DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been involved in a long distance situationship (intimate friends) for 3 years, and we live in different, adjoining states. We met once, then became friends online, and that is where it blossomed.

I have visited her once and it was a very intimate and fun experience for both of us, although she did mention once or twice while I was there that she noticed my body order. I took care of it asap every time, it didn’t seem like a big deal.

Anyway, we have been planning on another visit but she keeps bringing up the BO problem and has even said “if it is as bad as last time, you have to get a hotel and can’t stay with me”. Which is confusing because we were very intimate last time and she didn’t seem to mind, she was enjoying herself and I quite a bit and said so for weeks afterwards.

Should I just take her advice and be super diligent about BO or is this emotional manipulation or gas lighting of some sort?

My close friends tell me they never notice my body odor and I bathe once to twice daily and use deodorant every day as well as brush multiple times a day.

Also, and here’s the dinger, she has untreated BPD. What do I do?

What A Lovely Smell You’ve Discovered

DEAR WHAT A LOVELY SMELL YOU’VE DISCOVERED: Not gonna lie, WALSYD, I’m not entirely sure why you went immediately to emotional manipulation and/or gaslighting, especially when there are a lot of other potential explanations here. Absent other examples of manipulative or gaslight-y behavior, this seems like one hell of a jump to make – especially on the strength of “she had issues with my body odor that my friends don’t.”

My first thought would be to ask how she delivered this particular ultimatum. If this were over text, then it’s possible that her tone might not have carried over. What was intended to be a gentle teasing may have come across as being blunt and cold without the vocal cues to indicate meaning and intent.

But let’s say that this wasn’t an issue of meaning getting lost in the medium and it really was an issue about how you smelled at the time. This is no small thing; scent is probably the most influential of our senses, because of how our olfactory nerves connect to our brain. Scent is linked to memory and recall and may even be a subconscious signal of overall genetic compatibility.

The fact that your friends never noticed anything particularly pungent about you but she did doesn’t mean that she didn’t have a legitimate issue. One possibility is that it was circumstantial – something that wouldn’t have come up ordinarily during your day to day life that did come up when you were seeing her.

To give an example from my personal life of how this could work: not long ago, as we were laying on the couch and watching TV, my wife turned to me and said “ok, this is weird but your feet really smell bad tonight.” This was odd, as normally I don’t have an issue with foot odor; my wife even mentioned that when she brought it up.

As it turns out, the flip-fops I’d been wearing around the house had a mildew issue and the smell rubbed off on my feet, creating the problem. I couldn’t smell it – we’re all very used to our own scent, after all – but it was certainly noticeable to her. It’s also not something that would have cropped up under other circumstances.

So, is it possible that there was something – something in your clothes, your shoes, even something that you may have eaten – that would’ve caused a (literal) stink? This may even be things like the deodorant or hair products you use, the detergent you use on your clothes or any lotions or moisturizers you might put on.

Similarly, some people are just very sensitive to scents and smells, to the point that even slight fragrances, things that would be otherwise unremarkable to most, can trigger allergy-like symptoms, including migraines or difficulty breathing. Fragrance sensitivity isn’t common, but it’s not entirely unknown either. It could be possible that this is an issue for her.

Or it could just be that there’s something about your personal chemistry that hits wrong for her, in a way that it doesn’t for your friends. This comes up more often than people would think, and in odd ways. Sometimes we may realize we don’t like kissing someone because they taste weird or off-putting to us – not because they’ve been neglecting their teeth or need to use some Listerine, but because there’s a literal chemical incompatibility.

I think you need to talk to your friend about what she said and precisely what the issue was when you were visiting last time. Getting more detail about what was bothering her and why can help you pin down what the most likely culprit was. If it were more circumstantial – you had some serious road-trip funk going on – then you know what you can do differently, next time. Same thing with what you ate – strongly flavored or scented foods can affect how we smell, not just our breath. Anyone who’s familiar with post-coffee or post-asparagus urine smell has experienced this in action. If you eat a lot of garlic or other spices, for example, it can affect your body odor. If that’s the case, then making sure you have strong mints – Altoids, for example or other candies that use mint oil – can help mitigate the after effects of a particularly pungent meal.

Similarly, if she’s someone who has fragrance sensitivities, then you may want to double and triple check your toiletries and cleaning products for artificial scents and fragrances. There’re a number of fragrance-free options out there, and keeping some on hand for when the two of you are visiting will be a game changer for you both.

But if it really is just a case that she’s not into your natural scent – even if it’s fine to others – then this is ultimately a case of the two of you having an incompatibility on a fundamental level. This sucks, don’t get me wrong, but there’s not really much to be done about it. Now, it seems like you were able to address the issue the last time; if that worked well enough and you want to keep things going, then you’ll just have to accept being diligent about it when you see her as part of the price of entry.

If that is too much of a headache, especially on top of a long-distance relationship, then hey, that’s entirely legit. Everyone’s got the right to say “ok, this is more than I’m willing to do for the sake of this relationship” and call things.

However, I would suggest not leaping to the idea that she’s trying to gaslight you, borderline personality disorder or not. Having BPD doesn’t make people into manipulative s--ts, it’s a condition that impairs emotional regulation and can trigger deep and powerful anxieties regarding being abandoned or left by their partner. This can occasionally manifest by extreme swings in mood, negative self-image and impulsive outbursts triggered by those fears. Absent other evidence, I wouldn’t chalk this up to her trying to manipulate you or control you. Scent and odor are incredibly personal and what is delicious or fragrant to one person can be repulsive to someone else.

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’ve been seeing my girlfriend for the last six months. When we met, I thought she was too good to be true, and I couldn’t believe that she was interested in someone like me. We had so much in common and our connection was crazy intense. It felt like we could talk about anything and it seemed like we were sharing things with each other that we never shared with anyone else. I mean the deep, dark, personal stuff. I was thrilled that I found someone I could be this open with, like we really knew everything about each other.

That was until I found out she’s been lying to me about her past.

A few weeks ago, we were discussing our previous relationships (I know, I know, this was a mistake) and she started getting cagey about some of her exes. I didn’t think much about it until I was scrolling through Facebook and saw a guy who commented on one of her posts who she never mentioned before, but it seemed like he knew her pretty well. I wasn’t suspicious, I just was curious who he was, because I like getting to know more about what she was like before we met. Would we have liked each other if we met in high-school, you know, that sort of thing. It’s just cute “what if” stuff.

But that was before now. I asked her about him and she suddenly didn’t want to talk about him. At all. This was weird to me because we’d been open books about pretty much everything else. I’m not going to lie, I started getting worried and a little suspicious that she suddenly didn’t want to talk about him.

Naturally I feared the worst. It was like an itch I couldn’t get rid of; who was this guy to my girlfriend and why wouldn’t she tell me about him?

I asked her about it and the more I asked, the less it seemed like she wanted to talk about it. Finally, she admitted to me that she had been married before and this was her ex husband. I was shocked; she had told me she’d never been married! Obviously I wanted to know more, like what happened, why didn’t she tell me about him all that stuff. Btu the more I asked her about the marriage, the became really evasive and defensive, telling me it was a mistake and that she wanted to forget about it. After that, it was like a wall came down. No more talking about our past, no more sharing, nothing. She just really didn’t want to talk about this guy or anything else and got upset if I brought it up.

I got suspicious, I mean, wouldn’t you be? But I’m not too bad at searching and finding people and so I did some Googling around. You can imagine the sheer shock when I discovered that not only had she been married before, but they had a kid together as well!

Doc, she had been hiding this from me the entire time we had been dating. I know you say people are allowed to have their secrets but this is something I think I had a right to know! All of this made me question whether I could trust her anymore or if I even knew her at all! I confronted her about it, and she admitted to lying to me but said she was afraid of how I would react if I knew the truth.

I feel like I’ve been betrayed by someone I care about deeply. I don’t care that she was married before, but the fact that she lied about it bothers me. It bothers me a LOT. I don’t know if I can continue to be with her knowing she was willing to hide such a significant part of her life from me. What else is she lying to me about? What should I do?

Sincerely,

Betrayed

DEAR BETRAYED: Hoo boy. I REALLY hope this one isn’t real, because this, potentially is one hell of a mess, one way or another.

But let’s assume for a minute that this is legit.

This is one of those times when I am honestly conflicted, Betrayed. On the one hand, yeah, that’s a pretty big thing to lie about. And yes, actively saying she never been married and neglecting to mention that she had a child are lies. One is an active lie and the other’s a lie of omission. Those are things that can shake you to the core.

On the other hand… I don’t know if I would call this a betrayal, per se. I could see it being a betrayal if she were still married and you discovered that she was cheating on her husband with you, or if this were a case of out-and-out fraud or something. Leaving this relationship out of her list of past lovers… I don’t know if that would reach the level of betrayal, in my opinion. A shock to the system, absolutely. Something that would make you question how well you know her at all? For sure. Betrayal? I don’t know. Betrayal, to me, would be a pretty high bar to clear, especially just for leaving one relationship off the list – a significant relationship, to be sure, but still.

The reason why I’m hemming and hawwing is that, while I can understand why you’ve been rocked by this revelation, I can also see a lot of reasons why she might not want to talk about this guy.

You’re right: I’m firmly of the opinion that relationships aren’t depositions and we’re not required to share literally everything about our lives. You aren’t required to roll out everything about you right off the bat, especially if it involves aspects of you, your life or your past that aren’t going to immediately affect your relationship. Even then, everyone, even married couples, are allowed zones of autonomy and allowed to have secrets and private shames.

But that qualifier – “immediately affect your relationship” – is going to be an important one. And an ex-husband (and child) coming back into someone’s life is going to be a pretty big damn effect.

A lot is going to come down to precisely what happened with this marriage, why it ended and why she didn’t want to bring it up, or the fact that she had a child. It doesn’t sound to me like she was actively trying to deceive you, or trick you into thinking she was someone that she wasn’t. Similarly, it doesn’t sound to me like she was trying to lure you into a relationship under false pretenses by hiding something she knew would be a dealbreaker until it was too late.

If anything, this sounds more like she was trying to conceal something she was ashamed of. Or, worse, something she was afraid of.

If, for example, she left her ex because he was abusive or dangerous, I could entirely understand why she would want to keep that part of her life quarantined off from everything else, especially near the start of a relationship. That’s some pretty heavy shit to lay on somebody, and talking about it before she’s ready could dredge up trauma that she’d rather not experience again. Similarly, if she were actively fleeing this guy, cutting as many potential ties as possible would make it less likely that he could track her down and re-enter her life.

The fact that she says that being married to him was a mistake suggests to me that there’s more to the relationship and her past with him. This could be anything from youthful indiscretion to there being bigger issues in her past tied up with him… things that she would rather not dig into, either now or possibly ever.

But there’s also the child, involved here. Having a child, but either leaving them behind or losing custody can feel deeply shameful. Admitting that she abandoned a child is tantamount to admitting to be an awful person, even if there were reasons for it. The same would be true if she lost custody to her ex-husband, whether for legitimate reasons or not.

While I’m not saying this excuses not bringing them up, not wanting to parade what may have been an awful time in her life or a period when she was a horrible person would be pretty understandable. Especially when you’re still very much in the early stages of a relationship, like you two were.

Now none of this is to say that you’re wrong for feeling the way you feel. Your feelings are real and they’re valid. This has been a series of world-rocking revelations in short order, and it changes what you know about your girlfriend. You, quite reasonably, have every reason to question… if not everything, then significant amounts of what you thought you knew. But even so, it’s a question of whether this new information is an “instead of” or an “in addition to”. And the only person who can answer that question is your girlfriend.

But what do you do now? Well, if you aren’t ready to end the relationship immediately over this – which is a legitimate option – then I think you and she need to have a long and detailed discussion about this. This may be a conversation you would have had eventually, but it’s absolutely one that will need to happen now.

While I realize this may be difficult, you’re going to need to try to be as non-judgmental as possible when talking with her about this. This may well be a thorny and difficult topic. If she’s as wonderful a person as you say, then her leaving a husband and child behind, whatever the circumstances, was likely not easy.

(If it was easy, then it’s time to GTFO at speed. Leaving a marriage is one thing. Leaving a child is another.)

Condemning her, judging her or otherwise making her feel worse is only going to make her less likely to tell you her story, not more so. If you have any desire to keep this relationship going, then letting her share this will mean swallowing a lot of knee-jerk responses and letting her get the whole story out. It may well not be what you think.

But that’s a mighty big “if”, and I certainly couldn’t blame you if this was too much or the shock of it all was too big to get over.

Can you ever trust her again? Well, a lot is going to depend. Are you willing to extend that trust to her? If you aren’t, or you can’t, then you should end things now; prolonging things if you know you can’t forgive and forget is just cruel. If you are willing to trust her again, then she has to be willing to earn that trust back and demonstrate her trustworthiness by being absolutely above board on pretty much everything. That doesn’t mean she’s not allowed her privacy, but it does mean that she’s going to need to be mindful about what you do and don’t need to know.

All that being said: this is still very early in the relationship. If you’re going to have trust issues at six months… well, even if she comes clean and explains everything, I think this relationship may have problems going the distance.

My advice would be to at least hear her out and then decide how you feel. Just proceed with caution; this clearly isn’t easy for either of you.

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 (F, 27) been seeing this guy (M, 26) for a few months now. He’s incredibly sweet, our chemistry is great when we’re together, except for one thing—he’s always on his phone. Whenever we’re together, he’s constantly texting or scrolling through social media. It’s becoming a real issue because, when he’s present, he’s amazing. But when he isn’t, it feels like he’s not even aware that I’m there. Either I feel like he forgets I’m there with him, or I’m made to feel like I’m somehow interrupting him from something more important.

It would be hard enough if this was about work and his job kept getting in the way of us spending time together. I wouldn’t like it, but at least I wouldn’t feel like I’m not entertaining enough for him. But it’s not. He’s replying to group chats on WhatsApp, reading his Discords or Twitter. There were even a few times when I realized he was watching TikToks instead of being with me.

At first, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but as time went on, it started to bother me more and more. It’s not just an occasional issue, it’s all the time. If we sit down to dinner, his phone comes out. If we’re on the couch and not actively making out or something, the phone comes out. I’ve tried bringing it up in a gentle way, but he always seems to brush it off, saying that it’s just habit or that he’s not really paying attention to his phone

It’s starting to feel like I’m competing for his attention with his phone, and I’m losing. I really like him, but I want to be with someone who is present and engaged when we’re together. What should I do?

Digital Widow

DEAR DIGITAL WIDOW: Ooof. This letter hits a little too close to home, DW. I am emphatically someone who spends entirely too much time online and who’s more or less glued to his phone. And as someone who’s had partners who’ve gently pointed out that I seem to be unable to stop scrolling Twitter or who whips his phone out the moment he gets bored… I’m not that far off from your beau.

But the fact that I can relate to your boyfriend might be a benefit in this case, because I may be able to provide context that could help.

Much like you and your boyfriend, I’ve had partners complain that I spend a lot of time on my phone – even when watching TV or otherwise engaged with things I presumably like. What was so compelling about scrolling through social media over shows I actually enjoyed watching or spending time with people I cared about.

Well as it turns out, the answer was, in part, that I have ADHD. I didn’t get my diagnosis until 2020, when the pandemic and the lockdown disrupted the majority of my coping mechanisms, and getting that diagnosis was very much the Rosetta Stone of many of my odd personality quirks.

One of the defining traits of ADHD is that it interferes with the brain’s ability to produce, absorb and metabolize dopamine; people with ADHD are basically running on a dopamine deficiency, and as a result, we’re always trying to reach a baseline by finding other sources. This leaves us easily distracted, in part, because we’re trying to find the next “hit”, and hyperfocus happens when our brains are determined to wring every last drop of that sweet, sweet happy juice out of whatever we’re currently doing.

Because novelty is one of the easiest and most effective ways of generating dopamine, we often end up getting addicted to our smartphones. Between the ever-burning trash fire of social media, quick and easily consumed bites of content via TikTok or Instagram, never-ending streams of emails and 24 hour news and content cycles, our smartphones are functionally perpetual dopamine factories, forever supplying us with the novelty that lets our brains get the fix they need.

And to make matters worse, people with ADHD also frequently have issues with impulsivity – that is, we rarely think about potential consequences of our actions and leap before we look. So we often miss that middle step between the desire to check out whatever Elon’s done to Twitter this time and pulling out our phones to check – that middle step that says “doing this will make my girlfriend feel like she’s being ignored and maybe I should not do this.”

Before I got my diagnosis, I was very much like your boyfriend. I didn’t think I was ignoring the people around me, I didn’t think I was paying that much attention to my phone or that I was capable of multitasking and that it wasn’t taking away from my ability to be present and in the moment with people I cared about. It was only after I started getting treatment that I was able to start getting things more under control.

(Please notice very carefully that I said more under control. This is still something I have to be mindful of, because it takes very little to fall back into it. The eternal scroll of social media is decidedly something that makes the hyperfocus go BRRRRRRRRRRRRR)

So, I think it may be worth your time to ask your boyfriend if he’s ever been tested for ADHD, or if he’s under treatment. If he hasn’t, I think it would be worth his while and yours for him to talk to a doctor. If he is dealing with an undiagnosed case, like I was, then the odds are good that this is affecting him in ways beyond his being rude and inconsiderate when he’s with you. It’s almost certainly interfering in his life in other areas, often in ways that likely frustrate and mystify him the way that his behavior is currently bothering you. Getting treatment will go a long, long way to improving the overall quality of his life and his relationship with you.

However, I want to be clear: the possibility that he has ADHD explains his behavior, it doesn’t excuse it. His behavior doesn’t become acceptable just because he’s neurodivergent, and it’s no less rude just because it’s a mental health issue. He may be swimming upstream – metaphorically speaking – but his behavior is still affecting you, and he’s being inconsiderate of you and your feelings. That’s relationship poison, no matter the underlying reason. So while his getting tested and treated – assuming that he has ADHD – will help, he’s still going to have to make a point of being more engaged with you and less on his phone.

Who knows, you and he may be able to find a way to compromise, where you can have some “separate but together” time, where you’re both enjoying each other’s company by being physically present, but not necessarily doing things together. A lot of people with ADHD find this form of “parallel play” helpful, both for productivity and a general sense of companionship and connection.

That being said: I feel obligated to say that even if he does get a diagnosis, treatment may still be difficult. Right now there’s a major Adderall shortage in the US, and a lot of people are struggling to get their prescriptions filled, either regularly or at all. So there may a long period of struggle and trying to find effective coping mechanisms in the interim, especially if other medications don’t work as effectively for him.

If he doesn’t have it – or he does, but doesn’t change his behavior – well, then you and he will need to sit and have that Awkward Conversation about how he’s behaving, how it’s making you feel, and why this is a problem, even if he doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. His opinion that it’s not that much of an issue doesn’t negate how it’s affecting you. And if he’s not willing to change his behavior in the name of, y’know, not alienating his girlfriend… well then he’ll have made his choice between you and his phone.

And it’ll be your choice as to whether you’re willing to come in second to a piece of technology.

Good luck.

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