DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve (24M) done something wrong. I broke my gf’s (23F) trust and disrespected her. We have been together for about 2 years and we moved in together to a house in September, we have 3 cats together and lots of amazing memories and a connection we felt like we have never had with anyone else. We know and understand each other like we’ve never experienced.

I have been dealing by myself with an addiction to porn and also commitment issues, the issue with commitment went away when I started this relationship because I felt like this girl was the best thing to ever happen to me. But, when I was alone, I would sext with another girl I have never met before over Snapchat. 

This girl and I had sexted before my current relationship, so it felt easy when I felt horny I could just message her and get my rocks off. I also had the classic problem of just following on Instagram a massive number of women that I have never met or known just because they were simply attractive.

For context, we had a bump in the relationship before either trust when I bought a firearm and stored it at home without consulting her and that was an issue of trust between us. She wanted to look past it and move forward because of how much we love each other.

She woke up one morning and as she told me felt like her entire body was telling her to go through my phone, and low and behold she sees my chat with this other girl. She now says she cannot be with someone who would do this to her and I believe her past boyfriend – which tragically passed away after their breakup and is a very tender spot for her – also did something similar to her which I did not know until now and she believes she deserves better and cannot allow herself to try to mend things together because it would be disrespectful to her.

When this came up it was finally time for me to get it together and tell her about the addiction I have been dealing with and it made me face deep down why I did what I did and I laid it all out to her, all of my flaws and this massive skeleton I have been holding in my closet which I never had the guts to go to her with or ask for help because I was so ashamed of myself and always felt disgusting about.

I want to do everything I could do to make amends and be a better person moving forward but as of now – which it has been only day it is very fresh – I have already mass unfollowed people that weren’t healthy for me or us from my social media, I have cut contact with the other girl never to speak again, I have deleted all trace of porn from my phone now disgusted with myself. She doesn’t know I’ve done all this but I don’t want to tell her because I don’t want it to seem like I’m just doing this for damage control, these are things I need to do if I’m going to have a healthier mental state.

I am willing to give this girl the world, she says she loves me still, and loves me so much but she said as of now, she does not want to try to repair things or work forward.

Blew It All Up

DEAR BLEW IT ALL UP: OK, so there’s a lot to untangle here BIAU, and I think you’re missing the most important part: your girlfriend’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to fix things with you. That’s pretty much the end of the story. No amount of breast-beating or mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa is going to change this, nor are heartfelt pleas that you want to give her the world. She’s out, you have to accept it, period, the end.

And I’m not exactly surprised because if we strip out the sordid details – more on that in a moment – it really just comes down to the fact that you violated her trust multiple times. And while I’ve got some side-eye for your girlfriend as well, this really comes down to “oh look, it’s the consequences of my own actions”.

Over the course of your letter, you indicate that you don’t really think about how your choices and actions affect others. Bringing a gun into the house – a place you share with your partner – without consulting or even telling her is a big goddamn deal. I will freely admit that I’m someone who believes we need stricter and more stringent gun laws in this country, so I’m not unbiased here, but this is information she had a right to know about and to be consulted on before you did it. Bringing a lethal weapon into your shared space is absolutely something that everyone gets to have a say over. The fact that you didn’t suggests a level of irresponsibility and a lack of consideration for how she might feel. Maybe she would’ve been cool with it, but you’ll never know, because you made this unilateral decision that potentially affects you, your partner, even your cats.

So, right off the bat, you’ve already set precedent for not considering how your actions will affect other people.

Then you cheated on her with your sexting buddy. While I’ve got my opinions on how much things like sexting or cam shows “count” as infidelity, the fact that this is a pre-existing and apparently ongoing relationship with another person absolutely kicks it up a level beyond sexy chats with random OnlyFans models or sex workers doing cam shows. The latter ain’t necessarily great. The former is absolutely going to feel like a betrayal to her, especially since you made a monogamous commitment. That manages to be strike two and three; it’s not really a surprise that she’s decided that she’s out. Even if she didn’t have trust issues – issues it seems that you knew about – this is a pretty good reason to think that you’re insincere in your protests about how you want to make this all better.

I’m not exactly thrilled with your partner either; I find it hard to believe she just had a random premonition to go through your phone. But as I’ve said: snooping is the sort of thing that only gets justified in retrospect, and in your case… well, it was absolutely justified.

Now, I’m going to be generous; I don’t see in your letter anything about having actually apologized, but it’s possible that you did and didn’t think to mention it. However, listing out the things you did wrong is not the same as an apology, it’s just a cataloging of s--tty behavior. Without actually expressing both regret and apologizing for doing so, all you’re doing is telling her things that she already knew. Laying out all the supposed skeletons in your closet is likewise not actually an apology; it’s just drama. That’s just a “grand gesture” that supposedly demonstrates your remorse – look, I am so sorry that I’m going to reveal everything bad about me! – which is pretty damn disingenuous, seeing as the ultimate message is “I’m so sorry and so sad that you have to forgive me!”

Well, no. No she doesn’t. Because grand gestures aren’t apologizing, it’s just manipulation in an attempt to blunt the force of her very understandable anger and sense of betrayal. While it’s good that you seem – and I stress seem – to be indicating that you understand what you did wrong, that’s not the same as making amends or apologizing for what you did.

And it especially doesn’t help when you’re giving bulls--t excuses about why you did it – excuses that conveniently would diminish your capacity for culpability.  

Porn addiction is not a thing. It’s not in the DSM V, nor in any previous editions, nor is it recognized by groups like the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. While it’s certainly possible to have a problematic relationship with porn, it’s almost always a symptom of other issues, rather than an addiction. And in your case… that seems to be “I was horny”. You didn’t sext this person on Snapchat because you’re addicted, you were horny and wanted to get off. You didn’t follow hot women on Instagram because of an addiction, they were hot and made you horny and it got you off. These weren’t acts that you had no control over. These were things that were actively interfering in your life – you weren’t sneaking off from work to crank it to porn in the office bathroom or going through withdrawal if you went for too long without liking some random thirst traps, you were just being a horny f--ker and using the language of addiction to ease your sense of culpability. So needless to say: I’m not exactly sympathetic to your protestations here.

I also can’t help but notice that in your list of actions you’ve taken, you haven’t actually done any of the hard work that you would supposedly need. Congratulations, you mass-unfollowed people, I’m sure that was an absolutely grueling thirty seconds. That’s not restoring trust, nor is it trying to do better. It’s a show, a performance, not meaningful change. If we accept the addiction excuse – we don’t, but for the sake of argument – this is an alcoholic pouring all his vodka down the sink. It may remove everything within easy reach, but that’s not the same as actually addressing the addiction. The alcoholic can still go to bars and liquor stores. You still have internet access, Snapchat and Instagram; you could very easily just follow other Insta models and sext with other sex workers.

What would be addressing the issue? Talking to a therapist. Not, I must stress, going to some bulls--t sex-addiction group, but an actual therapist to talk about why you don’t seem to be willing to consider how your actions affect other people, why you’re willing to betray someone’s trust in many different ways. It’s going to require actual self-examination, not just surface level “oh, I’m ‘addicted’ to porn” and digging into real issues instead of ones that portray you in some valiant struggle against your baser urges. Because it isn’t “porn addiction” that made you keep sexting, any more than it made you decide to get a gun without telling your partner… but “I don’t think about other people” isn’t as aggrandizing a struggle as “I want to be good but I am always at war with these horrible, horrible desires…”

If you want to make it clear that you want to be better, then the first step is going to be accepting not just responsibility but the consequences of your actions. Your girlfriend is leaving you because of it. Trying to convince her to stay is more about trying to undo the outcome, not the accepting that this is the price you’re paying for your mistake.

You f--ked up, and you want forgiveness, but part of finding redemption is understanding that the people you hurt may never forgive you and you have to accept that. If you’re so disgusted with yourself and want to change, then you need to do it for yourself. Do it because you need to change, not because you want your girlfriend back. True change has to come from within, not just because you finally got caught. Until you understand and accept that, nothing is going to change, and you’ll be back here in another couple years with another break up and tearful story about what went wrong.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My boyfriend and I have been together for 14 years…however, I think we just aren’t meant for each other. We never thought about the future in a real way all this time and now here we are. I always knew he wanted kids, but I don’t. He loves me and would rather just be with me, even if it means not having them, he said. But then he’ll always bring them up, like he’s trying to convince me. In my head I’m getting too old to have kids (39), and honestly, I don’t want them. But he could still have kids. He would make a great dad. I feel like I’m denying him something that he’s always wanted by being with me.

There are other things too, like our eternal fighting! We fight about everything, small fights, big fights. Fights about arguing, if I interrupt him. It’s exhausting.

I’ve thought about this off and on for a few years, still never sure if we are right for each other. We do have good times, both 90s kids, we had the same type of childhood. And we do like a lot of the same things, but we differ a lot too. And a few years ago, we got into massive screaming fights. I can’t even remember why now. But I feel like I stayed during those hard times, because we had a dog that both of us loved deeply. I felt so guilty when she hears us fight. Sometimes we’d fight about her and how to take care of her. I did too much, him too little imo. But last year she passed away, it was devastating. And now lately I can’t stop thinking about being alone. Our dog was the glue that kept us together.

But he’s lost a lot in his life, year after year, and I feel like it would be so awful if I left too. The guilt is horrible! I love him so much, I really do, just not the same as I used to. But he’s still very in love with me, and it scares me. He can be such a good boyfriend, he’s caring, wants me to do what I want to do, he’s not controlling, we trust each other completely and are both extremely loyal. Maybe to a fault.

But he also has never been financially stable. I’ve been the breadwinner out entire relationship. He’s always said he hates it and has been trying to change. This year he has finally started pulling some cash in, but I don’t even care anymore. Yes, I’d prefer him to make money, but now only so I don’t feel guilty leaving him high and dry.

I guess I’m already leaning to breaking up. But what if it’s a horrible mistake! And then I’m sad and alone and he’d be done with me for doing it. I’m already so sad, I still haven’t recovered from our dog dying. And he’s still in pain from the loss of his Dad a year before. It feels so wrong to break up, but then why do I keep thinking about it!

Please help, should we break up? And if I do it, how and when? I read that no time is a good time, but Jesus, we’ve been together so long, how on earth do you say goodbye to a decade+?

We’ve talked about “if we ever break up” scenarios and we’d like to stay friends. I really do. He’s a fantastic person, and has been so supportive, he really is a decent boyfriend.

I’m crazy right?

There’s just a part of me that rather be alone now. I don’t want to take care of anyone or anything. I don’t want another dog, but he does. Just another thing I’m denying him! But it can be so exhausting with him. It shouldn’t be hard to be in a relationship, right? Especially after this long? Or does it get harder? Idk! Idk!

We know each other like the backs of our hands. I’ve always been fickle, which he hates! I just don’t know what to do. I’m so lost, and scared. And I don’t want to hurt him. Please help me, I immensely appreciate it.

Ever Have That Feeling Where You Just Want To Go?

DEAR EVER HAVE THAT FEELING WHERE YOU JUST WANT TO GO: Can I ask you a question, EHTF? Just between you and me and all the folks reading this… are you asking me for advice, or are you asking me for permission to do something you’ve already decided you want to do? Because if I’m being honest here, it sounds to me like you’re asking me to talk you out of a decision you’ve already made. I think you already know the answer. I think you’re afraid of admitting it and going through with it and that’s why you’re reaching out.

I’ll get into the weeds of your relationship in a second, but first I want to talk a bit about why you’re having these feelings about it. What you’re experiencing is what’s known as The Sunk-Cost Fallacy – it’s a cognitive bias where you’re hesitant to make a change or give up on something because you’ve already invested heavily in it.

People tend to be incredibly loss-averse; we don’t like the idea that we’ve given something up when we’ve put a lot of resources into it – whether those resources are money, material, effort or time. To acknowledge that this thing isn’t working is to admit that those resources have been wasted and lost. That’s a hard thing to do; it hits us in our ego as much as it does in our wallet because it requires admitting that maybe we’ve made a mistake. Or that maybe we made a bad investment and we don’t like the idea that it’s never going to pay out. Or giving up on a relationship that we’ve put so much time and effort into.

The problem is that this is precisely what the aphorism about throwing good money after bad is referring to; we don’t want to admit what is pretty obvious, and so we double and triple down in order to prove that no, we didn’t f--k up, that this was a good decision. The belief or hope that we can pull out a win and thus validate all the pain and frustration and angst was actually worth it is incredibly powerful. And God knows we swim in a sea of stories and anecdotes and messages about the value of persistence in the face of relentless opposition, or how hanging on even when all hope is gone is good. All of that makes it really hard to take a cold, analytical look at things and say “yup, time to cut bait.”

This is especially true when it comes to relationships; I can’t count the number of stories and movies and thought-pieces that all boil down to “you don’t to give up all these years together, right? RIGHT?”, as though longevity is inherently more important than, say, actual compatibility or happiness.

Now, me? I’m a big believer in “don’t stick with a mistake, just because you took a long time making it.”

So, let’s get back to the state of your relationship. It sounds to me like you know that this isn’t working and that there’re foundational issues that just don’t line up for the two of you. The question about children is a prime example. This is an area where there really isn’t any way to compromise; you either have kids or you don’t. You can’t rent one to try out for a limited time, nor can you have them and then say “actually, this doesn’t work for me” and return them. And while your boyfriend says that he’s cool with not having kids, the fact that it keeps coming up is pretty telling about how he actually feels.

The fights are another issue. Fighting and conflict in a relationship is inevitable, no matter how compatible you are or how good your relationship is; you’re two individuals, which means that you’re inevitably going to have interests or desires that bump into each other. That’s normal. But when you’re always fighting, that’s a bad sign. It suggests that either conflicts aren’t getting resolved, or that you’re addressing symptoms but not underlying causes. Sometimes identifying those underlying causes can resolve the fights… but sometimes they’re a sign of greater incompatibilities or greater conflicts.

And, as you said: it’s exhausting. You’re always on guard, always weighing what to say next and always wondering what’s going to trigger the next fight. That’s no way to live, especially with someone you care about and who cares about you.

Now, I suspect that the complicating factor here is that it doesn’t sound like your boyfriend is a bad guy. He’s got his flaws, sure, but we all do. He’s not an awful person who treats you badly; if he were, you wouldn’t feel conflicted like this. It would be easier if he were an asshole or abusive or was constantly cheating or something. But he isn’t. He’s just someone who doesn’t seem to be right for you and this relationship just isn’t meeting your needs.

That’s a perfectly valid reason to break up! You don’t need some causus belli to justify ending a relationship, nor do you need to prove mistreatment to The Relationship Council in order to get their stamp of approval. You can break up for any reason, any reason at all, no matter how absurdly small or petty. The fact that you’re just not compatible and the relationship brings you more stress than joy are good reasons – even a relationship spanning decades. All that time together doesn’t change that it’s not working. It may have been working before, especially in the early days, but it isn’t now, and that’s ok. Not every relationship is meant to last forever. We’re always growing and changing, and sometimes that growth means that we outgrow the people we’re with and the relationships we have. It doesn’t mean anybody did anything wrong or didn’t work hard enough; it just means that you were right for each other for a little while and now you’ve reached the natural end of this relationship.

I think you know this. I think you know that this is a break up that needs to happen. But it’s that sunk cost fallacy that’s hitting you and throwing all these objections in your way. Would it suck to leave him now? Yes, it will. Will you feel bad for leaving him at this point where he’s still hurting? Of course you will! You’re a caring and empathic person. Just because you don’t want to be in a relationship with him any more doesn’t mean that you don’t care about him or want to cause him pain. In an ideal world, you’d find a point where you could leave him, if not better than when you found him, at least in a relatively decent place.

But ask yourself this: how long are you willing to stay in this relationship while you wait for the “right” time? A month? Six months? Another year? Five years? Because I am here from the future, and I’m here to tell you that there will always be a reason why it’s the wrong time to break up. There will always be something that says “no, this isn’t the right time” – it’s too close to an anniversary, or a holiday. There will always be another tragedy, another setback, another problem that kicks things further down the line.

And while I realize that you don’t want to leave him in ways that make things hurt worse… sticking around when you clearly want to leave is going to hurt far worse than leaving now. Because while leaving now would hurt, finding out that you’ve been quietly dying inside and looking for the exits is going to hurt worse. This is the sort of thing that retroactively poisons happy memories as they have to recontextualize their time with you and think about how when het hought you two were having a good time, you were hoping for some sort of opportunity to cut yourself loose.

That’s a cruel thing to do to someone. You may not intend it to be – you’re actively trying to be kind!  – but that’s still the sort of pain we try to avoid causing in others when we end a relationship.

And it’s going to be worse for you, because the time spent waiting is more time you’re losing to a relationship that isn’t working and isn’t going to work. It doesn’t matter how much you water a dead plant; you’re wasting the water, and the plant’s never going to grow.

I know you’ve got all this shared history together. He’s not a bad guy, and you genuinely care and want to support him. But I promise you: you can care for him and support him without being in a relationship with him. Setting yourself on fire to keep him warm isn’t going to make this better.

So yes, I think you need to do what you clearly want to do: break up with him. There’s no painless way to do it; the goal is to not cause unnecessary pain, which means you want to treat it like ripping off a bandage: quickly and in one swift, smooth motion. That means you don’t talk it out, you don’t do it in stages and you don’t discuss it before you head out the door. You don’t need to list all the reasons, especially if talking it through ups the odds that you’ll back down at the last second. This isn’t a negotiation or a dialogue, it’s a download. You tell him that it’s over – you’re not happy, this hasn’t been working for you for a long time, and you’re done – and then you go. You can acknowledge the good times and the time you’ve spent together; that doesn’t vanish into the ether just because you’re ending things. But don’t forget that the fact that times were good doesn’t change that they’re notgood, now.

Don’t wait for “a better time”, because there won’t be one. The best time to leave was yesterday. The second best is today. The worst is tomorrow. A clean break heals the fastest and the swift sharp pain fades quickest. This chapter of your life has reached it’s conclusion; it’s time to start the next one.

It’ll hurt, but you’ll both 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: I fell in love with a Very Unsuitable Person – as in potentially career ending levels of unsuitable – and for a while he loved me back. It was a non-sexual but highly-romantic relationship.

There were several opportunities for me to have said no, or halted the relationship, but I didn’t want to, so I continued seeing him until he broke up with me rather abruptly.

It’s been three months since the breakup, and I still miss him so much it is a constant ache, a whine in the back of my head. I know I got very, very lucky. It was a clean break, no drama on either side, end of career averted, Very Unsuitable Person voluntarily f--ked off out of my life. The universe gave me a mulligan.

I don’t think there’s any possibility of him popping back up again, either. But God do I miss him. I miss the laughter and smiles and in-jokes and sweetness. I miss the sound of my name from his mouth. I miss the way his breathing sounded when we watched a movie together and he was really into it. I miss the intensity of the way he loved me, and how it felt like it was us against the world. And if he did get in touch, apologize, explain…I would seriously consider taking him back, fully cognizant of how bad an idea that would be, and how I would be throwing away that mulligan.

How do I him-proof myself? How do I get over this? Has it just not been long enough?

I’m just so sad.

Sincerely yours,

Lucky, But Not Loved

DEAR LUCKY BUT NOT LOVFED: This sounds rough, LBNL, and I’m sorry you’re going through it. I do wish you’d explained a little bit more about why it would’ve been so unsuitable and how the two of you were in this romantically fraught relationship, and that could give a little more insight into how you’re feeling now.

But I strongly suspect that a big reason why you’re still hung up on this is because the relationship ended so abruptly. It’s the suddenness of the break that screws with you, in part because one moment it’s there and everything is great and then suddenly it’s gone.

It’s one thing if you feel a relationship starting to wind down – whether you’re realizing you’re losing that loving feeling or they seem to be pulling a slow fade. Or if you’re constantly in conflict and the good times seem like an increasingly distant memory. In those cases, you have more of a transition period, where your status quo has been changing and the relationship itself is altering until you reach the point where it ends. On those occasions, while it sucks that things fell apart, you at least saw it coming. You’re able to look back on the good times and miss them, but you can also see how – if not why – it all ended.

When it comes screaming out of the clear blue sky, however, there’s no adjustment, no acclimation, no awareness of the change. It’s a bit like a chair you were sitting in vanished and dropped you to the floor, or a door you were leaning on opened without warning. This thing you had is gone and so quickly that you stumble and fall and you have no idea what the hell happened.

Small wonder that you still feel so strongly about it. Yeah, you know this wasn’t good for you and it’s better that the relationship is over, intellectually… but emotionally, it’s next to impossible to make that sort of 180 degree turn in an instant. This is in no small part because what you’re feeling is as much chemical as it is emotional. You’re literally in withdrawal; you were still in the phase where your brain was being flooded with dopamine and oxytocin when he was around. You were getting high off of him – literally – and now suddenly your dealer cut you off with no warning.

So what do you do about it? Well, part of it is that you give yourself closure. While this wasn’t the way you would’ve wanted the relationship to end, you know it needed to, and it’s better that things are over. You can and should acknowledge that you miss how you felt with him – trying to pretend you don’t just doesn’t work – but you also acknowledge that it’s better that this is over.

The next part is that you treat this like any other break up. It may not have been a conventional or even healthy relationship, but it was a relationship, and it ended. So you sit with your feelings and let yourself feel them. You mourn the loss, you regret that it had to happen this way, and you process. Give yourself a couple weeks to have a sad about it, then work on reconnecting with your friends and family. Focus on things that help generate some oxytocin – laughing with your friends, physical touch, good conversations and so on. Get a massage, cuddle with your cat or dog, go for long walks or hit the gym and get your blood pumping and endorphins flowing.

And then? Well, you will be surprised to wake up one day soon and realize that while you still miss these things you used to have with him… it’s not as bad as it was. And as each day passes, you’ll realize that you’re feeling a little better than the day before. And a bit better the next day, and so on and so on. Every day, you’ll miss him a little bit less. ��And in time, you’ll realize that not only are you over him, but you’re ready to go out and meet someone new – someone better for you, who isn’t six red flags in a trench coat. And some day, if Mr. Bad Decision does come back into your life – a day that, God willing, may never come – you’ll realize that you don’t want him back. You will have moved on and whether you’ve met someone who better meets your needs or not, you’ll know that this guy holds no more temptations 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