DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m in a bit of a tricky situation. To make a long story shorter, I met a guy while working overseas. At the time we were both married. Due to the nature of our work, we found ourselves gravitating towards each other to talk to and decompress with at the end of the stressful days. Come to find out, we seemed to have everything in common. He was easy to talk to, we had similar life goals, and I eventually ended up craving to spend time with him. Every minute I had, I wanted to spend with him. The easy friendship quickly resulted in sexual tension, but we were both aware that we were married. 

Fast forward six months of not a day without talking to each other, we make it home. This bond we had formed overseas ultimately led to my divorce. I found myself in a situation where I knew I wanted to be with him; I was completely infatuated and obsessed with him. Yet he was not doing anything in his situation to make himself available. It was a clear case of wanting someone I couldn’t have. I ended up asking for an ultimatum – I set a date for him to decide between me or her because I couldn’t feel so hurt anymore. He missed that deadline, and I tried to do what was best for me and completely cut him out of my life. I tried dating other people and not thinking about him. Nothing helped me stop thinking about him. I entered a two month relationship with someone who checked all the boxes and was honestly great, except for the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about the other guy obsessively. 

Fast forward again to three days ago. Because I had blocked him from everything, he had no way to contact me. He ended up waiting for me outside my house after work. I called the new guy immediately telling him I had unresolved feelings for someone else. It was an emotional high finally being with him and imagining a future with him. It lasted until he left. And now I’m sitting here, worried that I was only into him because he was someone I couldn’t have. 

Was it all about the chase? I find myself sitting here, crying for the other guy, and not having those strong feelings for the original guy. What should I do?

Don’t Want What I Ain’t Got

DEAR DON’T WANT WHAT I AIN’T GOT: This is actually pretty simple, DWWIAG. What happened to you is actually very common; we just don’t really hear about it often outside of tabloids and TMZ.

I’m sure you’ve seen story after story about relationships sparking up between actors who star in plays or TV shows together and on-set chemistry turning into affairs between movie stars, especially ones who have a lot of scenes together. Well, part of why they have these intense connections is because of one of the most under-appreciated sources of attraction: propinquity. Propinquity is the tendency to form relationships – both platonic and romantic – with the people we see the most often and spend the most time with.

This is one of the reasons why there’re so many office romances or why volunteers in political campaigns have a high tendency to hook up; you’re having many, many interactions with the same people over and over again. Combine that with shared values and interests, a charged or high-pressure atmosphere and finding each other attractive and you’ve got a recipe for explosive chemistry that tends to find an output in each others’ pants.

The same applies to your situation. You’re overseas, away from your friends and loved ones, including your husband. You’re a bit lonely, missing the familiarity of home (something that a lot of expats talk about) and here’s your co-worker. He’s a fellow countryman, he’s easy to talk to and pretty easy on the eyes as well. So you’ve already got the setup for a connection to build, especially since you’re seeing each other constantly. Add to that the apparently high levels of stress, which often demands some sort of tension release and boom: y’all are having the kind of furniture-wrecking funtimes that fuel so many romance novels and movies.

There’s just one problem though: that incredible connection and world shattering chemistry was the product of those very specific circumstances. If you hadn’t that same combination of propinquity, loneliness and tension… well, the attraction may have been there, but it wouldn’t have been so intense that you couldn’t keep your hands off each other. And as I’ve said many times before: the thrill of the new tends to cloud people’s judgment and paper over a whole lotta sins.

Well, now you’re back stateside, without the same level of tension, without the same level of constant contact and now you’re not feeling it any more. This, too, is part of the story. It’s why so many of those on-set flings don’t seem to survive past when filming wraps; they’re not being flung together, with absurd call times and film schedules, long periods of nothing and intense scenes. It’s not that the magic is gone so much as the pressure has been released. Without that pressure to trigger the chemistry, the moment fades and everyone moves on.

What adds a little more seasoning to your story is the open loop you were left with at the end of your relationship with this guy. You made your demand that he leave his wife for you and he all he did was admire the whizzing sound as the deadline passed him by. That had to sting, but it also left you without feeling like you had a definite end cap on this affair. So without any theoretical closure, you still had the flames of hope burning in your soul.

And then oh look he’s back and those flames shoot right back up  again. Except this wasn’t a reignition so much as a backdraft; the sudden burst of excitement gets matched by the sudden vacuum as the flames burn out what’s left of your attraction. Between the removal of the pressure and constant closeness and the sting to your ego from the way your relationship ended, the components of your connection were no longer there. And like a Transformers fan who realized the Bay movies sucked as soon as they weren’t being wowed by constant spectacle, you’ve discovered that what you were living for was flash, not substance.

In an ideal world, you would’ve taken a little time to sit with your feelings before immediately calling up your new beau to say “my other guy’s back, peace out”. And to be perfectly fair, that was certainly an emotional high. Whomst amongst us hasn’t made stupid decisions under the influence of a heroic cascade of dopamine and oxytocin? But you did and now you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

There’s not really much you can do here. You can get back in touch with your new guy and try to explain and hope he’ll take you back. But two months really isn’t a lot of time to build up trust and connection, and you dumped him with zero warning for your old flame before immediately changing your mind. I think most people are going to see that as a bad sign for the future. If you were (in his eyes) so flakey to ditch a promising relationship for a chance with The One That Got Away, followed by immediately turning around and saying “whoops never mind, can I have backsies on that”, I imagine he’s going to have a hard time trusting you not to ditch him again. If your heart is that inconsistent, how is he ever going to feel secure that this scenario isn’t going to play out over and over?

I think the best thing you can do here is what you didn’t do the first time: give yourself some closure. Let this draw the curtain on that period of your life and the relationships within it. The lessons were painful, but you’ve learned a lot about yourself. Now it’s time to let those lessons sink in and to keep them in mind the next time you find yourself head over heels. NRE can be exciting, even overwhelming, but that’s all the more reason to try to keep your wits about you. The last thing you want is to toss aside an incredible relationship – whether your marriage or a new one that’s developing – for something that’s ultimately just a shooting star: exciting and special, but gone in an instant.

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: What’s up, Doc? I’ll keep this one short and sweet: I’ve got anxiety and I hate it. It doesn’t matter how well things are going, there is a voice in the back of my mind that will tell me how it’s all a big mistake or that I’m at risk of messing everything up or I did something weird and now everyone’s got the ick.

My anxiety means that I’m on high alert all the time like I’ve gone outside the wire in Iraq all the time and I’m always second-guessing every word I say and everything I do. When it’s not doing that, I’m going over everything people have said to me and trying to convince myself that they don’t secretly hate me. 

I hate it and I want it to stop and I don’t know how. Please don’t say therapy, I’ve already got a therapist and they don’t seem to understand. What do I do? 

Nervous Devonshire (W)rex

DEAR DEVONSHIRE (W)REX: I know you said don’t say “therapy”, but if your therapist isn’t helping, it’s probably time to find a new therapist. Therapy is a lot like dating; if you aren’t clicking with your therapist, if you don’t feel like you’re being understood or listened to and if their work isn’t helping after you’ve given it a good-faith try, then you may need to find someone who is a better fit. You might also want to talk to your GP or a psychiatrist about anti-anxiety medication. Even something like a beta-blocker to help control your heart rate might help you get things under control.

Yeah, I know: it can feel like you’re weak or can’t hack it because you need pills to not be a nervous nellie. F--k that noise; as someone who’s dealt with a few different mental health issues, I’m a big believer in better living through chemistry. Our brains are blobs of tapioca with electricity running through them until they hallucinate hard enough to invent calculus; of course changing the chem balances will have an effect. If you’re willing to use the right kind of oil to keep your car’s motor happy, then there’s really nothing significantly different than taking your meds when you need them.

Now with that out of the way, I think what may help here is to change your relationship to your anxiety. The key to understanding anxiety is that it’s not there to hurt you or make your life worse. Anxiety is one your brain’s attempts to keep you safe.  Your brain doing its best to anticipate problems before they can happen so that you can navigate them smoothly and without issue.

Think about it: if you know that you’re entering the savannah and there’re saber-tooth tigers around, having plans and contingencies in case you encounter them makes sense. Being on the lookout for signs that they’re nearby is basic survival.

That’s what anxiety is doing; it’s looking for signs of trouble and trying to help you avoid it if possible and to deal with it when necessary. In this case, instead of helping you avoid predators in the tall grass, it’s being applied to your social life – helping you navigate the complex and frequently confusing morass of being a person in the world.

The problem, however, is that anxiety can be a bit like a working breed dog; if it doesn’t have a job, it can get rambunctious and destructive. When we had to be on the lookout for smilodons and cave bears and s--t, someone with a higher level of anxiety was a feature; they kept their crew alive. In a much safer world, there’re fewer things to be on alert for and so that anxiety kinda goes berserk trying to do its job and starts trying to find threats where there aren’t any. So someone like you ends up becoming hypervigilant in the name of safety, convinced that there’re threats lurking behind every smile, micro-expression or time that someone takes longer to reply to a text than they did before.

So, there’re three things to do here. The first is to give yourself a little breathing room. When you have those moments of being sure that something is wrong, actually look at the evidence and ask yourself what you would tell a friend who came to you with the same fears. Would you look at their concerns and say “oh yeah, you’re f--ked; pack your bags, change your name and get a new face, you gotta get out of here”, or would you say “hey, it’s ok, you’re making a lot out of nothing”? Or you might take a moment and think of times when you’ve been on the other end of the situation: a friend said something weird or you didn’t reply to a DM the instant you got one. Did you start to hate them because they misspoke, or did you intuit what they really meant and just took it in stride? Were you not answering their DM because you don’t like them or because you had other stuff to do?

You can’t logic yourself out of an emotion, but you can dial back the immediacy of the worry. If you can give yourself that space where it doesn’t feel like the world is coming down on you right this instant, then you’re giving yourself a chance for that moment of anxiety to pass. And it will pass, just as every feeling does. Nobody can be sad or happy or scared forever; it just feels that way in the moment.

The second thing you want to do is to pay attention to your feelings – note them when you’re having then and give them a name. When you have an anxiety attack about something, take a moment and observe that you’re having a feeling. Then you name it and describe its purpose “this is my anxiety about asking Sally out on a date”; “this is my anxiety about my connection with my friends, it’s telling me that I’m feeling insecure because I haven’t seen them in a while because I’ve been busy but they’ve all been hanging out and I worry that it means that they don’t have room for me anymore”.

Please note very carefully the way I phrased that: you’re having a feeling, not you are that feeling. You’re not anxious, you’re feeling anxious. Reminding yourself that you’re having a feeling is a reminder that this is a temporary issue, not a permanent, definitional state of being. Similarly, describing the why of it helps you figure out what the underlying issue is; the answer is often found there. If you’re worried about your closeness with your friends and you’ve been distant for a while, then perhaps it’s time to block out time to hang out with them. Maybe it’ll be easier to schedule one-on-one, rather than a big group outing; either way, that time with them will help reaffirm that no, things are fine.

The third is to gently redirect your anxiety away from these phantom problems. Remember what I said about how anxiety is like a working dog without a job? Well, just as with those dogs, sometimes the answer is to give it a job. If you’re getting anxious about something, ask yourself if that’s something that’s actually happening right now? Is it something that is, absolutely, positively going on, or is it theoretical, just the potential of a problem? If the answer is “no, it’s not happening right this instant, it just might”, then you want to gently redirect your attention to something that does need to be taken care of.

Is there a deadline for a project coming up? Maybe now’s a good time to figure out how to make progress on it. Is there a call you’re not looking forward to? This is the best time to start rehearsing what you’re going to say. Finding something else to focus on, something that you can accomplish and know that you’ve avoided a problem, helps settle things down.

Remember: anxiety is just your brain trying to keep you safe, not happy. It’s about smoothing the way forward and avoiding problems. By finding other things to do or problems to solve, you help keep it occupied and – importantly – allow it to do its job. Yeah, I know; it sounds like weird woo-woo s--t. But trust me: it works. The key isn’t to try to make the anxiety go away, it’s to give it a useful focus until the moment fades.

And by being more in tune with your feelings, being more mindful of what you’re feeling and why, you actually reduce the amount of anxiety you experience because you are giving yourself to address the underlying causes in a productive manner, instead of just freaking yourself out for no good reason.

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: So a bit of background: I’m 45 and last year had a my first ever serious relationship of 6 years come to an end. Also to note I live on an island of the northwest of Scotland so it’s a fairly small populations. So for good chunk of this year I felt in a rut, single and in a job that was sapping my soul. I tried for the 5th time in as many years for an internal vacancy I had chased and been turned down for. I got denied again and this spurred me to look to move on. I got the job I was after with another firm, the new place is a happy, calm, relaxed environment and I have passion for work and life again. I’m back at Muay Thai training and re-started my efforts to learn a new lingo (Russian), now a co-director for the local comic con, started a new tabletop meet-up in my small hometown. I feel enthused again

So I decided to go back into the dating world and the results have not been good. Signed up on a few dating apps, crafted a profile, had a lassie I know check it out and said my pic was cute and came across as a sweet guy. I read the profiles suggested to me carefully, and carefully chose who to swipe right on. The results have been practically nonexistent. Currently 3 matches, one did not reply to me, another on Badoo did message and I never got a reply and the third I messaged, got a reply and since then the trail has gone cold. And that’s been my fill so far very little action and so I’ve just given up on the careful and selective approach and now just swiping right on every profile suggested as I would think this will boost the chances of a like or a possible conversation that doesn’t evaporate. So far and nothing, getting the feeling that maybe I’m just not what women are looking for.

I have been working on my IRL dating meetup, was talking to a lassie for 2 weeks recently and felt a good vibe, only to ask her out and her to tell me she just started seeing somebody and was just “going official” but that we could meetup as friends. So not much luck IRL. Just feel like I’m hitting a brick wall and desperate to turn this part of my life around

cheers,

On Tilt Scotsman

DEAR ON TILT SCOTSMAN: I empathize, OTS. It can be hard to be single when you don’t want to be, especially when it feels like everything you do keeps coming up short. The problem is that this frustration can actually make things worse for you and you have to be careful to try to keep your wits about you when you hit these moments.

Here’s the thing: the frustration is natural and understandable. Nobody worth listening to is going to tell you that you shouldn’t be frustrated or that it’s possible to find relationships without occasionally having times when it feels like nothing would go right if you held a gun to its head. This is something that everyone deals with, no exceptions. But you have to be mindful about how you handle it, otherwise you end up with a cascading series of effects that makes it even harder.

When you start feeling like you’re running into a wall – getting matches that don’t lead anywhere, meeting people who later let you know that they don’t feel the same way you do, and so on – there’s an understandable feeling that maybe you need to go bigger, make bigger moves, do more to try to break through. This is a mistake; you’re reacting to the frustration of the moment, rather than thinking clearly. The impulse is based on emotion, doing something to address what you’re feeling right then, rather than making smarter, more measured decisions. You make poor choices because they’re ones that feel “right” in the moment, but they usually have far less thought or care behind them. And because those moves don’t have real thought or mindfulness behind them, they frequently don’t work or don’t produce results that are commensurate with the size of the move and so you get even more frustrated. That, in turn, encourages you to make even bigger moves… and so the cycle continues.

There’s actually a term for this in poker: going “on tilt” or “full tilt”. Someone who’s “on tilt” has had a series of disappointments and upsets – sometimes because of poor play, sometimes because of bad luck and occasionally because they lost and lost badly, and are feeling humiliated or disrespected by it. Because they’re letting their frustration and anger get to them, they tend to abandon strategy and play more aggressively than they should – they’re trying to deal with the unpleasant feelings and make them go away. And once a player is on tilt, if they don’t recognize it and find some way to induce a state break, they tend to get wiped out pretty quickly.

So right now, you’re getting to the point where you’re trying to make the feeling go away, rather than actually do better at dating and that’s a bad place to be when you’re trying to make decisions. Case in point: swiping right on everyone on a dating app is a bad move. For one thing, the app penalizes that behavior specifically; guys who swipe right on everyone to maximize the number of matches end up making other people upset because they matched in good faith. It’s in the apps best interest to disincentivize people from doing this, so someone who starts swiping on every profile gets deprioritized in the algorithm. For another, your behavior on the app in general changes how the algorithm responds. If you’re swiping right on people, the app is going to send more people who are similar to them into your feed. So if you’re swiping on people you’re not into, you’re going to start seeing more people who aren’t your type. And then many apps will also gauge who’s swiping right on you to decide who to show you and who to show you to – if you’re matching with a lot of people who you aren’t into, you’re going to be shown to people like them rather than the ones you’re attracted to.

There’re also apps that decide how high to prioritize people based on how many people swipe right vs. left on them. Maximizing the number of folks who’re saying “no thanks” means that you’re less likely to get matches from people you’d be into.

That frustration also means that you miss out on other opportunities or ways to turn a seeming loss into a win. One of the things with meeting people – on apps or in real life – is that just because someone doesn’t like you the way that you’d hope doesn’t mean that this was a failure or that you’re unloveable, nor does it mean that you shouldn’t ever see or talk to them again.

So the first thing I would suggest is that you need to get off tilt and get a state break. The quickest and easiest way, in my experience, is to give yourself a moment of quiet – to find a way to turn down the noise in your head.

I’m a fan of moving from brain to body – making yourself more aware of yourself physically and saying “shhhhhhhh” to your brain in the process. For some, this would mean exercise and getting lost in the feeling of motion, the burn of tired muscles and the exhaustion that comes with physical effort. Going for a jog or a long walk, doing a heavy work out with weights, punching the heavy bag – all of these can help burn through the mental energy while centering yourself in your body.

For others, removing external distracting stimuli is key – turning off music or podcasts, closing the laptop, turning off the TV and phone – and giving themselves literal quiet, so that they can focus on little things around them: the temperature of the air on their skin, the texture of the carpet beneath their feet, the feeling of their clothes on their skin.

Still others will meditate, in whatever ways make the most sense to them. For some it’s through movement – dance, performing katas, doing tai chi exercises and so on. For others, it’s about counting their breaths and noting and naming their emotions and physical sensations. Other people will meditate by standing under a  hot (or cold, for that matter) shower and just feeling the water on their skin as the heat relaxes their muscles or the cool eases the fire in their hearts.

In every case, though, the important part is to give your brain time to calm down, to unclench and release the tension, rather than twisting things tighter and tighter. Let the tension bleed away and say “shhhh” to your feelings and just breathe until things are calm again.

I also recommend giving yourself permission to take a break for a little while. It might be as short as a week, or it could be a month or however much time you need. The point is to let your brain and your feelings focus on other things, things that you aren’t going to take as personally and that help recharge your emotional batteries and feed your soul. Spending time with friends, reading good books, watching movies you’ve been meaning to see… things that help give you positive feelings are important here. These moments help produce more oxytocin and dopamine, which make you feel better overall.

Then, once you’re feeling ready, you’ll be in a better place to make sound decisions and plan things better.

In your case, one of the things I would suggest is to do a hard reset on your dating profiles. Delete the accounts and start over fresh. You can use the same prompts and bios and pics or you can change them up. Some folks like to start over and try different approaches, seeing as the previous one wasn’t working the way they’d hoped. Either way, you want a fresh account, so that you’re coming in with a clean algorithmic slate.

The next thing I would suggest is to give yourself some guidelines in how you’re going to use the apps, and then stick to them. Having some rules to follow can go a long way to giving yourself a feeling of control, rather than being at the mercy of the fickle finger of fate and the uncaring Algorithm. Recognizing you have more agency than you realize is an important part of combatting that feeling of helplessness. 

The first guideline is that you limit the time you spend on the apps, making sure that the time you do spend on there is deliberate and with purpose. Some people find that they do best keeping to swiping and checking in on matches or messages only once or twice a week, rather than whenever they get bored, lonely or horny.  If you’ll forgive an awkward metaphor, this is a little like going to the grocery store when you’re hungry; you’re going to be a lot more focused on the immediate desires rather than thinking about meal planning for the week. As a result, you make decisions you wouldn’t have made and may well end up bunch of junk food instead of what was on your grocery list. 

… ok so maybe that one got away from me. Anyway. 

The point is that by only using the app on certain days and being mindful of who you’re swiping on and why, you don’t enter a cycle of chasing after potential dopamine hits that just leaves you more addicted to the app. You also ensure that you don’t get caught in the intermittent reinforcement loop that just ups your frustration. If you’re going to use the apps, you want to do so with intent – only swipe on people you would actually want to meet in person.

The second guideline is to worry less about matches and more about messages. The point of apps isn’t to collect matches, it’s to meet people and go on dates. Those connections start not with matching with people but with messaging them. Getting lots of matches isn’t worth a damn, not when they’re people who you don’t want to meet or who don’t want to meet you. Quantity doesn’t have a quality all of its own, and having lots of matches with people you’re not actually interested in just serves to make you more frustrated. This is why your effort should be on connecting with the people you do match with and building things from there.

The third is that you change how you look at dating apps in two very important ways: how you approach the app itself and what you expect from it. For the former, you want to remember that the app isn’t a tool, it’s a venue. It’s a single’s bar you keep in your pocket, and your pictures and profile are what people see when you walk in the door or when they look across the bar at you. When you’re choosing your pictures and writing out your profile, you want to think about the first impression you would like people to have as though they were seeing you for the first time in person. The guy who’s talking about what women SHOULD be in order to match him or who’s grousing about how unfair and choosy women are? He’s coming off as the guy at the end of the bar muttering to himself and glaring at people. Not exactly someone who’s going to collect phone numbers or make panties disappear.

For the latter, you need to see using a dating app less as ordering takeout or calling an Uber, and more about sending out resumes and responding to job listings on LinkedIn. That is: you don’t expect immediate delivery, but instead that you’re sending out pings and waiting to see if you get pings back. Some may come back quickly, some may take a while… but you want to be ready to fire and forget until they do. No amount of vigorously checking your inbox will make it fill up any faster. It will, however, encourage you to obsess, which is more likely to send you on tilt. 

(This is also part of why you want to restrict how often you use the app; it helps keep you from obsessing about whether you’re going to match or get a message back.)

Now for in person… well, I’d point to the woman you met and remind you that she would like to see you as a friend. I’d recommend that you actually take her up on that and befriends. Not because you’re going to win her over or be there if her current relationship blows up but because she’s an attractive woman who does like you and thinks you’re a cool guy. Yes, she may not like you the way that you wish, but recognizing that friendship isn’t the boobie prize is important. And – not to put too fine a point on it – she’s got friends, and those friends are likely to be similar to her. If you find her attractive, the odds are good you’re going to think at least some of her friends are as well. And the fact that she thinks you’re a great guy means that she’s going to be your best reference and testimony to her social circle. Your odds of meeting someone who is right for you, is attractive and attracted, and is also single will be much higher with her in your corner than if you let this rattle you.

But first: take that time to get a state break and get off tilt. Calm your frustration, get centered again and you’ll be in a better place to make decisions and meet people you’ll want to date.

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