DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a middle-aged guy who’s always had lousy luck with dating. After I exited my last relationship because her biological clock turned the pressure up to 11, I decided to take some time out and do a little work on finding myself. That lasted longer than I expected due to COVID.

But what I did find was, in doing some reading on asexuality, that the concept really resonated with me and I am probably somewhere under the ace umbrella. Where, I’m not exactly sure. But it’s had me second-guessing a lot of my previous relationships. I have never had any luck finding dates outside of online dating, and with most of those, we’d spend some time chatting online before meeting in person…only for me to feel like things went well and for her to spend the next week not responding to my messages until she gave me the next “it’s not you it’s me” speech.

So, looking back, now I’m wondering if a lack of sexual attraction on my part meant that I wasn’t projecting enough interest. Was I spending too much time looking at her face and not elsewhere? Was my body language not showing that I was a little worked up? Was it that I didn’t go for a kiss or a hug–or a bedroom–at the end of the date?

And now that I’m ready to consider dating again, what do I do with any of that, plus my self-discovery? I’m not exactly thrilled about online dating, but it’s the only thing that’s worked for me. Meeting people organically, or being introduced by friends, hasn’t gotten me anywhere. My biggest problem with online dating is that it seems to be an all-or-nothing shot: if there’s no physical chemistry right away, it feels like they check me off the list and move on to the next. Meanwhile, I want a friendship to build up over time and see where that leads romantically. And, honestly, even if things don’t work out romantically (I am almost definitely sure I’m not aro along with ace!), I’d still like to stay friends, but that has never happened either. Do I lead off with “I’m ace” and then have to deliver the explanation of what that means? Do I have to learn how to give off the right signals of interest? Do I just keep being me and hope I finally find someone who likes that, even though that has been a frustratingly unsuccessful journey?

—Ace of Diamonds, Not Hearts

DEAR ACE OF DIAMONDS, NOT HEARTS: Hey, congrats on learning more about yourself and how you work, ADNH; that’s a pretty big step, especially when you’re hitting your 40s and older.

So what does this mean for your love life going forward? Well, let’s start with something obvious: without actively reviewing the footage of you on these dates, it’s going to be next to impossible to say what, if anything, didn’t go right. And I do mean “if anything”; sometimes it really is just down to “it’s possible to make no mistakes and still lose”, especially when it comes to online dating. One of the things about meeting people on the apps that’s just baked into the whole experience is that there will be people who seem to be great on paper, but who lack that x-factor that needs to be there for you two to be a good match. False positives and first dates to nowhere are, unfortunately, just part of the process.

It’s certainly possible that your lack of sexual attraction meant that you were either not making the best case for yourself or showing any real interest in the other person. It’s also entirely possible that the vibe you were giving off was more platonic or friendly than “potential partner”. Or it could just be you had a string of bad luck through no fault of your own.

I think, however, the more important thing is to recognize that you were dating at a time when you didn’t know what you now know about yourself, and that’s a pretty significant difference. This is why I think focusing on what may or may not have gone wrong in the past isn’t as important as figuring out what to do moving forward.

So, the first thing I think you should do – if you haven’t already – is start doing a little due diligence on being asexual. Asexuality is less of a spectrum as much as it is a multi-axis graph, with a number of different variations of how it works for different people. Some folks don’t experience sexual attraction at all. Some are actively repulsed by the idea of sex or sexual contact. Some experience sexual desire, but only rarely or only after they have a meaningful emotional connection with the other person. Others experience arousal but aren’t interested in sex with another person, and still others could take or leave it.

One of the best resources out there for ace people – especially people for whom asexuality is either a new concept or a new way of understanding themselves – is the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. I’d suggest you should do some exploring of the material and resources they have, if only so you have a better understanding of what being ace means. It’s a lot easier to explain to others when you’ve got a pretty solid idea of what it means for you. Educating yourself on the topic will make it easier for you to communicate it to other folks who, like you, may not have realized at first that it was even A Thing.  

Now, when it comes to dating when you’re ace, there’re a few things to consider. The first is fairly obvious: most people you meet are going to expect a relationship to have a sexual component to it. If sex is not going to be on the table in a relationship with you, that’s something folks should know fairly early on. Letting them opt out early on – possibly before your first date, even – means that neither of you will be wasting time with someone who’s fundamentally incompatible. After all, the last thing you want is to get emotionally invested in someone who is going to want something that you can’t give and vice versa.

Functionally speaking, this means disclosing early. You are going to want to make sure that folks who might want someone just like you can find you, after all, while allowing the folks who aren’t able to rock with that to peace out and move on.

Some dating apps have options in their profiles where you can define your sexuality – not just as gay, straight or bi/pan, but asexual, demisexual, hetero or homo-romantic and so on. This gives folks the option to filter you out of their searches entirely. But even so, I would make it clear in your profile that you’re asexual – and I’d recommend saying “asexual” and not just “ace”; most people aren’t going to know the slang. However, I’d recommend that you also make it clear what you are up for – cuddling, physical but non-sexual intimacy, and so on – rather than just “there will be no sex, ever”. It’s better, in general, to focus on what you do offer, so people have an understanding what is actually on the table. Otherwise you risk letting them make assumptions about you that may well not be accurate.

However, while online dating can be convenient, you aren’t wrong that the modern apps encourage an expectation of nigh-instantaneous connection. That’s hard under the best of circumstances, but even more so when the physical chemistry may not be there even if the emotional chemistry is. And since you mention that you want more of a slow burn – going from friends to (nonsexual) lovers – I think what would work best for you is what I call “dating slow”. That is, rather than taking the all-or-nothing approach on dating apps, you should focus more on simply being social and meeting people organically without necessarily looking for dates.

One of the benefits of taking a slow approach to dating is how it lines up with your ideal relationship progression. By being social and focusing on a platonic connection, you’re better able to get to know folks over time. This not only takes the pressure off trying to turn every interaction into a love match, but it also plays to your advantage. The more we get to know a person, the more their uniqueness makes them special to us; we literally find people more attractive as we get to know and like them. This also means you have more of a chance to see if they’re someone who’d be right for you; not only do you have the commonalities and shared values and interests you’d need for a relationship, but are they someone who can rock with a relationship where sexual intimacy simply isn’t a priority?

In these cases, you may get to a point with folks where you’re ready to ask them out on a date. In those cases, if being ace hasn’t come up, you should mention it – if not before the date, but at least at some point on the date. And, much with dating profiles, you should feel comfortable with explaining how this works for you and what you are and aren’t up for. Yeah, it means you risk people noping out, but this really is for the best. It’s far better to focus on the folks who are affirmatively and actively up for this sort of connection with you than to find out they aren’t three or four dates in.

When you do talk about being ace, however, you want to make sure that you’re not rolling this out like you’re the victim of a generational curse or you’re confessing some deep, dark secret about yourself. Being asexual is neither positive nor negative; it’s just a fact about you, like being right or left-handed. If you roll it out like something you have to apologize for, you’re priming them to reject you out of hand. After all, if you think it’s something shameful, why would they want to explore a relationship with you? Conveying it as “here’s who I am, here’s a fact of how I work” helps set the tone that this is just part of what makes you, you. It also serves as a filter for determining who may or may not be a good match. When you tell someone you’re asexual, you’re telling them a single fact about you. How they respond to that fact, however, will tell you a lot about what you need to know about them.

This, incidentally, is where visiting AVEN and learning more about asexuality can come in handy; it’ll give you an idea of how to communicate this to other people in a way that they can understand.

Now, a thing that you’re going to need to consider is how much traditional aspects of a relationship are going to matter to you. The fact that most people out there are allosexual – that is, they experience sexual attraction and an interest in sex with other people – doesn’t automatically mean that your prospects are limited to your fellow asexuals. It’s certainly possible for an ace person to have a relationship with an allosexual person. But making a relationship work with someone who is allo is going to require some compromise on your part as well as theirs.

Would you, for example, be willing to have some form of maintenance sex, where you may not necessarily be into it, but you’re willing to participate for your partner’s gratification? This may, for example, mean penetration, or it may mean providing a masturbatory assist – using sex toys on them or helping them out while they masturbate.

Alternately, are you willing to consider an ethically non-monogamous relationship, where your partner would have the option to get their sexual needs met outside of their relationship with you? Or is the idea of your partner having sex with another person going to sandpaper your nerves and leave you feeling raw and anxious? You don’t necessarily need to have a fully polyamorous relationship, where you both have multiple romantic connections, but allowing your partner to have sex outside of their relationship with you might be the difference between someone who’s willing to give it a try with you and just not feeling compatible.

If that’s something you think you could be ok with, I’d recommend doing some research into poly and open relationships and how to make those work. I’d recommend checking out Opening Up by Tristan Taormino, The Ethical Slut by Janet Hardey and Dossie Easton and Building Open Relationships by Dr. Liz Powell as a starting point.

(Full disclosure: Dr. Powell is a friend of mine and they’ve guest-written columns for me before.)

Mechanically speaking: you don’t want to learn to send signs of sexual interest, simply because you don’t want to give people the wrong impression. You should, however, work on your flirting and talking to folks, and being willing to express interest in them. You may have to rely on your words more than others, especially if you’re not necessarily comfortable with physical contact, but you do want the people you like to know that you like them as more than friends. Even if sex isn’t on the table, love is, and if someone doesn’t know you’re down for romance, they’re going to reasonably assume that you don’t like them that way.

But before we worry too much about that, you should focus more on understanding yourself. Do your research – AVEN has a lot of resources and links to other places – and figure out how you roll. The better you understand yourself, the more you’ll be able to find your path going forward.

I know that feels like I’ve given you some serious homework to finish before you start dating but I promise you: investing the time now is going to make the rest a lot smoother and more intuitive for you.

You’ve learned some important facts about yourself and hopefully that understanding helps clear up a lot of questions you had about yourself. Now it’s time to take that understanding a little further, in a way that’ll empower you to date in a way that makes sense for you and plays to your strengths, instead of trying to make it work in a way that was poorly suited for you.

You’ve got this.

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: For 6 months, a guy coworker and I have what seemed to be mutual attraction. He would regularly check me out, engage in intense eye contact, lean in, act really nervous when around me, looked surprised when talking to me – a bit like a deer in headlights, stutter a little and then recollect his thoughts. He’s super confident with other girls and guys, but not with me. He acts serious but flirty.

Anyway, I like him so I wrote to him back in January to say I was attracted to him. I didn’t hear anything, so thought I had got everything wrong. Then last week after a meeting he says he got my message and was sorry because he’d only just seen it and that he rarely checks that account.

I was shocked as it had been so long and I told him yes what I had written was true and he asked me didn’t I think it was strange that he didn’t reply to which I said I thought he didn’t care.

Anyway, he then said he had a partner. He didn’t say anything more. I have since found out he has had his girlfriend since January, but I believe he has been flirting with me a lot during that time. I get he has a girlfriend, but I’m also confused, as it seemed like he did like me, so what gives?

I kind of felt like he led me on to some degree. Up to two weeks ago, he was still showing signs of interest, he would regularly set up one to one meetings with me (when we are no in the same teams), linger to have a longer conversation and act a bit odd when I talk to another guy coworker.

Last thing I want is to come between him and his girlfriend. I guess I’m just confused as to why he even bothered with me. Now I also feel like it’s a bit awkward at work, like we say hi to one another and that’s it. We were friends before, but it was obviously more relaxed. Now it feels tense. Can you advise what happened here and why a guy would act like this?

Perplexed And Perturbed

DEAR PERPLEXED AND PERTURBED: The principle of parsimony – what is often called “Occam’s Razor” – states that when confronted with multiple possible hypothesis, you should select the one that requires the fewest assumptions, as this is the one that’s most likely to be correct. While this is more of a guide than a law or a mandate, it is useful when dealing with situations like yours, where there seems to be multiple possible explanations.

In this case, there are two possible hypothesis that stand out as requiring the fewest assumptions to be true: that he wasn’t flirting, he was just being friendly and what you were seeing as flirting was just him being him; or he’s the sort of person who’s just flirty but doesn’t necessarily mean anything by it.

Both of these are equally likely; people are notoriously bad at telling when someone is or isn’t flirting with them, especially if the other person is attractive. It’s very easy to let d--kful or c--tful thinking turn friendliness into flirtation, simply because the person wants the other to be flirting. There are also people who are just flirty because that’s how they roll and because flirting is fun. They are flirting without intent of following up on it, or expecting more than just the inherent fun of a flirty conversation.

Is it possible that he’s into you despite his having a partner? Sure; it’s hardly unknown for folks in relationships to be attracted to other people. People get crushes. And as I’ve said many times before: having a crush doesn’t mean anything other than “this person does it for you”. But was/is he leading you on? I highly doubt it, frankly.  Remember what I said about “Occam’s Razor”? Well, there’s a related guide called “Hanlon’s Razor” that states “never attribute to malice what can be equally explained by ignorance.” While it’s certainly possible that he’s the sort of person who gets his jollies by backburner-ing women or giving them just enough attention to keep them on the hook, that usually entails more than just “having conversations at work”

it sounds like you’re reading more into things than are actually there. That includes the tension, by the way; I suspect that it’s mostly coming from you and the way you’re feeling is affecting how you behave with him, which is going to affect how he responds.

As it is, I think the simplest answer really is “there’s nothing here”. Seeing as how he a) “didn’t see” that message for damn near six months, b) told you he has a partner and c) has never made any move that wasn’t “talking to you at work”, I think it’s safe to say that you were misreading things. And if you weren’t and he did have a crush… well, that’s a distinction without a difference, because it seems pretty clear that he has no intention of acting on it.

So, you may as well just work under the assumption that this was all a wacky misunderstanding. Allow yourself to feel silly about it, mentally roll your eyes at him over it and just let it go. I think you’ll find the friendship comes back a lot more easily when you do.

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: Hello! Thank you for taking the time to read this message. I’m currently a junior in college, and in February, my two best friends ended their friendship with me. Allow me to provide some context:

Firstly, I am 21, and nonbinary. These two friends, I will call them A and B, are both male, 21– however, all of us are transgender, so I feel it is important to note that we were all socialized as women.

We all met during our freshman year of college – we had been assigned as roommates in the dorms, and we hit it off from there. We became a little trio, though there was always a slight imbalance in which I was not liked as much as the other two liked each other – a lot of excluding, mean comments, etc. With hindsight, I don’t really blame them for this behavior. I was very insecure, and I was often very clingy/needy, always asking to hang out or be included. I treated them like I had known them longer than just a year, so I definitely crossed boundaries in this way, and I most likely missed some very important social cues (this comes back later).

Then, at the end of my freshman year, friend A, the one I directly shared a room with, asked if we could kiss. I said yes, and this began a FWB situation that lasted about 2 months. Eventually, I caught real feelings, and I had a conversation with him admitting this, and saying that if he did not feel the same, I wanted to end what we were doing. He did not feel the same, and thus we stopped doing it.

After this, he immediately got into a relationship with a girl, I will call her C, and admittedly, it hurt me a lot, even if there wasn’t really anything he did wrong. I felt like I had been thrown away, and we could never fully talk about the situation as he had moved on and it felt taboo to discuss it, so I held on to a lot of feelings. Again, in hindsight, that’s my bad for feeling that way. I know that very well.

Being unable to talk to A, I reached out to B about the situation. I remember saying that I felt it was unfair, that I felt confused and lost because I was a virgin and he wasn’t, and that I was incredibly regretful of everything. B was understanding, and was there for me. I appreciated that. He was also mad at A for the time for separate reasons, so that may have influenced the situation.

Me and A got into a big argument shortly after, as 1. I was still upset about the situation, and 2. I was mad that he was hurting B. We ended up working through it, though I don’t think we talked enough in debt to truly let go of resentment. This was a common pattern in both my friendships with A and B, and I don’t doubt it’s my fault – I was raised in a bad home situation, and I was taught to set my own feelings aside to take care of others, so I tend to be quick to an apology instead of defending myself, leading to miscommunication or me taking too much responsibility for a situation.

Things were okay for the next couple of years, but last year, in August, I got into a situation with B. He went out of state with his boyfriend to a powwow, which was such an important experience for him. We had a really wonderful conversation about it. But at the same time, he was getting drunk every night and texting/calling us. Nothing malicious or weird, but I have a history of alcoholics in my family, so the general situation made me super uncomfortable. Friend A wasn’t a big fan of it either, so we both acted kinda off when he came back. Eventually, friend A talked to him, and they were ok. I then talked to him about this on two separate situations, telling him about my discomfort and why. It seemed like we were ok.

Things were then fine, but friend B was starting to grow distant from our friend group, as he felt disconnected after that event. He also had switched majors, so we ended up seeing him less and less. I tried to reach out to him still and plan hangouts, but he’s always not been the best at keeping up over text, and tended to flake a lot from hangouts. Again, not a bad thing! I was just insecure, and took so much personally.

At this time, I was spending a lot more time with A. We had the same classes and major, so we basically did everything together. We even did one of our finals together.

However, during this time, he had met a new girl that he developed a crush on. for context, C ended up cheating on him and being a horrible person who lied about her entire life, and we all cut her off, but it left so much damage on both of us (I was very close with C, even before they started dating), so I feel we leaned too much on each other during this time, and boundaries were once again very muddled.

He started talking to the new girl, D, and she would visit him often at the coffee shop he worked at for a free drink. I usually would stop by before my shift at work, as we worked in the same town, and one day we bumped into each other. He then introduced us, and we started talking outside of this, with her initiating all of the conversations. She tried to invite me out a lot, but I didn’t want to overstep, so I would always decline her offers.

One day in the car, I commented on her music taste, saying jokingly that “I approve”, to which he got angry at, saying he didn’t need my approval. I was surprised by this response, so I asked about it, and we got into a conversation where he stated he did not want me to talk to D anymore, as he wanted her as a friend to himself. I understood this, as we had been hanging out a lot, and I understood that he needed a life outside of me.

About a week later, me and all of my friends had a friendsgiving party, and A invited D. she ended up talking to me often throughout the night, and I knew that A was super pissed off, and I totally understand that. I didn’t know how to get out of conversations, though.

After this, A went to me and said we need to take a break, that he didn’t like how I was acting and he needed to think about things. I was ok with this, as I needed a break too – he was treating me increasingly rudely and strangely, which, once more, I totally understand in hindsight.

During this time, A and B had a conversation about me, and the FWB situation got brought up. B told A that I said A took advantage of me, which wasn’t true. However, at the time, I couldn’t remember the day clearly, and so I took this as truth and apologized for it. In the end, though, he could not forgive me (I never tried to reexplain the situation) and I’m sure my past with him didn’t help. My friendship with him then ended.

As for B, he ended his friendship with me through text, saying that I manipulated my girlfriend into not liking him (she just drifted apart from B when they switched majors, there was never any ill feelings), and that I was stereotyping him as a Hispanic person for being upset about his drinking.

Here I am now, almost 3 months later, now in therapy, and with new friends. A and B ended up cutting off our whole friend group, so I am still friends with some of the people I’ve known since freshman year, including my girlfriend. They keep telling me that I’m not a bad person, that they mistreated me, that I didn’t deserve being cut off like that. I just can’t believe that to be true. I keep trying to convince them that it was my fault, but they won’t believe me. It makes me scared that I’m in with the wrong crowd.

As me and A are in the same major, I see him in all of my classes, which has been hard. He has talked about me to other people, and it has led to strangers threatening me online, as well as many distancing themselves. I can’t really blame them, but I don’t know what to do to redeem myself. I’m making new friends who aren’t involved with our mutual friends whatsoever, but I feel like I’m living a lie because I do not feel that I deserve these good people in my life.

I know that A and B are living a good, fun life apart from me through mutual friends and what A says in class, and I feel like I am just stagnant and unhappy. I’m working incredibly hard with therapy and friends to pick up the pieces of my life and become a better person, but I’m ostracized and haunted in my school. It’s very small, only about 900 people at the college, so word spreads.

I just want to know what I can do to attain peace of mind for my last year here. All of this came from my people pleasing behaviors, as I was too afraid of hard conversations or to truly be myself. It led to so many misunderstandings, and I’m fully aware of the damage I’ve done here. I’m more sad that I didn’t wake up sooner to save my friendships. I’m just stuck in cycles of shame that are making it hard to move on and learn to live for myself. I’ve been a horrible person, and I just want to release all of the pain so that I can continue on with new lessons learned. How do I do it?

I’m The Villain

DEAR I’M THE VILLAIN: There ain’t no drama like college friend group drama because the college friend group drama just metastasizes and becomes malignant and ends up lingering for months and years because folks never seem to understand that they can break up with or dump s--tty friends the same as they can romantic partners…

And look, I’m saying this as someone who’s sophomore year social circle actually had an honest-to-God arbitration session to deal with everyone’s petty bulls--t: this is more drama than an off-Broadway theater. And honestly? Most of it wasn’t your fault.

I know you’re determined to believe that you were the reason all this s--t happened and why everyone fell out with one another, and I know you’ve already rejected it when your friends told you that this wasn’t your fault but… you’re taking on responsibility that isn’t yours and assigning yourself blame that you don’t actually deserve.

Could you have handled some things better? Sure… but that’s pretty much true of everyone, always. Nobody’s going to be perfect, especially when you’re all dealing with hurt feelings, everyone’s individual damage and the sort of aggressive defensiveness that comes from feeling like you (the general “you”, not you specifically, ITV) can’t actually make a meaningful difference about the things that are real problems so instead you lash out at people you can affect. Which usually means people who are much weaker than whomever is actually hurting you.

Some of the issues here are things that would fall under the Geek Social Fallacies, and some are insecurities paired with a… let’s call it a more idealized vision of how relationships work. And some are just other people not dealing with their own damage.

(And this is before we get into what sounds suspiciously like folks using therapy-speak and social justice language to shift blame and guilt whenever they needed to make someone else the bad guy…)

What it isn’t, is 100% your fault. Or even 50%. Or 33.3333%, really. You’re taking blame for things that could only be your fault if you had cosmic awareness that gave you nigh-omniscient knowledge about everything affecting the situation. And since you aren’t Mar-Vell or Norin Radd or Adam Warlock, I think you can be forgiven for not being the all-knowing, all-seeing being you seem to think you should’ve been.

Let’s take the initial imbalance you mention, where A and B were closer with one another than with you. That’s just how s--t shakes out sometimes. Nobody divides their attention or affection for people perfectly equally; that’s just not how people work or possible to achieve. What we can do and should strive for is to express it share it equitably, so that folks don’t feel left out or excluded. But part of what you need to remember is that that level of attention or closeness also isn’t static or fixed; in fact, it can shift and change a lot. Sometimes you’re closer with one person in the friend group, at other times, you’re closer with another. That doesn’t mean that anyone did anything wrong, it just means that things change as circumstances and experiences do.

In fact, you’ve seen this happen yourself; you felt like you weren’t as equally liked the way that A & B liked each other, but then you and A had a FWB relationship going on that excluded B. This doesn’t mean that you were doing this to be cruel or because you disliked B; it just was how things were shaking out between the two of you. Then, when that ended, you and B became closer as A was having his own drama. That doesn’t mean that anyone did anything wrong by being closer or by feeling less included. It sounds like there was some envy going on, sure, but that’s very different.

You’re also blaming yourself for having goddamn feelings – feelings that were entirely reasonable, considering the circumstances. You caught feelings for a dude you were hooking up with and when they didn’t return those feelings, you felt sad and disappointed. After you two ended things and he started dating someone else, you felt hurt because the person you had feelings for was dating someone else. Why, HOW DARE YOU? HAVE YOU NO DECENCY?

Oh wait, no, you were having a perfectly normal and understandable reaction. Yes, you agreed to end things because he didn’t feel the way for you that you felt for him but that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to have a sad about it. The same goes for blaming yourself for – hang on, I’m going to check my notes here – not talking things through or having some sort of struggle session with him about your feelings afterwards? I don’t know precisely how magical you think an exit interview would have been but this doesn’t make you a villain for feeling sad and hurt.

The same thing applies to failing to have the sort of dialogue that magically solves all resentments and feeling ill-used. Leaving aside that you don’t live in a cozy coffeeshop AU fanfic, if conflict resolution and emotional catharsis was that easy, couples counseling and therapy wouldn’t exist. It’s not your fault that you weren’t able to do what the human race has not been able to do since homo sapiens came out of the savannah, and honestly, I kind of feel like whatever TikToker or Tumblr account that convinced you that it was needs to be staked out over an anthill.

I don’t know how to tell you this, but expecting that your emotions are going to be reasonable and logical and should perform in specific ways is unrealistic at best and beating yourself up for not being able to turn them off and be fine with things only leads to you making yourself feel worse about things.

Ask me how I know. Go on, ask me…

The real problem here is that you’re taking the blame for s--t that is demonstrably not your fault, nor for things that you could reasonably be blamed for. Feeling weird because your friend is getting hammered regularly and drunk-dialing you, for example, is not some violation of Friend Code. Doubly so when you already have a fraught history with alcohol abuse in the family. That’s you having an understandable response to a situation that can be uncomfortable on its own, but gets harder because it touches onto actual trauma in your past.

Where it gets egregious, however is that you’re blaming yourself for times when A and B were both severely out of pocket. A doesn’t have the right to tell you who you can or can’t be friends with, even if he’s dating them. He’s not D’s keeper, and saying “I don’t like her being friends with you, so you have to stop” is a great big f--king red flag.

Let’s leave aside that A has no authority to declare who you are or aren’t “allowed” to be friends with, nor have you signed some contract that stipulates limits on your behavior or whatever. Dictating who “gets” to be friends with his girlfriend, especially since D clearly had different feelings on the subject, is wildly out of line. Controlling who “gets” to be friends with someone is one of the warning signs in an abusive relationship for a reason.

Just as importantly though: A doesn’t get a say in who you are or aren’t friends with, any more than he gets to dictate who D is friends with, and being friends with D isn’t violating a boundary. If someone says “you aren’t allowed to do X”, that’s not them setting a boundary, that’s them trying to control you. A boundary is “I’m not going to tolerate someone doing X”, and then if they continue to do X, for the person setting the boundary to extract themselves from that relationship. A boundary is what you will not put up with and the consequence is what you do about it.

You also aren’t responsible for other people’s misunderstandings or misrepresenting what you said. You seem to think you have – or should have – a greater level of control over other people than you actually do. Let me disabuse you of the notion that there is some way that you could explain s--t so perfectly and completely that there is no way that they could take it the wrong way. That does not exist under the best of circumstances and definitely doesn’t exist when other people are determined to not hear it in the first place. But this also assumes that your explaining it with perfect clarity and eliminating any possible misunderstanding will ensure that someone else will likewise explain it the same way. Again: you can’t control that, and especially when someone has their own f--ked up agenda. But even if A and B weren’t already well into bitch-eating-crackers mode to a toxic degree, you don’t have any control over how someone talks to another person when you aren’t there. If B got things wrong – whether maliciously or not �– that’s on him, not you for failing to put a spell on him that will ONLY allow him to tell the correct version.

And seeing as how B was blaming you for his girlfriend not liking him? Yeah, I’m not going to assume his motives were as pure as the driven snow.

I know you want to take the blame for this and you’re asking me to tell you that you’re right to take the blame for all of this but as near as I can tell, you’re only at fault for not getting clear of these two as fast as you f--king could. I mean for f--k’s sake, A is talking so much s--t about you that you’re getting threats from random people? WHY THE F--K DO YOU THINK THAT MEANS THEY HAVE A GOOD POINT?

Your current group of friends is correct: these two sound toxic as s--t and you are so much better off without them. And the fact that they’re telling you this means that you’ve already done what I would’ve told you: get better f--king friends.

Look, I’ve done the college thing, so I am here from the future to tell you that being put together in a room with folks your freshman year doesn’t mean that you’re chained to them like you’re in the Defiant Ones. Sometimes it works out and you become friends and stay friends. Sometimes they’re just someone you lived with for a bit and then you didn’t live with them anymore. You aren’t obligated to keep them in your life and doubly so if they turn out to be the drama equivalent of a dirty bomb.  

You are fine. Your ex-roommates are assholes and they deserve each other and you’re much better off without them.

If you really want to do some sort of penance, then here it is: delete TikTok from your phone, block it on your desktop and go to the student health services to talk to a counselor. You’re taking on blame for s--t that’s not your fault and accepting responsibility for things you didn’t do and that needs to change. That is your only real flaw here and you deserve better than what you got from them and what you’re getting from yourself.

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