DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This might seem like a weird question, but it is something i’ve been thinking about. I apologize if my phrasing is awkward, English isn’t my first language.

I consider myself a feminist and I am sympathetic to the situation that men put girls in. You often talk about how women feel the need to give a “soft” no,  or not to reject at all, but to give a false hope since they might be afraid of the consequences if the reject too harshly. Everything from name-calling to physical abuse and such.

Consent and eagerness to go on a date is important to me. If they’re not stoked on going on a date, I don’t want to go on that date. However, when asking girls out I sometime get the “How nice! However I can’t that day since I am doing XYZ”.

Even though this is a rejection the fact that she said that it was nice/used another positive adjective, I feel like she didn’t reject cause she necessarily didn’t want to, she just couldn’t that particular day.

However, if a girl were to reject a guy as softly as possible, she would probably frame it as not being able to, rather that not wanting to. So how do I distinguish between those scenarios? I would hate to be a pushy guy, who doesn’t take no for an answer.

Thanks,

Nervous Scandinavian

DEAR NERVOUS SCANDINAVIAN: Before we get into this, NS, I just want to make a slight correction for clarity’s sake: women aren’t giving “false hope” when they use a soft “no”. A soft no is more about providing a plausible reason why that person (guys and non-binary folks will use soft no’s too) can’t do the thing. This way, it’s easier to believe that they aren’t saying “no” out of disinterest but because circumstances outside of everyone’s control won’t allow it. This means that the person doing the refusing doesn’t feel rude for saying no (or doesn’t feel at risk by doing so) and the person being refused can save face and not take it as a rejection of them, personally.

As a general rule, people generally recognize a soft no when they hear one. Most of the time, when we question whether that was a soft no or a genuine impediment, it’s because we don’t want to take it as a no, and so we latch onto the conditional. However, there are times when it may be hard to tell.

How can you tell the difference? Well, a good rule of thumb is that someone who is into you will make an effort to see you. If someone would like to go on a date with you and has a conflict of some sort — they’ve got an appointment that day, for example — they will usually make a point of suggesting an alternate day or time. If you ask someone on a date and they say “I can’t that day because XYZ, but I’m available next week…” then that’s not a soft no, just a scheduling conflict. If all they give is a reason why they can’t, then it’s almost certainly a “no, thank you”.

Now the way that you can be someone that women feel comfortable refusing or turning down is to take rejection with good grace. The more you can take a “thank you, but I’m not interested” like a gentleman and not get upset or change how you behave, the more comfortable people will be. And there are ways that you can signal in advance that it’s ok to say no. While I’m not a fan of pre-rejecting yourself, you can always invite the no; “Hey, it’s totally cool if not but would you like to…”

Of course, if I’m being honest, I’m not a huge fan of this approach for most things as it tends to come across more as “It’s ok if you don’t want to go out with me, I wouldn’t want to go out with me either.” However, if it’s a large ask — finding out if a platonic friend is open to going on a date, for example — then inviting the no is telling them in advance that you’re going to be cool if they turn you down, which can help diffuse potential awkwardness.

But let’s say you’re in a position where you get “I can’t, I’m doing XYZ that day” and they don’t propose an alternate day… but you’re genuinely unsure whether that’s a no or not? Leave the ball in their court. Tell them “Hey, no problem. Let me know if you change your mind,” and then just move the conversation on to something else. If you do this, it’s important to not keep circling back to ask “Well, how about now?” You’ve made your interest known; if she decides she would like to go on a date with you, she presumably knows where and how to find you.

And here’s the thing: being able to take “no” in stride means you’re more likely to hear “yes”. It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to turn that person around and get a date, but it does mean that you’re the kind of person people feel comfortable with. And that, in turn, means that those people will be more likely to want to pursue something with you. Attraction can’t exist without comfort and safety, after all.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I wanted to write in with an update to my situation. I wrote in previously about a new friendship that felt like it was falling apart (July 2019, “Why Is This Friendship Fizzling Out?”). Your advice was to not assume it had anything to do with my worth, and I really appreciated that. It helped put things into perspective and let me see the situation clearly.

That friend I wrote in about did turn out to be a bit of a narcissist after all (I don’t throw that term around lightly). However, I did manage to meet another person in that group who has turned into a genuine and long-lasting friend. Not only did he validate what I was experiencing with the original friend, but he also treated me like I would expect a friend should – being emotionally engaged and attentive, friendly, kind, having good boundaries, a 50/50 back and forth, etc. Not only that, but it sounds like that original friend group completely imploded recently and I’m grateful I wasn’t in the middle of it all.

So thank you for encouraging me to take a step back! It gave me the opportunity to put energy into a better connection which is ultimately what I wanted out of the entire situation. Plus this new friend brought along a separate but smaller and quite lovely group of people. Slowly I am building up my social network and it feels very wholesome and good!

No Longer Sick and Abandoned!

DEAR NO LONGER SICK AND ABANDONED: Thank you so much for writing in and letting us know how you’re doing NSLA! I always love to hear back how things have been going for folks who’ve written in before.

Glad to know that you’re doing better and building a stronger social network! Here’s to building stronger boundaries, better communication and better friends.

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 letter was spurred by your recent column about letting folks down gently. My question is related but separate: how do I keep a relationship platonic when the romantic interest is mutual?

For some context: I’ve recently met this lovely person with whom I have a great deal in common, including stated romantic interest. However, for reasons unrelated, I (though poly) am not open for new relationships at this point, and falling in love would cause serious harm to both myself, this new friendship, and to my already established relationships.

We’ve spoken about this explicitly and seem to have a good understanding of each other’s positions, but I want to make sure my actions match my words here. It’s a precarious situation.

So. How do I maintain a platonic relationship with my new friend, while minimizing the risk of catching feelings? Emotional intimacy is a major aspect of all my relationships, and I want that to be true for this new friendship as well, to the extent that I can manage it.

What advice do you have for navigating these deep waters? What are your do’s and don’t’s for not falling in love?

Love Fool

DEAR LOVE FOOL: This is one of those times where I feel like an oracle in Greek myth, except my answer would probably be “You realize that by asking this question, you’ve more or less ensured the fate you’re trying to avoid is going to happen, right?”

The sad thing is that I’m only partially joking.

I’m, gonna level with you, LF; you can’t really force yourself to feel or not feel something, and trying to do so usually makes things worse. It’s rather like folks in monogamous relationships who get bothered by the fact that they’ve developed a crush on someone. The more that people try to force their feelings away, the stronger and more intense those feelings tend to become. Trying to bottle up your emotions or force them away is more akin to a pressurized gas in a fragile container; you may have it contained for now, but the odds are good that things are gonna blow up and make it everybody’s problem.

So, under normal circumstances, I would say you don’t need to worry that feelings are inevitable. After all, people are complex creatures, capable of multitudes; just because someone is friends with a person they’d be into doesn’t mean that sex or romance is automatically going to get in the way. Folks are quite capable of being happily platonic, no matter what When Harry Met Sally says.

The problem is that you and your bud already are attracted to each other. You both know it. You both are trying to avoid it… but you both know it’s there.

That can be an issue if the two of you aren’t very good at compartmentalizing. There’s only so much “oh but if things were different” you can do before you start thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you indulged this a little. Especially when you, LF, already prioritize emotional intimacy in your relationships. While I’m very firmly of the position that emotionally intelligent folks can tell the difference between emotional intimacy and romantic attraction… the two tend to go together like nitro and glycerin when both parties are already into each other.

Does that mean that this friendship is doomed to fall under the weight of your mutual attraction? Not necessarily. A lot is going to depend on how disciplined you can be and how much you’re willing to sacrifice some of the emotional intimacy that is so important to you and your friendships.

A big part of how you can try to decrease the odds of falling in love is to try to try to avoid subjecting yourself to unnecessary temptation. I realize sounds like a sex-negative religious group telling men to block women with bikini pics on Instagram, but stick with me for a second. Human willpower is, in a way, a limited resource. Think of it like a muscle; you have a fairly finite amount of energy, and the harder that muscle has to work, the faster you burn through that energy supply. The less it has to work, the more energy you have overall. With willpower, the less you have to utilize it, the less likely you are to run into a scenario where you no longer have the willpower to resist a particular temptation. If, for example, you’re trying to cut sodas out of your diet, not having any in the house means that you don’t have to expend willpower to choose water instead of Dr. Pepper. Otherwise you end up in a situation where you’ve expended your willpower on other things — maybe you had an awful day at work — and you know you’ve got an ice-cold can of God’s own nectar in the fridge that would taste like pure happiness.

The same general principle applies to dealing with relationships. One of the things I suggest to folks who want a casual, no-strings relationship with a sex partner but want to avoid things getting more emotionally entangled is to avoid the trappings of romance. Get-togethers that feel particularly date-y — things like quiet, intimate restaurants, long walks on the beach watching the sunset, and so on — carry connotations and emotional associations that yell “WE ARE WORKING TOWARDS ROMANCE”. Similarly, getting deeply emotionally intimate in conversation, talking about future plans together…. the sorts of talks that people who are moving towards romance do also carries that connotation of love and emotional entanglements. Avoiding the sorts of behaviors that carry those connotations and implications helps keep the likelihood of developing feelings to a manageable level.

I realize that talking about framing and connotations sounds weird, but humans are bad at lying to ourselves and understanding why we feel the way we do. Our brains don’t rule our emotions; more often than not, our brains take their cues from what our bodies are doing and assign a reason for it that lines up with what it’s experiencing. When we do things that we associate with a particular behavior or emotion, our brains assume that we’re feeling that emotion. It’s part of why actors who play couples or whose characters fall in love will often end up dating; they’ve been imitating being in love and their brains said “oh, must be real, then.”

This sort of “brain follows the body” result is hard enough to shake. But there’s also the fact that you and your friend are already into each other; having those intimate moments together — especially alone, with physical intimacy or in a romantic atmosphere — makes it harder to say “we probably shouldn’t do this.” I mean, falling in love feels amazing; that new relationship energy makes our brains kick out the jams and dump dopamine and oxytocin into our systems. That increases the likelihood of hitting a point where you and your new friend aren’t going to be as able to pull things back a little.

And of course, it’s made that much harder when you’re constantly thinking “ok, can’t let this go too far, can’t fall in love, can’t let myself get too into this.” Much like trying to not picture a purple elephant — or, say, Bea Arthur wearing a strategically ripped Deadpool costume — the effort of not doing so just ensures that it will be on the top of mind. So it becomes this little reminder of how you feel that gets harder and harder to ignore, like a metaphorical rock in your shoe.

So as unpalatable as it may be for your usual relationships, having to keep this one a little at arm’s length until things have time to fade may be the key to not catching feels.

Now with all that being said… the problem isn’t falling for your friend, it’s what pursuing a romantic relationship with them would do. After all, catching feelings for somebody doesn’t mean that you have to do anything with them. You can realize you’re in love with somebody and not act on it. Emotions are just that — feelings; they’re not commands or obligations. You can be in love without doing anything about it.  As I’ve said before: crushes, even romantic and sexual attraction are like a fire. As long as you don’t add more fuel, they burn out and fade on their own over time.

Rather than dwelling on it or pining away, you can note those feelings, name them, and just let them be. Rather than damming them up or taking them as a call to action, you can just let them flow through you. When you become aware of it, you say “ah, yes, that’s my affection for %FRIEND” and allow it to just be there while you do other things.

Of course, it helps if those other things aren’t, y’know, deep and meaningful conversations over a candlelit dinner or something.

Does this mean you can’t pursue a friendship with them? No, of course not. It can certainly work; it just means that the two of you will have to be mindful and willing to not act on this attraction. If you can manage that — or if you can keep this relationship at a bit more of a remove than you might prefer — then you can have a great and meaningful relationship. If you can’t… well, then you have to ask yourself whether this relationship would be worth the effect it would have on the other aspects of your life.

Just be aware that aspects of this friendship will be more difficult than they would be otherwise. Go into this understanding that and you have a better chance of things staying to a level you would prefer.

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 am recently in the process of leaving my toxic job with a little bit of savings and no concrete plan for what’s next. I can’t even think about work and job stuff without feeling dread, anxiety, depression, etc. because not only am I leaving a bad environment after 5 years, but I also feel my career in tech and engineering no longer fits my life. I have no idea what my future holds and I’m absolutely terrified. I just turned 30 years old, male, straight-ish but identify within the queer community, and I am feeling so stuck with trying to get out of the toxic masculinity, “high-performance-male,” “life purpose or bust” mindsets.

I am in the slow process of seeing a career counselor and I am also on the ADHD/ASD spectrum. I have a lot of dating experience and good social skills, but the career aspect of life is just so painful for me and contributes to horrible feelings of low self confidence and failure to live up to my potential and expectations (I am a self-taught musician, avid reader, good friend and ally, and have a lot of positive social feedback, but I just don’t know how to pull these all together into a career that can pay the bills and still have free time to prioritize relationships). I am also terrified of going back to school for exploring interests in psychology, social sciences, arts, etc. because of not only post-pandemic uncertainty, but also if it’s something I’ll actually maintain long enough interest and executive functioning to succeed in without having mountains of debt for nothing (I consistently seek treatment for ADHD, but it’s a constant struggle because my brain might be treatment-resistant to most medications and there’s a lack of alternative resources in my area. I need A LOT of reassurance and support just to feel that I am succeeding and worry that I may need too much support that would be unattractive for a “grown-ass-man”).

So anyways, back to what I want to ask. In case I am unfortunate to experience long-term unemployment, failure, etc., what is my possible outlook for finding partner(s) who are okay with dating an unemployed man in his thirties or potentially forties? How can I still feel attractive and “sexually valid, wanted, etc.” without thinking too much about job uncertainty and potential financial dependence on others? It personally doesn’t bother me about not fitting the traditional stereotype and role of a man in today’s society, and I actually am not interested in children. But I am very worried about other people’s unconscious beliefs from society blocking me from finding loving, sexual, and fulfilling relationships (which I have found WHEN I was working, but never had the experience of finding them during unemployment, and I do not want to live with my parents). I know that I would never fall into a co-dependent hole of binging on weed, drinking, video games, porn, etc. if I ever found myself in a relationship as an unemployed person, but how can I portray that while dating or explaining to others about my circumstances? Would it still be attractive to call myself a potential “stay at home boyfriend?”

Thank you for your time and support,

Potential Stay-At-Home Boyfriend

DEAR POTENTIAL STAY-AT-HOME BOYFRIEND: There’re a lot of questions tied up in this, PSAHB, but a lot of false assumptions too. But as with a lot of apparently complicated and thorny issues, it helps to start with just one thing and working outward from there. Because, quite frankly, sometimes the reason why folks get tied up in knots is because everything stems from an initial underlying issue. Address that and everything else starts falling into place.

So let’s start with your leaving your job. First and foremost: congratulations on recognizing that you’ve been in a s--tty situation and taking steps to get the hell out of it. That alone is some huge progress, and you should be proud of yourself for doing this. It’s also entirely understandable why you’re having complex and weird feelings about it. You’re making a choice to step away from something that not only have you invested a lot of your life into, but something that also lines up with toxic and restrictive ideas of what it means to be a man. So not only are you dealing with the sunk cost fallacy, but you’re deliberately choosing to push against a lifetime of messages that tell you that this is what you’re supposed to want and what you’re supposed to be. That’s really, really goddamn hard to do.

We live in a culture that equates “productivity” with morality. A culture that confuses “being busy” with “being a good worker”, and one that consistently tells folks that if you aren’t hustling and grinding and breaking yourself to pieces, you are lazy and worthless. In a very real way, we are taught that our job is supposed to be our identity. This is especially true in the tech and startup industries, where there is a very real push to see yourself not as a worker but as “part of a community”, subsuming your identity as an individual into the company. The whole “we’re a family”, “be part of something bigger” mythos that gets pushed on folks is all about giving up everything in your life in the name of providing value for someone else, for benefits that you will never fully receive. You are being expected to sacrifice your life — and often your emotional, physical and mental well-being — in the name of “being a team player”. But what this tends to end up doing is causing burnout, breaking people and wrecking their lives. If you look at the various exposes about the way employees have been treated at various game companies and the toll that “crunch culture” takes on people, you can see just how much this attitude damages people. And to make matters worse, the very people who are broken by these practices are then shamed for having been broken. They’re told that giving your entire life to a job is a privilege, or that they don’t have the grit for “the hustle”. They get told that reasonable hours, non-abusive working conditions and living wages are unreasonable asks, things that you should be willing to give up in the name of Being Part of Something.

Rise and Grind Twitter and LLC Twitter will tell people they’re doing something wrong for wanting unreasonable things like “work/life balance” or not trying to become a CEO of something. The whole “we all have the same 24 hours” mantra gets repeated like gospel truth instead of bulls--t hype that only gets shared because it fits on a bumper sticker. Not everyone wants to be a captain of industry, nor do they need to. Not everyone wants to run a business, nor do they need to make everything in their life about making money. People feel pressure to somehow monetize their hobbies or casual interests, turn things they enjoy doing for its own sake into a “side hustle” because… reasons. And as a result: they get stressed because they aren’t living up to an ideal that not only doesn’t appeal to them, but doesn’t actually exist in the first place.

And in a real way, it’s worse for men because there is still the pressure of “a man isn’t a man if he’s not a provider”. This ties very firmly into the belief that a lot of men have that they have to be needed because they can’t be wanted. The push to be The Provider comes from a place of “this is the only way women will want to be with you,” turning relationships from something built of mutual respect and desire into a commodities exchange. It bolsters and encourages the idea that Women Only Want “High Value/High-Performance” Men because they don’t believe that women could be interested in men for who they are as individuals. It also denigrates the value of “soft” skills like communication, emotional support and engagement, positivity and warmth and domesticity. As a result, you get generations of men who think that the only way to find a partner is to break themselves into pieces in the name of trying to fit into a cultural expectation that not only doesn’t exist, but is virtually impossible to achieve.

(Everybody can’t be the highest performer, everyone can’t be the top-earner or climb the ranks to the top of the industry. The feel-good motivational stories you read are exceptions, not the rule, and most of the “role models” people point to have advantages that 99% of the world doesn’t.)

So it’s not surprising how much this choice is weighing on you… but I think you don’t realize how much it does. You say that you aren’t bothered by not fitting into the traditional stereotype of men’s roles, but those are the very anxieties you’re describing in your letter. The fear of not being a high-performance male, the fear or finding a relationship while being unemployed or under-employed… that’s all part and parcel of those fitting into those roles. It’s very much the story of the mahout and the elephant; you are more powerful than the things that hold you back, but you have been told to believe this for so long that you don’t see it yet.  You are making the choice to step outside of what you have been told you “need” to do and society pushes against that. Those doubts and fears you are having are born from trying to go against the grain. It’s the voice of a culture trying to force compliance, terrifying you into falling into line.

As the saying goes: before you diagnose yourself with depression and anxiety, first make sure you haven’t surrounded yourself with assholes. You’ve been neck deep in a toxic environment that has been sapping away everything about you and being told that you were defective for being harmed by it. Simply taking that first step is going to feel like you’ve made a tremendous difference. You will have made a choice that says you know your own worth and that you have chosen to prioritize that rather than giving everything to somebody else.

You are afraid of needing more support than is ‘seemly’ for a grown-ass man… but the issue isn’t needing that support, it’s where you’re getting it from. Everybody needs support. No man is an island, nobody is such a rugged individualist that they’re completely self-sufficient. Everyone needs somebody they can rely on and lean on. If you’re putting all that weight on one person then yes, that’s a problem. But if you distribute your support by working with a therapist, having a strong support network of friends and loved ones that you can rely on, that’s an entirely different scenario. It’s the difference between a thousand pounds of pressure on one square inch versus a thousand pounds of pressure spread out over a wide area. One punches straight through, the other spreads the load to the point that any individual portion barely notices.

But here’s the thing about your current job, the stress of leaving it and your anxieties for the future: so much of what you’re dealing with — the stress, the anxiety and so on — is because of your job. We all have only so much emotional bandwidth, and when most of it is taken up by a job that you hate, in an environment that’s profoundly toxic for you, it’s going to leave you with virtually no room for anything else. You aren’t leaving those negative feelings behind when you clock out; they’re with you, all day, every day, bleeding into everything else you do. Just by leaving this job and not subjecting yourself to that continuous treadmill of misery, you will be cutting off the source of so much anxiety that you’ll be astounded. It will be like shutting down applications that are using all your processing power and RAM, defragging the hard drive and clearing your emotional cache. That alone will make you feel like you’ve dropped a burden you never realized you were carrying. While it certainly won’t cure any conditions, I wouldn’t be the least surprised if you find that it alleviates them. As somebody with ADHD, I can tell you from personal experience: you have no goddamn clue how much what you’re dealing with are compensating behaviors and how much they take out of you until you don’t need them anymore.

By freeing up that bandwidth, you’ll be in a much better position to decide what direction you want to take and what new career path you’re going to want to follow. You may even discover that you want something that isn’t as “prestigious” or “glamorous” but speaks far more to your soul. You may discover, for example, that you’re a facilitator, not a leader or driver. You may realize that you’re happiest being someone who makes things run smoothly or who helps people do what they need. In gaming terms, you may well discover that you’re best role is support, not carry or pusher. And you know what? That’s fine. That’s not only valid, but valuable and undervalued by folks who think that everyone needs to be the aggressive go-getter.

You know who’s one of the most beloved and — in a real way — desired characters in pop culture? Samwise Gamgee. He’s a quiet man who doesn’t want to change the world, he doesn’t want to be all-powerful or an influential leader of men. He wants to work in his garden, grow his vegetables, cook and clean and generally live a very quiet, domestic life. He’s there for his friends and will help quite literally carry them through Hell… but his greatest ambition is a quiet, calm life with a nice house and a nice family. And there are many many women who want a partner like that.

One of the things people tend to not understand about relationships, especially when it comes to questions of “being the provider” is that people in general, and women in particular, aren’t looking for someone who’s going to be covering all the costs and paying all the bills and anyone who can’t keep up gets seen as a mooch and slacker. What they want is someone who contributes, who doesn’t take more than they give. Being a provider isn’t just about money or material goods, it’s equally about labor and effort, including emotional labor. A guy who pays all the bills but treats this like they don’t need to do anything else for the relationship isn’t giving equal value for what they’re taking. The cost of the labor and effort they are demanding from their partner isn’t equivalent to just covering expenses.

The obstacles you’re imagining and the complications you’re afraid of aren’t based in the value of being domestic while under-employed, they’re based in the way you’re diminishing that worth. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at dating men, women or non-binary folks; they’re all are just as caught up in the day to day grind of capitalism and trying to squeeze life into a workday as everyone else. They’re struggling just as much as men to try to figure out how to do basic life maintenance while also trying to live up to a world built around an 8 hour work day while demanding 10 and 12 hours from workers. A guy who’s going to keep house, cook and clean and do the domestic stuff is gonna be huge for folks who feel overwhelmed just by trying to do the day-to-day business of life. Taking those stresses off their shoulders is a goddamn gift.

But all of this? This is all what’s known as “borrowing trouble from the future”. This isn’t what you’re currently dealing with, these are all things that you’re anticipating. You’re worried about whether telling people that you’re a stay-at-home boyfriend will be unattractive when you haven’t even decided what your next career steps are. You’re still in the beginning stages of retraining, not dealing with having been unable to find a job for months. Trying to deal with a problem you may never encounter is a way of tricking yourself into not making actual progress. You’re giving yourself the illusion of forward motion — “Hey, I’m alleviating this worry, so I’ll be ready to start looking for a new career” — but that’s all it is: an illusion. You’re devoting energy to a problem that doesn’t exist yet instead of the problem that does: getting out of your s--tty environment and taking the steps to starting a new career. That is where your energy should be directed. The worry of “will people find me attractive as a partner if I don’t have a job” is answered by “yes, because my value isn’t in my paycheck”. Boom, done, now you know how you can deal with it if — not when, if — it comes up.

Focus on your immediate steps. Get out of work, realize how much it’s going to free things up for you and how much better you’ll feel. Take a moment to rest and and let things settle before you leap back into the pit, so you don’t trade one source of burnout for another. Getting out of a s--tty environment can feel weird at first and you are going to want to adjust. Just because you put the weight down doesn’t mean you aren’t ready to pick up a lighter one; you need time to recoup your energy. Then, as you feel your strength and energy return, focus on your next immediate step: looking towards retraining or going back to college. Focus on the step in front of you, not the one that may be there 45 steps down the line where you can’t see yet.

Take it one step at a time, one milestone at a time and let the future take care of itself. Trust in yourself and your own value to carry you through if, IF, unemployment intersects with finding a relationship. That’s not a worry you need to expend your energy on. That’s not a thing that exists yet. You are here, in the present. Be in the now. Take care of the now, and that future will just be one more day that never comes to pass.

Good luck.

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