DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: When I met my now-husband, I was very young ignorant and naïve. He wasn’t my first nor second though, I had this habit of changing boyfriends cos I didn’t know what I was doing. The relationship was no good at all, but I decided to stick to him cos I got pregnant. It was very very toxic, but I still moved in with him and we ended up getting married. By the time I began to know better, I realized I’ve never loved him. 

I had been with him 9 years and I had 3 kids for him so I left him. He ran after me promising to change and I took him back. Yes indeed he changed, miraculously, and now it’s been 6 years he’s been the best husband and father in the world. He loves me so carefully he meets my emotional needs. He gives his all to his family, but I have to put in a lot of effort to go on with him. 

It’s not like there’s someone else I’m in love with. I’ve never been in love, but I always wake up in the morning longing for someone else, like I have strong feelings and a strong desire for someone else and I don’t even know who it is, but with a partner besides me who’s all over me. No affection no connection and consequently no communication and no appreciation. I make him go through a lot sometimes I curse myself when I see him suffer, sometimes I beat myself when I show him that I don’t care. Then I go back again and start putting in efforts. His love alone has kept the marriage going but both of us are not satisfied and happy in the marriage. 

I sometimes wonder if I have an emotional disorder. 

What should I do?

He Loves Me, I Love Him Not

DEAR HE LOVES ME, I LOVE HIM NOT: There’s a saying that’s appropriate here: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”   

I’m a believer in giving things the ol’ college try, but there does come a point where continuing to try isn’t going to help things, and it’s almost certainly making things worse. And trying to force yourself to love someone when you clearly don’t – certainly not in the romantic sense, in any case – is one of those times.

Hell, this isn’t even as hopeful a situation as Meat Loaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad”; at least in that case, you’d want him and need him, even if there ain’t no way you were ever going to love him.

Being aromantic – where you don’t feel strong feelings of romantic love for anyone – is a thing, but I don’t think that applies here, HLILMN. Nor, for that matter, do I think you have an emotional disorder. I think you’re someone who’s been trying to force yourself to feel something that you’re just not going to feel for someone. You said it yourself: you dated around a lot because you didn’t know what you were doing – as many people don’t – and then you got pregnant. Now, fifteen years and three kids later… well, you’re still in the same boat. And while it’s admirable that he seems to have turned his life around and become a sterling husband and father, there’s still the fact that you don’t love him, and you feel stifled by being married to him.

The answer is pretty clear: you should get divorced. Yes, companionate marriages are a thing, but companionate marriages have some sort of love connection at their core. It may not necessarily be romantic love, but there’re many different kinds of love… and those don’t seem to be at play here.

If love was going to grow – especially the kind of love that makes a marriage work – then it would’ve done so. After fifteen years together, I think you can say that you’ve got a definitive answer to whether things will get better on that end. It hasn’t and it won’t. You’re not happy and staying in this marriage isn’t going to change that. If you want things to be different, you have to do different things. That means that it’s time to admit that this isn’t working, not the way that it needs to for a successful marriage and family.  

Yes, he’s become a devoted husband and father and does everything for his family. That’s great… and he can continue to do so after you divorce. You can still be co-parents, even if you’re no longer bound to one another; his devotion is about his love for his kids, not about whether there’s still a ring on it or whether you’re financially and legally entwined. They’re still family, even after you get divorced.

Just as importantly, this is better for your children. Kids aren’t dumb or unobservant; they can tell when things aren’t great between their parents, and that affects them as much as it affects the two of you. Even if they’re reaching their tweens and teens, the level of tension and discord between their parents can be harmful. While I know people will talk about staying together “for the children”, the truth of the matter is that the children tend to be much happier and healthier when they don’t live in a home full of resentment or if their parents feel trapped.

And to be blunt, it’s kinder to your husband, too. Even if he loves you – and he clearly does, if he was willing to make such a transformation – staying with him when you don’t care for him like this is cruel. He deserves someone who’ll love him back… and that’s just never going to happen if you stay. If you care for him, even just as the father of your children, the kindest thing you could do is to free him to find someone who’ll return his love. And you can find someone that you can love.

Don’t stick with a mistake just because you took a long time making it. You’ve spent years on a bad decision, and it won’t magically become a good one if you throw more years at it.

It’s time to do the kind thing for everyone and let this marriage go.

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’ve dealt with this pretty odd issue for years. Every time a woman shows that they’re attracted to me it always makes me feel uncomfortable, creeped out, or angry. My brain automatically finds some annoying feature or trait they have and makes me turned off by them.

Just recently I met a girl who I honestly found pretty attractive, but I didn’t really talk to her. I guess she found me attractive too because she was actively trying to sit next to me and inserting herself into my conversations with other people. Sounds nice, but the moment she started talking to me I realized she had a really nasty, grating vocal fry that made me hate listening to her. Just the most obscenely hammed up Valley Girl accent that was so fake sounding I thought she was doing an impression, but no, that’s how she really talks. She would ask me questions trying to get to know me and her voice was making me visibly ticked off (obviously I would NEVER confront her or lash out at her about something she can’t control). I just half-assed any interaction I had with her until she realized I wasn’t into her anymore and she stopped. I honestly feel like a dick doing that because she was a perfectly nice person.

There have been other cases where women I don’t know come onto me and I immediately get creeped out or disgusted at them even though they’re perfectly fine people.

On the other hand, I find myself becoming somehow more attracted to people who ignore me specifically. Like this woman at one of my clubs who talks to everyone but me enthusiastically, and I’m still attracted to her. Most of the time when I talk to her, she acts and sounds like I was inconveniencing her and sometimes just ignores me outright. Part of me is hurt when she does that for sure, but it also gets me thinking of her more and getting more attracted.

And yet I feel like there’s something else to it, because I get a bunch of odd mixed signals from her. It’s quite confusing because if she were just ignoring me, I would just leave her alone and forget about her. It feels so wrong that I still have more of a soft spot for her than any of the attractive, compatible single women that hit on me.

I guess my question is, what exactly am I experiencing and how do I stop? This absolutely can’t be healthy for me.

Sincerely, Lovers To Enemies

DEAR LOVERS TO ENEMIES: I’ve seen a lot of people get upset when someone they find unattractive is into them; they take it almost as a personal insult that this person thought they had a chance with them. It stabs them in their incredibly fragile ego, as though someone else’s interest was a marker of “this is the best you can do”, and so they take their inner insecurity and turn it outward, projecting their frustrations and fears and lashing out at someone who’s only “crime” was to think they were cute.

It’s not often that this happens when the person committing the heinous sin of “hey, I think you’re interesting” is someone they find physically attractive. But the reason for it is not exactly a mystery. But hey, let me ask you something: is this reaction only to women who show interest in you, first? Does it happen if they’re neutral or casually friendly, or do you only find that they turn creepy or develop these anger-inducing flaws if their behavior starts to seem flirty?  

For that matter, is this a permanent state? If any of the people who provoke this reaction in you remain in your social orbit, do you find that they become less aggravating or off-putting once they lose interest or start actively avoiding you?

I ask because, honestly, what you’re describing sounds a lot like bargain basement self-sabotage. As absurd as it sounds, a lot of people snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with the sort of glee that you’d expect from someone finding a limited-edition Magic card in a store’s “ten for a buck” remainder box.  People will find reasons to blow up even the vaguest possibility that someone might find them attractive or that they might actually be happy. Why? Because F--K YOU, THAT’S WHY. 

This manifests itself in a number of ways. The most common example tends to be getting crushes or finding yourself attracted to people who you know to be uninterested, unavailable or wildly inappropriate for some reason. Queer people may find themselves getting crushes on folks who are a solid 0 on the Kinsey scale, straight folks find they’re only attracted to people who are either happily coupled up or who are in a position where they can’t or won’t date and so on.

Your case – getting angry at people who seem to be attracted to you – is rather… let’s just say dramatic. Counterproductive, sure, falling in line with a lot of other self-sabotaging behaviors, sure… but angry? That’s a moment where things start falling into the “this isn’t just about other people anymore, is it?” territory.

It sounds to me like your issue is one of feeling like you don’t deserve to be happy or to find love. Maybe you feel like there’s some failing that you need to atone for. Maybe you simply feel like you have some irredeemable flaw or quality that you think makes you undateable. Or maybe it’s as mundane and as common as “I should have someone who’s ‘flawless’ and anything less makes me a failure” because you’re trying to prove something to the jerk voices in your head.

Regardless, the way you go about looking for flaws in the other person and then use that flaw to gin up pointless anger so that you can’t possibly consider them as a potential date is telling. So is the fact that you are drawn to the people who seem to, if not actively dislike you, don’t seem to regard you at all. There is a part of you that actively does not want to be happy or to have a relationship with someone who may actually like you back.

If this seems bizarre, that’s because it is. But it’s bizarre in a way that makes sense if you understand two important things. The first is that our brains evolved to keep us safe, not to make us happy. We have weird, seemingly Pavlovian reactions to things precisely because our brain has detected a threat and is trying to prevent us from being harmed by it, even if that means suffering from discomfort or even opening ourselves up to a different sort of harm.

The second is that our brains are incapable of telling the difference between what’s real and what’s made up. You’ve undoubtedly had dreams where someone in your life wronged you and you spent the day angry at them, even though you know, intellectually, that they didn’t actually do anything wrong. You have also unquestionably responded more to things you assumed to be true, despite having no evidence that it was, and often in the face of evidence to the contrary. That’s because we’re not objective observers of reality, nor are we aware of why we feel the way we do. Our brains take what evidence it can find – your heart rate and respiration, amount of adrenaline in your system, even how warm or cold you are in that moment – makes hasty conclusions based on assumptions and presumptions and filling in blanks with things that seem to fit the circumstances, and then decides to apply a reason to it.

As a result, what you’re often doing is responding to phantom fears and anxieties and self-limiting beliefs and treating them as if they’re actual factual dangers. And that includes the danger of allowing yourself to actually let someone get close enough to you… dangerously close, one might say.

This is the issue you have to address: figuring out what, precisely, is your major malfunction. Why do you feel the need to not just reject someone or decide you aren’t interested in them, but turn their mere existence into something that upsets you by zeroing on their supposed “flaws”? Why is this desire to push people away so strong that you have to preemptively salt the earth while you do it?

I think you’ve got some serious self-exploration to do, and the intensity of your reaction suggests to me that you should probably enlist professional help to do it. Finding a therapist for some dialectical behavioral therapy is going to be important for understanding yourself better and why you’re reacting to these experiences. Once you understand the underlying issues, you can start to change your responses, adjusting your behaviors and finding more productive means of settling these internal disconnects.

So hie thyself to the therapist’s couch and start digging in. This is almost certainly about how you feel about yourself and turning it outward. Find where that particular core wound is and you’ll be able to start the healing process. Then, when you do… well, you may have burned some bridges beyond repair, but at least you can stop burning new ones when you find them.

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 had met a guy and we exchanged phone numbers. We are both around the age of 40. I probably texted him first and then he and I hung out at his place. But then he started texting me later and later at night, and only randomly and wanted me to come over to his place. So I said no, that I wanted to see him more during the day and have a relationship. He said he was not interested in that, so I had to move on from that and try to forget him.

So obviously, I am sad about it and I thought he and I had a lot in common and would be a good relationship for long term. I am a few years older than him and now I wonder if he lied of his age a bit since nothing he said was emphatic. He sort of mumbled everything now I remember and he was not that conversational. I guess picture two people in casual sweat clothing watching tv for 2 hours and then saying a few words here and there like Did you go skiing? “And Have you Traveled?” and I guess he did not answer all of my questions when I asked.

So being that is so difficult to meet men, and I hardly get out of my house, well of course I value that I finally met a man who. like me, wears suits and skis’ and grew up here and likes golf and has family here. So, ya, I want to scream “What” and Why Not?” I guess he has options is that why? Is he “playing the field?”

I have begun to get upset in thinking that in general men seem to have more options so that is why they only offer 1 night a week to me? Currently, I have not met anyone.

I am alone each night watching tv for the past 10 years. So this guy offering me a night here and there randomly is a really? So he does not want to watch tv every night? Why?

I am wondering a lot obviously. I wonder why he bothered in the first place at this point. And he texted me recently so I am upset so should I tell him I met someone else?

I Said Hey Whats Going On?

DEAR I SAID HEY WHATS GOING ON: I would like to pause for a moment here and highlight this part of your letter for some members of my male readership:

“I have begun to get upset in thinking that in general men seem to have more options so that is why they only offer 1 night a week to me? Currently, I have not met anyone.”  

Remember this, the next time y’all talk about how women have more options and have it so much easier on the dating scene. The idea that “X has it easier because they have all the options” is universal. It knows no gender or sexuality; it’s all down to whose perspective you’re looking through.

Now with that out of the way, let’s get to your issue. And honestly, this one’s dead easy, ISHWGO: he didn’t want to date you, even casually. He’s not playing the field, he’s playing the odds, and the odds in this case are “will ISHWGO come when I call?”  He wanted sex, period, the end. This is why he wasn’t interested in seeing you during the day. It’s why he was texting you at night, seemingly randomly and always asking you to come to his place. This is all classic booty-call behavior; I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if half of his texts started with “u up?” or “wyd?”.

Actually, no, I take that back: I’d be a little surprised, but only because of his age. The rest is bog-standard late-night horny texting, trying to find anyone who’ll take his calls and might come deal with the emergency in his pants. You showed signs that you might be the type he was looking for – texting first, willing to go to his place for a first date – and so you went into the list of numbers he’d shotgun his late-night invites to.

This is why everything else you talk about – his not seeming enthusiastic about things, his lack of interest in conversation – is ultimately irrelevant. There was never any interest in a relationship, not with you and likely not with anyone else he’s been seeing. He’s not looking for a TV buddy or someone to hang out in comfy sweats, he’s looking for someone who’s down to clown when he’s had a couple drinks and thinks that maybe a blowjob would be nice tonight.

Now to be clear: his behavior isn’t a you issue, it’s a him issue. This isn’t something that happened because you didn’t do X, Y or Z properly or because you gave him the wrong idea. I don’t subscribe to the idea that you never go to a guy’s place for a first date or that you have to make them wait an arbitrary number of days before you get physical. This wasn’t down to your going to his place on a first date, it’s simply him going “ok, she did this, so what if I do X?”, like a raptor testing the fences. If all a guy is after is sex, making them wait or having hard limits on what you’ll do on which date isn’t going to change their minds. They’re going to look for signs that suggest that you might be receptive, and they’ll shoot their shot if they think they see any.

Hell, sometimes they’ll do it anyway, because when you fire off enough Hail Mary’s, one may eventually work out.

However, having said that: having some personal limits on what you will or won’t do in the early days of meeting someone can be a useful filter for weeding out guys who simply aren’t right for you. This is especially true if you’re having issues finding people who want the same things you want. If you’re looking for something long-term, with someone who has similar goals and interests, then prioritizing dates that highlight those goals and interests is useful. The folks who want the same things as you are more likely to leap at those, while someone who’s not interested in, say, getting together for coffee, brunch and a lazy hang-out in your Sunday comfies is likely someone who’s not a good match for you. Guys who only want evening dates, only a couple times a week max, and ones that may lead to your ending up testing the structural integrity of his mattress will filter themselves out of your dating pool in short order.

But part of finding someone who’s right for you is going to require actually, y’know, going out and finding someone. One of the reasons why women in particular are getting fed up with dating apps is because a lot of guys are using it in hopes to find Ms. Right Now, not Ms. Right. It’s easy enough to just keep swiping right on as many people as possible, shotgunning the bare minimum to be considered an actual message and see what comes back. Going out and meeting people may not be as convenient as running your thumb left and right on your phone in your pajamas, but you’ll have a much easier time filtering out the timewasters and dead enders before you invest your energy in them.

I’d suggest that if you’re looking for someone who’s enthusiastic, communicative, likes skiing and long satisfying binge-views… well, you’re probably going to need to start spending time where people like that hang out. And they’re not hanging out in your house. Many of them are going to be out and about – hitting the slopes or at the local après ski spots. If you especially want people with strong ties to the area, then you’ll want to prioritize places where the locals hang out, rather than the tourist destinations.

Just as importantly: you may want to take your time in getting to know some of these folks, instead of leaping first and hoping that there’ll be a relationship by the time you hit bottom.

But for now: I don’t think you need to respond to this guy. You weren’t dating, you barely had a connection, and his only interest is whether you want to bang at his convenience. None of this necessitates a response or even a formal break-up. I think you’re fully entitled to just block his number and forget he exists. Let him waste his time trying to get with someone else instead of wasting yours for even the length of a “FOAD” response.

Good luck.

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