DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I work in customer service , not exactly a professional level career, but it’s not flipping burgers. I actually like my job, while not the best, the pay is decent , I get to work from home, and being a government job, the benefits are pretty good, and I have weekends and holidays off as well as good job security.

Unfortunately, my work seems to be an issue with a lot of women. After I tell them what I do, I never hear from them again. Some people have told me to just get another job, but the job market isn’t the best and I’m not exactly qualified for a lot of professional level jobs, plus I’d have to give up working from home, I may make less money etc. Also, there aren’t any single women where I work and if there were I really don’t want to date a co-worker.

Are there any other options?

Career Exception Oriented

DEAR CAREER EXCEPTION ORIENTED: Let’s take the “dating a co-worker” off the table for the moment here, CEO, because it’s not really relevant. Instead, I want to talk about how to fix dating problems you might be having – and, importantly, how to be sure you’re trying to fix the right problem. I’m sure you’ve seen me talk about how “the problem you have isn’t the problem you think you have”; part of how you avoid this is to make sure that you’re actually looking at what’s actually going on, rather than making assumptions. This is why you want to zero in on what the real problem is, rather than what seems to make sense.

So let me walk you through some steps to try to analyze the issue and then I’ll give you my opinion about what I think is happening. 

The first thing to keep in mind when you’re troubleshooting your love life  is that correlation is not the same as causation. It’s the fallacy of “post-hoc ergo propter hoc”: after this, therefore because of this. It’s a trap that people fall for all the time, because it makes a certain logical sense. It’s the linear progression of cause and effect – this thing happened, then this other thing happened soon thereafter, so it stands to reason that the former caused the latter. The problem though is that life – like time – is really more a big bundle of wibbly-wobbly stuff, where things only seem related because of proximity and we’re a species with a pattern-seeking brain that will look for patterns and meaning, even when there isn’t any. The problem is, because we have pattern-seeking brains and a general love of narrative, this fallacy means that we tend to end up believing a lot of wonky or even harmful things, simply because they happened in a particular order. It’s basically working backwards from the conclusion; X happened, Y happened, so if Y happened because of X, we’ll come up with reasons to make the two related, even if they aren’t. 

That doesn’t mean that the two are never related; sometimes it really is as obvious as it seems. But that doesn’t mean that this is a connection or inference that you can rely on. The risk here is that if you get stuck on the post-hoc fallacy, you end up letting your biases do the thinking for you. Troubleshooting your dating life means that you don’t want to leap to a conclusion just because it seems to fit, you want the one that actuallyfits. The most obvious answer isn’t always the correct one because the one that’s most obvious isn’t actually obvious to anyone who isn’t you. It’s not “this is so self-evident that it must be the answer”  so much as “this answer matches my pre-existing anxieties and beliefs”. In this case, people have a lot of beliefs about how important (or not) a person’s job is on the dating scene. If you’re at all sensitive about what you do for work, it’s very easy to assume that this was the trigger. But that doesn’t mean that it’s true; it just happens to be an area where you’re particularly sensitive. 

Of course, being sensitive doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, either. This is why you want to try to be as objective as you can while examining the potential conflicts and causes. Even if you’re correct, you want to be correct for the right reasons, rather than by accident. Having the right answer doesn’t help if you got there by faulty reasoning; you end up focusing on the wrong issues or ineffective solutions. 

This is why you want to do your best to take an objective look at the data and evidence you actually have, while being mindful about what evidence you don’t have. When it comes to dating, what you often don’t have is access to what the other person is thinking or feeling or otherwise has going on in their life. So there are times when the problem isn’t even on your end, just as there can be times where you have the classic situation of “you can make no mistakes and still lose.”

Now, here’s the order of operations I would recommend for you.

The first thing I would suggest is taking a hard look at the exact frequency of how often your job comes up with women going radio silent on you. One of the common flaws of the human brain is recency bias; we tend to focus on experiences that are fresher and more immediate and assume that it’s more significant than it actually was. One of the ways this can manifest would be feeling as though X keeps happening to you with far more regularity than it actually does, simply because X happened to you the last time or the time before. In this case, you should check to see if it really is true that women are ditching you after you talk about your job.

Fortunately, because we’re talking about dating apps, you have the receipts. If you were to go through your conversations with your matches, for as far back as you can, did they all end when the subject of your job came up? If it’s not every time, was it still more often than not?  Or is it just that the most recent matches, plural, end at this point while others ended at other times? While it’s hard to say what a “statistically significant” number would be, let’s say that it follows the Bond Rule of Enemy Action: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is a problem.

If it does seem to be a recurring problem, then we want to make sure whether this is correlation or causation. So we want to look a little closer. That’s why, in this case, the next step would be to look at the timing of the connection drying up.

This is another area where we can get tripped up, in no small part because things that feel significant can warp our perspective. This is why it’s easy to mistake correlation for causation; we think something happened much sooner than it did, which then means we tend to not look any further past that point.

So, looking over those previous conversations, pay attention to how long it was before the conversation ended and your match stopped replying. Was it really the case that you would say “I’m in customer service” and they would just stop responding immediately afterwards? Did they say “ah, ok, I’m no longer interested, thanks for your time?” as a direct reply and then unmatch? Or did the conversation continue on for a bit before petering out to silence? If it were the latter, then the odds are that this is correlation; it just happened that the conversation was already winding down by the time you got to that point.

Which actually brings me to the next thing to consider: whether the trigger was your talking about your job, or whether things were already on the downswing and it was a coincidence that this is where it ended. 

For this, you want to look at the overall tone and rhythm of the conversation before you got to the job talk as well as afterwards. Had these women been actively engaged in the conversation, keeping up their end of things or even being enthusiastic as you were talking until someone brought up the topic? Was there a distinct and noticeable vibe shift? Or were things starting to drop off or reach a lull, where their replies were getting less and less involved and you were starting to hurt your back from carrying the entire conversation by yourself? If that was the case, then the odds are that by the time your job came up, then the problem wasn’t your job so much as they were coming to the conclusion that they just weren’t feeling it. What you do for a living wasn’t a deal breaker, or if it was, it wasn’t the sole cause. It’s more likely that this was just the point in the interaction where they decided that they weren’t feeling what they needed to feel to be excited to see you. The fact that it coincides with you talking about what you do for a living was just happenstance. 

If that’s what happened, then you should take a look at the overall tone of the conversations you were having and see where and when the vibe started to shift. It may not have been anything specific – as in, it wasn’t a case of “well if you hadn’t said this particular thing, she’d still be interested” – so much as you weren’t necessarily connecting, didn’t demonstrate that the two of you had enough in common or there was something in there that signaled that maybe you two weren’t a match. Which sucks, but that’s as likely to be an issue of “wrong person” as it is that it’s a problem with you. Online dating means you’re going to face rejection more often and from more people, simply because you’re putting yourself out there more than you would be if you were meeting people in person. And putting yourself out there more often means that you’re going to meet more people who simply aren’t a good fit for you, or you for them, no matter what. 

Now let’s say that yes, it absolutely is the case that the majority of women have dipped out as soon as you mentioned that you work in customer service. This doesn’t necessarily mean that your job is the problem in and of itself. There’re other variables to try to isolate before we assume that the problem is your job.

One of the first is who you’re matching with: are they driven, ambitious professionals in white-collar jobs? Are they entrepreneurs, small business owners or people working in or aspiring to middle class success or higher? Perhaps they’re creatives, who are hoping to make their passion their career but are currently working a day job to make ends meet. Or are they women who are looking to get on the marriage-and-family track right away? If that’s the case, this may well be an incompatibility; they’re looking for someone who’s more or less on the same level as they are or who has ambitions outside of their day job and is demonstrating the drive to achieve those goals. If you’re happy where you are, your needs are more or less met and you don’t feel much of a push to seek something better, then it’s likely that the issue isn’t your job so much as that you don’t match what they’re looking for. And that’s fine; that’s an indicator that you and they were likely not compatible, not in the ways that would be necessary for a long-term match.

Another thing to consider is to look at how talk about your job. Customer service conjures up a wide range of possibilities, from being the person at the big-box retailer processing returns and exchanges to being the voice on the other end of a company’s 800 number, or the chatbot on a company’s webpage. If you’re describing it to your matches the way you did to me, then honestly, you’re painting a very vague picture that doesn’t make it sound terribly appealing and leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Part of it is that you start off sounding kind of negative about it. You aren’t apologizingfor it, exactly, but you’re treating it as though it were a mark against you, before backtracking to explain why it’s not so bad. By the time you get to “the pay is good, the benefits are gold-plated”, you’ve already set an image in people’s heads and it’s hard to shift that. So I’d start with giving either your job title or a more precise description – “I do X for the Y department of the government” rather than just “customer service”. Talk about what you do, specifically – “I help people with questions about their tax returns” or “I assist people getting access to government programs that they’re entitled to” or whatever the actual description is. You can follow it up with “It’s not the most exciting gig, but the pay is good, the hours are flexible, I can work from home and I get a government benefits package, which is pretty huge.” 

This gives a better idea of what you do without the negative associations that come with “customer service”. While it doesn’t come off like anybody’s dream job, it certainly doesn’t seem like a bad one. But if you’re describing it to your matches the way you describe it to me, then you sound like you’re saying “I work a dead end job,” and all the good parts are going to fade to background noise. As a result, you leave people with the impression that either you’re stuck there and have no prospects or you have no ambition to move on to something better.

Which brings me to my analysis. I don’t think it’s your job, per se; I think it’s about how you’re coming across to other people. While the job itself may be a turn-off for some – more on that in a second, I think that the bigger problem is that you give the impression that you’ve either settled for this and given up, or else you  don’t have the drive to do better. And while I fully get not wanting to give up your benefits – trust me, I’ve seen what state employees get, never mind federal employees – the fact that you’re giving reasons why you’re not looking for another job kind of stands out to me. There’s a difference between “I’m trying to find something better, but the job market sucks” and “I don’t see the point, so I’m not going to bother.” The former indicates that you’ve got initiative and drive but you’re hindered by outside forces. The latter suggests to people that you’re kind of a slacker. Needless to say, one is relatable and the other is… less attractive.

Obviously not everyone needs to be a captain of industry or determined to make it to the C-Suite, and f--k knows that a job with good insurance is worth a lot of frustration. But the issue I think you’re running into is that the way you’re coming across sounds like you’ve given up before you’ve even started and in a manner that’s pretty defensive. To be fair, you’re relating this to me, not to your Hinge match, and it’s possible you’re phrasing things differently. But if I were to pick up a similar vibe from someone I’d matched with on a dating app, I’d start thinking twice about whether I wanted to continue that conversation for much longer.

Now to be clear: I’m not saying that you need to get off your ass and get out into the job market. What I’m saying that the version of you that you’re conveying through your words to me strikes me as a negative. If you’re framing it this way with the people you’re matched with, especially if they’re someone who’s goal oriented or career driven, then it increases the odds that they’re going add a mark in the “minus” column. If that’s the sort of person you’re hoping to match with, then either you need to adjust how you talk about  your job or have other things going on that you can point to that would counterbalance things.

One of the things I recommend for people in lousy jobs is to talk about your ambitions – “yeah, this is what I do to pay the bills and keep my insurance. My real passion is $OTHER_THING_I’M_WORKING_TOWARDS…” and talk a little about how you’re trying to get to that place. You don’t need a grand side hustle or some plan about how you’re going to get rich; you just want to show that you’re doing more than coasting along. Ambition and passion are attractive qualities and demonstrating that you’re actually pursuing those goals tells people that you’re going to be more than just an anchor or worse. You don’t need to be rich or upwardly mobile to date; people just want to know that you’re going to pull your share of the weight. If their goals include things like “having a family”, then that weight’s going to be considerable. Your share of the weight doesn’t have to be financial, but it needs to be something that will help spread the burden around so that no one person is going to collapse under the weight of it all while the other just farts around.

(This, incidentally, is also why you should talk up the benefits when talking about your job. Government insurance plans are no joke; I’ve got people close to me whose health issues would bankrupt their entire family if not for gold-plated insurance from state and federal employment.) 

So TL;DR: don’t make assumptions, look for actual patterns. If it is about your job, pay attention to how you’re talking about it and the impression you’re giving about yourself. You can describe it in a more appealing – and more accurate – way that emphasizes the good parts and why it’s a good fit for you right now. And when you do so, avoid the talk that makes you sound less driven and more resigned; that tends to be a turn off.

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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: Something that has been bothering me is the pressure to be that interesting, fun, funny, good looking etc. etc. etc. guy that women go absolutely nuts over. I’m not talking about the incel’s god “chad” but basically what you’ve laid out in previous material (becoming more charming, better clothes etc.)

At the same time though, I’m pretty happy with who I am now and while I’ve made a lot of improvements already (career, martial arts, skydiving, weight loss etc.) I still feel this pressure to be that mythical “perfect dude.” I feel that I can still do just fine as the imperfect but still pretty cool version of myself I am, but it’s at odds with the image I’ve built up in my head.

That and spending all of my time trying to become this person, and always being funny, charming, adventurous etc. sounds REALLY exhausting.

Less Perfect Tommy

DEAR LESS THAN PERFECT TOMMY: This is one of those times when there are multiple issues all coming together here that are combining into a major misunderstanding – like watching three or four different people coming to the same wrong conclusion from entirely different angles.

The first should be self-evident: you don’t need to be “perfect” to date. In fact, one of the more common complaints I’ve seen are people who feel like they are perfect – or damn near – grumbling that they’re struggling trying to find a date while a dude who looks like a Waffle House fry cook with a side hustle in meth gets more strange ass than a dude at a mutant donkey auction.

This sort of pressure is almost entirely self-imposed and almost always comes from other men who want to pontificate endlessly on what women “really” want – usually punctuated with appeals to “look at how much attention $FLAVOR_OF_THE_MONTH gets on Instagram” or talking about the long-misunderstood 80/20 garbage, especially around dating apps.

(This is a classic case of “figures don’t lie, but liars don’t figure”, where folks miss that the reality is that most users on dating apps are male – 75-80% depending on the app – and many  of the women – 20-25% –on the site aren’t active.)

A lot of it is also pure assumption; folks assume that when someone stops talking to them on an app or doesn’t match with them or a first date doesn’t lead to a second, it must be because they’re “not good enough” and that they need to reach some mythical peak of attractiveness in order to date.

The truth is that, despite what folks will insist, it’s not that women are too picky or selective or that there’s some weird evo-psych thing going on. The truth is that the attraction or interest just wasn’t there, and that can be for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s a skill issue, where one person or the other simply isn’t that good at conveying interest or connecting with the other person. Sometimes it’s that there’s a compatibility mismatch, where one person either lacks a necessary quality or has one that the other considers to be a deal breaker. And sometimes it’s just as simple and banal as “there’s nothing wrong with the other person, I’m just not feeling it.”

None of these are due to a flaw or a lack of perfection in the person who was rejected. It’s just that sometimes someone’s not going to be into you, no matter what and that’s fine. You don’t like every woman you meet either and some folks are just not going to do it for you, even when there’s nothing wrong with them. In fact, I rather suspect that if you were to look at the people you’re attracted to, you’d realize that you aren’t expecting them to be perfect or your 100% ideal partner. So it is a good time to ask yourself why you feel like you have to be exceptional in order to date, but the people you date get afforded a measure of grace that you won’t give yourself.

If you can see yourself dating someone who isn’t an opera-singing super model who also does archeology in her spare time while pursuing her PhD in quantum mechanics, why would you assume that women will only date the real-life equivalent of Doc Savage?

The second issue is mistaking those qualities for what makes someone attractive. Here’s what folks miss about attraction: it’s about feelings, not accomplishments. As I said just this week: the vast majority of women aren’t going to be won over by great deeds or by your resume. A lot of stuff that guys will rattle off as what should make them more desirable can be interesting, it can offer opportunity or security… but that doesn’t mean that it makes the person attractive. Not if the person who does those things isn’t able to connect with other people.

The most obvious counterargument to all the usual “women only want the top 10% of men” is the cliché of the dirtbag musician boyfriend – the guy who’s out of work or works dead end jobs, who refuses responsibility because of their “obligations” to their band/music/artistic vision and who seems mostly to sponge off anyone who gets into a relationship with them. Despite practically being a cartoon character of a stereotype, this kind of guy is a cliché for a reason: damn near every woman who dates men has either encountered him or knows someone who has. And the reason why this kind of guy does so well isn’t because he’s Dude Perfect, it’s because he knows how to play on women’s feelings. He’s very good at connecting with people, inspiring particular emotions and feelings and wielding those emotions like a weapon.

That’s what “game” is. That’s what “rizz” is. It’s understanding how to inspire particular emotions, build connection and parlay those feelings into a relationship. That’s really it. Perfection isn’t required. Connection is.

But part of why people struggle with this is because they tend to feel like they’re not enough. They don’t believe in their own worth or value. They don’t believe that women could possibly enjoy their presence or find them interesting on their own merits and so they feel like they need to collect these other qualities like they’re Infinity Stones and assemble the Infinity Gauntlet before they can date. But women aren’t looking for perfection, any more than men are. They’re looking for someone who they enjoy spending time with, who makes them feel good and who gets them.

It’s one thing to pursue various hobbies or ambitions because they’re things you truly enjoy. It’s another to do so because you think they’re prerequisites for being An Attractive Person – the dating meta, if you will – and that you have to align with that specific build in order to unlock the Relationship tree.

The third issue is also simple: you don’t need to be living a life of constant action, adventure, hustle and grind etc. Some of what you’re getting wrong here is the difference between action and essence: being charming vs. having to act charming, having a sense of humor vs. Being Funny and so on.

Now part of the conflict I think you’re running into here is simply the difference between skill states – the effort it takes to make something go from being something you have to do consciously to something that becomes a habit. It can take effort, for example, to force yourself to practice piano every day or perform your katas until you know every move by heart. But once it goes from conscious effort to habit, it becomes something you just do. You get up at 7 AM to get to the gym at 8 AM because it’s become what you do. You strike up conversations with strangers because it’s become your habit to just make small talk when you’re out and about whereas before you had to force yourself to so much as ask someone for the time.

But another part is that you need to recognize that always being “on” not only isn’t necessary, but it can be actively detrimental. Yeah, I know, how could always being charming be a bad thing? Well, among other things, when it gets in the way of the times when you need to be sincere or serious or deal with situations where oozing charm wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate. There are times when what people want isn’t Charming Less Perfect Tommy, it’s Sincere Less Perfect Tommy or Vulnerable Less Perfect Tommy or Compassionate Less Perfect Tommy. It’s a matter of understanding when charm is needed and useful and when what you need is a different quality entirely.

Just as importantly though is that there is always a point not just of diminishing returns but when being always on becomes harmful to your goals – in this case, to connect with someone and build a relationship with them.

For example: Robin Williams was hilarious, both professionally and as a person, but there was Robin Williams the person and Robin Williams the performance. What we see on stage – when he’s doing stand-up, when he’s acting or otherwise being “on” – may be hilarious to watch… but only for an hour or so at a time. Living with someone who is always “on” like that would be exhausting… both for the audience and the performer.

It would also reduce the actual efficacy of his humor. Humans are incredibly adaptable and almost any state can become just the status-quo if it goes on for long enough. If you’re afraid for long enough, the fear eventually just becomes background noise, something that you no longer notice to the same degree, and it doesn’t affect you quite the same way. You become numb to it; there’s nothing you can do about it so past a certain point you just accept it and move on to living with it. The same applies to humor, to charm, to sexiness… any sort of heightened state of arousal or being. Do it for long enough, consistently enough, with no breaks and it just becomes the norm, less noticeable and far less special or effective.

This is true in fiction, in music, in media and in people. This is why even in performance, there’s an ebb and flow, a crescendo followed by a diminuendo, where a moment of excitement is followed by a moment of calm to allow the audience to breathe, recover and come down off the previous high point. If everything is high energy with no release or no break, then it goes from arousal to exhaustion to numbness. The moments of peace and calm give opportunities for recouperation but also serve to highlight those moments of high arousal and energy, to make them more significant by the contrast. It’s the buildup of tension followed by the release, followed by the recovery. The laugh after a scary scene in a movie, followed by another scare that’s all the more frightening because of that moment of calm and release of tension. Or a laugh that hits harder because it comes seemingly out of nowhere during a dramatic or serious moment. Or someone suddenly contrasting their previous staid or even dowdy persona by turning on the charm and sex appeal. The times when the energy is low make the difference that much more noticeable and much more significant.

Now having talked about what leads to that misunderstanding, let’s take a moment to look at why this misunderstanding is a problem – why the feeling that you need to be “perfect” actually works against your goals. Trying to be perfect will sabotage your progress and any relationship that you will have because of it, simply because you will never actually feel secure and confident in that relationship.

Think about it. Being “perfect” by its very nature is impossible. But if “perfection” is the benchmark that you need to reach, then there’s no point where you are ever going to feel that you’re there – certainly not consistently. You may have times where you feel like you’ve absolutely nailed it – where you’ve done things “perfectly” – and that’s lead to that date or series of dates. But nobody can keep that level of “perfection” up forever. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone falls short of heaven, it’s part of the human experience. And because you feel that your value isn’t inherent but because of being able to perform perfection, then you can never feel like your connection with your partner is actually solid and secure. You will always living with the Sword of Damocles over your head, convinced that at some point you’ll either mess up or she’ll realize you’re not this impossible ideal and then it will all come crashing down.

This is why having that sense of your own value and worth is important. If you’re not secure in yourself and believe that you are enough – even if you aren’t perfect – you never feel like you can let your guard down and relax. Your value isn’t inherent, it’s in your performance and if your performance falters even a little then it’s all over.

And the seeking of perfection, of being The Best of the Best is ultimately about trying to allay that insecurity. It’s trying to drown out the fear of not being enough by piling it under accomplishments and metaphorical trophies. But none of it will ever be enough. As with external vs. internal validation, your chief sense of worth really needs to come from within, not from without.

And it’s not even necessary. Like you said: you like who you are now and what you’ve accomplished. That’s far more important and forms a much stronger foundation for a relationship. So take that feeling and let it be what motivates you. “I’m pretty damn cool; the right people will get that and the rest aren’t important” is a lot more attractive than “If I’m not at Peak Performance at all times, I’m worthless.”

So remind yourself that the need for perfection is unnecessary and unimportant. You’re pretty darn happy as you are and that’s more than enough.  

Good luck.Top of Form

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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: Is there some amount of time where people should be forgiven for past indiscretions? Especially if those acts lead to something good? 

About three years ago, I (F/31) cheated on my boyfriend (Alan, M/31) with a former co-worker of mine. The Covid lockdown put a lot of strain on our relationship and my boyfriend had a very hard time being isolated from his friends and family. He pulled back from me and became very withdrawn and unaffectionate and nothing I did seemed to be able to draw him back out. I was having regular zoom meetings for work that would turn into post-work hangouts and improvised happy hours and over the course of the year, a co-worker (Barry M/33) and I started to be a little flirty. I know a lot of this was because I was feeling neglected and I missed that sense of being desired and wanted, but I felt alone even when I was with my boyfriend and here was someone who was making me feel like a whole person again. 

Eventually the lockdown ended and Barry left the company to start his own business and at a so long/farewell after work party at a bar, Alan and I had a few too many drinks and we had sex. We both swore that this was a mistake, it was a one time thing and we were never going to ever do any of this again, but two weeks later we were flirting again and before we knew it, we realized that we were actually in love and this went from being a fling to an affair.

For a while I thought I could hide my affair until I could end things with Alan but he found out when he walked in on us flirting and getting sexy over Zoom and dumped me on the spot. News of my cheating spread through our entire social circle and everyone sided with Alan over me. 

That was three years ago and I’ve been with my lover ever since. I know I made mistakes and I don’t pretend that what I did was right. But it’s been three years and my friends still won’t talk to me or acknowledge my new relationship with Barry. They’re still upset at me for breaking Alan’s heart and don’t want to accept that what Barry and I have is real. 

Dr., I know what I did was bad, but doesn’t the fact that Barry and I are still together and that we’re happy mean anything? It’s not like Alan was blameless in this and it’s not as though I did this because I was bored or didn’t care. Barry and I love each other, we’ve moved in together, we’ve got a dog and we’re talking about marriage. I feel like this should make a difference, but nobody seems to be willing to hear me out about this and it just doesn’t seem fair to me. 

What do I do? Is there any way to change my friends’ minds or am I just the cheating bitch for the rest of time? 

I’m The Bad Guy

DEAR I’M THE BAD GUY I think this can be summed up best as “Oh look, it’s the consequences of my own actions”, ITBG.

Now, I will freely acknowledge that I’m on the record as saying that I don’t think cheating is the worst thing that you can do in a relationship, nor do I think it’s an automatic relationship extinction event, and I do think that there are times when cheating can be the least-bad option in some circumstances.

But that’s not the same thing as saying that cheating is something that can be easily overlooked or that you shouldn’t face the consequences. Something may not be the worst thing that you could do, but that’s not the same as being a good thing. And while the circumstances can make a difference – there’s a difference between “oops, I got drunk with a co-worker and we failed our wisdom save” and “fidelity is something that happens to other people” – those circumstances aren’t a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. They’re the difference between “we have some things to work out and trust to rebuild” and “get the hell out of my house before I throw you out and if you’re very lucky I might actually open the door before I do.”

Part of the problem here is that you don’t seem to actually own what you’ve done, nor are you actually expressing remorse. You can say “I did bad, I know,” all you want, but that’s not a magic spell that will inspire forgiveness from everyone around you. Saying “yeah, I f--ked up” or “I know I’m the bad guy here” isn’t an apology, it’s just a statement of facts. Yes, you f--ked up. Yes, you broke your ex-boyfriend’s heart and yes, you’re the bad guy here. Those are all true things. That’s not the same thing as an apology. Acknowledging that they’re true doesn’t make it better. You’re just agreeing on the facts of the matter.

And the fact of the matter is that you cheated on your boyfriend with a co-worker, that relationship continued until you got caught and it lead to your ex dumping you because of it.

The fact that you’re in love isn’t going to change the math in terms of how people feel about it. Not the way you’re going about things now. Yeah, it’s a little less s—tty than if you were doing it because you were bored or because you were being spiteful and wanted to hurt your ex. And perhaps this was, in some ways, you slamming your hand down on the eject button of this relationship. But that doesn’t change how your actions affected other people, and the way you apparently didn’t bother trying to stick the dismount after.

I don’t think cheating is the unforgivable sin, nor do I think that being a cheater makes you an inherently awful person. I don’t think we are defined by our worst days, and I think people are complex and good people can do bad or dumb things. I think people in love can make poor choices because sometimes love makes us stupid. I don’t think love means you have to be forgiven, but I think it can make things understandable… but that also requires a willingness to face the music for making those poor choices.

More than just acknowledging that you were the “bad guy” here – a vague and nebulous term – you need to acknowledge that your choices hurt people and that they have a right to be hurt by it. I think that your friends have every right to be angry at you for hurting their friend, love or not, and to be further upset that you seem to not understand that their anger is justified. You’ve done nothing to change that, and coming to this with an attitude of “man, why are you bringing up old s—t?” isn’t helping your case.

If you’re hoping for forgiveness… well first of all it doesn’t sound like you’re asking for it, you’re just expecting people to forgive you because Twu Luv. Second of all, you need to actually earn it, and you haven’t gotten as far as offering an apology. So far, what I’m hearing is “well, I did it for love, doesn’t that mean anything?” as though your boyfriend is James Marsden in… pretty much any movie, and is going to say “oh, you’re in love, that makes it ok, I don’t mind losing you to another guy because you’re in love and who am I to stand in the way of that?”

Part of apologizing and seeking forgiveness or redemption means doing your best to make things right… but it also means accepting that some people aren’t going to forgive you, nor are they required to. Some hurts go too deep or are left for too long, and people aren’t obligated to forgive you just because it would make you feel better. You have to be willing to live with the consequences of your actions, as much as it sucks and as unfair as it may feel to you.

You hurt your ex. You hurt your friends. You were not acting with integrity. I think if you’d handled things differently, sooner, you would be in a different place. Not necessarily the place you would like to be, where your relationships were no different than before, but at least you might still have relationships with your friends. You would’ve had the chance to build things back and move forward. But thus far, you haven’t taken the steps to do so, and I can’t help but feel like you’ve left it for too long.

If you’re going to try to change things, then I think the first person you need to apologize to is your ex. You will probably have to eat a ration of s—t when you do, and if you want forgiveness, then you’re going to have to eat it like it’s steak because you f--ked up. But he may – and I stress may – forgive you. Then you can talk to your friends and apologize to them. Please note, though, that your ex’s theoretical forgiveness likewise doesn’t obligate them to forgive. They can still think that what you did was too far. But at the very least, you can know that you’ve apologized, shown remorse and done your best to make things right. Hopefully that will bring a measure of peace.

Like I said: you f--ked up, badly. You made bad decisions. Bad decisions made in the name of something good doesn’t make them less bad. You may have to accept that the start of this relationship meant a break from your old life and there’s no going back. That sucks, but that’s how it is and that may be the price you pay for what you’ve done.

Seeking redemption isn’t about getting people to love you again the way they did before. It’s about trying to be better than you were, to learn and improve. You’ve f--ked up. Own your mistakes, do your best to make things better, then go forward and don’t make those mistakes again. Be better than that.

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