DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My friends and I need your help. 

Our friend is in a super toxic relationship and Tuesday night he finally escaped the relationship. She then sent him around 80 calls, found his mom’s number, home number, and sister’s number and sent him text saying that she was going to kill him. Then on Thursday, she showed up outside of his door at 9 in the morning. (She goes to a college that’s 3 hours away, meaning she took a 6 am bus ride all the way here). She then proceeded to cry for six hours straight and threaten to kill herself.

Apparently, she has attempted this before. Eventually she guilted him into taking her back through emotionally manipulating him and threatening her safety. 

My friends and I have no idea what to do, it feels like we’re helpless to save him from this mess and we’re pushing against a brick wall. He even met a new girl a few days ago that is super into him and is not a manipulative psycho who actually treats him with respect. 

Any advice would be great. I feel like slapping him at this point. 

Stuck In The Middle

DEAR STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: Your friend doesn’t have a relationship. He has a hostage situation… and his girlfriend is both the hostage taker AND the hostage. The problem here – besides the fact that he’s backed himself into a corner by his  ex – is that there’s nothing you can do to save him.

This, unfortunately, is a universal truth for anyone who’s friends with someone stuck in an abusive relationship, regardless of gender: as much as it may drive you nuts to watch your friend suffer, you can’t force him to leave her. It’s going to drive you bats

t watching him waste away with his toxic girlfriend, especially when there are other, awesome, non-manipulative, non-abusive women out there practically throwing themselves at him and feeling completely powerless to do anything.

But, sadly, that’s the way it has to be. He knows he’s in a toxic relationship… but he’s the only one who can get himself out of it. You can’t force him out. You can’t go all relationship vigilante and try to drive her away, nor can you kidnap him and give him the Clockwork Orange treatment until you’ve deprogramed him from ever going back to her. He’s a grown-ass man, and the only way he’s going to get out of this mess is when he decides he’s had enough.

Now having had experience with this sort of thing before, I do have some advice for you and your friend.

Don’t talk s

t about her; he knows what she is. Don’t pressure him to dump her; he already knows this is what he needs to do. He’ll do it when he’s good and ready, and pushing him is only going to make him push back. The best thing you can do right now is be the friend he needs. You need to be as non-judgmental as possible; he knows he did a stupid thing and giving him s

t for a decision he made when he felt like his back was against the wall will only make things worse for him. The more he feels shame or embarrassment, especially if it’s coming from his support squad, the less likely he will be to come to you when he needs you. This includes comments like “FINALLY!” or “OH THANK GOD” if he talks about leaving her. The last thing you want to do is punish him for finally having the strength to do what needs to be done.

Give him your unconditional support – he’s going to need it. Be someone he can lean on and provide him strength when he needs it. If he asks for your opinion, then tell him how you feel. Phrase it in your concern for him: you’re worried about him, you don’t like how he’s been so drained lately or the way he’s been so depressed.

Also: keep him busy. Since she’s not actually on campus with him, it’ll be easier to keep him occupied and distracted. She may be using the electronic leash to try to keep tabs on him, but the more you and your friends can spend time with him, the less of an influence she’ll be able to exert. Having a life outside of her one-woman campaign of misery will also help build back his self-esteem and help remind him that he needs to establish strong boundaries

Here’s the other thing need you need to tell your buddy: she is not his responsibility. He’s not her doctor, her father, her legal guardian, or her guardian angel. Yeah, she’s threatened to kill herself if he leaves her, and that can be distressing; he’s a good guy and he doesn’t want her to be hurt, no matter how badly she’s hurt HIM. But here’s the thing: she’s not going to do it. This is an incredibly common manipulation technique that abusive s

tbags  – men and women alike – use to keep their partners in line. She’s relying on the fact that he’s a good guy and doesn’t want anyone to hurt themselves over him. It’s a way of making him feel as though he’s somehow responsible for her and playing on his sense of guilt. She only has as much power over him as he allows her to have… and right now, he’s allowing her to have a lot.

But even in the (incredibly unlikely) event she does hurt herself… that’s not his fault. Unless he actually has secret mutant powers, he didn’t cause her to do anything. She’s a grown-ass woman, fully capable of making her own decisions. If she’s in a place so dark that she actually would carry out her threat to commit suicide, then she’s such a danger to herself, then she needs immediate psychiatric help, rather than continuing to go to class.

Eventually he’s going to get around to dumping her again. When he does, you all need to go nuclear IMMEDIATELY. This means cutting off every avenue she has of getting in contact with him. All of you need to block her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, WhatsApp, Spotify, GoodReads… everything. All of you also need to make sure that your privacy settings are air tight, especially on Facebook; it’s absurdly easy to stalk people via friends-of-friends. Be sure to tell his family as well, and remind them to not give her information, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. She’s already dragged them into her drama once already, she’ll likely try again.

In addition: go to campus security. She’s shown up unannounced before, and odds are, she’ll do it again. Bring copies of the threats she’s made against your buddy, as well as bringing up all the other people she’s dragged into this drama. Do not let them brush you aside just because she’s a woman. She’s threatened to kill him and she’s shown up on his doorstep without warning; it’s their job to keep HIM safe and HER off campus.

If she does show up again – do not engage her. Don’t talk to her, don’t answer the door. Tell her to leave. If she won’t leave, call campus security. If she’s not on campus, the call the police. Your buddy has no obligation to talk to her, listen to her or otherwise enable her bulls

t. Opening the metaphorical door even an inch just gives her even more leverage to wedge herself back into his life. Cut her out.

Your friend is lucky to have friends like you. Help him stay strong, give him your support and be the shield he needs to keep the toxicity out of his life.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 26 years old and finally graduated college, now I’m feeling an incredible amount of fear and anxiety about the future. Especially when I wanted 2020 to be a year where I could finally feel satisfied with my life. Obviously a lot has gone wrong this year and it’s even harder to meet people now than before and I feel extremely depressed and start to think I’ll never meet someone even though I know that isn’t true.

So many people have told me for so long that I’ll meet somebody and “It’s going to happen” and other sorts of positive compliments that feel meaningless when it’s been 8 years now and still I’ve never met someone who wants to date me. I’ve had close female friendships that I value dearly, I do know how to talk to women when I feel comfortable with them. It’s just the matter of introducing myself that I struggle with. And I never seem to be able to make it to the next step and I figure all the words of encouragement don’t mean anything really.

In general I have social anxiety and don’t do well in crowded areas with loud noises even if recently I’ve learned to manage it somewhat. I’ve also never had a job in my life, other than a decent amount of volunteer work, which also makes it scary to imagine meeting a lot of new people. I have Asperger’s syndrome and I’m on the autistic spectrum if that clears anything up on why my life seems so empty, though that may be my own negative projection talking.

Lately has been especially rough since I’ve started to feel really isolated from my family and I don’t feel I can really connect with them and I’ve lost two friends that I’ve known for a few years and while it was my decision to end the friendships when they both moved away while I was graduating college, for a variety of reasons, it still hurts a lot that I haven’t seen a friend in person in two or three months.

My family I’ve spent too much time with really, they’re kind of cloying unfortunately and don’t really seem to want me to move on and grow up. More than anything I just want to no longer feel alone, even if that’s a hard thing to quantify. I’ve felt alone for a long time and the quarantine has made it worse, right now is possibly the loneliest I’ve ever felt. I keep telling myself I can make it through it and I intend to I just don’t know how long it will take or what that will look like so right now is an emotional endurance test for me. I just really would appreciate any and all advice you can give me when it feels like I have almost no one in my life to help me right now for emotional support.

Thank You

Trying To Look Forward

DEAR TRYING TO LOOK FORWARD: When it comes to dealing with feelings of loneliness and despair, TTLF, it’s useful to start examining how much of what you’re feeling is of the moment, and how much of it is a matter of projecting into a future or imagining what you think will happen. This seems like a minor thing; what the hell does imagining things have to do with anything when it comes to loneliness? But one of the mistakes that we all make when it comes to our brains is that we trust them to be objective arbiters of reality; that what we see and what we experience is absolutely, perfectly real. That we are experiencing things exactly as they are and that our emotions are understandable responses to those experiences.

Except we’re actually really bad at understanding why we feel the way that we feel. Sometimes it’s a matter of our brains interpreting the sensations that our bodies are feeding it — we feel our pulse racing, our mouths going dry, our palms getting sweaty and adrenaline dumping into our blood stream and we have to decide: which is it? Are we terrified, or are we aroused? Then our brains cast about for an explanation that justifies why we feel that way: is there a tiger in the grass over there? No. Is there an attractive woman standing right there talking to us? Yes? Oh, that explains it: we’re aroused.

Other times, however, we feel the way we do because we’ve been imagining awful scenarios, and our brains are responding accordingly. As it turns out, our brains have a very hard time telling the difference between reality and what we imagine. So we end up reacting to situations that we made up out of whole cloth as though they were real. This is one of the core causes of approach anxiety; we have spent so much time imagining how badly everything is going to go that we have terrified ourselves to the point of paralysis.

In your case, TTLF, you have two separate issues. The first is that yes, you’re legitimately lonely. You’re feeling isolated and adrift, and the current lockdown is only making it worse; now you don’t even see strangers, never mind your friends. The other is that you’ve been spending time imagining a future where nothing ever gets better and that your attempts at meeting people are doomed to go wrong.

Let’s see if we can tackle both of those issues, shall we?

Right now, the actual loneliness and isolation is the larger issue. We as a society are increasingly, desperately lonely.  Men in particular are vulnerable to this; while men and women lose friends at approximately the same pace, men tend to not make friends at the same rate that women do.  Women are taught, implicitly and explicitly, to be more social. They tend to make friends faster, especially with other women, and the way that women conduct their friendships tends to mean that their friendships are deeper and more emotionally intimate. Men, on the other hand, start having a harder time making close friends almost as soon as they hit puberty; they’re taught that emotional intimacy is the same as sexual intimacy and so they’re often reluctant to make friends, especially with other men. Most male friendships are activity based — at least at first — and so it take longer and more repetition to turn an acquaintance into a friend, and then into a good friend.

And the quarantine is only serving to exacerbate that. While under normal circumstances, one could meet up with their friends regularly for drinks or games or what-have-you, COVID-19 means that we’re having to stay home to protect one another. That makes it difficult to make new friends, and just as difficult to try to solidify them.

But difficult isn’t the same as impossible. Nailing Jell-o to a tree is impossible; everything else is merely difficult.

Right now, I would suggest that you start by finding new communities and rebuilding your social circle. The easiest way to start doing this would be to focus on your interests and your passions: what are the things that you love doing and give you joy in life, and how can you enjoy those in a way that help bring you in contact with other people who enjoy them? If, for example, you enjoy gaming, then it may not be a bad idea to start looking into a tabletop gaming group, especially groups that meet regularly. Traditional RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder are great for this; not only can you play the games remotely via Zoom or apps like Roll20, but taking part in an RPG campaign means that you’re going to be meeting on the regular. You might see if your local comic store or gaming stores have set up forums or services for matching players with campaigns.

Similarly, you might want to look into MeetUp groups that relate to your interests. A number of MeetUp groups have transitioned to online meetings during the pandemic; it may not be the same as seeing people in person, but joining these meetings is a great way of finding people with similar interests and laying the groundwork for building friendships and expanding your social circle. It will take time to transition from “faces you see in the Zoom call” to “friends”, but this will help scratch the itch for socialization and help keep you going while we all white-knuckle our way through the lockdowns.

And while I know you had many reasons for deciding to end things with your friends who moved away after graduation… maybe it’s time to revisit those reasons and see if they’re still valid. If circumstances have changed, or your feelings have evolved since you and your friends split, then maybe it’s a good time to reach out to them and start seeing about rebuilding your friendship with them. It won’t be the same as before, but that can often be a good thing. With distance (literal and metaphorical) and perspective, you may find that the nature of your friendship has changed for the better. It may mean you’ve all learned to be more mindful of the issues that broke you apart.

Now as for the social anxiety and the inability to bring yourself to meet new people, I suggest a two-pronged approach.

The first is that you focus on the story you tell yourself about yourself. One of the most important lessons that we can learn is that we are bigger than our thoughts, bigger than our imaginations. The things we think don’t define us; they’re just thoughts. Noticing your thoughts and labeling them is important. It’s not that your life is empty, you’re having the feeling that your life is empty. It’s not that you can’t make friends, it’s that you feel afraid that you can’t make friends. The same goes with being attractive or unattractive; it’s that you’re having the thought that you’re unattractive.

By that same token, you want to change the way you imagine trying to meet people. Right now, you’re imagining future scenarios — scenarios that haven’t actually happened — where you’re unable to meet people. Your brain is reacting to those imagined situations, rather than the reality. You want to take control of those mental scenarios and train yourself into seeing them go well. Think of it as training or dress rehearsal. Imagine a scenario that you’ve been worried about — meeting people at an event, for example. Picture it as vividly as you can, with as much sensory information as you can manage. Not just the event itself, but leading up to it — how you get there, opening the door and seeing everyone there for the first time. Then, instead of thinking of how intimidating it is, or how nervous you are or how you aren’t going to be able to meet people… imagine it going well. People there are happy to see you! They’re warm and welcoming and interested in getting to know you. Maybe it’s a little awkward at first, but you have the confidence to push through the initial nerves and you can see everyone being happy to have you there.  Imagine the conversations, picture the warm smiles and how much you enjoy yourself and getting to know these people.

Then, after you let this imagined scenario fade… see how you feel. Is it a little less intimidating, a little less daunting? Note and name those feelings. It’s ok if it’s not a huge change; you’ve spent a lot of time imagining worst case scenarios. But by starting to imagine best case scenarios, you start to retrain your brain into feeling that meeting people is less intimidating and scary and more of an exciting and awesome opportunity.

The next prong I would suggest is to talk to a counselor about your social anxiety, especially someone who has experience with autistic patients. They’re going to be in a good position to help you drill down to the causes of your anxiety and help you find ways of addressing them — both in terms of easing the symptoms and also helping you build your confidence and assuredness. If you can’t find someone in your area, you might look into an app like BetterHelp or Talkspace; they can help connect you with a trained counselor.

Your feeling lonely and isolated is real and understandable. But while things are daunting, they’re not impossible. It takes time and effort, but you’ve got the strength and the courage to reach out and make those connections that will help you meet new and amazing people — for friendship, and maybe even something more.

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 have a friend who has recently gotten back with her ex (whom none of her friends/family like). They were with one another for 1.5 years and living together. My friend broke up with her three times! They’ve told me that she wasn’t attached to her and never wanted to have sex with her. My friend has repeatedly lied to this girl about things from being obsessed with her ex to smoking. Nothing seems too big or small to lie about.

They were broken up for a year and recently gotten back together right before quarantine. My friend has every intention of moving forward with this girl even though they have the same issues as before (lack of libido). They are now moving really fast with one another and spend almost every night together. It doesn’t seem they have addressed the issues of their past.

I don’t know what to do now that they are back together. It is awkward and it is hard to take their relationship seriously. Any advice on how to handle this would be great!

Thanks,

At a Loss

DEAR AT A LOSS: There’re few things more frustrating than watching your friend continue to make a series of unforced errors, AAL. It’s like watching someone repeatedly touch the stove, only to get burned every time. You’d think they would have learned after the first time, but they keep trying again, as though sheer repetition and stubbornness will change the fundamental reality of the situation. Even after you tell them that no, the stove is still on and they’re going to get burned again, you see them reaching out one more time.

And therein lies the problem. You can give people the benefit of your insight and your advice, but you can’t live someone else’s life for them.

As frustrating as it may be, you can’t control people. You can smack them around with the Chair Leg of Truth if you want, but the odds are they aren’t going to listen. Motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug; if they’re determined to ignore all the times they’ve broken up before and why, they’re going to do so.

And unfortunately, there’s no argument or no amount of logic that’s going to make them come to their senses. Percy Sledge had it right: when someone’s in love — or at least in infatuation or some other near-as-dammit emotional state — they’re not going to listen. In fact, trying to push the issue is a great way to drive a wedge between you and them. As the man said: they’ll turn their back on their best friend who puts her down.

So I get the frustration. You can’t force them to recognize that this is a bad situation and that the two of them are on track to have the 12″ extended dance remix of their last three breakups — just more intense, a heavier bass and with a faster beat. All you can do is tell them exactly what you told me: that this is a bad situation, that they’re having the exact same problems that they had the first three times and that apparently absolutely nothing has changed. You can even tell them that this is going to end as badly as it did before and that you — and their other friends and family — are getting tired and frustrated watching the two of them do the same dance that they do every time.

But there’s a reason why it’s called “advice” and not “binding arbitration”. You can give them a piece of your mind, but at the end of the day, they’re going to have to decide what they’re going to do with it.

Which means that they can — and likely will — choose to ignore you and make the same mistakes yet again.

Now what you CAN do is refuse to be part of the narrative this time around. You can set boundaries and tell them that you don’t want to hear about this relationship or talk about it. You can say “I am willing to hang out with you and spend time with you, but I don’t want to discuss this relationship or have any sort of relationship with your girlfriend”. You can even say “Look, when you break up with them, I will be willing to help you figure out what you need to do so the two of you can move on and you don’t repeat this mess, but I don’t like her and I think this is a bad idea.”

But at the end of the day… your friend’s gonna do what they’re gonna do, and you can’t really stop them.

Lay down some boundaries, tell them exactly where your support stops and stick to it. And then hopefully either your friend and their partner will actually address their issues and fix things this time around… or they’ll break up (again) and hopefully this time things will actually stick.

Good luck.

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