DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Last year summer of 2023, I ended my engagement with a man I was with for five years. He lost his job, fell into a major depression which led to substance abuse, which resulted in sex addictions like messaging hookers.

Unfortunately, this was not my first rodeo with his behavior like that. I had dealt with other betrayals before and his inappropriate behavior towards other women. In 2021 we broke up for a few months because he tried cheating on me with our roommate.

I had thought he had his “coming to Jesus” moment after 2021 so I stayed. We went to therapy and he promised and said everything I needed to hear. We had a beautiful year and a half together. This is a man I’ve loved since middle school, always had a crush on him, and was head over heels when I finally got a chance to be with him.

Ever since our relationship ended, he has been telling me he wanted to be with me and make things right.

In May I decided to give us a chance. We would get in quite a few heated arguments but I was invested in making it work and give us a chance at repair. One argument we had a lot was about a new friend of his we will call Jackie. Jackie was coming over a lot and when she sent him a middle of the night message when he was staying at my house, I got red flags.

Anyways, fast forward to this month and I find out while I was trying to repair our relationship, he had hooked up with Jackie. He tells me that him and I weren’t officially together so it shouldn’t matter. He tells me I’m being psycho and irrational and unreasonable.

I definitely have not made our repair easy. I’ve escalated fights and said harsh things. As of now our relationship is completely over and I’m telling him we are broken with no chance at repair. Am I overreacting? Should I not care if he was hooking up with another girl if him and I weren’t officially back together yet? Obviously his lies and gaslighting were problematic. But I’m considering what he did as betrayal. Am I wrong?

Thanks.

Always Betrayed

DEAR ALWAYS BETRAYED: So I’m going to apologize in advance for a tangent, but you accidentally hit a “push button, get rant” trigger of mine: unless you left something out, it doesn’t sound like he was gaslighting you. Gaslighting is one of those terms that people have started misusing; it doesn’t mean lying or disagreeing about how to interpret something, it’s when someone is deliberately trying to make it impossible for you to trust your own judgement and senses. There’s a difference between saying “I’m not seeing anyone else” when they absolutely are and “You didn’t see me kissing Jessica, you’re crazy.” 

(Or to put it another way, the more someone’s behavior resembles the song “It Wasn’t Me”, the more it’s akin to gaslighting.)

OK, anyway.

In all sincerity, I really don’t think “is it unreasonable to be upset about this” is a question that needed to be asked. While I firmly believe that you shouldn’t assume exclusivity until you’ve had the “are we exclusive” conversation, there’s a distinct difference when someone who cheated is trying to prove you can trust him again. I understand why you would want to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and why you wouldn’t want to think that he’s the kind of guy who could be this s--tty to you. You’ve carried a torch for him for a long time, and it’s hard to think of someone you’ve had feelings for being this much of a d--kbag. But that’s what he’s doing, and he’s doing it in a way where he knows he’s being s--tty, but he doesn’t want to face the consequences for doing so.

This is  a situation where someone is technically correct, but even being technically correct doesn’t mean that he’s not also being an absolute s--thead.

Yes, technically you and he weren’t back together, and so technically there wasn’t an expectation of commitment or exclusivity. That much is correct, as far as that goes.

However! 

The fact is that you were working on fixing the relationship with him in good faith, with an eye towards getting back together. He, likewise, said over and over again that he wanted to make things right, went to couple’s counseling, said all the right words and so on. While he didn’t say or make any promises regarding exclusivity or monogamy, I think most reasonable people would assume that someone making all of those promises and appearing to actually be putting in effort is not also pursuing other people unless otherwise specified. 

(Polyamory and ethical non-monogamy are examples of when this would be less reasonable, but seeing as you were in a closed relationship, it doesn’t apply here.) 

So I don’t think it was unreasonable to assume that there was an implied promise of exclusivity, or at the very least, making a point of not dating or putting other dates on hold, especially in light of the fact that you broke up with him before when he tried to bang your roommate. Violating the commitment he made is part of what ended the relationship in the first place. Since he violated your trust before, if he wants to get back together with you, it makes sense to assume that he would want to re-earn your trust by proving himself to be trustworthy.

The fact that he was f--king around with Jackie while doing this belies the intent and sincerity of his actions. If he meant it, then he has a weird way of showing it. If he didn’t mean it, then he’s just being an asshole and playing you for a sucker. 

The fact that he also tried to pull a “well technically we’re not together” over this should really tell you everything you need to know.  He proved time and time again that he’s so full of s--t that his eyes turned brown. I get that you’ve had a thing for him for a long time, but he’s already hurt you at least twice through his choices and actions, and he’s proven that either he doesn’t mean what he says, or doesn’t know himself well enough to not make promises he can’t keep. Both are exemplary reasons to never date him again. This revelation (and his subsequent “you’re not allowed to be mad at me because reasons”) puts him into pure “curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” territory.

So no, I don’t think you’re wrong to feel hurt by this nor do I feel it’s unreasonable for you to be upset by it. I think it’s entirely fair to see this as a betrayal. He told you, repeatedly, that he wants to be with you and make things right while he goes out and bangs another person. Well, as I’m always saying: deeds, not words. His words say one thing, his deeds say another, and what they say is “drop kick this dude to the corner with the rest of the compost”.

So TL;DR: he may be technically correct, but that doesn’t mean that he’s RIGHT. Someone who’s going to try to lawyer his way out of consequences despite those actions going against the spirit of what he promised is someone who you are well rid of. Consign this guy to the Dumpster of Bad Dates Past and don’t let him take up any more of your bandwidth. And the next time someone says one thing but his actions indicate the opposite? Trust the deeds more than the words.

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 recently found your page and I have read a bunch of your posts and I think you have generally good advice but one thing I haven’t been able to find much of is about the talking phase because I am new to it and I don’t know how to navigate it very well.

Basically, I am a 18 year old male who just started college and until this point I never went out of my way to talk to girls. I am a decently attractive dude I think and I have had a number of people have crushes on my throughout my life but I never really wanted to go anywhere with them. Now that I have gotten to college I wanted to try and push myself out of my comfort zone and start looking to talk to girls, which I had been very nervous about until recently, where I finally got the courage and it really isn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

Last week I went up to a girl and we started talking and I got her number, we started texting and we continued texting for about 3-4 days before she started losing interest and then things didn’t really go anywhere from there and we haven’t texted since. There was another girl last week that I found really attractive so I walked with her after class for a while we were really vibing I felt like and I got her number but she responded once and then didn’t respond again. Then like 3 days ago I was outside and I saw a really good looking girl who was staring at me off and on for 30-45 minutes and smiling as I walked by, so I feel like she must have thought I was attractive. She was with a friend who was on the phone so didn’t want to go up to her since I didn’t want to interrupt her friend, but I did mouth asking for her number from another bench, she got up excitedly and gave me her number and we started texting basically the rest of the night but I could feel her losing interest as the night went on, but she did said goodnight so I thought that was a good sign. Then the next day comes around and she messages me in the morning and then doesn’t until 10 PM where I then ask if she wants to hang out a bit the next day and she says that she wants to focus on school and stuff. Now about 2 days ago, I remembered this girl from one of my classes and I thought I should try and message her since I got her Instagram and I tried to be more fun in the messages and I could see a massive difference with how they responded and stuff, towards the end of last night I asked if I could get her number and she said she wasn’t looking for something right now and wanted to focus on school but she still wants to be my friend. I said that I would because I genuinely did enjoy our conversation.

Now this is all in the matter of 1 week so not a very big sample size but I can’t help but feel like I am doing something to lose interest. I am not sending anything weird at all over text, I am just asking questions, and occasionally complimenting them with which they respond “aww thanks,” which I think is where I am messing up but I want your thoughts. I have been asking general questions that don’t take much thought and they answer with short messages, and I think that’s where I am messing up, they take on average about 3-4 hours to respond. Of course, I know that I need to be more fun like I did with the last girl, by joking around, and being more myself, and she did seem more quick to respond sometimes right away, but that ended up with being friend zoned. But I was also thinking that maybe I should try calling them sometimes, I saw people online say calling is generally more effective so I was wondering if next time I should try that, and if I should, how should I go about it?

Also this is a side question I wasn’t sure the answer to and I couldn’t find anything online about, I was wondering if there is like a limit on how much I go up to women, like if I see a girl I think is attractive should I go up to them even if I have talked to one earlier, or should I try and not go up to too many, I ask because I don’t want to be seen as down bad going up to a ton of girls lmao, but I also want to try and shoot my shot if I think a girl is cute because the other ones might not work out.

Take The Shot

DEAR TAKE THE SHOT: Congratulations on taking steps and getting the courage to be more social and working on meeting new people, TTS!

Now, the first thing I will tell you is that this is something of a skill issue. That is, you’ve never really done this before, and so you’re still figuring things out. It’s a little like using learning any skill for the first time; you’re going to stumble, make progress, stumble again, make progress, completely mess up, stumble, mess up, make more progress. This isn’t a marker at being undesirable or being uniquely unskilled, it’s just how everyone learns. Even people who are naturally gifted have to practice and develop their skills. This is why we call them social skills. So I wouldn’t stress about it too much and instead focus on trying to see what you could do differently or better with each interaction and what you could learn from them.

Now that having been said, I don’t think the issue is anything in the messages per se. I think the biggest problem, such as it is, is that you’re taking a shotgun approach to meeting women and this is the inevitable result.

One of the things I always tell folks is that meeting someone is often a matter of right place, right person, right time. If those things don’t line up, very little is going to happen, and you can’t control for all three. It is, however, a lot easier to adjust those odds when you take a more targeted approach at finding people who are right for you. You’re much more likely to find someone who’s going to be compatible with you if you meet them at an event based around something you both enjoy. Similarly, meeting people in social venues means they’re more likely to be in the mood to be social and talk with a charming stranger. And of course, in spaces that are explicitly for people interested in dating – speed-dating events, dedicated MeetUps, dating apps, etc. – you’re meeting people who are open to dating. 

When you take a scattershot approach like you have, you’re going to run into a lot of people who are in relationships (wrong time), who are focused on other priorities (ditto), who don’t want to talk or don’t have the time (wrong place), or who may well think you’re nice enough but simply don’t want to date you (wrong person). In those cases, there’s really nothing that can be done. It’s not that you’re not whatever-enough, or that you should’ve called instead of texting,  it’s that those are people who aren’t going to be interested in dating for any multitude of reasons. The only thing you can really do is shrug your shoulders and move on with the understanding that this is part and parcel of the shotgun approach.

The next thing I would point out is that you’re moving very fast in terms of trying to turn these into dates, in a way that’s not that conducive to your goals. This style of cold approach – basically, approaching random people in non-social, non-dating spaces  – is very inefficient in terms of actually getting dates overall. I recall one would-be pickup artist who documented his street approaches and came to the realization that, over the course of three years, he had an approach-to-date success ratio of 1%. If you factored in dates that lead to sex, his success ratio dropped to fractions of a percentage point.

The challenge here is that you’re essentially trying to convince a total stranger to be interested in starting a potentially romantic or sexual relationship with you after knowing you for less than an hour – even factoring the texting. That’s not varsity level difficulty, that’s damn near Olympic level difficulty.

The fact that you’re getting numbers and texting is good, and you should be proud of yourself.  However, it’s going to be very hard to turn most of these into dates. And the single biggest reason is that you really have next to no connection with any of them. From what you’ve described in your letter, these are all ice cold approaches, with people you’ve only really interacted with for what seems to be minutes at a time. There’s just not that much of a foundation to build on that you could turn into enough attraction that they’d want to go on a date. Even on dating apps, you’re usually talking for longer and you’ve got the benefit of your mutual profiles to check for signs of compatibility. As it is: you know next to nothing about these women and they know next to nothing about you. You’d have to be building rapport and finding commonalities very quickly and be pretty skilled at using those to build a sense of attraction between you two to make this work the way you’re trying.

Now, in other circumstances, I would say that part of the issue is not inviting them out on a date. But seeing as these are people you’ve literally just met and have only known for the length of time that you’ve been texting, I’d say that instead, you may want to commit to getting to know them better and chat, rather than angling for a date. Remember, you know very little about them other than you find them physically attractive, and they know just about as much about you. Getting to know them makes it a lot easier to find out if there’s enough there that would make it worth your time to date them; after all, our time on this earth is limited and you want to spend as little as necessary on folks who just aren’t right for you.

I think it would also be helpful to see this as practice in getting used to just connecting with women and making friends rather than being laser-focused on dates and relationships. The women who are focused on their studies or who are in relationships with someone else can still be great friends – possibly even people who might introduce you to their friends once they like and trust you. But that means being willing to genuinely be their friend, not hoping to find an angle to parlay that connection into a relationship via the Nice Guy Back Door Gambit.

Another thing that will help, especially since these are women you’ve literally just met, is inviting them to group events rather than one-on-one dates. Organizing, say, a cookout if your local park has grills for folks to use, a karaoke night or a NERF war on the quad or other events for you and your friends gives you a low-stakes, low-pressure event to invite these women to that doesn’t feel like a date with a stranger. It’s a lot easier to say yes to “hey, I’m hosting $ACTIVITY with my friends this weekend, I think you’d dig it. You should come by if you’re free. Feel free to bring friends!” than committing to being with someone you don’t know for an hour or more. This gives you a greater opportunity to talk with them, for them to see you in your element and generally for you to help everyone have a good time – something which triggers the Reward Theory of Attraction and helps encourage them to want to spend more time with you. The more they like hanging out with you – in groups and solo – the more likely they are to be interested in dating.

As for your last question: there’s no real limit outside of time and ability to maintain multiple connections or conversations at once. You do run the risk of getting a reputation depending on when and where you’re doing all these cold approaches, however, especially if its consistently in non-traditionally social spaces, though how much of an issue that can be depends on a lot of factors.

However, like I said: this is a very inefficient way of meeting women and dating them. You’d do better to date slow – that is, get to know folks over time, rather than shotgunning your attention all over the place. It’s a lot easier when you focus on meeting the people who you are most likely to be compatible with, rather than throwing lead in the air and hoping you get lucky.

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

DOCTOR’S NOTE: Today’s column involves discussion of suicide, suicidal ideation and self-harm.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Okay doc, this is gonna be one of those letters that you get to tear apart because I’m a major a--hole and I need to fix this. I don’t wanna remain deep in denial about how I keep sabotaging my relationships and making people miserable. I’m a little scared of how this is gonna demolish my fragile ego, but it has to be done.

So long story short: I grew up as an HSP with anxiety, bad social skills, and few friends. As an elementary school child, I was the disruptive weird kid who was bullied and also bullied others. I did a lot of public crying and other stupid embarrassing s--t. I wasn’t an a--hole 24/7 this young, it’s more like I was just a dumb kid who didn’t know how to interact with people. Some adults would look on me with disgust, others I would soak up the praise from for being “smart” (making me look like a teacher’s pet later in life and craving adult attention). I always felt alienated from kids my age. My family relationships were mostly fine here, but my parents could be a bit overbearing at times, especially since I needed extra attention due to being a weird fussy dork.

Obviously I was sad and confused at why people didn’t like me, but I didn’t know why yet, so I basically got depressed and became a recluse. I pulled away from people and showed all the classic depression signs. By middle school, I was suicidal, self-harming every day, never talked to anyone, and the few “friendships” I had were pretty s--t and were kinda just us tolerating each other. My reputation went from weird kid to quiet kid, and the bullying increased. I became more self-aware of my bullying behavior at this age, so it faded a little bit. (fyi, it was pretty much all snippy rude comments and random ghosting). I also developed some serious mental disorders that I still haven’t gotten checked out to this day (I think it is OCD and a dissociative disorder). My family knew I had no friends and hated me for it, but didn’t know I was mentally ill. They started treating me rougher (screaming at me more and hitting me once in a while) and I never knew how to deal. I still don’t. But I should definitely mention that I targeted a family member for bullying. Verbal and physical abuse against someone who had a worse life than me and was more vulnerable in many ways. I am not making excuses for this: I know it was wrong and I wish I had not done this. I just don’t know how to talk about it. It feels awkward to mention that you’ve been a bully. I really should say it, though.

Middle school was awful and I knew I was a freak the whole time. One day my mom was screaming at me for being a withdrawn weirdo in the corner and I realized I did need to do something. For my underclassman years, I did social exposure stuff (without a therapist) to get myself some social skills and friends. It was rocky at times, but it worked. By sophomore year, I had a few friends (no real friend group), social skills, no depression, and diminished anxiety/other symptoms. I was very proud and thought I had finally fixed everything wrong with me. BUT I DIDN’T.

Coming into junior year, something weird happened: I dunno what exactly happened to my mood and functioning, but I suddenly felt like pulling away from everyone, and other stuff. It might have been depression, or the fact that I realized I was trans. But one big thing that had happened in sophomore year was I fell in love for the only time (I’m grey-ace, I think) and they got a partner that wasn’t me, so I had a weird sort of meltdown and grey rocked them until we were no longer friends because I didn’t know how to deal with this “rejection” (this is the “nice guy” part btw).

So in junior year I lost my s--t completely. I ghosted all my friends, had more public meltdowns, got bullied by teachers, had my first suicide attempt, and started abusing my parents (mostly verbally). We have LOTS of fights now: they don’t really hit me now, but we get into massive screaming matches all the time (sometimes my fault, sometimes not). I developed a fear of rape and being touched due to the OCD (fortunately I have never been SA’ed, but my OCD was so traumatic that it is practically its own sexual trauma). I came out as trans and my parents didn’t accept it: they said all these terrible things and said “no HRT until 18”. I can live without the HRT, but I hate being misgendered every day.

So the other day me and my parents had a fight and they said that I have to look at myself. I am a complicated person, and while my parents are a--holes and I don’t have peers I can rely on, I do cause a TON of problems for myself. I’m gonna go off to college in another year, so I can get away from all this s--t, but if I don’t deal with myself, everything is gonna follow me and I’m gonna screw myself over again.

My ACTUAL question (sorry for all the context: I just felt like the whole story was needed): how does a person like me, who fights with the parents they hate daily, can’t keep a friend, and has to wrestle a bunch of mental illness, deal with it like an adult? I’m abusive, self-pitying, and mean, but I also am self-aware (well, more than 0%) and know that I have a future beyond suicide. I dunno how I’m gonna do relationships. I rarely have close friends and I rarely fall in love (idk if I am really grey-ace or somehow denying it like an incel who “didn’t want a date anyway”). The self-pity is a big problem, because I’m not very self-aware about when I am self-pitying (I suppose this whole dumb letter counts as a pity party for my “sad” life which is also comfortable and privileged beyond all the stuff I can whine about), and don’t understand it that well anyway. I would get a therapist, but last time I tried me and my parents (who really do want to see me get better and actually do provide me with mental health resources, all basic needs, and internet for looking up stuff) got waitlisted for MONTHS and we quit. I was very discouraged after that. I don’t wanna wait so long since I’m gonna be leaving for college anyway and really don’t have the time to wait for some dumb therapist. I do have Moodgym, but do I NEED anything else? I kinda wanna wait until I can get a therapist as an independent adult (idk how it works though). I don’t want my parents involved with my next psych because I wanna talk about trans stuff/my upbringing/my mental disorders that they don’t know about. Plus I really hate my parents these days and am always lashing out at them (this is the “a--hole” part). They really don’t deserve it because they do a lot to take care of me and make sure I am well but I just have so much resentment and we also scream so much at each other. I can tell it deeply saddens and stresses them. I do carry a lot of self-hate and it’s weird. I am so tired of myself and wanna stop the self-sabotage even though I know it’s all a choice. I know I am too emotional about everything but I just wish somebody knew EVERYTHING that happened and this is as close as I’m comfortably gonna get to that atm.

I don’t trust any other nerd on the internet more than you. 

Told You I’m The Bad Guy

DEAR TOLD YOU I’M THE BAD GUY: I think you’re going to be disappointed TYITBG, because while this may be a Chair Leg of Truth situation, this is not going to go how you expect it to.

You aren’t a bullying, abusive a--hole, TYITBG: you’re someone who’s carrying around a lot of pain and trauma and clearly you are really hurting. I’m not surprised you’re lashing out and responding the way you have been. But to be perfectly blunt: I think the only person you’re really bullying is you.

I mean, right from the jump, you’re going on about having been a highly-sensitive person and how that makes you a “weird fussy dork” who was “always crying in public and other stupid embarrassing s--t”. That’s not a helpful way to talk about yourself and it sounds to me like this is you having absorbed what other people were saying about you and taken it as gospel. But it also ignores that a lot of why children who’re diagnosed or labeled as HSP behave the way they do because they’re frequently overstimulated and have sensory processing issues; they’re not crying because they’re “overly fragile snowflakes”, they’re dealing with not being able to handle the level of noise, light and sensation and to a child that’s f--king intense. As a child you don’t have the coping mechanisms, the experience or even the brain development to handle those things and so you cry, because crying is a way of communicating distress to others.

Yeah, it can be hard for other folks to deal with, but that’s in no small part because they often don’t realize what the problem is and often don’t have the training or resources to handle things. It’s made worse by the way that many insist on trying to force children to behave in the exact same manner no matter what, even when there’re very understandable reasons why that’s a lot harder for some than others – especially if you’re any flavor of neurodivergent. But deviating from the accepted behavior for any reason is treated as either willful misbehavior or a moral failing and so the divergent get punished and told they’re bad for not being able to fall in line effortlessly. Kids will also pick up on that, not because kids are needlessly cruel, but because they are ignorant and take their cues from adults and peers. If the adults are singling a person out for being non-normative, they’ll do so as well, especially if either they’ve been on the receiving end of similar treatment from adults or peers. They’ve been told that’s “normal” and “appropriate”. This is precisely why shows like Sesame Street have been introducing autistic characters and other diverse identities and backgrounds: to show kids that they’re not weird or bad, just a little different from you, that’s all.

So no, I’m not surprised you had a hard time making friends or understanding why people didn’t like you. You had a s--tload of people giving you a hard time for “not fitting in” without understanding why that might have been a challenge for you.

None of this self-blame is helped by the fact that you’re rounding “making snarky comments and random ghosting” up to “bullying” which… no I’m sorry, that’s not bullying. That’s just someone in a s--tty situation trying to cope and protect themselves. Some of what you talk about later comes closer, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice it to say that this is all coming through the filter of your having decided you are ‘bad’ without really thinking that maybe you’ve been dealing with some s--t a child is going to have a hard time dealing with, especially without any support from the adults in your life.

This is an ongoing theme in your letter, starting with how you make derisive comments about “soaking up praise” from teachers and coming off like a teacher’s pet as though that were a bad thing. Or perhaps, instead of being proof that you were just weird and doing everything wrong, you should recognize that this was probably one of the few sources of validation and praise you were getting from anyone, especially since you mention your parents were overbearing at first. I say at first because HOLY HOPPING SHEEP S--T THINGS GET SO MUCH WORSE.

I mean, by middle school, you’re self-harming and having suicidal ideation, you’re isolated and have little social interaction and your parents are screaming at you and hitting you? You’re holding so much pain inside that you’re literally hurting yourself over it, you’re dealing with depression and other issues and the only thing that resembles “support” from your parents are just varying flavors of abuse? GEE, I WONDER WHY YOU HAVE BEEN HAVING  A HARD F--KING TIME, COULD IT BE YOU WERE BEING PUT THROUGH HELL FOR NO F--KING REASON? I wonder why you lash out at others – hmm, I guess it couldn’t because the massive amount of pain you were carrying around and being taught that this is how you treat people who are weaker than you, it’s a goddamn mystery.

Oh except it’s NOT,  because you were a goddamn tween trying to process a lot of pain and trauma with no help, no resources and no clue why this was all happening. The closest you get to real “help” is forcing yourself through DIY exposure “therapy” – something, I might add, that every psychologist and mental health professional will yell about what a bad idea that is –  while your parents continue to be far less than supportive.

This is also why I am not the least f--king surprised that your entire system fell apart in your junior year. This wasn’t improvement, this was six coping mechanisms in a trench coat, trying to make it possible to move through the world right up until you realized you were trans and that blew your entire world apart. 

So now here you are, trying to handle this new understanding about yourself on top of all these ways you’ve been masking for years and you now have parents who neither understand nor respect you or your relationship to your gender, who are actively opposed to your transitioning and who have been – intentionally or not – making things worse with how they treat you. I repeat: GEE, I WONDER WHY YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM, YOUR PEERS, YOUR TEACHERS AND LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE IN YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN SO F--KING FRAUGHT.

You’re not an a--hole, self-pitying bully, TIWTBG, you’re a kid who’s been carrying around trauma and pain for damn near your entire life, who has had no support in terms of handling things and has been told over and over again that this is all your fault because you’re just a bad person. You’re not a bad person, you’re someone who’s been going through trauma after trauma and carrying all sorts of scars and open wounds. Jesus tapdancing F--K, you don’t need the Chair Leg of Truth, you need a hug, a blanket, a cup of tea and some goddamn EMDR.

So what do you do? You go to therapy. Lots of it. This is not an area where you can DIY it via MoodGym or random lifehacks from Reddit or TikTok. This is “you need to be talking to a psychologist and a psychiatrist, preferably ones who understand CPTSD, trans issues and childhood neglect” sort of situation, because you have 17 years of trauma to unpack and release before we even get into how this is an incredibly s--tty time to be trans.

I wish you’d mentioned what sort of therapy or therapist you had gotten waitlisted for, or what other resources you’ve looked into. But I think you would be well served to start looking on your own for finding a therapist in your area. Both Psychology Today and the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists have a referral directory for finding licensed mental health professionals in your area; I think you would be well served to start calling around to find a therapist on your own and start the process. While there are benefits to waiting until college – not the least of which being that you have access to the student health services as part of your tuition – I think getting a start on things now is going to be important for you. If nothing else, starting off with a better understanding of who you are, what you’re dealing with and some basic exercises on how to manage some of these issues will be vital for you as you dive head first into the deep end that is college. And if you’re going to need some form of medication – from anti-depressants to HRT – getting that started now is going to also be incredibly helpful to you. Especially since finding the right medication and minimal effective dose is more art than science.

If you can’t find a therapist in your area or you can’t afford one, I’d recommend checking out these guides from Captain Awkward; they’ll help point you in directions where you can find cheap or even free mental health care until you can manage to get in with a therapist on the regular.

And no, your parents really shouldn’t be involved in your therapy, especially considering how much it involves them. In an ideal world… ok, so we’re well past that, but let’s say “an ideal response to your situation” would be that they’ll cover the bill for your sessions and stay out of it otherwise. Because it’s going to be really f--king hard for you to have the sort of honesty and openness with a therapist if your parents are going to get reports back about what you said.

Now that having been said: once you’re in better working order, have a better grasp on your mental health and are comfortable in your body as a trans person, then it may be worth looking into family therapy and addressing things with your parents in a controlled environment. If it really is a case of “they’re trying their best, but they don’t know what they’re doing” (as opposed to “they’re hateful s--tbags”) and you want to try to repair your relationship with them (and theirs with you) then having a trained third party to mediate and guide the discussions can be invaluable.

But for now? You need to recognize that you’re not this horrible person who’s done horrible things and deserves all the bulls--t that’s been heaped on you. You’re somebody who’s had a rough life, who’s been unsure of how to navigate the world around them and the people who were supposed to be your guides and protectors have failed you. You’re carrying a lot of pain around and it makes you lash out – both because you hurt but also because you’re scared and you’re trying to protect yourself. You need to recognize that a lot of what you’ve been going through is the product of hurt that nobody else would acknowledge as real or valid and you need to forgive yourself for doing the best you could under incredibly unreasonable circumstances.

I’m going to repeat that again for emphasis: you need to forgive yourself. You’re not broken, you’re not a horrible person, you’re not an abusive a--hole, you’re someone who’s hurting and has been hurting for a long time and I don’t think you still fully understand why. So start with forgiving yourself, then work on healing so that you stop hurting. The sooner you start, the sooner the next stage of your life can begin: one where you can start to be the person you always could be, if you’d been given a better chance.

This is going to be hard, it’s going to be unpleasant and it’s going to involve a lot of trial, error, setbacks, heartache and confusion. But when you’re going through hell, sometimes you need to keep on going so that you can make it out to the other side.

But you will get there. You’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.  

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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