DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:  Question about asking for reassurance, since you mentioned it in a recent column: how do you ask when you aren’t sure if the reassurance will be there? I (23f) know my boyfriend (21m) loves me, but he’s got major depression so a lot of the time he has no emotions. Half the time he just can’t say “I love you” back to me, because he’s not in a place where he can feel things or he doesn’t have enough energy to verbally/textually express himself. Mostly, I’m okay with this. I know that his love for me shows up in different ways and we have some substitute things he does like sending a heart emoji or squeezing my hand.��I don’t want to be dependent or make him responsible for my emotions when it’s things I should work through on my own like jealousy or insecurity. I also don’t want to make him feel bad for something he can’t control or isn’t able to do for me. Still, there are times when I desperately want to ask for reassurance that he loves me and wants me. I don’t, because when I’m vulnerable like that, it’d wreck me if he wasn’t in a place where he could. Instead, I do grounding techniques, journal, and try to remember specific times or look at screenshots I keep where he’s expressed a lot of love for me. If we’re together, I might ask for a hug. Despite all this, I still feel very lonely and sad at those times. I’m into words of affirmation, so maybe this is a love language mismatch I need to learn to accept — if so, how do I do that?��Additional context: both in therapy, first relationship for both, ldr for summer but same college, so once school starts we’ll be back together, dating for 6 months.

Sad Girls Need Love Too

DEAR SAD GIRLS NEED LOVE TOO: There is a lot here, SGNLT, and I realize a lot of it is coming from the fact that you’re both very young and very inexperienced, especially since this is your first relationship on top of the mental health issues.

First and foremost, I hope that, in addition to therapy, you and your boyfriend are looking at medication for managing depression. I honestly can’t express how important it is to treat depression from many different angles; talk therapy and CBT can be helpful, but depression is often as much about issues with brain chemistry and talking doesn’t change those. Finding an antidepressant that works for you, in the right dosage, tends to be more art than science, and it can take a while for the medication to build up in your systems before you start to feel the effects. This can make finding the right treatment an exercise in frustration, but when you do find the right meds with the right dosage, it makes all the difference in the world.

And as I’ve said before and elsewhere: sometimes, if the depression is resistant to other forms of treatment, you may have to look at options like ketamine infusion or other treatments. It feels like being on the fringe where actual science and medicine blends uncomfortably with woo, but there’re actual legitimate studies of how ketamine or ECT or some psychedelics help with treatment resistant depression.

The second thing is to understand that love is more than the giddiness and butterflies-in-the-stomach and racing pulse of infatuation. What you feel in the early days of a relationship – and at six months, you are very much in the early days – is what’s often called “New Relationship Energy”, where everything is incredibly intense and powerful and wild. Humans are a novelty-seeking species and our brains reflect that; being in a relationship with a new person causes our brains to produce hormones that go straight to the pleasure-centers. The excitement, the desire to be with each other at all hours, the constantly thinking about one another, the sheer joy of their presence is as much about the thrill of the new as it is about them, specifically; your brain is cranking out incredibly high levels of oxytocin and dopamine because of this new person and this new experience. You are, quite literally, getting high off one another.

Now, I bring this up because this feeling will fade. No matter how intense it feels now, it will start to lessen. This isn’t because you’re falling out of love, or you love each other less than you did at the beginning. It’s simply that humans are incredibly adaptable and any new experience – whether good or bad – inevitably becomes the status quo. With our partners, our brains simply don’t produce those happy chemicals at the same rate because it is now the known, instead of the novel. Those changes aren’t reasons to panic; it’s simply part of the biological aspects of love and relationships.

But that’s precisely what brings me to my next point.

It’s important to recognize that there’s a profound difference between being emotionally exhausted or numb or having a bout of anhedonia from depression and not loving someone. Think of it this way: the world being dark at night doesn’t mean that the sun is gone, any more than the weird demilight of a solar eclipse means that the sun is going out. It just means that the sun isn’t overhead; the world has gotten between you and the sun’s light. The sun is still there, the light is still there, the warmth it brings is still there; you just can’t see it or feel it the same way at that specific time.

So, if your boyfriend loves you, he still loves you even when he’s having bouts of alexithymia. The depression may be eclipsing things in that moment, but it’s still there. It’s important to recognize that, because there are going to be times in the future where some emotions are going to be more front and center than others, including love. You can, for example, love someone to distraction but also be furious at them. Or you can have other things going on in your life where the emotion you’re most feeling in that moment is more present and significant than others. That doesn’t mean that you don’t love someone in those moments; it just means that other emotions are louder or are more relevant.

I say this because his not “feeling” something at a specific instant – especially at a time when his depression is being very loud – isn’t the same as not loving you. He can still express love and affection for you; if he can’t say it, he can still demonstrate it in other ways, just as you can even when you’re sad or feeling low.

One of the things that you’ll learn over time as you get more experience in relationships is that we can still do the little things that help our partners and help maintain the relationship, even if we’re not necessarily feeling it in the moment. That’s not a lie or pretending; it’s simply an acknowledgement that love and relationships are complex and we do things for the sake of our partners because we love them, even if it’s something that’s hard or that we aren’t necessarily feeling in the mood for. It’s part of the give and take of being in a relationship with someone; if we only do the stuff we feel like doing for them when we feel like doing it, the relationship falls apart in short order. It’s not all cartoon birds and cherubs and singing flowers; sometimes it’s gritting your teeth and white-knuckling it and doing it anyway.��(There are obvious exceptions to this, especially when it comes to things that hurt you or leave you feeling violated, exploited or used, but that’s another topic all on its own.)

You should both also understand that depression isn’t a get-out-of-responsibilities card either. Yes, being depressed makes it hard to want to do things. It saps the energy out of you, drains joy from the world and often leaves you feeling either exhausted or just gray. But you still have obligations and responsibilities, including to one another. Sometimes you have to push through and do the thing anyway and if you aren’t thrilled to do it… well, it still needs to be done. And sometimes that means saying “yes, I absolutely love you”, even when you don’t feel much of anything at that moment. Because what you feel at that moment doesn’t mean that you don’t still love one another. Unless that has actually changed – and persists outside of those moments of numbness – then it’s still true and he should still say it. The same goes for times when you are feeling low and he wants reassurance.��Now, let’s talk communication for a moment. One of the important things about love languages and the like is that they’re a guide. They’re about knowing how to express yourself in ways that your partner understands and how they express themselves in ways that you understand. It’s also important to realize that there’s how you express love and how you receive it, which aren’t always the same thing. In your case, you receive love best when it comes as words of affirmation. While this may not be the way that your boyfriend expresses it naturally, that doesn’t mean that he can’t, any more than you could express love via touch or other ways. It may mean that he has to think about it first, or you may have to ask for it specifically, but that’s not the same thing as being unable to give it in that form.

You’ve already demonstrated that you understand this, as you recognize the ways he’s showing love via substitutes. That understanding goes both ways; if you can recognize the substitute, he can express it differently as well, and vice versa. That can be important at times when one of you needs that level of expression in the way that’s easiest to accept. Now, in those moments, what you want is to ask for what you need, in the way that you need it. So if you need reassurance from your boyfriend and you receive them best in words of affirmation, ask for them. If you’re so worried that he’s going to say he can’t tell you he loves you because his depression is waxing instead of waning, ask for affirmation in other ways. Ask him to tell you what he likes about you, what makes you special, things that may not be the exact words you want to hear but that you understand and can take on board because of the nature of them. ��It’s a little like the “I love you”/”Ditto” exchange in Ghost; once you recognize what’s behind the words, the intent rather than the specifics of it, it’s much easier to take it onboard.��If you do need those specific words, then ask for them, specifically. It doesn’t mean less or make it less special to say “I need to hear it right now”; the strength of your relationship isn’t measured by or predicated on your abilities to read each other’s minds or to express things spontaneously. It’s measured in the overall commitment you make to one another, in the ways you show up for one another. And if you need him to show up in a specific way, telling him so doesn’t lessen it, any more than saying “I’d really like my favorite meal tonight” makes it any less special than someone preparing it spontaneously. It’s your partner choosing to fill that need, because it’s something you want or require and he wants to provide it for you.

Yes, there’re times when it can feel perfunctory. There’re times when it feels like you shouldn’t have to ask. But doing something because someone asked doesn’t make it mean less; they’re doing it because you asked and because it’s important to you. If they didn’t think that it was important, they wouldn’t provide it. It becomes an issue if you only ever get it when you ask and never any other time. In that case, it’s worth asking if there’s a mismatch or miscommunication going on, or if there’s an underlying problem that’s going unaddressed. ��But when you need a little reassurance, even when he’s feeling low himself? Ask for what you need, in the way that you need it. If you can accept it in a roundabout way, great. But you need what you need, so ask for it in the way you need it. Otherwise, your only recourse is to date a telepath and unfortunately, Psi-Corps rounded all of them up already.

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 have recently been widowed. My husband was/is the love of my life, and as you might imagine, the loss of him is utterly devastating in a way that words will never fully articulate. It isn’t fair, having to work towards a future I never wanted, and have to do it without him.��I’m relatively young. I’m only in my early 40’s, and when I think about what comes next, there are two options that it seems I have to “look forward” to:��A) My husband was it. He’s the One, and the only One I get. So the decades to follow, I will be alone.��B) I find someone else, and fall in love with him.  But he isn’t my husband.��I know the wound is raw, and I know time will change the grief. However, at the moment, both of those options feel horrible right now. If nothing else, I don’t even know how to begin trying to date again. Any advice on how to move forward without disrespecting our past?��Single, But Not By Choice

DEAR SINGLE BUT NOT BY CHOICE: I am so, so sorry for your loss, SBNC; that’s one of the hardest things that someone can go through and you have my sympathies.

I’ve never lost someone I’ve been in a relationship with, but I have lost a parent and some very close friends, so I understand a little of what you’re going through. And I can tell you that what you’re feeling is entirely normal and natural. It’s not just that the wound is so raw, though it is. It’s that your world has, in a very real way, been destroyed and you’re still dealing with that realization.

None of it is right. None of it is fair. The unfairness of it is so profound that it hurts us to our bones, and the worst part about it is that there is nothing we can do but accept it. And even in accepting it, it can feel like we’re doing something wrong, rather than raging against it for all time. But no fire can burn forever and keeping that particular fire going requires that we burn more and more of ourselves until there’s almost nothing left for the fire to consume, and that’s not something that our loved ones would want for us. Instead, what they would want is for us to live. To continue on. To be happy again.

But it’s just so goddamn hard. So, so f--king hard.

One of the things we never think about when we’re in a long-term relationship is how our lives change and merge. This is especially true when we’re talking about a romantic partner, someone we have brought into our world and who brought us into theirs. It’s not just that we have this other person in our lives, but how we’ve changed our lives to accommodate and work with that person’s presence. It changes not just in the way that we’re sharing physical space with them but in the way we become a new person. You’re not just you, you’re part of a new gestalt being, formed of you and your partner, and the way you think of yourself is often as much about “we” as it is about “me”.

And the ways that we incorporate those changes can be so incredibly subtle that we never really think about it. There’s the obvious things, sure – the way you divide the housekeeping and daily chores, the way you factor in their interests and desires and restrictions when you’re both planning meals for the week or taking their schedule into consideration when you’re figuring out what your day looks like. But there’s also the little things that are so mundane, so banal, that you almost take them for granted: the impulse to text them a weird thought or humorous experience, the way the room sounds at night with their breathing and the little noises they make in their sleep. The subtle signs of someone else being around – dishes or the remote being moved just so, the way they used to stack books they were reading or where they would put the mail – things so small that we just never think about them but are thunderously huge in their absence. It’s not just that they’re gone, but there is a hole in the world where they used to be; the negative space that they used to occupy haunts us more than ghosts. Ghosts, at least, would be a presence, instead of an absence, a void, a lacuna in the world.

So you, in a very real way, are having to process that your world – the one you built around yourselves with your husband – is gone, and gone in one of the most devastating ways possible. The idea that you should be looking down the road to getting back on the dating market isn’t putting the cart before the horse, you don’t have a cart and the horse hasn’t even been foaled yet. You are still sitting around in the wreckage of the world around you – if you’ll forgive the very nerdy reference – like Kefka blew everything up and you’re still realizing just how extensive, how complete the damage is. You are having to learn to exist in this new world, one where you see shards of the familiar in the ruins, but where everything is so different and horrible and strange.

More than that though, you have to relearn who you are. You’ve been part of this gestalt whole and now fully half of you is just gone. Like someone who suddenly loses a limb or their sight or hearing, you’re having to relearn how to simply exist in a way you haven’t before. All these little things that you used to rely on without realizing it are gone and now you have to figure out not just what they were, but how you’re going to make them work by yourself.

And of course, there’s simply the echoing, horrible, wrenching loss of it all. The grief of someone so important to you that it seems absurd that the world exists without them and yet the world stubbornly insists on continuing to turn, as though the keystone hasn’t been taken away. It feels almost obscene that the world doesn’t stop to acknowledge this loss, that people don’t pay heed to the way that this vital part of it is just gone.

You are dealing with all of that, and processing this and all the grief and all the pain and the unfairness of it all and that bone deep desire to grab God by the shoulder and just scream at him.

There are times when I don’t think I’ve ever related to anything more than Ray Stevenson saying “Sometimes, I’d like to get my hands on God.”

So for right now, the best thing you can do is just live. Grieve your loss because it deserves to be grieved. Learn how to live in this new and different and strange world. Discover who you are, now that you have this massive line delineating the time before and time after your loss.

In time, when the negative space is smaller – it will never be fully gone, but it will shrink – and the pain has dulled, there will come a time when you realize that your heart is ready again. Nobody can tell you when that will be, not really; you’ll know when you know, and it will be the right time because it’ll be your time, not anyone else’s. When that time comes and the right person comes, you won’t be disrespecting your past. Your husband was your husband, not some Pharaoh of old, entombing his wife and servants to take them into death with him. Your husband wouldn’t want you lonely, to live in constant misery. He loved you and would want you to be happy again. To smile, to look forward to tomorrow, to hope and dream and yes, to love again.

The day when your heart is available to love again is a day that you will be honoring your past, in part because your past is what makes you who you are. It shapes every part of you and directs your future. Opening yourself up to the sweet agony of love again is possibly the most honest and sincere way of honoring what you and he had. It doesn’t lessen what came before, it highlights it and brings it forward.

You don’t need to try to work towards that day or fear that it’ll never come. Your path of healing is your own and it will take however long it takes. In the meantime, there are many loves that you should be leaning on – philia, the love of friends and companions, storge, the love of family, not just of blood but of choice, and more. Those loves won’t replace the eros or pragma that has been lost, but they aren’t meant to. They simply are a reminder that while this love has been lost, love still exists in the world and wants to wrap you in its arms and reassure you that things will be better.

But for now, your only duty to yourself is to grieve, to live and to heal and to rebuild. The rest can wait. Live in your present for now; the future will take care of itself.

And while I know the pain is still so very fresh and those days feel so very far away – and they are �– there’s something to remember: there is no One. Or rather, there are many Ones, people who are our Ones because of who we were at the time. As we grow and change, we become different people and so what makes someone our One will change too. We have many soul mates, because our souls aren’t small things; they are vast, vibrant and glowing and capable of holding so very much. To think we could have only one soul mate is to reduce our souls to something so petty small that it beggars belief.

I know the world is a cold and dark place right now; a great love, like a light, has gone out. But even the blackest night will end and the bright day will return. Hope always burns bright.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

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:  So my life is Bad. Life sucks, every woman I have feelings for are happy with men I hate, and no women wants me because I’m ugly looking, and I’m a 31 year old kissless virgin so that says it all about how much of a loser I am. Seeing women I’m miserable over with men I loathe and hate, ruins my life because no one cares about me and my loneliness.

I lose out to dudes better looking than me and nobody cares how s--tty I have it, or how much other dudes ruin my life because they’re who the women I tried for wanted over me. Then everybody tells me “date ugly fat women because that’s your league and just accept that’s the way it is.”

Meanwhile I get NOTHING

Whoever said looks don’t matter is a liar

Here’s a list of every woman who treated me badly or who rejected me and friend-zoned me now you know how bad I’ve got it

Rejection 1:

Girl I can’t get over got married and she’s in love with him and it depresses me beyond comprehension that she loves him and she will never love me. I’m absolutely f--king depressed.

I f--king hate him he ruined my life. I asked girls online if he’s better looking than me and they all said yes he was and they’d rather date him than me. Can anybody give me advice that’s beneficial for me? if you say “If you really love her you’d be happy for her” or “move on”, that has no benefits for me it only benefits her POS husband.

I don’t get a bright side or a silver lining or happy ending just f--ked over.

I TOLD HER MY FEELINGS SHE REJECTED ME AND SHE TRIED SETTING ME UP WITH A FAT UGLY GIRL AFTER REJECTING ME. F

K MY LIFE. I HAVE THE WORST LIFE POSSIBLE

Rejection 2:

My prom date who I had a crush on for years made out with another dude in front of me and ran off to f

k him in his car and because she was from out of town she stayed over my place and the next morning after she invited him over so she can make out with him and in his car on my driveway amd people found out and I got humiliated all the way to graduation

Rejection 3:

The girl I had feelings for in high school but who friend-zoned me is getting married to a guy who is cheated on her with a teacher. She started dating him when me and her were seniors and he was a freshman. He’s an absolute scumbag. I truly hate him. He was caught sexting a teacher caught on the news and has been caught texting other girls with intent to cheat multiple times. and now the girl I want is marrying him and

A TEACHER HERSELF

She would use me as the shoulder to cry on and then when she was done crying to me she would have me go away and then she would go back to him after I’m not saying it wasn’t my own fault but to some degree I was used emotionally

and now everybody is happy that they’re getting married it’s like I’m living in the Twilight Zone that people forget that he cheated on her with the teacher and got caught on the news.

Then five years ago when my mom passed away everybody I knew gave me their condolences even people I didn’t like but they still were decent enough to tell me their condolences

EXCEPT HER

She didn’t even give me a my condolences at the minimum despite her feeding me lies saying how me and her were such close good friends. She couldn’t even text me “My condolences” or “Sorry for your loss” not even 2 to 4 words in a text. I go to therapy

BECAUSE

of this experience.

I then messaged her saying how it hurt me that she didn’t say anything I told her how I felt about her I told her that her boyfriend now fiancé is a scumbag I told her she’s dumb for staying with a scumbag like that and the last thing she ever told me was

“F

k you loser sorry you’re so mad at the world”

THE WEEK MY MOM DIED!!!

last thing I ever said to her was “how is that possible? I’m not a scumbag who cheats on you. Isn’t that what you prefer to f

k?” That was five years ago and we haven’t spoken since. The wedding was in July

All my life women I’ve liked rejected me or ignored me. The only time women liked me they were morbidly obese and extremely unattractive but then I would be told to “give them a chance that’s your league anyways at least they’re nice girls”  being told to take an L with a smile isn’t a great life. Especially if you compare her to the women who rejected me. Their husbands and boyfriends (WHO I LOATHE) see that I’m with a woman much less unattractive after being rejected by them gives them a whole lot of leverage over me and that’s absolutely humiliating for me like “Haha my girl rejected you and you’re stuck with an ugly woman. sucks to suck loser”. That is HUMILIATION defined, and everybody wants me to embrace this happening and it’s NOT FAIR.

I’ll be happy when a woman hotter than the women who rejected me loves me. Until then, ALL I EVER GOT WAS F--KED OVER NO LUBE OR SPIT AND THEN PEOPLE TELL ME BE HAPPY FOR THE PEOPLE I HATE. TO JUST LIE DOWN AND TAKE IT AND THATS F--KING BULLS--T.

If i lose 130 lbs, and attractive women still think I’m ugly then what am I supposed to do? Do I just Be okay with being a loser by dying alone? Or end up settling for a woman uglier than the women who rejected me, and look like a loser compared to the men I hate and compared to my friends who all have attractive wives and better lives than me? Because no one wants me to have a happy ending apparently.

Happy Endings Don’t Exist

DEAR HAPPY ENDINGS DON’T EXIST: Alright, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do.

For my regular readers, here’s some inside baseball for you: this is a copy/extension of a letter I answered on February 4 – “I’m An Ugly, Lonely Incel Loser. Now What?”. The text of the letter in today’s column is what he included after repeating the previous letter verbatim.

Now, normally, I don’t go in for giving folks multiple bites at the same apple, especially when it’s a copy/paste situation like this, and from someone who is just venting ressentiment about how it’s all unfair and he’s uniquely wronged. And, considering that I brought out The Chair Leg of Truth on a letter this week already, it’s tempting to let this one go to the great killfile in the sky with a satisfying plonk. ��But instead of doing that, I’ve decided to actually answer this. And while there is a certain inevitability to the Chair Leg of Truth being pulled out here, too, I’m not running this to dunk on it. While I don’t have much faith that you’re actually going to read this OR take any of it onboard, HEDE – seeing as, y’know, this is a director’s cut of what you wrote the first time – what I want to focus on is your mindset here and how it’s warping your thinking.

So before we get going, I’d recommend everyone go back and re-read the previous iteration; we’re going to be building on things from there. 

Now, I’m going to go ahead and skip the parade of times I’ve dealt with the “I’m too ugly to find love” issue, because in this case it’s not really relevant. So instead, let’s roll it from the top with an obvious question: what makes you think that “a woman who’s hotter than the women who rejected me” is going to make things better? What, precisely, is going to change for you? I’m being serious here, and I want you to really dig in and answer the question: why will that make things better for you?

Now I know the obvious answer is “because a hot woman will love me”, with all the validation you that brings. As is the unspoken – but very loud, regardless – idea that having a hot woman will grant you status and clout within society.

But if you were to be honest, I think the answer is that what you really want is revenge. There’s a lot of “…and then they’ll realize what they missed out on and their boyfriends and husbands whom I hate will be jealous of me and I’ll be vindicated because they’re assholes and now they’re unhappy and I’ll finally be happy because they are experiencing what I experienced and it’ll suck for them instead.”

At the risk of sounding flippant, I think we’ve hit on a big part of why therapy isn’t helping you. And – again, I’m not dunking on you, I’m being sincere here – all of this letter is precisely why you’re single. It has nothing to do with your weight or your looks, and everything to do with the fact that you don’t seem to recognize that other people are people, not objects or robots, and you don’t treat them like people. Moreover, you don’t seem to accept that the world’s focus doesn’t revolve around you. Nobody’s dating someone at you, nobody’s applying “leverage” because of who you are or aren’t theoretically in a relationship with.

One big reason why nobody cares about “how s--tty you have it” compared to them is because most people don’t think about you, period. That’s not because you’re special in some malign way; most people don’t think of most other people, certainly not to the degree that we all fear. Everybody has limited bandwidth and we’re all focused on our own drama; unless we have a particular relationship or reason or they actively draw our attention, the vast majority of people we encounter on a day-to-day basis functionally vanish as soon as they leave our eyeline. That’s not because they’re not special or we’re all callous, it’s because nobody has the bandwidth to waste on everyone we have ever interacted with.

But even more importantly: people aren’t sympathetic to you on this subject because you’ve given them – or anyone, frankly – very little reason to have sympathy in the first place. What they might have because of empathy – and because we’ve all been rejected by people we like – vanishes like tears in rain as soon as you open your mouth. 

To wit: you yourself don’t seem to have given thought to anyone else at all if it doesn’t involve how they’ve wronged you in some way by not giving you what you want, the way you want it. And to be blunt: their supposed “crimes” against you are so anodyne that the level of vitriol you’re spitting about it turns off folks who might be sympathetic. So as a result, the only people who are going to agree with you are people who are equally as angry and bitter and solipsistic as you are, because they’re doing the same things.

Now, I’m not going to get into the hyperbole of “my life is the worst ever” by comparing your complaints against people in warzones or whatnot; it’s not helpful and the fact that other people may be suffering more doesn’t make your pain hurt less. Your pain is your pain and it’s real. Comparisons to other people’s pain isn’t going to change any of it.

I am, however, going to point out just how self-inflicted and how self-maintained this pain is, and how petty and self-serving these complaints are when looked at by a dispassionate observer and why you’re not making a great case for how you’ve been wronged.

Rejection 1 is a prime example of what I mean. You don’t love her. I’m not even sure you could say that you love the idea of her, because that would imply a feeling that wasn’t just possession. But part of loving someone is that you want what’s best for them, even if what’s best for them isn’t you. Parents send their children to school hundreds or thousands of miles away, knowing how much they’ll miss them and how that distance means that their children won’t be as involved in their lives, because it will benefit their children’s futures. We say goodbye to people we love, because we know that staying where they are, where we are, isn’t good for them and they need to be somewhere else to thrive.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t be sad about it or have strong regrets that it had to be this way. But it does mean saying “I am putting your happiness over my own, because I want your happiness more than my own”. To quote the sage: “I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile.”

But more to the point, the thing that makes you “have the worst life ever” is that you told someone you liked her, she turned you down and tried to help you move on by attempting to set you up with someone else, which you took as a dire insult. The crime here, such as it was, was that you weren’t provided with exactly what you wanted or at least a consolation prize that was equal or greater value. That is a pretty good indicator that no, this wasn’t love, this was about not getting the shiny new toy you wanted.

Rejection 2… you actually have more of a case about being mistreated you do elsewhere. I’m gonna give you that. However, it’s not much more of a case, because this still requires that I accept your interpretation as being trustworthy and accurate which… well, I’ll be frank: I don’t. I say this as someone who also had to sit and watch as the girl he had a crush on – the one he had invited specifically to come visit him – hooked up with another guy in front of him all weekend. I’ve had a woman I was hung up on come over to my place with the guy she would start dating a week later, when we had planned for it to be just the two of us hanging out. So I am someone who’s been there and done that and I know exactly how it feels. And it’s from that perspective that I strongly suspect that what you thought this was and what everyone else thought this was were very different things. But again: I get it, especially because I’ve been through something very similar. It sucks, it really does, and at the time it feels like someone jammed an icicle through your torso and into your brain. So in this, you have my sympathy.

The difference, however, is that I got over it. It took some growth and maturity to recognize that I was being an idiot at the time and definitely after, but I got there eventually. You… have not. And you’ve had decades to do so.

Rejection 3, however is the point where it really shows just how much this is about you not getting what you think you’re owed and being pissy because nobody else is honoring the contract that they never signed or even knew existed. We can start with using the term “friend-zone” as though it were a thing that was done to you with malicious intent. Instead, it’s very simple: she thought you were her friend. She wasn’t romantically or sexually attracted to you, but she was trying to be your friend. You, on the other hand, behaved as though your wants were a command and that she was wrongly denying you something that you were owed. This is not how love works, nor is it how relationships work.

The behavior you describe – crying on your shoulder before going off with someone else – is friendship. During times of trouble or when we’re hurt, scared or upset, we turn to our friends for solace. That’s part of how friendship works. She was seeking comfort and reassurance from someone she had assumed was her friend, who could understand why she was sad and would, at the very least, say “there there, that really sucks, I’m sorry you’re hurting.” What she got was someone whose presence in her life came with strings, and who threw a tantrum when she didn’t pay the cost that – again – she never agreed to.

And then, years later, you continue to hold this grudge – long after anyone with some reasonable maturity and emotional intelligence would have gotten over it – and wave it around like it should mean anything to anyone besides you. And while I am sorry for the loss of your mother, that’s not any excuse. It might be more understandable if you hadn’t already established your getting pissy at your high-school crush for rejecting you years prior; as it is, someone not sending you condolences isn’t a reasonable excuse for screaming at them about how s--tty they are for not dating you in high-school. And thinking that going on a tirade where you s--t all over her and her partner is an appropriate response to this is, once again, not going to win you any sympathy points. And that’s assuming people accept your description of how it all went down as being at all accurate. ��Which, for the record, I don’t. As I said: you are not in any way, shape or form demonstrating yourself to be a trustworthy narrator.

Now, notice very carefully how I don’t get into the relative qualities of her boyfriend as a part of how you’ve been wronged. That’s because he’s completely and utterly irrelevant to any of this. Let us be real: his worst crime in your eyes is that he’s f--king the person you like. The rest is how you justify it. He may well be a scumbag, independent of your opinion of him. I have watched people I cared for go off to date folks that I felt were objectively a worse choice than me. In one case, the boyfriend turned out to be an actual don’t-leave-this-man-alone-around-underage-girls monster.

(For those of you who know me personally: no, I’m not talking about you. Or you. You with the face? No, not you either.)

But none of the people they chose to date had anything to do with me. It was never about comparisons or “who was better/who was worse” because that’s not how people choose their partners. None of it was a slight against me or a comment about me or a criticism. I never entered the equation at all. It was about who they were attracted to, who seemed right for them. I didn’t have to be happy about it, but I accepted it.

Just as importantly, none of the partners of the women who rejected you are thinking “yes, yes, get an ugly girlfriend and then I’ll have leverage over you.” They’re not spending their time thinking about you, the way you’re thinking about them. They’re not thinking about you at all. You don’t come up, period, the end. This isn’t Kendrick and Drake, this is a one-sided beef where the other person isn’t even aware that you exist. This is completely and utterly about you and your perceived grievances.

I can tell you, with perfect certainty, that your weight isn’t the problem. Nor is your face. Your problem is entirely about the aggrieved entitlement and the tantrums you throw when you don’t get your way. You’re not interested in relationships or love or happy endings, because you’re not interested in women as people, only points in a game that only you are playing, and not getting the high-score is a crime against God and humanity. Nobody is going to be interested in being a part of that, and nothing about this attitude is going to be appealing to them.

You’re holding onto these grudges and supposed slights that happened to you decades ago, and you have only gotten worse over time. You have allowed them to curdle your soul, and until you’re honest with yourself enough to actually address that, nothing will change.

Now, again, as someone who’s dealt with similar s--t, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I can very clearly see the pain and chronic untreated depression that’s underlying a lot of this. I think what you need more than therapy – especially since therapists can’t help you with problems you refuse to address – is to talk to a doctor about treatment for depression. I strongly suspect that you might need to look into ketamine-infusion therapy or ECT, because I have a feeling that we’re talking about treatment-resistant depression and things have gotten bad enough that skipping straight to the hardcore s--t is warranted. But – as I’ve said many times before and will do so again – Doctor NerdLove is not a real doctor and you need to talk to an actual medical professional.

But again, if I’m being honest, I’m probably saying all of this for the sake of other readers than for you, HEDE, in hopes that it may prompt some of them to look at their own attitudes if they see a reflection of themselves in yours. The truth of the matter is that this is a situation of your own making. The universe isn’t f--king you over, nor is it refusing to grant you what you deserve. You are the victim only of your own choices and your own attitudes and beliefs, and you have let those beliefs calcify into something akin to stone.

Unless and until you’re willing to do some radical self-examination and a lot of shadow work to go with your therapy, nothing is going to change. The only thing that will happen is that you’re going to get older with nothing to show for it except more anger, more bitterness and even fewer people who are willing to reach out a helping hand. 

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