for that stage in your lives. But now you two have reached a new stage, where your wants and needs are different and, ultimately, contradictory.

The fact that the relationship may have reached it’s conclusion doesn’t mean that anyone did anything wrong or that there was something you could’ve done differently that would’ve saved it. That sort of thinking just circles back to the idea that the only form of “success” a relationship can have is that it lasts until someone dies. A relationship that ends with two people who respect each other, who have affection for one another and look back on the bulk of their time together with fondness is an unqualified success by any definition.

All of this brings me to a couple questions.

Are you two able to have conversations outside of your interests? Do you still have interests that you both share, or does everything come down to trying to find some barely acceptable compromise that neither of you actually enjoys? You may not like her movies and she may not enjoy games, but can you both respect that the other person does? Can you at least connect with each other’s enjoyment of your hobbies and respect them, even if you don’t share their interest? Can you both carve out space to do your thing and come back together to do things that you both enjoy later? Are the things that brought you together in the first place still present in your relationship, or does everything revolve around one or the other of you trying to enjoy “their” thing and getting frustrated by the other person’s lack of interest?

These are all questions that you’re going to need to answer, OCG, if you want to have an idea of just where your relationship is going. Being able to find some compromises where you both don’t feel obligated to include the other in their hobbies or interests will be crucial to the future of this relationship. But if the answer to most of these questions is “no”, or you can’t find ways of both of you enjoying the things you like — even separately — then it may just be a case that your relationship has come to it’s natural ending.

But those are all things you and she are going to have to work out together. And it’s going to require both of you being willing to face up to the possibility that you’re trying to prolong things beyond the point where it no longer works.

It’s not an easy conversation to have, and it’s a scary thing to face. But it’s better that the two of you figure this out together than by constantly making yourselves miserable by settling on compromises that neither of you enjoy.

Good luck.

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