DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Long time lurker occasional letter writer, you have helped me and many others navigate the dark and turbulent waters of non-monogamy and alternate lifestyle dating. I have been, and continue to be happily poly, 5ish years in. It was not an easy transition, and decidedly playing the relationship game on Hard mode, but it’s been ultimately worth it for me and my partners. All of this to preface my current situation. 

I have 2 very stable long-term partners that I love. I had been dating a third, really sweet guy, who had just gotten divorced and was ready to explore some other dating options. We had a conversation about polyamory and our long-term relationship goals. He was currently happy to date multiple people and enjoy more casual hangouts, with his ultimate end game to go back to monogamy for stability. I get it, relationships are hard! And polyamory is NOT a good fit for everyone. 

So, with the knowledge that we would never be more than causal partners, we ended up dating for roughly a year. He worked on himself, picked up hobbies went to therapy and decided he was finally ready to find his next full-time partner. So, when he told me that he was in love with a really cool girl, I was thrilled for him. We had previous plans for a weekend away, but I told him I would bow out, or we could go just as friends. As I said, he’s a cool dude and I like him. The original relationship plan was to date, and then hopefully stay friends afterwards. 

Yeah…I may have been too optimistic. 

By the time the weekend trip rolls around, they had been dating for 2 weeks. The weekend goes off with no problems and only one reminder that, Nope, really, we are just friends now. And all is well…

A week later, they are broken up and he asks if we can date again. And it’s on me that I said yes. Because it hadn’t been long. Fast forward another week, and he’s yet again madly in love with someone new, so no hard feelings (there were absolutely hard feelings)… I wish them well and off he goes, two weeks later I get the drunk call of. Bad news, she broke up with me, but that means we can date again!

This is when I realized he assumed that I was going to be the stand in girlfriend. And told him sorry but I am not a consolation prize. He threw an absolute fit and it went about as well as you would think. He later apologized for said outburst admitted to being in love with me. But knowing that I wouldn’t just be with him meant he had to find someone else. I may have gotten a nervous eye twitch when I had to explain to him that he threw away my affection twice, and honestly assumed I would continue to do so anytime

He was freshly single… this dude DOES NOT understand polyamory at all. And now I just feel very, very tired. And all of this to say, how the hell do I talk to people who want to date, that this IS in fact a real relationship, and just because it’s temporary doesn’t mean I should be treated as an afterthought.

So Very Tired…

DEAR SO VERY TIRED: This is, unfortunately, not an uncommon problem, SVT, and it’s going to continue to be a problem as polyamory and ethical non-monogamy become increasingly normalized and accepted.

I’ll be honest: there’re times when it feels difficult to write about topics like polyamory or kink or other relationship models that veer outside of the mainstream without feeling like maybe the “oh, you like $AUTHOR? Name three of their books” isn’t the worst way to go. As a general rule I think gatekeeping is bad; it generates a sense of faux-elitism and almost always serves to drive away people who are genuinely interested but may not (yet) have the same encyclopedic knowledge of the in-group. But when it comes to sex and relationships… well, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

A lot of people, for example, got interested in kink in the aftermath of the release of 50 Shades of Gray. However, their knowledge of kink came almost exclusively from pop-culture… and frankly, that taught them all the wrong lessons. From not understanding the dynamics of a scene, the purpose of aftercare or even what constitutes a difference between kink and abuse, a lot of folks were operating with what they thought was a level of knowledge that they didn’t actually have. This created a situation where “knowing just enough to be dangerous” wasn’t a quippy reply but a statement of literal fact – many people didn’t understand, for example, the ways to communicate during a scene or why they want to use specific tools or toys, or rules and best practices for kink play. Many people not familiar with kink, for example, might not realize that tying someone up with certain types of rope or immobilizing them with police-style hand-cuffs could cause permanent nerve damage to their unsuspecting partner, or that leaving an immobilized person alone could potentially lead to death.

The same goes for ethical non-monogamy and polyamory; the knowledge that people think they have isn’t necessarily complete, comprehensive or even – in some cases – in the same zip code as correct. Many times, people who haven’t managed to sort out basic issues of trust, communication or connection in their monogamous relationships will try to enter poly or ENM relationships and not realize that they’re going to be bringing the same conflicts, but multiplied exponentially.

These misunderstandings, even when coming from someone well-intentioned, can lead to a lot of unnecessary pain, misery and in many cases, shattered and failed relationships. There’re reasons why there’s so much discourse around The Right Way To Poly – because there’re so many ways for things to go wrong. It may seem simple and intuitive at first, but those gaps in both knowledge and experience can lead to otherwise easily avoidable conflicts.

Hell, Lily Allen’s “West End Girl” is a treatise on one of the ways a poly relationship can fall apart, messily and all over the place.

Which brings us, kicking and screaming, back on topic to your question, SVT. And while poly is a key detail to the issue at hand, the bigger issue was your ex.

I agree: his ignorance of what polyamory was and how it works was a problem. He didn’t actually want polyamory. In fact, I’m not sure he knew what he did want; he just knew what he didn’t want, which was sexual exclusivity. And to be fair… that’s not an unreasonable thing! He just came out of a divorce and wanted to have some time to date around. All well and good, a tale as old as time, too bad the dude’s a slime. If he had stuck to this while he was trying to relearn who he was and what he wanted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

But the problem is that he wanted a casual relationship and – like many people before him – he took the nature of the relationship as a sign that he could also treat you casually. He may not have intended to do so… but that doesn’t change what he did. And what he did, intentionally or no, was not just hurtful but insulting.

One of the reasons why I often feel like maybe a little gatekeeping is warranted with ENM is because people who aren’t experienced with it or know people who are non-monogamous – not just “aren’t exclusive” but actively practice non-monogamy – often have a lot of mistaken ideas of what that means in practice. Many think that poly and ENM people don’t experience jealousy or that people who are ENM are horny, easy or indiscriminate in who they sleep with. Others think that the fact that their relationship isn’t exclusive or is short-term means that they can enter or exit it with little care for their partner. A casual or non-exclusive relationship may mean that you aren’t in love and don’t expect love to be a major part of the connection, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t have feelings… feelings that get hurt when someone treats you like an object.

And that’s precisely what he did: he treated you like an object, rather than a person. He very clearly thought that the lack of exclusivity (and existence of other partners) meant that his relationship with you was inherently lesser than a potentially monogamous one. He saw you as an option, rather than a priority, dropping you like a bad habit the instant that a “real,” “serious” (read: monogamous) relationship became an option, leaping in with greater verve and excitement than he showed with you. His mode of “hey, a better option showed up, I’m going to toss this aside for someone I literally just met” carries a metric f--k-ton of “you don’t matter”, whether he intended it or not.

Yeah, you both knew that this wasn’t going to be serious, or even a terribly long relationship, but that doesn’t mean you’re made of stone. And again, to be fair: you were trying to live up to the bargain you’d made about trying to be friends. So maybe I could see this as being a learning experience for him, particularly after he came back with his tail between his legs.

I would agree that you probably shouldn’t have taken him back. But hey, it’s understandable to think that maybe a lesson had been learned. Dude is a grown-ass man, after all.

But obviously he didn’t, seeing as he didn’t last a f--king week before falling “in love” again, ending things with you again and coming back a-f--king-gain not even two goddamn weeks later, tail between his legs and asking if you would be his crash pad.

Again.

I have had bagels that lasted longer than this guy’s relationships.

He even had the gall to throw “…but I’m really in love with you!” into the mix. Which, considering how quickly he fell “in love” with his other mono choices, ends up adding insult to injury.

But hey, he’s gone like last week’s compost and good riddance. The problem is though… he’s not alone. There’re a lot of folks who are 1000% convinced that they want and/or can handle a poly or ENM relationship, but who are also carrying around a lot of mononormativity. Sometimes it’s a matter of unpacking and unlearning old lessons, and that’s fine… but there are also folks, like this dude, who never stop thinking of monogamous relationships as being “real” or “meaningful” in ways that ENM ones “can’t” be. So I don’t blame you for being both exhausted and incredibly gun-shy.

And unfortunately, this is the part where I have to say that there really isn’t a good way of keeping this from happening again. An obvious answer would be “don’t date people who don’t have any experience in ENM” or “only date people within the ENM community”. But the obvious answer doesn’t actually help, because the problem isn’t the monogamy of it all. F--k knows people can be ENM or polyamorous and still treat their partners like accessories or an afterthought. The poly and ENM forums, subreddits and Facebook groups are littered with tales from folks who’re just as casual with their partners’ feelings as this bright spark was with yours.  

Now that having been said, there are a few things I recommend. Since you’re polyamorous and have two partners already, I think you’re well within your rights to filter out future potential partners – casual or serious – who don’t have experience with ENM or polyamory. While this can put a pretty significant limit on the raw number of matches, I think the tradeoff of not having to be their guide to the top of Mount Non-Monogamy and not having to hold their hand through the various trials and tribulations that can come with one’s first ENM experience would be worth it. And this is especially true for folks who are only dipping a toe into ENM but are more mono-oriented. You aren’t a foster partner, taking care of these dudes until they’re ready for their forever relationship after all. Even if it’s going to be a casual or limited relationship, better for it to be a relationship, rather than a stopping point on someone else’s journey of personal growth.

The second thing I would suggest is making how someone treats you a much stronger boundary issue. You don’t need to be their number one priority, but someone who can’t (or won’t) honor the relationship they have with you or treat you with respect as a person is someone who should – if not be given their first and possibly only warning – be shown the door. I also wouldn’t blame you for having a “Once we end this, that’s it, no take-backs” policy. That doesn’t mean that they’re dead to you – you were trying to stay friends with this guy, after all – but it does mean that they can’t keep trying to slide back to you when their next relationship fails.

Obviously, this doesn’t have to be an iron clad rule. If the person shows genuine growth and change and understanding, then maybe they can be an exception. But even then, I would suggest that this should only be after a significant amount of time; after all, this guy came crawling back almost immediately, having learned precisely nothing.

And the last thing I would suggest is the same thing I tell everyone who’s dealt with a partner who treated them too cavalierly: be careful with who you give your heart to and who you invest in, emotionally. A lot of heartache comes when we invest in someone before they’ve shown they’re someone worth investing in and before it’s time to invest in them. That means that things like overnights or trips together may need to be restricted to your committed partners – at least until the new person has reasonably proven themselves. And if you know that they’re always going to have one foot out the door, romantically speaking… well, they’re probably not going to be a great investment opportunity for you.

The road to making love work is never easy. But it is worth it.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m writing to you because of a problem I’m having with my fiancé’s parents that I’m worried is only going to get worse. 

I’ve been with “Janet”, now my fiancé, for three and a half years. Our personalities clicked from the moment we met at a creative-professionals-under-30 Meetup and we both realized very quickly that we had found our better half. I can’t believe how lucky I am that someone as talented, creative and ambitious as Janet, and she feels the same about me. We’re looking forward to being married and raising a family together. 

In that time, I’ve gotten to know her family and while her cousins, aunt and uncle all like me, my relationship with her parents has been polite at best. They’ve never been rude or openly inhospitable to me, even in a well-mannered way, but it’s impossible to miss that they’re tolerating me at best. I am not the only person who’s noticed this; Janet has mentioned it several times as well, to me and to her parents. 

The central conflict is that her parents are very small-c conservative – they are very firm on holding to long-running family traditions and ideas of what is or isn’t “appropriate” for people. They are big believers in conservative dress and careers and maintaining a very top down, Father-Knows-Best style patriarchal family dynamic. I, on the other hand, come from a family of aged out punks, former hippies and I-Remember-When-Burning-Man-Hadn’t-Sold-Out bohemians. While I can clean up nicely and I’ve got a degree and a steady job in a creative industry with a health salary, I’ve still got more Joe Strummer in my DNA than Joe Kennedy.  Janet was a private Catholic school and church girl, I was a high-school troublemaker, insert joke about opposites attracting/skater boy lyrics here. 

When their precious little girl brought home a guy with tattoos and piercings, who is most comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans and Docs instead of Brooks Brothers shirts, pleated slacks and loafers, there were some gritted teeth and forced smiles. They clearly thought their daughter was having a rebellious phase and hoped that they could wait things out.

(I feel like I should point out that Janet was 26 and considering a graduate degree when we met.)

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Now it seems as though they’re hoping to actively interfere in our relationship with a goal towards changing her mind. This is where it gets strange.

When it was becoming very clear that we were serious, and I was getting ready to propose, her father pulled me aside towards the end of a family visit. He told me that while his daughter could make her own decisions, he would not give me neither his permission nor his blessing to ask for her hand in marriage. Yes, he actually used the word “permission”.  According to him, I was not a good match for his daughter, and he didn’t want to see her “wasting her potential”. I told him that this was fine, I hadn’t been intending to ask his permission, seeing as it was 2025 and not the 1950s and Janet was her own woman who could make up her own mind.

Since then, both her father and her mother have been making comments to her about not “rushing into things”, “thinking about her future” and about whether certain careers (such as, say, mine) could actually support a family. Janet, now officially my fiancé, pointed out that between her salary and mine, we have a very comfortable income that easily supports our chosen lifestyle, and we’ve even saved quite a nice nest egg in our savings account for our future house and family. This doesn’t seem to have made a difference. 

They have also apparently been making a point to bring up “Brad”, a guy that Janet knew in high-school and college and how well he’s been doing lately. Brad is the son of one of her father’s friends, and according to Janet, her father had always hoped that she and Brad were going to get together some day. In fact, he had never really stopped trying to set them up, even after we started dating. Brad, in contrast to me, regularly wears suits and ties, quarter zips and khakis when he’s feeling casual and spicy. Unlike my “not serious, not ‘real’” job, Brad is in finance, on the glide path to joining the c-suite at his company and, also according to Janet, about as interesting as an empty beige wall and half as exciting.

Where things are getting weird and frankly uncomfortable is the fact we’re going to be spending the holidays with her family as per one of their unbreakable traditions, only we have just been informed that, in a stunning coincidence, Brad will be joining us. His family is out of the country while he had to stay behind for work and according to Janet’s father, it would be a shame for him to be alone for the holidays.

I don’t think I’m being excessively unreasonable to see this as a setup. I don’t have any worry about this actually working like he hopes, but I DO worry about the precedent this is setting for our future relationship. This feels like an escalation, and I can’t help but think that if this doesn’t get nipped in the bud, it’s only going to get worse. It’s very genteel boundary pushing now, but I don’t think I’m wrong to expect that there will be more, and possibly less genteel pushes and interference down the line. They’re already making noises about not being at the wedding, pointed questions about who’s going to pay for it all, and about limits on Janet’s ‘future when he’s gone’. 

(We both feel that these are series of veiled financial threats. This is not out of character for her father. He long used  money as a means of control, such as leveraging his paying for school and first apartment as getting a say over her education, university attendance and choice of majors.)

Neither of us are worried about the money. As I said, we’ve got a comfortable living and good savings. However, the behavior is bothersome and I don’t know how to handle this without an actual confrontation with her father, which Janet also wants to avoid. Janet strongly wants me to have a good relationship with her family, and that means it’s important to me. How do I deal with future in-laws who not only don’t like me, but seem to be set on actively bent on sabotaging our engagement? 

Planet Schmanet, Janet  

DEAR PLANET SCHMANET, JANET: There are times when I get letters that seem implausible enough that I feel like possibly investing some time into trying to track down which Hallmark Christmas movie or mid-tier shoujo romance manga they come from, just for the challenge. And then I remember that I’ve got deadlines and my hyperfocus would just lead to reading far too many Wikipedia and TVTropes pages, so better to just roll with it as though it were real.

(In fact, I’m somewhat tempted to throw open the doors and make a challenge for 2026: send me your best Ask Dr. NerdLove letter based on fictional characters from movies, tv, games or comics and let’s see what happens.)

As per usual, I want to give my standard disclaimer about fake letters: I’m not terribly bothered by someone slipping a creative writing exercise past my filters and bullshit detector as long as there’s actually something useful to be learned. After all, all letters to an advice column are functionally fictional to everyone but the LW. And in this case, I think there is a useful lesson to be had from this.

In this case, PSJ, the lesson is this: this isn’t your fight to pick, and doing so is going to cause more problems than it’s worth. If you want to respect Janet’s wishes to have a healthy relationship with your in-laws, that is.

Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re not doing anything wrong here. I would agree that your future in-laws’ behavior is weirdly retrograde, boundary-pushing, and frankly, head-scratchingly passive-aggressive. It sounds to me like your future father-in-law has never fully accepted that a) he has a grown-ass adult for a daughter with her own life and free will, and b) that he doesn’t live in some weird John Hughes or Joel Schumacher movie. Which is especially sad because at least the rich asshole bullies and villains are interesting.  

(Plus, it would lead to wacky Wedding-Crashers/Meet-The-Parents-esque shenanigans that would make for a memorable holiday visit instead of trying to quietly drink away the second-hand embarrassment at watching all this sub-par manipulation go down. Hope the wine’s good enough to make up for it. Although if he invites you to try his special vintage of Amontillado, I recommend you decline. Politely.)

He also, apparently, managed to raise a child to adulthood without ever learning the lesson that obvious parental disapproval has a tendency to make the forbidden fruit all the more tempting. I mean, shit, even The Fantasticks knew how to lead with that one.

You are correct: you don’t need his blessing or his approval. It’s nice to have, and it makes the future relationship a little less contentious. However, seeing as how women’ve had the right to vote, own property and manage their own finances for the last 3/4s of a century, it’s hardly necessary.

I’m also somewhat surprised by the implied-if-apparently-impotent threats of financial coercion. Sure, writing them out of the will is a tried-and-true way of keeping failsons and daughters in line, but seeing as Janet has her own career and bank account entirely separate from them, I’m not sure what the point would be. Maybe the estate she would inherit would mean wealth beyond dreams of avarice, but it hardly sounds like meaningful leverage to threaten it when she’s handling her own bills. Maybe it’s because he thinks you’re a filthy gold digger trying to woo his daughter in order to abscond with her money?

Dunno, I’m running out of hackneyed plots at this point.

The point is though: he may be your future father-in-law, but he’s not your father and getting in his face about this isn’t going to have the effect you might hope. About the only thing it will do is confirm that you’re some greaser thug from the wrong side of the tracks and cause him to dig in his heels even further. To be less colorful but still perfectly blunt about it: you have no leverage here to work with. You don’t have the sort of relationship where your disapproval would make a meaningful difference, nor do you have any sort of moral authority or influence to back up or enforce the consequences in a way that would be meaningful.

You know who does, however? Janet.  Your fiancé. His daughter. You know: the one he seems to be ignoring and treating like furniture while having these man-to-man discussions with you (and, I guess, Brad). Frankly, I’m a little surprised Janet isn’t the one getting in his face over this, seeing as she’s being disrespected even more than you are. Now, maybe it’s the case that she feels like this is just the family dynamic and expects it to blow over. Families have their quirks, and a lifetime of enduring passive-aggressive manipulative bullshit shows up in all sorts of ways. But the fact of the matter is that you are correct: habitual line-steppers tend to keep line-stepping until someone makes them stop.

I don’t know if your future family is seriously (or fictionally) trying to sabotage things or not, but this sort of interference isn’t going to stop. While they may not try to honey-pot you into a divorce or persuade your fiancé to dump you for a Man In Finance, the odds of them being intrusive grandparents who undermine your authority with your future children or interfere with their upbringing is pretty damn high. Father may not actually know best, but Grandpa seems like the kind of person who’s going to try to assert his will through the grandkids as proxies in his weird-ass dominance and control games.

You and Janet need to have a talk about her family’s behavior, and then she needs to have a very pointed talk with daddy dearest. He doesn’t need to approve or bless the marriage, but he sure as hell needs to accept it and to stop trying to interfere – now and in the future. And while he may think that he has a financial lever to hold over Janet’s future, she has a far more potent one: her presence in their lives. Her disapproval weighs a hell of a lot more than yours does and has much more impact than throwing threats of disinheritance around.

If she’s as uncomfortable with her folks’ behavior as you are, then she needs to take point on this and make it clear that the bullshit has to stop. She may have grown up with it, but the key word here is “grown up”. As in: she is one, and they need to act like it. It’s one thing to tolerate it when one’s folks have actual control and authority over you. It’s another entirely to continue tolerating it when you’re a full-ass adult and their levers of power have been disconnected by her having her own life and finances.

If they’re going to play stupid games like this, they get to win stupid prizes, and those prizes include “spending the holidays with her husband’s family”, “breaking family traditions” and “not having a relationship with their grandchildren.”

Not to mention, there’ll be no wacky sequels where they have to adjust to meeting your punk/boho family and your mother-in-law drinks magic mushroom tea by accident and trips balls while your father-in-law tries to wrap his head around the concept of tofurkey or doing a Three Wise Men with your punk uncle.

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: My ex-girlfriend is confusing me and I don’t know what to do about it. We broke up six months ago when her grandmother died suddenly and she told me that she realized that she didn’t want to be in a relationship. I was heartbroken, because I was madly in love, but I respected her decision. I went no contact for a while because it hurt too much to even see her name in my texts, and I thought I had moved on.

A few weeks ago, she contacted me and asked if we could give things another try. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was and so I said yes immediately. But since then, things have felt strained to me. We had a date shortly after she asked me that ended with us kissing like teenagers in the back seat of my car. I thought we were back together and I was incredibly happy. But now everything feels weird. 

When we get together, it feels like talking to a stranger, where conversation topics run dry or we keep having uncomfortable silences. I reach out to touch her and I don’t get much of a response. She doesn’t get tense or push me away and she will often touch me back but it feels like she feels like she should rather than she wants to. And we definitely haven’t been physical like we had been after that first date. We’ve had a kiss good night, but it’s been a quick kiss on the lips, that’s it.

I don’t understand what’s happening. She asked me if we could try again, but it feels like I’m the only one who thinks we’re dating. Am I doing something wrong? Did I move too fast? What’s going on? Please help, I am so confused right now.

Strike Two?

DEAR STRIKE TWO: Ooof. I have been there more than I care to think about, ST, so I feel you. There’s something uniquely uncomfortable when you think your relationship is going one way, but all evidence suggests that not only is it the opposite, but it may not be a relationship at all.

But I think I know what’s going on here, and it stems from your first break up.

Here’s the thing: when there’s a momentous or sudden change in our lives, it has a tendency to make us take stock. A death, particularly the death of someone we were close to is the ultimate change, and one that really prompts us to take a long, hard look at our lives. It forces us to confront our own mortality, which brings up a lot of questions: is this the life I want to be leading? Am I actually living my life, or have I just been going on autopilot? Am I even happy with how things are now?

It’s not surprising, really, that after losing a family member, someone will take stock and decide that maybe they need to make some changes. A lot of times, it prompts people to finally pull the trigger on things that had been lingering in the back of their head; the loss brought a sort of clarity that they hadn’t had before, bringing a greater sense of urgency. Don’t wait any longer, you never know what might happen.

But that clarity doesn’t always stay clear, especially as time goes by. Sometimes that loss prompts us to make changes for the sake of change; we just want things to be different, and we don’t think about what that might mean or look like or feel like. And if one of the changes you made was to end a relationship… well, it’s not unusual to ask yourself whether that was a good idea or not.

The problem is, though, that questioning whether something was a mistake doesn’t mean that it was… particularly with break ups. One of the questions I ask when people ask me whether they should try to get back with their ex is: do you miss them? Or do you miss what they represent? This is important, because often what we miss isn’t necessarily the person, but routine. Familiarity. There’s a comfort in the known and the familiar, and it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and habits, simply because they’re the known. Our brains, after all, don’t like change, and will often resist it – sometimes even to the point of what’s known as an ‘extinction burst’, a last-minute sudden and nigh-irresistible desire for the thing that we no longer have. And so… we go back.

And at first, maybe it feels right. Our brains flood us with dopamine and oxytocin again because we’re not trying to force it out of the groove we’ve carved. It’s the comfort of the known, the golden haze of nostalgia. The problem is, though, that this doesn’t change why we broke up in the first place. Those issues are often still there. So, what feels right at first… doesn’t feel so “right” a little later on. Sometimes it even starts to feel weird or uncomfortable, because of that conflict between the comfort of the known and why you broke up. And while you may not necessarily realize it when it’s happening, that conflict tends to show up in ways you feel and behave.

As much as I hate to say it, I think your girlfriend asked to give things another try because of that feeling of missing the routine. I think that the tension, distance and awkwardness you’re feeling is the result of her starting to realize that getting back together wasn’t what she wanted after all. And, again, I hate to be the one to say this but… I think she’s not sure how to tell you that she thinks this was a mistake.

To be clear: I don’t think she’s doing this intentionally. I think she sincerely thought that this is what she wanted. I suspect that part of the reason for the tension is that she feels torn between being honest with you and not wanting to hurt you again. And while that’s an understandable, even laudable desire, I think it’s ultimately causing more harm than good.

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I that I have to say it: I think you need to be the one to rip off this particular bandage. It’s going to hurt like seven forms of hell, but I think the best thing you can do – for yourself, as much as for her – is to be the one to say “this isn’t working.” Not “what’s going on?”, not “are we ok?” or discussing why things feel tense between you, but to say “this clearly isn’t what either of us want.”

And it’s really not. She doesn’t seem to want to be in this relationship and you don’t want to feel this distance and tension with someone you care about. Letting this continue isn’t fair to either of you; you’re feeling hurt by the distance and separation and she likely feels horrible about how being the reason why you’re hurting. And I suspect she feels more than a little stuck, too.

This is why I think the kindest thing you can do – for yourself as much as for her – is to be the one to end it. It doesn’t need to be a big production. Just tell her that this clearly isn’t working. As much as you want this to work, you don’t want to be with someone who isn’t ready or excited to be there with you, and it’s better for both of you if you stop now before it gets any harder. 

I don’t recommend saying “we can still be friends” or making any promises or statements about the future. Right now, I don’t think either of you are in a place where it makes sense to do so, and I think you’d both feel an urge to try to force a relationship, instead of allowing a new one to grow… if one does. So, keep it short, simple and fast. The clean break is a lot of immediate pain in the moment, but it ultimately hurts the least and heals the fastest.

There may be a time in the future when the two of you can circle back around – when you both have had time to get distance, to grow and change and know what you both want and need. But that’s the future. For now, I think the best thing you can do for yourself and for her is to draw the curtain on this relationship.

Take some time to feel the f--k out of your feels afterwards. You’re having to say goodbye to this relationship twice, and that makes it almost four times as rough. It absolutely sucks and I’m so sorry you’re going through it. But I’m someone who’s been there and done that – many times – and I can tell you from experience: you will recover. It’s going to hurt, and it’ll hurt a lot I’m sure, but you will feel better, and likely sooner than you think. It’s a little like finally removing a splinter that’s been dug in deep; the pain of extracting it is huge, but it will allow you to finally heal fully.

I know how bad it feels, and I know you won’t believe me but: this too, shall pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

You’ll be ok.

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