DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Near the end of last year I started a new relationship with this incredible girl. Our chemistry was great and it honestly felt like I had found my “life buddy” (a term we called each other). She not only showed interest in the things that I liked but I was also interested in her likes and even when I didn’t understand them I was still able to see what she saw of value in them.

Fast forward to March of this year. Due to the pandemic we were both furloughed from our jobs and although we did our best keeping entertained for a month she felt homesick and moved back to KY with her family. The thought of going long distance was daunting but it was something we agreed we could attempt to do. After spending six months apart it feels like we both reached a breaking point. When talking about when our paths would cross again she didn’t seem very sure of were her life would be headed. Meanwhile, I had just started my graduate degree and returned to work. I had suggested she come down and visit me in FL, but she said she didn’t want to risk traveling. I was fine with this, until she mentioned she was also planning on flying to the Virgin Islands with her family. I brought this up to her on our last conversation, mentioning how it felt a bit of a double standard. She quickly admitted that she wasn’t happy and the long distance was taking a toll on her anxiety. She felt like we needed to call things off now while things were still good between us, than wait for the moment it reaches its boiling point.

It all hit me the next day. The apartment felt even more empty than it did before, probably because it was permanent now and she wasn’t coming back at all. I reached out to a friend of mine and we met up for drinks to which she showed me a message she received from my ex saying: “hey can you please check up on him this week”. I feel like I had no control over what happened and COVID just threw a very unexpected wrench into my relationship.

What happened? And what can I do about this?

Pandemic Paranoia

DEAR PANDEMIC PARANOIA: The short version PP is yes: COVID-19 blew up your relationship.

Sort of.

The problem is that life threw the both of you a curveball because of the pandemic. You both went through a number of fairly significant life-events, which have a tendency to stress-test relationships, especially relatively new ones. First is, well, the fact that we’re living through the worst pandemic in a hundred years. That alone is causing people an incredible amount of stress and mental anguish. Even though it may not feel like it, the constant awareness that we’re living through a global crisis that’s killed more than 210,000 people in America alone has become the background radiation of our lives; it’s like a constant, low-grade hum that you can’t completely block out. Then there’s the fact that you both got furloughed from work. Getting let go, even when it’s theoretically temporary is a huge stressor. Not only does it mean that you have to deal the uncertainty of your financial situation, but for a lot of folks, it can be like a loss of identity. Men, in particular, tend to have adverse reactions to losing their job; it hits them square in the “man is supposed to be the provider” trope, leaving them feeling emasculated and helpless.

Then there’s the fact that you and your girlfriend transitioned to being in a long-distance relationship. Twice, even. The first time was when the quarantine came down and everyone who wasn’t living with their partner found themselves in a de facto long-distance relationship. The second time was when your girlfriend decided she needed to be with family and moved back to Kentucky. Long distance relationships can be incredibly hard on relationships under the best of circumstances. They’re even harder when the things that make LDRs tolerable — regular visits, knowing that there’s an end-point — are impossible. Your girlfriend moved away and, frankly, there wasn’t really any way for the two of you to reunite until either the pandemic eased up or you were both willing to run the risk of COVID exposure while traveling.

Neither of you were. That was the point where your relationship was functionally on a countdown timer until a break up that was, honestly, somewhat inevitable.

I mean, I hate to say this but… you all weren’t together for that long before COVID hit. Three-ish months is not a long time for a relationship; you’re still very much in the “getting to know you” stages, when you’re both on your best behavior and likely aren’t so much as farting in front of each other. That’s plenty of time for some serious sexual attraction and the rush of New Relationship Energy, but rarely enough time to forge the kind of emotional bonds that help a relationship last through so much upheaval. So — and I don’t mean to be cruel — I’m not entirely surprised that you were a lower priority; you simply weren’t together for long enough to really make that kind of connection.

That having been said: I do think it was s--tty of her to say “I just don’t feel safe traveling to see you” and then telling you that she was taking a family vacation to the Virgin Islands. That was unnecessarily mean on her part, and frankly it would’ve been kinder for her to end things without telling you that you were less important than a (frankly, in my opinion, irresponsible) family vacation. There was no need to tell you about that; she could’ve told you that she wasn’t able to do the long-distance thing and left it there without the implied insult.

At the end of the day, you’re right: this was out of your control. Unfortunately, life is like that; sometimes s--t happens, and the only thing you can do is roll with it. Many times the things that cause our relationships to end are out of everybody’s hands. There’s no good guy, there’s no bad guy, there’s just the vagaries of life. And while that sucks, there really isn’t anything to be done, nor was there anything you could have done to prevent this.

However, I do want to point out that she clearly does care about you. People who don’t care don’t, as a general rule, ask their friends to check in on their exes. That’s something I think you should hold onto. Your relationship didn’t end because of anything that you or she did wrong, nor did it end because one of you didn’t care enough. It’s simply that you were both reasonable people in an unreasonable situation.

Right now, I suggest you give yourself time to heal and recover from this. Take this time to practice some self-care and work on finding the things that will help you feel better. One of the things I strongly suggest is that you find ways to keep busy, especially with friends. One of the reasons why we feel so awful after a break up is because we’re in withdrawal; we’ve just lost our single biggest source of oxytocin and now we’re having to deal with the aftermath. Finding the things that help generate oxytocin — laughter, conversation, physical touch, even emotional satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment — goes a long, long way to helping ease that sense of loss.

I’m sorry you’re going through this PP, but just remember: this wasn’t your fault. This wasn’t something that you could’ve avoided if you’d done things differently. The simple truth is that you got dealt a s--tty hand this time around. It sucks now, but it won’t suck forever. Take care of yourself, and you’ll start to feel better faster than you realize.

You’ve got this.

All will be well.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Thanks for all the work you do! I have a question I’ve been pondering for a while now, and it is how on earth I figure out what I want. Because I can’t. And I have been trying very, very hard.

Professionally I’m all set (in my very early 30s, got all the opportunities anyone could ever ask for), my family is amazing and supportive and drama free (mostly very far away, but that’s about the only complaint I have) and my friends are beyond awesome. My life is already as close to perfect as it gets in this world, and sometimes I wonder how on earth I could possibly get even more lucky and find the perfect relationship to top it all off. Because that would seem like having my cake and eating it. And I can’t help but suspect that nobody really gets to do that.

Thing is, I don’t even know if I want a relationship. I’m content and I have a lot of challenging things to work towards. I have all the emotional support I want, mostly thanks to your awesome writing on developing emotional intimacy with people that I have no interest in seeing romantically. Seriously, it’s like someone gave you a cheat code for life. So I see very little benefit in relationships.

Whenever I am seeing someone romantically, it takes about a month before I crave being on my own again because I get to do whatever I like, whenever it pleases me. This was a bit more pertinent before that thing everybody is talking about because I would travel a lot, privately and professionally. That’s off the cards for now, but the feeling is the same even when there are no real opportunities I am missing out on. Somehow, whenever I am dating someone, time to myself becomes incredibly valuable and time spent with them bores me. So I end things. And I hurt people doing that, which I hate. But staying with them would be terribly unfair to them because I’d be faking it.

Then I am relieved and single again and content. And then I start to wonder if maybe I am missing out on something and start dating again and so the cycle goes. But I never have the connections with people I date that I have with my friends, and so I leave. Again. And then I start to wonder. Again.

Hell, I even went to see a psychologist about this (among other things) and they said some stuff about avoidant attachment that sounded sort of true but also a bit generic, kind of like a horoscope.

Any advice?

Is What You Want What You Need?

DEAR IS WHAT YOU WANT WHAT YOU NEED?: What you have, IWYWWYN, is a classic case of “asking the wrong question”. What you have isn’t exactly a problem so much as that you’re coming at this from the wrong angle. So let’s adjust things a little bit and see if that doesn’t help.

Now to start with, you’re actually in a great position all around. One of the things I regularly people is that you don’t want a relationship that “completes” you. I see this all the time: someone who thinks that they need a relationship in order to be “complete” or to be fulfilled. They essentially see themselves as having this hole in their life marked “girlfriend” or “partner” and want to find someone — anyone — to fill it. But the problem with this approach is that they’re relying on someone else to fulfill their lives. Not only is this a huge amount of pressure to put on another person that can risk damaging the relationship, but it also ultimately outsources your happiness and well-being to another person. You’re no longer in control of your own life; you’re dependent on someone else to make you happy, and that’s an inherently unstable situation. Relationships end, partners leave or pass away, and suddenly you’ve got that massive hole in your life again.

You, on the other hand, are in the place that I tell people is ideal: live a great life full of things that satisfy you and bring you joy. Have strong and emotionally fulfilling relationships with friends and family, have things that feed your soul and give you reason to get up in the morning. When you look around and think “hey, this is pretty good! Having someone to share it with would be great too!”, then you’re in an excellent position to find a partner; you aren’t relying on them for your happiness or emotional needs AND you have a great life to share with someone. That means you’re coming to any relationship from a position of collaboration — “here’s what I bring to the table, here’s what you bring to the table, let’s put them together and see what happens”. And as an added bonus, it helps bolster an abundance mentality when it comes to dating. Because you aren’t coming to a date or potential relationship from a position of neediness or desperation, you’re better able to weigh issues like compatibility and interest. If someone’s not right for you… well, it’s a damn shame, but hey, that just means that this single person isn’t right for you, and now you’re free to find someone who is. And there’re millions of folks out there who are your potential match.

I think the problem you’re having is that you’re dating people who aren’t necessarily right for you. One of the things people often get wrong about relationships is that they think that being in a relationship with someone means that you need to be joined at the hip. That you need to spend as much time with them as you possibly can. That’s simply not true. While that style of relationship and connection works for some people, that doesn’t work for everyone, nor should it. Some people are dogs, who need their pack. Some folks are cats; they want their clowder, but they don’t necessarily need them all the time. They like getting together when it suits them and doing their own thing when it suits them.

(Yes, I realize that there are very clingy, cuddly and sociable cats. I have one. Roll with the metaphor here)

You seem like somebody who values their alone time. That’s valid. It just means you want to date someone who understands that and — preferably — likes their alone time too. And trust me: those folks exist. In fact, they tend to have the same struggles you do: finding someone who doesn’t want to be up on them 24/7/52.

The issue is that is sounds like either you’re not dating those people, or you’re not establishing that you like having your solo time as well as being in a relationship. Now you don’t mention this in your letter, so I can’t tell if it’s that you’re dating people who aren’t compatible with you or if you feel that you’re supposed to spend more time with them than you would prefer. But either way, it comes down to that you’ve had relationships that don’t work because you aren’t making that a priority for you — something that should ideally come up when you and your partner have the Defining The Relationship talk.

The other issue you bring up is about how you don’t have the connections with the people you date that equal what you have with your friends. This, I suspect, is a matter of time, rather than anything inherent to romantic relationships. From the sounds of it, you’re only seeing people for about a month or so at a time before you get twitchy and decide you need your space. That’s not really enough time to build a strong and lasting emotional connection, especially compared to the one you have with friends you’ve known for years. And considering that you seem to be dating people you’re not a good match with, I can see why you might not be motivated to work on building that connection.

Now it’s certainly possible that you fall somewhere on the asexual/aromantic spectrum and so the idea of a relationship is more interesting to you than the reality. But honestly, it sounds a little more like “wrong person, wrong relationship” to me.

So my first suggestion is that you prioritize finding a person whose relationship style matches yours — someone who like the companionship and romance of a relationship, but also likes their own space and own time. If you’re using dating apps, then I’d suggest making that clear in your profile. It’s much easier to start off with someone who’s on the same page than it is to pivot to this when you have the DTR conversation… especially if they went into this expecting something different.

One thing that might help — assuming that monogamy isn’t something you absolutely need in the long term — is to look for people who want a  casual relationship, rather than something serious or a friends-with-benefits arrangement. One of the things that can often trip people up is the label, rather than the relationship itself. Many couples have found that they have a great relationship… as long as they don’t call each other “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”.  “Relationship”, “boyfriend”  and “girlfriend” all come with cultural baggage and assumptions built into them that can trip people up. However, when you remove the label — and attendant expectations — then suddenly the issues people have often clear up. If you and a potential partner have a casual relationship or an FWB relationship, it may make it easier to have that time apart you need without feeling like you’re being tied down.

In these cases, just remember that it took time to build the sort of emotional intimacy you have with your friends; you’re going to need time and effort to build that with the people you date.

Another possibility — if you want to explore it, that is — is to simply embrace the short-term relationship. Relationships don’t need to end with somebody dying in the saddle in order to be successful. Relationships that only last a few months are just as real and valid as ones that span decades. While this means that you’re less likely to build the kind of emotional connection you have with your platonic friends, it’s a relationship style that may be more fitting for your needs. Just make sure that, if you go this route, that the people you date know this is what to expect; letting people believe that this relationship has long-term potential when it doesn’t is not cool.

Or it could well be that you’re just not that into dating and romance. And hey, if that’s the case, then more power to you. If it ain’t broke, then there’s nothing that needs “fixing”. If you think that’s you, then it might be worth checking out some of the FAQs and forums at asexuality.org; they can help give you the vocabulary and resources that might help clarify things for you in the future. Plus, if you decide that maybe you would like to give this “dating” thing another shot, there’s nothing saying that you can’t. Just keep those guidelines I mentioned in mind.

Like I said, IWYWWYN, you’re in a good place over all and especially when it comes to dating. All you really need is a perspective shift, and I think things will shake out for you, one way or another.

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 think I’ve come to the denouement of my real problem, but as it was a painful process and is still ongoing, I’d like to relate my story and see if you have any good advice for moving forward.

I cut ties with a toxic partner about a week ago. I think one of the hardest things about our relationship was seeing massive red flags everywhere and allowing myself to have my mental slate erased like an Etch-a-Sketch by the fact that this abuse was unintentional.

So, in 2013, I was feeling good about being alone when I met Jake (names have been changed to protect the innocent) online. We seemed to hit it off, so we started going out. We had mind-blowing earth-shattering sex that eclipses my memory of our first year. He was unemployed, and I helped him with the caring kick in the ass he needed to start making money again and move out of his parents’ house. He felt a lot of guilt about mooching off their support since he quit his lucrative last IT job and squandered his savings. I was also living at home, and understood the shame that comes from not having income.

I quit my retail job to work in my field in 2014 and was glad of it because my resume had even more holes in it than Jake’s swiss cheese history. I was let go about a month later. This was a big blow to my self-esteem but Jake was there to get me through the rough times. After living with roommates for a year, he decided to move with me to a shared house where I would be independent of my parents. He floated the idea of being my sole source of financial support, so I could focus on my career without stress.

Then he asked me to marry him.

I was a little taken aback since we were both kind of anti-wedding if not anti-patriarchal-symbol-of-property-exchange, but I said yes. In the months leading up to my moving in with Jake, his insistence on a D/s relationship became subtly more aggressive, and I said sure we can try that. I’m probably a french vanilla with sprinkles as kink goes, and it wasn’t difficult, until I got triggered one evening and was unable to “red” out (red means stop, yellow means slow down, like a stoplight) of a scene. I insisted that this was due to a scene dynamic I was unprepared for, but Jake cooled his jets and held onto resentment that I wasn’t into being kinky. A few months later, I tried to take it in a different direction – dog seemed to have a different connotation than slave to me, so I suggested pet play. Jake didn’t understand the distinction, but was excited to learn.

A few months later, I moved in with him. The roommates we shared a townhouse with were passive aggressive and weird and made life annoying. Worse, tensions at his job were inciting Jake to look for new work. When OPM investigated his candidacy further due to a fudging of being fired to a “mutual decision for me to leave,” Jake’s chances for keeping his new job seemed to diminish (as far as I know he still has it, go figure). We had a huge fight about whether the government was right to brand him not suitable for a clearance – I insisted that it was not a personal judgement of his character to say that if he lied to the government in fear of losing his job, maybe he wasn’t the best candidate for a clearance. He locked the door to our bedroom and bathroom for an hour.

Having resolved that fight semi-peaceably with a decision to table our engagement, which involved shearing off my bride hair, we moved forward. I got a job as a pet sitter and dog walker that was stressful but allowed me to be financially independent for the most part. I got a much better job a year later that was just enough above minimum wage for us to afford an apartment in an expensive part of the city closer to Jake’s job, where he was put on non-cleared overhead for a negotiated salary of 63k or so. Mine was somewhere around 30.

So we moved into our own one bedroom apartment in 2017. Fights were regular. In the interim years, my friends had stopped inviting us to social engagements. My family mentioned they wanted to see us more often. But whenever I would see someone without Jake, he treated it as emotional cheating, and leaving him out of my life. I increasingly wanted time alone in the apartment, which only spurred on Jake’s feelings of abandonment.

Somewhere around the third time I was provisionally fired and made to look for and train my own replacement at my job, I stopped making transfers for rent to Jake. My salary had been cut but I couldn’t find work elsewhere. We fought about it but never discussed it. He insisted that if I spent less on frivolous things, I’d have the money to pay him.

I walked out of my job one day and into the ER for fear of my safety from suicidal depression. Jake was supportive and joined me at the hospital. I quit my job officially later that day. In the months that followed, I worked on myself and got two jobs to make ends meet – part-time at the job I’d quit a month ago, and part time dog walking. Things had reached a comfortable lull that I was thinking Jake and I could move forward from. I asked him about getting out of our lease and he said not to worry about it.

Then one day he started a roundabout conversation about moving into a townhouse again, this time renting a room so that I could afford rent. At this point, I owed him back rent on our agreement of some $3000. Next day, the current lease was cancelled, waiting for my signature. He toured houses without me, and we had our last big fight, after which I stormed out to stay with my mom.

I moved out, and we stayed friends. We tried a few months later to patch things up. It didn’t work. My family hated how he sponged my time. Then the pandemic hit. Jake texted me, as he often did while we were together, saying it was difficult to be the person no one wanted to talk to. I texted back viciously that he could see a therapist, work on himself for once. He blocked me. My family and friends rejoiced and told me all the ways he was awful. I thought it was because they were trying to be supportive.

Then last week I was thinking (a dangerous pastime), wondering how Jake was and if he wanted closure. He wasn’t the type to just cut ties out of the blue. I offered an olive branch over text and he called me by our secret pet name for each other in return.

In the next week, I talked with him for about 8 hours a day for four days. Jake had started therapy and antidepressants. Was working toward getting better and wanted to be friends, even platonic partners. On the fourth day, my family intervened. Since then, I’ve been untangling a web of unintentional gaslighting going back almost 7 years. I wouldn’t say I’m not responsible for at least some of the toxicity between us. But I have learned that he does not care about me and that was all I needed to put him out of my life for good. I am aware of the ways I hurt him – most were made clear to me at the time; some I had come to on my own. I didn’t and still don’t know how deeply I was hurt by our relationship.

I know, and am sorry, that you have first hand experience with both sides of this kind of toxicity. I think that’s why I’m asking you, now that I’ve asked everyone else in my life.

I guess what I’m wondering, as someone intentionally oblivious, being manipulated and abused by someone just as intentionally oblivious of that manipulation, how to understand and prevent it from happening again?

How can I know myself when my mirror is so distorted from years of warping? How can I know my yes when my no has been so absent? How can I recover and share mutual intimacy with future partners? More importantly, how can I love myself after years of being “loved” the wrong way?

Ex-Victim

DEAR EX-VICTIM: This is one of those times where I REALLY wish you’d included more detail about what went down between you and your ex. Because, I’m going to be honest, EV: I’m not seeing much in your letter as it’s written that suggests a lot of abuse or gaslighting. Most of what I’m seeing is the story of two people who were a bad match, who stayed in a relationship for much longer than was healthy for either of them. While there are definitely some red-flags here — Jake losing his security clearance because he lied to the government about why he got fired, and having a temper-tantrum over it for example — most of them are flaws of character, rather than abusive behavior. There ARE behaviors that you describe that definitely butt up on being toxic or borderline abusive behavior, such as how he would get upset that you saw friends or family without him. Isolating somebody from their friends and loved ones is a classic sign of abuse. However, this doesn’t sound like he was trying to keep you away from friends or preventing you from seeing anyone he didn’t approve of; it sounds like he would have a big sad when you’d go out and make it your responsibility to manage his feelings. Which is s--tty, but not exactly abusive, honestly. A lot is going to depend on just what he was doing and how, and from what we have in the letter, it’s hard for me — a person reading this at quite the remove — to make that call.

Now I want to be absolutely clear: I’m NOT saying that manipulation or gaslighting didn’t happen, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Nor, for that matter, am I disagreeing with you that this was a toxic relationship or that this wasn’t abusive. All I’m saying is that it feels like details are missing that could help. So I can’t really comment on the specifics with THIS guy and tell you what to look out for based on your experiences.

That having been said, it sounds like you’re still processing things in the wake of your break up. That’s good. Sometimes it can take time to recognize what somebody did to you and to come to terms with it. Going back and looking at your relationship can help you recognize issues in hindsight that you can then be more mindful of in the future. Especially when you can look back and realize that behavior that you accepted as normal at the time was, in fact, a giant red flag. Or, for that matter that it was actually abusive.

But here are some things to be on the lookout for in your future relationships.

To start with: how does they act at the start of the relationship? Are they incredibly demonstrative and effusive with their feelings, telling you how amazing you are and how crazy they are about you, even though you barely know each other? Do they seem to feel much more strongly than would be warranted by the length of time that you’re dating? This is often a sign that somebody is love-bombing you — trying to overwhelm you with attention and affection so that you don’t notice how quickly the relationship is progressing or other red flags. Similarly, pushing for high levels of commitment early is a warning sign. Trying to get somebody to commit to a relationship when you’ve only just starting to get to know each other is an indicator either that the other person has low emotional intelligence or is trying to lock you down before you can get away.

Next: how do they respond to your having and enforcing boundaries? Do they demand that you let them do the thing they want anyway? Do they argue with you about why you have that boundary or why they should be allowed to ignore it? Do they continue to push at your limits, even when you’ve told them to stop? That’s an indication that they see boundaries and restrictions as things that happen to other people. Now keep in mind: it’s one thing to disagree with your boundary; it’s another to not respect it. People can think that your boundary or limit is absurd, wrong-headed or a mistake; that’s a matter of opinion.  However, if they still respect that boundary, then this isn’t a red flag; it’s merely a difference of opinion. We can think it’s absurd that, say, somebody thinks coffee is poison and refuses to drink it. But as long as we don’t try to convince them to have a cup (or try to trick them into drinking it) and respect their desire to avoid it, then we can disagree all we want.

How do they treat you around others? Do they neg you, insult you or undermine you when you’re out with friends? Are you always the butt of their jokes? Do they bring things up in order to embarrass you or make you feel awkward? When you’re celebrating a success, do they do or say things that diminish what you’ve accomplished? Do they make you feel as though you’re a failure or worthless? Do they mock or belittle your ambitions, goals or dreams?

For that matter, do they constantly question your views or beliefs? Do they insist that you have to be mistaken about things that you know to be true? Do they make you question your judgement and doubt your own instincts? Are you almost always wrong, especially about things that make you upset or hurt you? Are you “always making such a big deal out of things” or “blowing things out of proportion”? Do they make you question your view of reality?

While we’re at it: are love and affection conditional? Do they withdraw and act cold to you when you’ve done something wrong? Do they use things like the silent treatment and a refusal to answer calls or texts as punishment for when you “misbehave”?  Are you always unsure about where you stand with them, or do you feel fairly certain and secure in your relationship?

Do they do things that scare you, especially deliberately? This can include anything from reckless driving, yelling and screaming, damaging or destroying property (including punching walls, smashing or throwing dishes or glasses) or otherwise making threats? For that matter, do they threaten to hurt themselves if you do something they don’t like, including leaving them?

Do they try to control you and your actions? This could be direct or indirect. They could pitch a fit or make a scene in public in order to embarrass you when they don’t get their way. They could put up such a fuss when you go out to see friends (constantly demanding to know where you are, what you’re doing and when you’re coming home, pouting and crying and acting hurt, etc) that you end up not seeing them because it’s too much of a hassle. Or they could insist on having control of, say, your finances, your medication or other necessities.

It’s worth noting: this isn’t an exhaustive list, nor is it definitive. Sometimes people can act in ways that hurt us without realizing it. Other times there can be scrambled lines of communication and people simply aren’t being heard or trying to get their needs met in unproductive ways. But when a potential or future partner trips one of these red flags or sets your Spidey-sense tingling, then it’s important to examine things as carefully and dispassionately as possible. It may well be a good idea to get the opinion of a friend whose judgement you trust, just so that you can have an outsider’s perspective.

But more than anything else: pay attention to how they make you feel. If someone makes you feel insecure, unsafe or otherwise uncomfortable, listen to those feelings. Those are warning signs, and should be taken seriously. It might be nothing. It may end up being a big mistake. But often, those feelings are a sign that things are wrong, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. So examine your relationship with Jake, process what happened, what he did and what you did… and then learn from it. The lessons you take away from that relationship may be what help you exit a future, toxic relationship at speed, instead of spending another 7 years with someone who’s manifestly wrong for you.

Good luck.

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