DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m gonna apologize beforehand but it’s one of those “I have this friend…” questions. I’m a guy and this friend is a girl. Her boyfriend broke up with her after a very serious 2 year relationship (living together and all that stuff). The dude was very f--ked up and turned my friend from a happy-go-lucky girl into a depressed, drawn-back husk of a woman.

She is on the road to recovery but every 3-4 months that guy gets in contact with her and tells her all about how he misses her and he can change and so on, they get back to together and after 3-4 weeks leaves her again, completely destroyed. She knows he’s bad for her but she has gone back to him several times even after breaks as long as 7 months.

My question is how I can help her getting over him, so she can lead a happy life again.

Emotional Life Guard

DEAR EMOTIONAL LIFE GUARD: OK ELG, I’m going to start this with something I’m sure you already know. As cold as this is going to sound, you can’t save someone from themselves. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just her ex working his magic Killgrave-esque mind-control powers over her, it’s a series of choices that she’s making every time she goes back to him. It’s not just the choice to give him a second chance or to try to start things over with him, it’s the choice to even let him contact her in the first place.

She has the ability to control who is and isn’t able to contact her, and how. She could, at any time, take The Nuclear Option on this guy – who sounds like the precise sort of person the Nuclear Option was made for – and keep him from ever talking to her in the first place. But she hasn’t. She continues to let him have access to her, to take his calls or read his texts and emails, and she lets him talk her into giving him another chance.

Those are choices that she’s making. Until she’s ready to start making different choices, there’s really not much that you can do – certainly not anything that she would thank you for. Sure, you could, say, grab her phone when she’s not looking and try to block and unfollow him on every social media app she has before she notices it’s gone… and then she’ll be unbelievably pissed at you for violating her privacy and going through her things.

And since murder-and-disposing-of-the-body is presumably off the table too… well, your options are going to be very limited.

And to be clear: this is a very common pattern in toxic and abusive relationships. People will often return to partners who’ve hurt them – physically and emotionally – multiple times before they’re ready to make a final break. It’s maddening to watch because everybody knows how it’s going to end. You know. She knows. She’s just hoping that maybe this time things will be different – maybe he really means those sweet promises and offers. Maybe he’s finally gotten the help he needs.

Or, more realistically: maybe this will be the time that lets her justify all the other times he was horrible to her and she won’t have to face the possibility that she’s someone who got into an abusive relationship and kept going back to her abuser. Because at the end of the day, one of the things that brings people back to their abusers is the desire to salve their ego; they don’t want to face the reality that they’re someone who could be stuck in an abusive relationship. They don’t want to see themselves the way they’ve looked at other people in s--tty situations and thought “why don’t they just leave??”

Embarrassment and humiliation are motherf--kers, and they cause people to stick in s--tty situations for far longer than they should. It’s easier to stay in an awful relationship than it is to face the potential judgement of others for being in it in the first place. Especially if they’re someone who’s judged others for similar situations.

The key is that, at some point, they’ll finally reach their breaking point. They’ll hit that place where they’re ready to make the final break, cut this relationship out for good and move on – not just shutting the door behind them but bolting it, then bricking it up and carving warning signs to future generations letting them know that this is no place of honor. Hopefully before they suffer from harm they can’t recover from.

But that’s something they have to do for themselves. You can’t make that call for them, nor can you push them to make it before they’re ready. You can certainly try, and maybe they’ll go along with it for a little while… but they’ll almost inevitably go back because it ultimately wasn’t a choice they made for themselves.

So what can you do? Well, to start with, you be the best friend she needs. That means that you make sure that she knows that you will always be there for her. If she needs you to talk her through the process of leaving for good, you’ll be there. If she needs a sanity check or a second opinion, you’re available at all hours. If she need someone to hold her hand while she finally pulls the trigger on leaving this relationship, then you will be by her side before she can blink.

One of the ways that people end up stuck in toxic relationships is that they end up being separated and isolated from their support networks. Sometimes the abuser is responsible – dripping poison in their victims ears so that they don’t trust their friends, or restricting their ability to contact people. Other times, their friends are the ones who end up making things worse – criticizing or mocking their friend (or people in her situation) so that they don’t feel safe reaching out. Or they may step away because they don’t want to deal with the frustration of the rebound cycle.

Don’t be that person. Part of breaking the cycle is having people who are unquestionably on their side, who they know they can turn to without fear of judgment and who will be the support they need in that moment. It’s a frustrating role to be sure – you’re going to be doing a lot of waiting – but being there when it counts is going to make all the difference.

The other thing you can do, which might (and I stress might) help accelerate the process, is to be the voice of reasonable doubt. You don’t necessarily want to ask things directly – “why are you letting him do this again?” – but you might get a different reaction if you point out that she’s trying to buy orange juice from the hardware store. That is: she’s likely hoping for things from this person that she’ll never get. Maybe there’s some emotional wound that she thinks that he’ll heal. Maybe it’s a form of validation or affection that she feels she needs and isn’t getting elsewhere. But it’s ultimately an illusion; whatever she thinks he’s going to finally give her will never appear, because it’s not something he has – so she’s functionally going to Home Depot trying to find family size cartons of Tropicana and wondering why she can’t find it anywhere.

And that’s part of the trap. Abusers are like angler fish; they’re very good at drawing their targets in by seeming like they’re offering something the target wants. Except it’s all an illusion, and by the time their target realizes this, it’s too late. But psychology being what it is, it’s a lot easier for someone to rationalize that it should be there than to recognize they’re looking in the wrong place. Doubly so if they’re afraid of facing up to how much time they’ve spent looking and having to admit that all that time was ultimately wasted. The sunk-cost fallacy has claimed many a victim this way.

If she’s willing to talk (and, importantly, to listen), you might ask what he’s promising her and whether he actually has the capacity to follow through. You might ask why this is going to be different, this time, instead of like every other time he’s sweet-talked her back into his clutches. But this requires a very deft, delicate touch; it’s all too easy to push a little too hard and trip the instinctive defensiveness that will drive her back into his arms.

So, as much as it sucks… the best thing you can do is be the support class here. She’s going to have to be the one to decide to break the cycle, and she’s going to do it in her own time. Your job is ultimately to make sure she knows she has the resources to do so, and that you’ll be there to back her up, no questions asked, no judgements given. It sucks, it’s maddening, and you’ll want to tear your hair out as he continues to drain the life from her. But it’ll be much easier for her to make that leap if she knows you will be ready and waiting to catch her when she does.

Good luck.

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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 23 year old adult who has; what might be to some; a nerdy obsession. However my profound love is not an interest of high fantasy literature, video games, movies, or anime, but an overzealous devotion to heavy metal music. This seems to be my down fall as I live smack dab in the Bible Belt. This little fact means that I am surrounded by women who have picked up the social, political, and sometimes religious views of their community. 

Now I like the southern girls as much as any other guy in the area, but my dilemma is that I have a hell of a time explaining to the girls that comes over to my house; that just because I own a ton of CDs that range in topic from anti-religious sentiments to brutal violence; that I am not some kind of nut case.

Let me paint the picture a little better. Say I meet a nice young lady out in public, hit it off, and hook up with her; the first few dates being outings and maybe going over to her place (If I am to be so lucky). But then she asks to see, hang, or go over to my place. I then have to spend an afternoon coming up with a series of explanations as to why I have this really obscure hobby (if you can call metal collecting a hobby; I will leave that up to you). The music in general is not a big issue; it’s not like I my placed rigged to play black metal when I walk through the door. It’s all the paraphernalia like CD cases, band posters, T-shirts, and magazines that often have graphic content on it. Some girls just get put off by it.

At first I thought it would just be a few girls that might freak out about it, but I soon realized that I was explaining my hobby to every one of the opposite sex who walked through my door. 

My question is this: Is it possible to meet and hook up with people when you maintain a hobby that controversial, or does it require the person in question to lock a few skeletons in their closet.

Death Metal Head

DEAR DEATH METAL HEAD: Here’s a question for you, DMH: do you want to be dating someone who is going to see your taste in music as a disqualifier?

My second question for you is: if you take away the loaded imagery of some death metal (some folks are always going to see corpse paint, pile-o-sticks logos and trying-to-shock-and-offend-you album art as turn off) and substitute it with, say, video game paraphernalia or anime or some other interest, does your apartment look like an adult lives there or like a teenager was given free reign over the décor and interior design? That’s going to be a much bigger issue when it comes to bringing women over. Offensive or graphic imagery is just going to be the squicked out cherry on that particular sundae.

It’s important to answer both of these questions, but the latter is going to be more important than the former. What someone sees when they come to your place for the first time is going to tell them a lot about who you are – whether you intend it or not. If your apartment looks like a tornado tore through the merch tent at Wacken, your date is probably going to suddenly remember that she needs to go home and shave the cat. Not necessarily because it’s wall to wall Opeth and Thy Art Is Murder, but because it’s cluttered and messy and looks like Oscar the Grouch is living there – not a grown ass man.

If it’s not a matter of only knowing that you have a floor because all your s--t hasn’t dropped into the apartment below you, everything isn’t piled up like the first ten minutes of an episode of Horders  and the cockroaches haven’t moved out to find a place more upscale, then it becomes a question of style and presentation. One of the common complaints that women will often have about the ways guys will live is that their homes are clearly not meant to be shared; they’ll have a section devoted to their console setup or their battlestations or their hifi system… and then a mattress on the floor with no bedframe, a single chair or couch, no kitchen or dining room furniture and so on.

Yeah, sometimes this is as much about income and poverty as it is anything else, but it still conveys a particular message. And that message is “I have never considered sharing this space with anyone else.” The issue isn’t cost or class, so much as “will it be physically comfortable to share this space with another person?” A living room picnic can be romantic. Not having chairs and a dining table quickly loses its charm (and it loses it even faster when your knees, hips and back no longer find it as convenient as you do).

So consider whether someone – who isn’t an exact clone of you – would be physically comfortable in this space – in terms of cleanliness but also furnishings. Then it’s time to consider the décor and how you’re displaying your collection.

Part of what will make the difference is simply presentation. Posters and memorabilia hit differently when they’re framed or in a display. An autographed band shirt in a shadowbox or framed and hung on the wall is significantly different than a bunch of them draped over the backs of chairs. A wall of shelves designed to show off some killer vinyl or choice albums from your collection is different than when they’re just loose on the coffee table. These little adjustments make the difference between “immature clutter” and “a carefully curated collection”.

But just as importantly, there can be levels to what you display and where. The more public the space – that is, places where more people who aren’t as into heavy metal as you are likely to congregate – the less outre the stuff you display. Yeah, the art and imagery that’s more palatable to the general public isn’t always going to be your favorite, but it’s also less likely to turn off people who are still in the “getting to know you” stage or who aren’t as used to you and familiar with your interests.

Now, if you have the space, then designating one room as the home for your collection can be useful. Here’s where you can put house and display the stuff that’s more likely to shock and offend people. Having it off in its own space means that people who want to see it or who are ok with it can find it, but it’s not going to be as much of a sudden shock to someone coming over for the first time. It also, incidentally, gives you a chance to adjust what’s out on display; you can rotate some items in and out when you want a change or you add new items to your collection.

But let’s get back to the first question: are you really going to want to date someone who’s going to be put off by your being a metalhead in the first place? That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re only ever going to be dating people in the scene, but you’ll at least want to focus on dating folks who a) can respect that you love metal and b) aren’t going to see dark, gothic or extreme art as a sign that you’re the last surviving cult member from Michelle Remembers. So while I’m always a believer in curating your hobbies, you are going to avoid a lot of headaches by filtering for people who’ll be cool with it in the first place – even if they’re more of a Swiftie than a Nightwish devotee.

And really, you’ll have probably filtered out the people who are going to be turned off by your hobby before you ever got to the “coming back to your place” stage anyway.

Oh, one more thing: just because you’re talking about southern women in the buckle of the bible belt doesn’t mean that people can’t surprise you. A lot of folks who may not necessarily be into the cookie-monster-growling-and-howling genres of metal might find a lot to love about, say, Halestorm or Within Temptation or Old Gods of Asgard.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: As a girl, I would like to know how to be obviously off the market. Uh… let me give you some background information:

I am definitely a nerdy girl. I’m relatively attractive and I can gush on about Star Trek for hours to anybody stupid enough to let me. I’m probably one of those girls that has an overinflated ego because of how geek culture generally views women and how easy it is to be like-able.

I WANT to be liked. I’m sure most people do. I don’t want to stop being liked.

The problem is, I’ve stumbled through some relationships recently that range from absolutely horrible to just damn annoying (a few that used my intense need to be liked to manipulate the hell out of me and one that seemed to view me as the prize you get if you win the dating game). I’m just absolutely sick of dating and the complications that come from it. I’m sure that feeling will eventually fade, but in the meantime I want to be able to make friends and be liked without being some kind of mythical sex goddess unicorn to every new guy I meet (this is obviously where the ego thing steps in, I do know that I’m not THAT attractive to everybody, really. I also know that sometimes I am.)

How can I and anybody else in a similar situation make it obvious that we are not currently looking to date? Is there a way to avoid the hideously awkward “Look, I don’t know if I’m reading you right but no thanks, its not you its me.” conversation?

– Not a Prize To Be Won

DEAR NOT A PRIZE TO BE WON: here’re a couple things to consider, NAPTBW, starting with the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect “don’t even think about asking me out” signal. It doesn’t matter how obvious, how firm or how blunt it is;  a lot of people will miss it or ignore it under the assumption that yes you mean that for other people but not Studly GoodNight. And frankly, you could put up road barriers marked “Not On The Market, Not Interested in Talking, Do Not Cross” in front of you with the flashers on and there would still be guys who would straight Wile E. Coyote their way through it, leaving a human shaped hole in the center because they assume that they are the obvious exception to your “not on the market, not interested” message.

Part of the problem – and this is true across communities and interest groups, whether nerds and geeks, jocks, tech bros, whatever – is that motivated reasoning is a motherf--ker, and it’s very easy to convince oneself that other people’s desire to not interact with folks is less important than their desire to talk to an attractive lady. They’re the hero of their own narrative, the main character of the universe, so of course, they’re allowed to push past that initial resistance and prove that they are, in fact, the droids you’ve been looking for.

This gets all the more “amusing” when you factor in how many of them will then get upset that you’re not following along in the script that they’ve written for you in their heads.

But one thing that jumped out at me in your letter was that you mentioned an intense desire to be liked. Having people-pleasing tendencies can really get in the way of trying to establish a firm boundary with people, especially people you know. This, combined with the way that women are still socialized to prioritize men’s feelings over women’s own comfort and interests can lead to a lot of soft “no”s – that is, refusals or deflections that’re concealed in socially plausible reasons why you couldn’t do something without turning them down, directly.

The problem is: people tend to ignore soft no’s when they want to. It’s not that they don’t hear them or don’t recognize them when they happen, it’s that they’re doing the classic gambit of “I reject your reality and substitute my own!” So if you say “I’m just not looking for a relationship right now” or “I’m taking a break from dating” or some other equally soft refusal, they’ll zero in on the “right now” part and now “Not interested in dating” part.

At best, all that happens is that you’ve kicked the can down the road, and they hope that they can hang around long enough that they’ll be first in line (metaphorically) when the window of opportunity reopens. At worst, they’ll take that as a challenge and try to prove to you that you should be dating them. Often through continuing to pester you for dates.

So you’re going to have to start getting comfortable with being blunt and direct. That doesn’t mean you need to be rude, but you can be direct and still be polite. Now, if you’re not sure that someone’s giving “I want to date you” vibes but isn’t actually saying the words, then take it at face value. But if they’re inviting you to do things that sound suspiciously date-like and you’re not sure or they’re starting to behave in ways that seem overtly like they’re angling for more than friendship, then you’re going to have to call it out. I realize you’d prefer not to have that awkward moment, but a moment of “OK, just to be clear, are you asking me out on a date?” or “You mean like a date?” is going to be less awkward than weeks or months of trying to figure things out, only to have to have the conversation anyway.

Now, it’s possible that they’ll try to surf the quantum wave of ambiguity, where they’re both asking and not asking you on a date at the same time and hope that they can upgrade to a date while you’re on it. Or they may actually say that yes, they’re asking for a date. In those cases, then you’re going to have to turn them down, firmly, completely and unequivocally.

You want to think of it like a knife: short, sharp and to the point. “I’m flattered, but I’m not interested,” or “I appreciate the compliment but I don’t want to go on a date”. Don’t give details, don’t soft-pedal it by giving reasons or excuses. Just “thank you, but no”. Anything after that isn’t a refusal, it’s the opening position for negotiations.

Yeah, it’s uncomfortable and creates the possibility of hurt feelings, but trust me: it’s a lot better for everyone to keep it simple and clear.

Good luck.

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