DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So gonna be very upfront. I’m beneath perhaps a of women in a lot of terms and women don’t date down. 

I’m beneath them economically because I’m working two minimum wage jobs and living with my parents while the vast majority of women are college educated (same college educated elite who look down on minimum wage or blue-collar workers or tradesmen as stupid uneducated hillbillies) who are earning more and already home owning at higher rates than men. I’m beneath them in terms of my looks I’m quite schlubby to chubby which I guess is a thing for weirdos and chubby chasers (I’m thoroughly convinced Dad bod thirst is a massive psy-op) because in real life, in my job I see lots of chubby women with very good looking guys but almost never reverse unless the guy has money (I can tell with how big tips he gives) and I’m not very picky, I just find people who find my body type uncomfortably weird. 

I’m beneath them in terms of well experience since maybe I’ve had one partner and the sex wasn’t particularly good at least for me and I only lost it since I didn’t want to be lower than I already am (a virgin) something once again women do look down upon when choosing a man, and much like chubby chasers, women who supposedly don’t have an issue with men being virgins/under experienced men are uncomfortably weird because they’re not really doing it because they like him or genuinely care about him but rather it’s all about asserting her superiority. 

A woman with experience is simply superior to a man with little to no experience.

So that’s the conundrum how does one get to their level to being a quality partner. Especially now a days where women don’t really need men (they got vibrators and smut and well there is no women complaining about being lonely or struggling to find partners or even getting laid because there is no virgin stigma affecting them) and thus leaving me in a position where I desire partnership and intimacy where that isn’t really reciprocated.

So what do I do so I don’t feel like I’m beneath them?

Singed, 

Climbing with Bloody Fingers

DEAR CLIMBING WITH BLOODY FINGERS: I’m going to say this as kindly and gently as I can: that was a lot of words to describe your low self-esteem and what is frankly an ugly mix of ignorance and a s--tty attitude about women. In the span of 400 words, you’ve declared that women are snobbish, mercenary and manipulative and really have no incentive to date men unless they can either control them or get something from them.

This is why it’s often hard to take complaints like this on their face: based on the way you describe women, if you honestly and sincerely believe this, then I’m kind of astounded that you want to interact with them at all. I mean, talk about how sexual orientation isn’t a choice…

But more seriously, this is another case of “the problem you’re asking about isn’t the problem that you have”. I’m going to be blunt here: it’s pretty clear just how much of this is self-loathing and what Nietzsche referred to as ressentiment – a state of suppressed envy and anger due on what you see as a personal affront. That is: you actively dislike yourself and see yourself as being inherently undesirable, yet also are angry at women for… apparently agreeing with you that you’re undesirable, thus denying you something that you desperately crave while also feeling undeserving of receiving in the first place. You’re right that the desire for partnership and intimacy isn’t reciprocated, but you have completely reversed who’s not reciprocating that desire. You want to feel desired, but you yourself say that you actively mistrust women who find you attractive. You treat people who think you’re attractive like their interest is an insult.

Honestly, I would think that the act of writing that sentence out would be something of a clue.

What leaps out at me is the level of learned helplessness that’s deeply embedded in your letter; you describe your situation as though it were both an inevitability but also something that is imposed upon you – by nature, by a cruel and capricious God, or by the vast and uncaring universe itself because f--k you, that’s why. And since lashing out at the universe does about as much as pissing into a bonfire and you don’t blame yourself, that ressentiment gets directed at the object of your desire for things that, according to your worldview would be entirely reasonable. I mean, if women are as mercenary and stuck up as you believe and you’re as much of a gloppy mess as you describe, then this would just be the natural order of things. God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.

And of course, it doesn’t exactly take a deep forensic investigation to figure out how much time you’re spending in the same dank corners of the Internet, seeing how many of the usual talking points and tropes got trotted out. In an era where women are talking all the time about their struggles with dating, with loneliness, with finding quality partners or even just a modicum of respect from the people who want to date them, insisting that no woman is lonely or that there is no virgin shame almost requires deliberate and willful ignorance.

Hell, it demands an inability to read or even see, because it’s pretty damn hard to miss all the “how to get and keep a man” magazine cover stories, blog posts, articles, podcasts, TikToks, Instagram reels, YouTube videos and, y’know, friends complaining about it.

What “evidence” you do have isn’t evidence. “Well, this guy is a generous tipper, so he must be rich; that must be the only reason this attractive woman is with him” isn’t even motivated reasoning, it’s an observation that got tied up in a basement by Jack Bauer and beat with a telephone book until it gave up and told you what you wanted to hear.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying “the call is coming from inside your head”, my guy. Nothing is going to change until you can accept that all of this – everything you’ve written about – is coming from self-loathing and learned helplessness, not from women “not dating down”. If you want to stop feeling like you’re “beneath” women, then stop telling me about how much you suck, tell me what you’re going to do about it. What are the steps that you’re willing to take to stop feeling so bad about yourself?

And an important follow up to that question is: how many of those steps are going to be about learning to let go of your self-hate and instead learning to love yourself instead of trying to focus on shallow and far less important material concerns? Because here is a truth: there are no leagues. There are simply women who either want to date you or who don’t.

Are there issues that can affect compatibility? Of course, because people are people. Does class (not income, social class) play a role, for example? Well… yeah. The sainted Billy Joel didn’t write “Uptown Girl” for people to pretend like this was never a thing. But at the end of the day, people either like each other or they don’t; they want to date and try to make the relationship work or they don’t. If someone likes you and wants to date you? Then hey: you’re in their league.

But you’re not going to be in anybody’s league if you are going to insist that anyone who seems to like you is either “uncomfortably weird” (your words) or “asserting her superiority” (still your words). Why should they like you or express even the vaguest interest if your response is to recoil and brandish a crucifix at them like you’re trying to ward off a vampire?

(And this is before we even get into questions like “how are women supposed to know that you’re a virgin or only had one sex partner?” By smell? By telepathic radio? By the RFID chip implanted in your vas deferens that keeps track of how many body parts it’s been inside?)

The hell of it is that many, if not most of these issues are by choice. Being “schlubby”, for example, is easily fixable; you just need clothes that fit properly and to actually put some thought into your presentation. A decent haircut, some shampoo and conditioner (NOT an all-in-one product), a daily routine involving a gentle facial cleanser and moisturizer and deodorant solve 75% of most presentation issues. The rest tends to be a matter of personal style.

Similarly, some of these aren’t the problem you think they are. You live with your parents? Ok… and? Turns out, so do around 45% – 50% of young people. Congratulations, you’re not nearly as much of the outlier that you thought. Shockingly, the housing shortage and skyrocketing rents give no consideration to gender; they hit men, women and non-binary folks alike.

(Also, incidentally, the reason why single women slightly edge out single men in home ownership is due to simple demographics; there’re more single women than single men. That’s it. And I hate to tell you this, but women’s average income is still 88% of men’s.)

The rest? Well, I’ll be fair: some of it is out of your control. Jobs that pay living wages can be hard to come by as more companies try to find new and inventive ways of minimizing pay or even the need to have employees at all; welcome to end-stage capitalism, hope you survive the experience. Maybe you should go unionize your workplace about it.

But the remainder of your complaints aren’t about any innate superiority of women or anything else; they’re a matter of choice. More women are college educated than men or getting more advanced degrees partly because they need those degrees to reach something closer to economic earning parity with men (even ones who don’t have advanced degrees), but also because fewer men are applying to college. Men aren’t being rejected or failing out, they’re not going in the first place.

But most importantly – and I can’t hammer this home enough – your single biggest problem and the reason why you are “beneath” women is that you don’t believe women when they say they like you. That’s a you problem, my guy, not a them problem. Until you actually deal with the way you feel about yourself, nothing is going to change. You’ll never be loved, simply because you’ll never trust that someone actually loves you. You’ll never have companionship because you don’t believe that you could have it. And you won’t be a better option than a vibrator simply because you think the vibrator brings more to the table than you do.

If you want to start feeling equal to the women you want to date? Well, you’re gonna need to change how you feel about yourself. Some of that may mean therapy. Some of it is going to involve treating yourself like you actually give a damn and deserve good things instead of punching yourself in the dick over and over. A lot of that is going to require being honest with yourself and where this ressentiment is directed and why. And a metric f--kton of it is going to require stepping the f--k away from every incel and redpill adjacent forum you’ve been soaking in for Zod knows how long. And considering how many forays the grievance-peddling slapdicks have made into male-centric online spaces, that may mean a very thorough social media audit and detox. But that’s ok, because then maybe this will inspire you to get the f--k off the Internet, go outside, touch grass and get to know people in the flesh instead of gulping down other people’s pre-chewed anger-paste.

Nothing is going to change until you change. Nothing is going to improve until you improve yourself. And that improvement isn’t about your material condition, it’s going to be about believing that maybe people might actually give a damn about you instead of assuming that women are just out in these streets looking for excuses to “demonstrate” their superiority by… doing something that men then turn around and denigrate them for doing and insist makes them inferior.

The call’s coming from inside, my guy and that’s where the change is going to have to come from as well. You can’t hate yourself into being a better person. Loathing isn’t going to make your life better. Until you’re a bad enough dude to love yourself, this is the best you’re gonna do. The choice is ultimately yours: loving yourself and being able to accept love from others, or more bitterness, more anger and more loneliness.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a college freshman home for the holidays and experiencing mild but constant panic at being back in my old surroundings. Particularly my room. I am realizing my life may have been f--ked up in ways I have trouble putting into words. Not my parents, who did the best they could including homeschooling me when I was bullied, even though they both work full time, but the fandom communities that basically raised me from the age of 10 or 11 up to a few months ago. I am still active just not as much. My main fandoms are ones with lots of underage characters and controversy about shipping them, which I was always very on the side against.

My main issue is, I turned 18 in May and went away to college in August thinking I would start my adult life there. It’s an amazing small liberal arts school with a huge LGBTQ+ presence that I am completely in love with. I’ve made a number of platonic friends and would like to date and be in love and even potentially have sex in theory. But when I think about taking the actual steps for it to happen, I shut down. It just feels wrong for me even though I look at other people my age and don’t judge them the same way. My roommate for example has had a boyfriend a year older since she was 15 and I don’t see her as either a pedophile or a victim.

I guess I didn’t realize how deeply I believed that as a minor I was off limits to being sexual or desired in any way ever. And if anyone ever saw me this way there was something weird, sick even evil about them. Especially if they were older but really regardless of their age. It sounds so stupid but it’s almost like I thought “minor” was a permanent part of my identity, like my race or gender. While simultaneously thinking as soon as I was a legal adult I would feel like one. But it’s been 7 months, more than half a year, I’m closer to 19 now than 18 and I still feel the exact same as before. And I just wonder how long will it take?

If it matters, I am AFAB. Healthy and average by heteronormative beauty standards. Still figuring out if I’m nonbinary, in what way or possibly transmasc, although I don’t think I would ever want to medically transition. I don’t have a strong gender preference, but I do tend to like pretty, slightly feminine yet tall men and strong, dominant yet girly girls. All this is still in theory since I feel panic and disgust at the idea of anyone I’m attracted to being attracted back. A girl in a club with me started trying to hit on me and I wanted to just scream at her to die, even though I thought she was very cool and beautiful before and now I can’t even speak to her. And worried about others noticing and thinking I’m either homophobic or racist, or both. Even though I have been shipping adult characters and writing romantic fiction for years, it makes no sense, and I know it doesn’t.

So how do I stop seeing myself as this unsexual entity and anyone I think of being attracted to me as a pedo? I don’t want to be a 25- or 30-year-old virgin. But the time between being old enough it’s not pedophilic to lose your virginity and so old you’re a weird, awkward incel just feels impossible.

Ex-Minor Art Major

DEAR EX-MINOR ART MAJOR: I’m going to reiterate my usual stance on potentially fake letters: I don’t spend that much time worrying about whether letters are fake or not. The vast majority of the time, people’s creative writing exercises or attempts to fool me are glaringly obvious and get sent straight to the trash. While I’m sure some have gotten through, the fact of the matter is that I don’t really care that much if they did. Most questions to an advice column are, for all intents and purposes, entirely theoretical exercises to 99% of the readers, but can be incredibly relevant to that 1%. So if there’s a lesson to be learned, even a fake or fictional letter can be helpful to people outside the writer.

I say this because, well… this ain’t the first time I’ve gotten letters about the fallout from shipping wars and Tumblr fandom or attempts to get me to weigh in on the ongoing discourse about age-gap relationships. But then again, a bunch of college students recently violently assaulted a stranger as part of their attempt to have a “To Catch A Predator” antics go viral, so it’s not as though this sort of thing isn’t actually out there and causing problems.

But more importantly, I wonder if the problem you’re asking about, EMAM, is the problem you’re actually having.

So, I’ll be honest: I tend to roll my eyes at a lot of the age-gap discourse I see online, especially in fandom circles, and when it gets folded into ship and anti-ship conflicts. I think a lot of it is fueled by the tendency of online discourse to push people into increasingly extreme and intractable positions while declaring their opponents ontologically evil, and the rest gets fueled by purity culture bulls—t that figured out how to dress itself up in progressive drag, with a teeny bit caused by people who don’t understand how neuroplasticity works. Much of it – especially within fandom – comes from folks who have more enthusiasm than experience and whose experience with actual relationship dynamics are more theoretical than actual. But that doesn’t mean that sometimes there isn’t something more going on there. Just… not in the way you think.

This is why I have a question for you, EMAM: are you sure this is about age gaps and being a minor? Or, if you really dig down into it, is it possible that the discomfort you’re feeling is more about your own relationship to sex and gender overall? If you’re someone who’s in the middle of trying to understand themselves, who you are as a person and how you relate to your own sexuality, it’s not unusual that you might feel really uncomfortable with the idea of sex or people being sexually attracted to you. It may feel like an identity is being imposed on you, as though you’re compelled to live up to expectations that may or may not align with who you are. Someone else’s interest – even if it’s sincere and appropriate, rather than The Big Bad Wolf moving in on a metaphorical lost lamb in the woods – can bring up all kinds of uncomfortable or even frightening feelings and associations. Especially if, up until now, most of your peers had been telling you that all of this is bad and wrong and everyone who disagrees is going straight to the Special Hell, and should probably be shoved into the Fastpass lane.

Some of it may be because of how you’re still working out your gender identity; someone else’s perception of your gender might make you feel like you’re being told what it is. Or it may be as you come to terms with whether you’re a sexual being at all; you may well be somewhere on the asexual spectrum. And some of it could well be because now you’re out in the world for the first time and realizing that you don’t feel like you’re ready.

That last one is especially relevant. This part of your letter leapt out at me: “[…]thinking as soon as I was a legal adult I would feel like one. But it’s been 7 months, more than half a year, I’m closer to 19 now than 18 and I still feel the exact same as before. And I just wonder how long will it take?” This is so common that it’s practically universal. Damn near everyone has the moment where they realize that while legally (and chronologically) they’re an adult, they still feel like a kid in their head. I know people who are well into their forties and fifties who still feel like they’re a fourteen-year-old with a fake ID and pasted on mustache, getting away with something every time they buy a bottle of wine, rent a car or find an apartment.

But that’s the thing: there’s no “click” moment where suddenly you’re an adult and you get all the adult things. It’s just a gradual collection of experiences over time, and you often don’t realize how far you’ve come until you look back at your past self and go “oh wow, I really used to be like that, huh?” 

This, I suspect, is the real issue: you’ve been waiting for that “click” for everything to make sense, for everything to fall into place and everything will finally make sense. And because it hasn’t… well, here you are in limbo, feeling lost and confused and it’s all scary.

So, here’s my advice. First: take advantage of being a college student. Your college likely has counselors as part of the student health department. I’d recommend that you make an appointment to talk to them about how you’re feeling and why. I think part of this is simply trying to adjust to life on your own and establishing your identity. If there’re on-campus resources for LGBTQ people, I would recommend checking those out as well; even if you think there’s a chance you might not be queer, knowledge helps increase understanding, and understanding chases the fear out of uncertainty.

The second thing I would suggest would be to check out some videos by Princess Weekes, particularly on her videos about purity culture in fandom, media literacy and sex and how pop culture handles issues of feminism, race and queerness. Princess is incredibly insightful and incisive, and her breakdowns of pop culture tropes, fandom and social issues are excellent. I think some of her analysis will help you sort out and put nuance and context to your fandom experiences, possibly give you the language to express and understand how you feel.

The third thing I would suggest is to give yourself a break by giving yourself permission to not know yourself. Part of the problem is that you’ve expected to have all the answers, and you don’t. That’s fine; you’re still figuring yourself out and you’ve had precious little opportunity to explore those sides of yourself until now. College is precisely the time to try on different identities, to see what truly resonates with you and what doesn’t. And the good thing about taking this opportunity is that what you decide now doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re locked into it forever. Your understanding of who you are and what you want can – and often will – change with time, experience and perspective. What feels right and authentic in this moment may not be what is right and authentic in a few years; not because you were mistaken, deluded or lying to yourself, but because you’ll be a different person then than you are today. That’s part of growing up.

This may mean deciding that you want to hold off on the whole ‘sex and dating’ thing until you’re feeling more centered. You may come to realize that you’re just not interested in sex at all, but you still want a romantic or emotionally intimate connection. Or it may mean that you’ll want to explore different sides of yourself without expectation that it’s going to be forever – short term relationships, experimenting with gender non-conforming styles of dress and presentation and so-on. If you need more time to figure things out, take that time. The fear of being an older virgin is a distraction; the “right” time to lose your virginity – if you do at all – is when you decide it is.

Lastly, here’s some advice from An Old, who’s been around the block a few more times than you: it’s all much easier if you don’t hold onto these expectations that you’re supposed to know it all by now. Accepting that you know very little and that you’re making it up as you go along can be incredibly freeing… especially when you realize that that also describes pretty much all of your peers and classmates.

You’re on a journey, EMAM, and nobody knows where that journey will necessarily end. Don’t try to rush through it; take your time, explore and truly learn who you are. Your future self will look back and thank you for it. Even the awkward, embarrassing parts.

You’ve got this.

All will be well.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been with my boyfriend for two years; both of us recently turned 20. We broke up last year for two months because he and I got to a toxic point, leading him to cheat on me during an 8 day bender with his friends. 

(He made out with his friend’s sister and continued to pursue her for a month while me and him were still hooking up) 

I was madly in love with him, and we ended up back together. 

His friends play a really big part in his life, to the extent that they basically can change his entire personality when they’re around, and I dislike all of them. My reasons for disliking them are that they all dislike me, they give him advice that ruins his life, they are horrible influences on him who just want to drop out of school and party on their parents’ money. My boyfriend doesn’t have the luxury of his parents funding his partying and other antics. 

All of his friends are linked to the girl he cheated on me with, and all of them wanted them to be together which is an awkward situation for me. Recently, one of his friends and the “other woman” called me after I extended an olive branch in order to be more comfortable around them, and on that call both of them told me lies about my boyfriend. I was heartbroken and asked them to inform him about what they had told me, but rather than do that, they told him and everyone that I was insulting him and mentioning private details of our relationship. When I clarified the story to him, they kept defending themselves and made me look worse, we kept fighting and I gave up and stopped asking him to cut off that friend (who is female). 

(He didn’t believe me, nor specifically take my side over his friends; he wanted to stay neutral and have a confrontation in front of him to decide who was lying)

I feel like his entire world revolves around his friends. As an outsider, I can see are simply hurting and using him, yet he clings to them more and more. All of the fights in our relationship are based around his friends. 

I do love him more than anything and have already told my super religious family about him as we want to get married soon, but now I don’t know what to do or if I should marry him. 

I told him not to let his friends near me and not to mention me to them, including not being included in our wedding (only keeping it to family) and that in the future I don’t want them around our kids, I don’t feel comfortable around those people and now I’m wondering if he will actually prioritize me and protect me when I’m hurting. He refuses to give me extra care in this time to reassure me, and thinks I made him go through something by trying to get him to cut off his friend and wants to maintain the advantage in our relationship, while I was the one hurting and have to continuously feel uncomfortable. 

(I struggle with mental health and the lies I was told on call led to me relapsing after one year of not self-harming, they continued to manipulate the situation and lie to basically break us up and I don’t know why) 

This specific friend lives abroad and only visits once a year; the rest are also moving out of the country for their education as they can afford it without scholarships. I don’t get why my boyfriend at this stage would be this obsessed with keeping his friends at the risk of losing me and refused to listen to me just because they said so. I expected him to have my back as we’re at the point of getting married in a few months, yet I feel like I’m being treated like nothing compared to his horrible friends. I give this man everything in terms of finances, support and to the extent of being isolated and scorned by my family for being with him, as they disapprove. 

I’m here losing my family for him including my mom, yet he’s not willing to lose one friend who only texts him when they want drugs. 

Is this simply a 20-year-old boy being stupid and immature, which is something he’ll grow up from, or is this a huge red flag that I should run or just stop giving as much and maintain the relationship, I’m lost.

One of Us Has To Go

DEAR ONE OF US HAS TO GO: Alright OUHTG, I was going to start with a discussion about your boyfriend’s behavior and his friends and why he’s acting like this. But in the span of a couple paragraphs, you went from “already told my super religious family about him as we want to get married soon,” which set off some alarm bells in my head, to “we’re at the point of getting married in a few months”, which point said alarms became full-bore air raid sirens.

As a result, I feel that I have to drop this right at the top: HOLY HOPPING SHEEP S--T DO NOT MARRY THIS MAN. Even if we leave aside that you’re both 20, which is really goddamn young, the last thing you want to do is make this relationship any harder to leave. Right now, you can walk away with minimal fuss; as soon as vows are said and rings are exchanged, lawyers get involved and the process gets infinitely more complicated.

And yes, you absolutely should leave this dude. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know why in pluperfect hell you’re with him. I don’t care if he runs an orphanage for kittens with special needs or if he can lick his eyebrows and breathe through his ears, dump this guy. Dump him so hard his grandparents divorce retroactively. There is no upside to being with this guy. You thought you were getting Captain Crunch but instead you ended up with Oops! All Red Flags! and it’s only gonna get worse before it gets better.

Here’s the thing: yes, this is absolutely 20-year-old-boy bulls--t. He’s profoundly immature and thinks his dirtbag friends are the coolest. At some point – hopefully – the crippling hangovers, constant drama-fueled relationship explosions and barely-escaped-more-serious-consequences of the lifestyle he’s leading will lose its luster, especially since he doesn’t have the money or connections that his buds have. With luck, that day will come before one of them comes up with some absurd crypto investment scheme or convinces him to sink all his money on their dead-before-it-even-began startup venture… but one way or another, the day will come. But this is not that day.  And it’s not gonna be tomorrow. And quite frankly, probably not over the next four to six years, either.

And why should he? You’ve given him no reason to change. He’s getting everything he wants: you’re still with him and he’s still out partying with his bros. He’s got the best of both worlds and couldn’t care less how this is hurting you, because there’re no downside for him. The closest he’s had to consequences has been a tepid “please stop talking to this person” that you eventually gave up on. So as far as he’s concerned, you’re just making half-hearted requests that he can just ignore when they’re inconvenient.

If you’re hoping to stick things out until he matures and wakes up, you’re going to be waiting a long, long time, and you’re going to be taking a lot more psychic damage along the way. Staying in a relationship with him means that you’re committing to more time being told, implicitly and explicitly, that you come second or third to these people, and they are going to do their damndest to make you go away. And here’s the thing: they’re going to have the advantage here. As far as they’re all concerned, you’re the funwrecker. The buzzkill. The scold who thinks “because thou are’t virtuous, there shall no more cakes and ale.” To a 20 year old bro, the party-hardy-tomorrow-never-comes lifestyle is going to be more appealing than the person telling him to knock it off already.

But more importantly: what are you getting out of this relationship? OK you love your boyfriend, but why? What needs of yours does this relationship meet and does it honestly outweigh the disrespect and despair you’re experiencing? You may love him and maybe he loves you, but he sure as s--t doesn’t respect you. The fact that he cheated on you and continued to cheat on you should let you know what he’s about. But the fact that he wants to do some weird f--king People’s Court with his friends to decide which of you is telling the truth and which of you is lying and spreading gossip? It sure as f--k seems like he’s enjoying the drama of it all, even as the tire fire that is his social circle continues to spread.

There is no upside for you here. There’s only how much s--t you’re willing to eat and pretend is steak. I’m sure you care for him, but I promise: dropping him like fifth period French will feel like you’ve shrugged off a two hundred pound weight. He’s shown you who he is, what his values are and where his priorities lie… and you’re damn near at the bottom of that list if you’re on there at all. Kick him to the curb with the rest of the compost and do it yesterday.

But just as importantly: you’re doing yourself no favors by having put up with this. It’s one thing for your (the generic “you”) partner to have friends you don’t care for or who don’t care for you. It’s another entirely to let him and them walk all over you, treat you like s--t and raise only the most meager token protest over the treatment. He needs to grow the f--k up but you need to start being a much stronger advocate for your own needs and enforcer of your boundaries. Part of the reason this situation has gone on for as long as it has and as poorly as it has, is because you’ve had weak boundaries. If you’d stood your ground and said “no, your friends treat me like s--t, they encourage the worst in you and I’m not going to put up with this,” you would be in a very different position right now. A much better one. Because he would absolutely have dumped you months ago for standing your ground on this issue and you would be better off for it.

Yes, enforcing your boundaries would’ve meant the end of this relationship but holy f--ksnacks that is the outcome you absolutely need from this. You would have had that time to get over him and find a partner who is not only more in line with your values and lifestyle, but you also wouldn’t have had to deal with the constant disrespect, the eroding of your self-esteem and being a source of ridicule from his dickhead friends. Even the pain of the breakup would be a small price to pay to not deal with this bulls--t. The point of boundaries isn’t to get your way, it’s to ward off people like your boyfriend – people who are just going to steal your most precious resource: time.

This is a relationship with no upside and it’s not going to get better. It’s time to love yourself enough to dump him now, take some time to reconnect with yourself and your center, and work on being your first and best advocate. This guy’s bad news bears and spending even a second longer dealing with his s--t is two seconds too long.

Good luck.

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