DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, first things first: my partner (38NB, they/them) and I (28F) both have histories of abusive relationships. Their most recent partner before they met me was physically, sexually, and emotionally violent towards them; I had gotten out of a sexually predatory and abusive relationship with a much older man. We both understand that the trauma we’ve undergone shapes us, but does not define us. We’re working through it.

My problem is that I’m scared that I was simply the first partner in a long time to show them kindness and compassion, and that because of that they’ve spent the last five and a half years in a relationship in which, on some fundamental level, they do not want to be. This is in large part because I have a lot of flaws as a partner.

We live together and have done for nearly five years, but it was a case of me moving into their flat straight from my parents’ house rather than us picking a place together. I am long-term unemployed and contribute to household expenses as much as I am able but they’re still the primary breadwinner and I feel like I am leeching off them. I have triggers relating to showers (which I would rather not go into) that make personal hygiene difficult for me. I clean and help out and cook and the like, but I’ve had to learn how over the time we’ve lived together. I have serious depression and anxiety, for which I am receiving treatment and medication, but they had to poke and prod me into getting any treatment at all. I constantly feel like I have nothing to offer but being a considerate and caring partner – something that should be the default for any relationship, though the both of us are keenly aware that it is very much not.

Both of us drink heavily, something which lockdown has made worse, but they’re getting through a litre of gin every couple of days. They’re much more outgoing than I am and not being able to see their friends has hit them very hard indeed. When they’ve been drunk on the sofa, they’ve talked about how they didn’t see themselves ending up like this. Illness took their dreams of being a dancer in the West End, and now they’re pushing forty in a provincial fishing village that makes Toshi Station look like the height of urbane cosmopolitanism. And they look so sad when they say it. And then the next day, it’s like a switch has been flipped and it’s all smiles, and when I try to bring it up they brush it aside as me being paranoid. Which, to be entirely fair, is one of the symptoms of my anxiety disorder.

I love my partner, I really have to stress that. I love them with all my heart. I’m just terrified that I’m not worth loving back as much, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I’m making my partner as happy as they make me. I struggle to tell what’s my paranoia and what’s a genuine issue that I should talk about with them. They’re a really awesome person and I just… worry that I’m nothing more than the first person to be a good partner, and that having had such an unbelievably fucking shitty partner for five years makes me look way better than I actually am.

We’ve been together, like I said, for five and a half years. I’ve been really happy. The happiest I can ever remember being. And I wonder if I’m the only one in the relationship who feels like that.

Or if it’s all in my head.

Thank you for reading,

Relevant Black Sabbath Song

DEAR RELEVANT BLACK SABBATH SONG: Well let’s get this out of the way first, RBSS: yes, your partner is settling for you. But you are also settling for them. This doesn’t mean that they’re choosing you because you’re the closest warm body that said yes, or only person they could end up in a relationship with. It means that everybody looks at their list of what they want in a partner and realizes that no one person can provide ALL the things they want. Everybody goes into a relationship saying “Ok, I’m willing to give up on X, Y or Z because what I do get from this person is worth it”. And that goes for you too; nobody gets 100% of what they want in a relationship, but they get enough that they’re happy with the exchange.

Problems only arise when somebody prioritizes “having a relationship” over “a relationship with a person I want to actually date” — they’re just trying to fill a whole marked “relationship”, rather than choosing that person specifically.

Now with that said, let’s talk about the specifics of your situation. First and foremost, I think you’re drastically undervaluing offering someone kindness and compassion and what that can mean to someone… especially someone who was in a horrifically abusive relationship. Being somebody that they can trust, somebody who is safe and reliable and lets them feel secure is no small thing. The sense of being able to let your guard down and let somebody in without having to tense up or be afraid of how they’ll treat you is huge. That’s not “well anyone could provide this” or something cheap or meaningless. It’s very, very important and I suspect it was at the top of your partner’s “must have” list. So stop talking yourself down on that level.

Similarly: you have your flaws. Ok… and? Everyone does. Maybe it means that you wouldn’t be compatible with some people. But you’re not dating those people, you’re dating your partner. Similarly, you have depression and anxiety and your partner has been poking and prodding you to get into therapy. Here’s the thing: they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t care. People, on the whole, don’t try to push folks they don’t like into getting help. And hey, if it helps you process things, look at this as your partner saying “here’s something you can do: taking care of yourself will make our relationship better.”

You’re also seeing this relationship on a transactional basis and worrying that things aren’t perfectly balanced. But perfect balance is for Thanos… all the rest of us deal with things being a little unequal on one side or the other. But not only is that not inherently a bad thing, successful relationships balance those aspects out in other ways. You aren’t the primary breadwinner, but there are other ways you contribute, both to the household and to the relationship. They can be anything from housework to being the emotional port that provides them safety from the storm.

And then there’s the part about “I didn’t think my life would end up like this”. First of all, a thing you need to keep in mind is that alcohol is a depressant in the literal and emotional sense of the word. As I’ve said before: we’re bad at understanding why we feel the way we do. Our brains don’t just feel emotions, they interpret the input they’re getting from the body and backfill the reasons for it after the fact. As a result, getting drunk can make you feel lower than you actually are because it’s depressing your nervous system. It can even drag up feelings that you’d resolved because it removes filters and hinders your judgement. So, just as getting drunk impairs a person’s ability to consent, because they may be agreeing to something they don’t actually want to do, your partner’s discussing how their life isn’t the way they expected doesn’t mean that they don’t like the way things are now. It just means that there’re things that they wish could’ve been different. And hey, we all have that. Show me somebody who doesn’t look at aspects of their life that they wish  could’ve gone differently and I’ll show you a fictional character. But life not going in the direction you expected doesn’t mean that they can’t be — or aren’t —  happy now.

Shit, 90% of Christmas movies are people discovering their lives aren’t going the way they expected and realizing that this is OK.

(The rest are about terrorists invading Nakatomi Plaza or crime waves in Gotham.)

The biggest problem you have isn’t that your partner is “settling” for you. It’s that you aren’t recognizing that what you’re giving them is actually very goddamn valuable indeed. Safety, security, care and love are huge. Are you perfect? No. Neither is anyone else. Are you The Perfect Partner? No… but neither are they. Are there things you could possibly do to make things balance out a bit more? Probably, and you can talk with your partner about ways that you could do this. But that’s not the same as “being a bad partner” or “being the first person to be nice to them”. The important question to ask is are they happy? And are you happy?

And then it’s your responsibility to listen and take yes for an answer. Because the thing that’s worse than “settling” for somebody? That’s being told you’re settling, when you really aren’t. It’s telling your partner that you love them and being called a liar for saying that. Yes, there are things you can work on; everyone has those. And it may well be worth doing so, when you can differentiate actual areas of improvement from your anxiety dripping poison in your ear.

But most importantly: you need to recognize your worth and value and how important the things you contribute actually are. Being kind, caring and supportive isn’t just baseline, it’s important and it’s clearly something your partner lacked, desperately needs and that you provide. Don’t diminish that. And don’t steal misery from the future; enjoy what you have now.

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: This is a pretty minor problem compared to a lot of the ones that you deal with, but I’ve really valued your advice over the years, so I thought I’d send it in anyway.

I was very nervous and awkward as a teenager, but I have spent the last decade working actively on my social skills. I’m proud of how far I’ve come! I’ll always be a bit dorky, but I am able to have conversations with a wide range of people. I have an upbeat personality and really like getting to know people, but I am also a bit over accommodating.

This leads to a dating problem—I feel like I lead guys on. When I’m on a date I tend to smooth over any conversational rough spots, get enthusiastic about their interests, and actively listen to the things they want to rant about. If someone isn’t engaging with me and I have to carry the entire conversation, I can and will do that. I can tell that a lot of guys leave our dates feeling like they’ve really connected, only to be completely blindsided when I reject them. I feel like I’m the woman on the other side of every story about how “I thought it was going so well, I just don’t know what happened.” Rejection hurts, and it especially hurts when you didn’t see it coming. I’m sure all women experience this to some extent, but my I-Don’t-Want-To-Date-You conversations can get super messy and make me feel like the bad guy.

I’m not trying especially hard on dates and never promise anything–it’s my default conversational style that’s the issue. I really want people to have a good time, and don’t know how to do “lukewarm.” To a lesser extent this is also a problem in my friendships, as it’s become a pattern that other people get much more invested in me than I do in them. I think sometimes by trying to be nice in the short term I end up hurting people in the long term, and I feel awful about that.

Do you have any advice on dialing it back? Should I learn to let awkward silences hang and invest in a resting bitch face? I know that there’s got to be middle ground between “what I’m doing now” and “actively being mean” but for some reason I’m finding it hard to navigate. Or should I just accept that part of life is sometimes accidentally hurting the almost stranger that you are eating a giant plate of tacos with? I don’t want to close myself off to other people.

Thank you for your time!

Feeling Rotten About Unrequited Desires

DEAR FEELING ROTTEN ABOUT UNREQUITED DESIRES: This is one of those weird times when I can understand what you’re going through, FRAUD, but man I can empathize with the folks you were on dates with. It can be really frustrating  and confusing when it seems like you were really vibing with someone and having a great conversation only to find out that… well… they weren’t actually feeling it. Now you’re left wondering just what the hell happened, when all signs pointed to everybody having a great time.

But while I can see why there would be dudes who feel like you’re leading them on, the problem is, ultimately, one of discomfort in the short term.

You mention that this is an issue that you have with your friendships too, which I think is a bit of a clue as to where the problem lies. The fact that this tendency towards over-accommodation seeps into your entire social life suggests that you have issues with being a people-pleaser. On the surface, that’s the sort of thing that sounds like a non-problem; what’s wrong with wanting to make sure people are having a good time? Well, it comes down to the cost of paying so much attention to other people’s emotional states. One of the problems that people-pleasers have is that this desire to accommodate others’ needs comes at the expense of their own needs. Giving so much to others often means that either the people-pleaser is missing out or giving up resources that they might need, whether those are material resources or intangibles like time or emotional bandwidth. So someone may agree to take up responsibilities at work that tax their ability to get their own work done. Or they may agree to so many things that they don’t have time or energy for and run headlong into burn-out.

And of course, people-pleasers tend to be a magnet for toxic people who love to take advantage of them.

In your case, your behavior is giving the impression of being far more invested than you actually are, leading to lopsided — or non-existent — relationships. I have to imagine that there’s also a psychic cost to this as well; dealing with the constant mistaken impressions or imbalances in your friendships must get exhausting under the best of circumstances. And that’s before we get to the (understandable) guilt at feeling like you’ve lead people on.

I absolutely get why you feel like you need to carry the conversation. There’s a strong sociological aspect involved here; even in this day and age, women are socialized to prioritize the feelings and emotions of men over their own… even when that hurts them. And let’s be real: those awkward silences or the inability to keep the conversation can be uncomfortable, even anxiety-producing. So I get why you feel like you have a duty to carry on the conversation. But — as you’ve noticed — the end result is a problem of its own.

So my first suggestion is that you start to interrogate just why you feel the need to be the person who makes sure everyone has a good time, no matter what. Does this come from a sense of a lack of self-worth? Are you trying to prove your value or justify your presence in people’s lives by being a people-pleaser because you don’t feel like you have any value on your own? Do you feel like you need to take on the responsibility because someone told you this is what you need to do? Do you not feel like you have the right to just hang back and not carry the entire conversation on your own? Or is it just as simple as feeling like someone needs to do something about that uncomfortable moment and you just end up always being the one to step up?

The more you can understand just why you feel compelled to do this, the easier it will be to dial it all back.

Notice I say “dial it back”, not “be mean”. There’s a vast difference between the two. You don’t need to overcorrect from being too accommodating to being mean or contemptuous.

That’s why my second suggestion is to do less. I realize this seems like a duh-George answer, but I think if you look at your life, you’ll see many places where you go above and beyond the call of duty, to the point of absurdity. By choosing to do less — to embrace the concept of choosing not to fill the emptiness — you carve out more time and emotional bandwidth for yourself. So, rather than rushing to fill in the conversational gaps yourself or carrying the entire conversation on your own shoulders, simply… hold back. Let the silence or the awkwardness be, instead of trying to fix it. This has two benefits. First: it means that the other person is going to have to take responsibility for their end of things. Dates — and conversations, for that matter — are collaborative exercises. The whole point is for mutual engagement and mutual connection. When one person is doing all the work, it’s no longer a partnership. At best, it’s a lecture. At worst, one person is doing all the work and the other person is alternately reaping the reward or sitting there in increasing discomfort. That ends up being lose/lose for everyone. The second benefit is that it ensures a more genuine connection with the people you’re dating. One of the mistakes a lot of people make is that dating is supposed to be easy. If you’re struggling to connect with someone, for example, that’s often a sign that there’s a fundamental incompatibility at play.  You may have incompatible interests or personalities. You may have a clash of values, or they may simply be uninterested. Forcing the issue by carrying the entire conversation on your own creates a false sense of connection because, well, one person’s trying to paper over that incompatibility by themselves.

(It’s worth noting: there’s a notable difference between an awkward but genuine connection and a lack of compatibility. It’s the emotional difference between trying to figure out what side of the USB plug faces up and using the wrong plug entirely.)

My third suggestion is that you get comfortable with discomfort. If you don’t fear an occasional awkward moment or lull in the conversation, you won’t feel the need to fix it. Every conversation has its peaks and valleys. Sometimes those moments where the conversation dies off aren’t signs of something being wrong; it’s just the natural rhythm of the interaction. If you can learn to be comfortable with momentary discomfort, you’re in a better position to tell the difference between companionable silence and signs that the two of you aren’t connecting. Plus: it means that you won’t be forcing yourself to prop up somebody’s entire emotional state on your own.

Don’t be afraid to prioritize your own comfort or your own lack of interest, especially on dates. You’re seeing if you and that person are a good match, not acting as a cruise director. Take a step back and let other people carry their end of the interaction. You’ll have much stronger connections with the people you do like, and you won’t end up accidentally leading on the people you don’t like.

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: Back in december 2019, I joined a twitch channel to help develop my skill at a certain VR game and ended up sticking around that channel up until now. The person doing the streaming is an absolute sweetheart of a girl and helped me a ton with my life. Her small acts of kindness and genuine acceptance of my person gave me back my self-love, my self-worth and managed to get me out of a very long depression. We hanged out a lot in her discord server, she’d open up to me with her problems, with some of her desires and we would also play games together.

I’m sure you can see where this is going, I started to have feelings for her. At first, I didn’t really pay them attention, thinking it was not a real possibility because she lives so far away from me and kept that attraction buried. After around 10 months hanging with her and other friends of the community she created, the feelings grew to more than simple attraction, I was longing for her. I tried to approach her for a potential long distance relationship but it didn’t end very well. She said she wasn’t ready and that she’s a physical person and a distant relationship was not a possibility for her. I then spoke about it to someone else and it got her really angry about the whole situation but we managed to get over it and move on from it.

Now here’s the thing, that whole situation just showed me that it was more than just a longing for a relation. I am totally in love with her. True love level of love in fact. I’ve never felt feeling as strong towards anyone than what I feel for her. So I confessed those feelings to her at the end of november, that it’s actually love that I feel for her, not just attraction. She repeated that she’s not ready for a relationship, that she does not feel that way for me either. Still, I did something really stupid and I pushed it. I thought that the distance was the problem and that if I was willing to come to her (which I am), then maybe it could work. I asked her to give me a chance, I told her that love can grow between two persons. This caused her to actually burst into tears as she didn’t want to hurt me but really don’t want a relationship. She really do care for me but not in a romantic way… Seeing her hurt over this made me slam on the breaks, or rather, it made me divert my course into a brick wall rather than keeping hurting her. I love her with all my heart and it’s stronger than the very desire of being with her, I’d rather suffer than see her suffer from this…

The whole unrequited love made me have several mental breakdowns in the following day, I went into heavy crying for several hours, several times, silent screaming from heartache. The pain is very real and the only time I’ve felt something as intense is from the death of a dear one.

That said, I still want to be with her very badly, I don’t know if there’s any path for me to take that could result in that situation without her getting wounded in the process. She still want to be friends (very much so) and don’t want to end that friendship but was pretty clear that if needed, it will happen. I totally get that she wants to be left alone in that regard and I am not gonna make any direct move in that direction. I’d rather stay her friend than have her disappear from my life. Is there a chance she can eventually love me? How?

Is my love situation hopeless?

Thanks

Does The Heart Get A Second Chance?

DEAR DOES THE HEART GET A SECOND CHANCE: I see that it’s that time of year again when I have to talk about not just parasocial relationships, but online-only relationships as well.

Parasocial relationships are, put simply, one-sided relationships that people form with individuals who they see in media. Because we see or hear somebody so often — whether on TV, YouTube, podcasts, Twitch or in the movies — we start to feel as though we actually know them. And for many, that sense of familiarity can feel a lot like a personal connection. While this phenomena is practically older than steam — people have formed these sorts of connections on silent film stars, after all — it’s especially prominent with the advent of podcasts, YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and other forms of digital media. First there’s the fact that creators are incentivized to push out as much content as possible. Podcasts, come out on a weekly basis, YouTubers and Twitch streamers will often post multiple times a week, often with videos or streams that run for hours at a time, and short-form digital media like TikTok encourages a veritable deluge of videos. The literal weeks of content that come out from creators on a regular basis can accelerate that sense of familiarity and connection like someone attached a NO2 injector to the engine.

Then there’s the fact that a lot of digital content creators — especially streamers and YouTubers — have financial incentives to create a sense of community and intimacy with their audience. Giving people this feeling that they’re on a first-name, intimate basis with their favorite streamers or podcasters or what-have-you encourages not just emotional investment but financial investment… either indirectly through views or directly through merch sales or crowdfunding.

(And we will pause to appreciate the irony of my saying this while I very pointedly do not look over at the Patreon and Ko-Fi links on my site…)

As the medium and the industries have progressed, this sense of community and access has grown to include private online communities like Discords, where people feel like they have even more direct access to their idols and favorite creators.

(Again, very pointedly NOT looking at my Patreon…)

And hey, I get it. One of the things that’s been keeping me sane as an extrovert in lockdown has been going for long walks while listening to episodes of Rebel FM, Behind the Bastards, You’re Wrong About and Critical Role; having those regular voices with me as I go through my day at least partially scratches my need for company. I can completely understand that sense of “yes, my friends, I know them well.”

However, even when you’re a regular on their Discord, it’s not the same as actually getting to know them or having an intimate relationship with them. They may be fairly open with their lives, even willing to talk about s--t that’s going on… that’s not going to be the same as an in-person friendship.

But hey, maybe there was a chance a real friendship could come from this. That can happen.

Speaking of in-person, let’s talk about the other side of this particular problem: namely that you’ve never actually met them in person.

Now I freely admit: am an Old Man of the Internet. I got on the Internet proper before The September that Never Ended, at the birth of the World Wide Web. Even back then, there was a lot of hue and cry about people falling in “love” over USENET and email and MUDs despite having never met in person. But here’s the thing: 99% of the time? Those relationships didn’t survive meeting in person. Because the truth is that — even when people were exactly who they said they were — there’s more to attraction and chemistry than how well the two of you get along in a textual medium. For that matter, there’s more to it than how you attractive you find someone when you’ve only seen their pictures or seen them on video. As the sage once said, love isn’t brains children, it’s blood. There’re hosts of physical and social cues that affect who we’re attracted to, in ways that we can’t consciously perceive. And, just as importantly: we can only determine those cues in person. It’s not just how they look or how well the two of you get along online or chatting, it’s in how they smell, how they taste, the timbre of their voice, even little social clues like how they treat others (such as, say, the waitstaff at the restaurant or bar). Without those… well, you’re making your best guess and hoping that the rest actually falls in line. And a lot of times… it doesn’t.

So here’s the thing: you had a parasocial relationship with her that turned into a crush. And hey, crushes are great! Crushes feel amazing. But you don’t need to act on a crush and you don’t want to round a crush up to “love”, especially when you don’t know that person as well as you think and you’ve never met in person. And — I hate to say this — but intensity isn’t the measure of the depth of feeling. You may have intense feelings for somebody, but that’s not the same thing as “true love”, my dude. What you have is limerence; it’s a type of crush that’s marked by intrusive thoughts about the crush-object and a deep, almost obsessive emotional fixation on the other person.

Trust me: damn near everyone reading this is nodding along at that description. Just about everybody has gone through this, especially when they’re young or relatively inexperienced. It’s incredibly common… and it always fades with time. The problem is that the intensity and the obsessive nature of it makes it feel like it’s much more than it actually is.

So the good news is: you’ll get over this. At some point in the near future, you’ll realize those feelings are starting to fade and down the line, you’ll be embarrassed about it.

The bad news is: no, there isn’t any way forward with your crush. Those times when she said “she wasn’t ready”, that “she wasn’t a physical person” and “doesn’t do long-distance”? Those were all what are called “soft no’s”, ways of turning someone down without rejecting them directly. People — women and femme-socialized folks especially — use these because it’s seen as being less direct and less hurtful (and, frankly, less dangerous) than just “no, I’m not interested”. The problem is that you either didn’t recognize these for what they were or take them seriously. The issue was never the distance, it was that she just didn’t like you that way, wasn’t going to and isn’t going to.

And while taking the rejection well wouldn’t have saved your chances… bringing it up to other people and pushing the issue was only going to piss her off at best. Dragging other people into your drama made it more embarrassing. Bringing it up again and ignoring her “no, thank you, not interested”, to the point of telling her “look, you could grow to like me” was telling her that you weren’t actually listening and weren’t going to listen. Don’t get me wrong: this wasn’t a crime beyond redemption or even anything terribly egregious. It’s that you handled a situation badly, it reflects badly on you and it put her in an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable place.

So, no, my dude. This was never going to happen, there was no path forward and you’re lucky that she’s still willing to be friendly with you. Your only path forward, such as it is, is to let this go. There’s nothing to be done here and, frankly, the amount of time and effort that you’re willing to spend to try to win her over would be far better spent finding someone who’s close by, who is available and who, critically, is interested in you, too.

The best thing to do here is to just chalk this up as a learning experience and get ready to cringe when you think about it in the future. You haven’t lost on the love of your life. This was just a strong crush that got intensified by the nature of digital celebrity (for suitably shallow definitions of “celebrity”), and you tripped over your dick. You’ll recover, you’ll do better in the future and the worst that’ll happen is that you’ll try really hard to change the subject if it ever comes up in the future because your embarrassment at your past self will make you want to dig a hole in the ground and pull it in after you.

Learn from this, and you won’t make these mistakes in the future.

Good luck.

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