DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: If a 32-year-old man is morbidly obese short ugly poor has a small penis and has only had sex once should he give up on the hope of a fit good looking attractive woman ever picking him and loving him if he’s so unattractive even at his best and he refuses to date obese unattractive women because of the comparison how he’s with someone so unattractive and his friends and enemies all have attractive wives and immensely better lives than him? And even if he loses 130 pounds he’s still not going to attract attractive women only average woman? It’s not fair for me to accept being a loser when I’ve had it as bad as I’ve had it. Or bust my ass just to still not be good enough. Everyone tells me to lower expectations but I don’t want to, I hate dieting and exercising and if I put myself through misery and I’m still too ugly for women I want then that means I suffered for nothing. I hate being fat and short and never getting a 8, 9, and 10. What am I supposed to do?

Fat Short Lonely and Doomed

DEAR FAT SHORT LONELY AND DOOMED: Look, FSLD, I’m going to let folks peek behind the curtain a bit and say that this is the third or fourth letter you’ve submitted in as many months this year alone, all of which just have variations of the same complaint. So, I’m going to be blunt here and ask you a very simple question: what are you willing to do in order to stop being a loser?

If you want things to change, then you’re going to have to change them. You’re going to have to decide if you hate your situation more than you hate what you have to do to change and improve it.

The thing is, you have laid out what you feel are your problems. That implies pretty strongly that you know what you can do about them. You just don’t want to. That’s not even tough-love-self-help-that-isn’t-actually-help bulls--t, you say this in your letter.

Case in point: you hate being fat. Well, your options are very clear: diet and exercise, GLP-1 or similar medication, surgery, learning to love your body regardless of size – whether individually, in combination with other options or all of the above. Which is it going to be?

You want to be with 8s, 9s and 10s? Ok… leaving aside the inherent side-eye I have for ranking people like that, what steps will you take to become someone who 8s, 9s and 10s want to date? What are you willing to change about yourself and how will you go about doing it?

Of course, you don’t have to do those things. You could stay the same size and shape you are. You can accept that you’re not someone who dates 8s – 10s. You can learn to be cool with yourself, to actually love yourself and find the people who love you as you are now.

You could stop being a loser by deciding you’re not a loser. You can change the terms of what being a loser means to you.

Of course, that may mean that the people who come to love you aren’t models or aren’t going to be the sort of person who would make your friends jealous, and you’ve already stated that this would be “lowering your expectations” and you don’t want that either.

But consider, why should women – not just women you deem to be attractive but women overall – be willing to give you grace that you aren’t willing to give them? Why should they be willing to accept you, with all of your supposed flaws, when you would find someone similar to be an insult?

And why should someone want to pick you when even you wouldn’t pick you? It’s ok to not be your own type, but there’s a difference between that and thinking that you and everyone like you is hideous and unacceptable.

So again, I ask: what are you willing to do to stop being a loser?

The answer seems to be “nothing”, because nothing you do will be a guarantee that you’ll do so much work and get rewarded with a girlfriend that will make you not a loser. But then again, that’s the same as it is for everyone. We all do things in the name of achieving a goal – all sorts of goals – that ultimately doesn’t end with us reaching that goal. That’s just life. Nobody is guaranteed anything in life except that life eventually ends. That’s the only place where life is fair: we all get a lifetime – a start and an ending.

What we do with it is ultimately up to us.

What you’re asking for is a magic solution and there isn’t one. Nobody is going to wave a wand and make things different. Nobody will sell you a magic formula that will change everything for you. Oh, they’ll sell you promises that never pay out and then offer to sell you more promises to fix the ones that they broke. They’ll sell you anger. They’ll sell you fear. They’ll sell you bitterness, resentment, despair and entitlement and tell you that if you pay a little more, they can make it all go away.

But they’ll never sell you a fix. They’ll never sell you change. They’ll just sell you the opportunity to sell you more bulls--t, until you don’t have anything left.

So I ask you a third time and the third time pays for all: what are you willing to do to stop being a loser?

Which is more important to you: complaining or things being different? If the only outcome that’s acceptable to you is to get exactly what you want, with no risk and minimal discomfort, then this is what you get.

Are you willing to invest in yourself? Are you willing to do hard work, grueling work, work that is going to require you to climb emotional mountains and test your resolve? Are you willing to do things that aren’t going to bring permanent changes and recognize that what needs to change is your relationship to yourself? Are you willing to change your idea of who you are, of who you “should” be? Are you willing to take risks, to make investments that won’t pay off in ways that you expect, but may very well pay off in ways you never dreamed?

Because that’s how things will be different. Whether that’s better or worse is going to depend on how you feel about how things are now.

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: Reaching out with some questions about a poly dynamic I’m currently in. I’ll start with some context…it’s a long story but I’ll try to make it as quick as possible without leaving anything important out.

So, my current partner, let’s call her Haley, and I have been together for 3 years. When we first started dating, she was my boss and was in a poly relationship with another person, let’s call him Alex. Alex was married in addition to dating Haley. When I started dating Haley, we were on a work contract out of state and Haley was my boss. Alex wasn’t happy that Haley was dating someone other than him, and was not supportive of the relationship.

Flash forward a few months: the work contract has ended, Haley is back living out west in the same city as Alex, and I’m home in NY. I go to visit Haley, and Alex and I meet a couple times. He is cold to me and every time we’re in the same place he instigates a fight with Haley, causing them to vanish and fight it out somewhere while I’m left to my own devices. Alex was also mad any time Haley and I were together, even though we were long distance and would only see each other for maybe a week every couple months for the first year. Haley was constantly upset that Alex was being so unsupportive and I was feeling horrible about it. I felt like a home wrecker, even though Alex was married to someone else. I felt like the more I heard about Alex’s behaviour, the less I liked him. At a certain point I asked if we could pause on sharing details of our other relationships, not a full don’t ask don’t tell, but moreso just trying to create a boundary so I didn’t have to hear about how Alex was mad yet again. It felt like because Alex sat in the seat of power in almost every way (he was older, a man, the pre-existing relationship, lived in the same city as Haley, more integrated into her everyday life, married with another partner, etc.), that his (hypocritical) distaste for Haley dating put my relationship with her at risk. This created a lot of anxiety for me in our first year of dating.

Flash forward a year and Alex and Haley break up. Alex proceeds to date some other friends in proximal circles and it ends in drama and with mutual friends experiencing a bad taste about Alex’s behaviour.

Flash forward another 10 months and Haley and Alex start to talk again. I’m all for being friends with exes, I am friends with all of mine except one with a particularly bad temper. A couple months later Haley tells me Alex has proposed they start dating again and she is interested. Understandably, I am hesitant. There has been no attempt to rectify the poor experience between Alex and I and I feel that until he is able to apologize, acknowledge and show some signs of genuine change, it is not a dynamic I want to be a part of again.

Another year passes and during it, every couple of months, it comes up again in a check in that Haley and Alex still want to date. Eventually I reach out to Alex and ask to chat. The conversation does not go well. I try to pause it several times and he keeps escalating it, leading to me very directly say that I need an apology from him before them dating again is something I can give me genuine blessing to/stick around for. He refuses to apologize, saying that we all played a role in the previous mess. Though I don’t disagree, I also feel that it’s unfair to sit in a position of power, lash out, and blame the person hit by the volatility equally for the impact.

Now Haley and I are in a bind. Our relationship is amazing other than this. Though we had different sex drives (mine much lower) she has freedom to explore with anyone else and she does full-service sex work. I am happy dating her and having the odd kiss or date here and there. We talk about living together, having kids, big dreams of the future and I love her dearly. But this situation with Alex feels like a huge mismatch in values between us. I am of the school of thought where it is ok to have boundaries in polyamory, and even a “messy list”. The messy list should not be excessively long, but more so a few people (siblings, close friends or co-workers, messy exes or people with proven questionable moral/ethical boundaries), who would likely and significantly affect the well-being of me, her and/or the relationship. She seems of the school where that is veto power and it is unreasonable to say no to anyone. To me, this is relationship anarchy, a dynamic I have communicated is not my preference and a dynamic I did not sign up for.

Where do we go from here? Is there a way that we can both compromise and meet in the middle on this? She and Alex are good friends and do things together which is no problem, but the same level of enmeshment as before with no apology or signal of genuine change is not something I want to be a part of. To be clear, I’m not saying she can’t do this, I’m saying that I will need to take a step back/out if she does. This is a boundary, sure, but is this not the same thing as vetoing someone?

Finally, even if a perfect apology is given by Alex, I don’t want to have to drag it out of him. And maybe most importantly, I don’t know if circumstantially it would feel genuine at this point because it would be motivated by him getting to date Haley more-so than genuine repair. He never reached out or attempted repair before it served his own interest.

What do you think is ethical and reasonable here? I would love to hear your perspective!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for your time.

Sincerely,

Poly confused

DEAR POLY CONFUSED: This honestly seems like it was a mess before Alex ever even became a problem, PC, starting with the fact that Haley was your boss. That’s just a factor that doesn’t sit well with me.

However, that’s the really the least of things when it comes to your relationship with Haley. The whole thing sounds like it’s messy as hell to a point where I’m honestly wondering whether it’s worth staying. The conflicts – and the underlying issues that are ultimately the cause – seem like they’re outweighing the benefits of the relationship.

It sounds to me like there’re a few issues at play here, starting with the nature of boundaries and the difference between having a boundary and “veto power”. As I’ve said before: boundaries are about what you will put up with and accept, and what you will do if someone ignores those boundaries. Asking, for example, that Haley not tell you all about what’s going on with Alex is a boundary; you’re saying “hearing about everything going on with this person is making it hard for me to be present and enjoy my time with you, so I’d appreciate if you could dial it back.” So too is “look, I don’t want to be intimately tied to this person, even at a distance; his presence causes me enough stress and anxiety that I’d rather step away than have him be an ongoing factor in our relationship.” This isn’t a veto; it’s simply you laying out that you’re not comfortable with the way his behavior ends up interfering with your relationship. Yes, you are saying that you’d back off if Haley chooses to enter a relationship with him, but being in a poly relationship doesn’t mean that you’re required to stick around if your partner is also dating someone who you can’t stand. Especially if that person is causing you active distress or affects the dynamic of your relationship with your partner.

But that also leads to another issue: I’m wondering how much of the problem you were having was actually a problem, and how much of it was the way you were feeling. While the situation with Alex certainly seems to have escalated over time, but I think the idea of Alex having the “seat of power” was more about your perception of him, rather than the reality. I realize you were still in the beginning stages with Haley, but part of making a poly relationship work is trusting your partner enough to be their own person and to have and enforce their own boundaries. Alex only has as much power as Haley allows him to have, after all.

This is important, because power is often more a matter of perception, rather than reality, and people often mistake who has it and who doesn’t. As a sneaky son of a bitch once said: “power resides where people think it resides. It is a trick, a shadow on the wall.” You bring up the idea that Alex has more “power” or “influence” because of the length of his relationship with Haley and the fact that he lived in closer proximity to Haley. While the time in a relationship and their relative enmeshment does mean that there are often more ties and responsibilities, that doesn’t automatically translate into “a seat of power”. It’s not the same as control and it certainly isn’t the same as “authority”.

That’s not to say that this can’t become a problem, especially if Alex’s dislike of you translates to more than sulking or throwing tantrums about you, but that requires that there’s action, not just words. Alex can say what he wants, but his ability to affect your relationship requires Haley’s buy in too. If Haley isn’t changing plans because of Alex’s disapproval or allowing him to have a say on whether she dates you or what sort of relationship you and she can have, then his influence is very limited.

I do think that some of Alex’s ability to f--k with you is self-inflicted. You were engaging with him when you were in town. This gave Alex opportunities to steal from your time with Haley by throwing a tantrum that had to be resolved right away while you’re left twiddling your thumbs. Doing so once is understandable; you were trying to be a gentleman by meeting him and hoping that everyone could at least be adults about things. The fact that he decided to throw such a tantrum that he and Haley had to go sort s--t out wasn’t something you could plan on. However, if it’s something that’s going to happen every time you see each other, it seems pretty clear to me that the answer is quit seeing each other. If you’re in town to see Haley, but don’t go say “hey” to Alex, his ability to actively interfere is reduced significantly.  

And if I’m being perfectly honest, I think Haley ended up contributing to the mess. It takes two to have a fight, and she allowed Alex to drag her off to resolve it rather than telling him she’ll deal with him later. As I said before, I could see this being an understandable occurrence once… but when it happens every time you and he are in the same place, then the pattern should be glaringly obvious. As the saying goes, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

This is why I think this is at least partially a self-sustaining problem; there’s really not any reason that you had to have a confrontation with Alex every time you went to see Haley. While I think it’s good to at least be on nodding terms with your metas, but it’s not absolutely required. Plenty of people prefer garden-party style polyamory (where you see your metas on occasion, but otherwise don’t have much contact with them) or parallel poly (where a person’s partners don’t interact or come into contact with one another at all). If you don’t want to be besties with the other people your partners are seeing, that is absolutely allowed.

If that’s something that’s important for you or Haley… well, then the problem is also in the nature of your relationship rather than exclusively in Alex’s dislike of you.

(Incidentally, relationship anarchy doesn’t mean not having boundaries or rules; that’s just relationship libertarianism.�Relationship anarchy means that the rules of a relationship don’t automatically presume default hierarchies or levels of importance, significance or intimacy, particularly based on whether the relationship is romantic, sexual or platonic. The rules of each relationship defined by the individuals for their relationship with mutual consent.)  

But that gets to the heart of the problem: this is a messy situation and Alex and Haley seem to be particularly messy people. Alex seems like someone who thinks that maturity and emotional intelligence are things that happen to other people and Haley seems to be willing to accept it and thinks that it’s not a problem. If she were more willing to keep some firm walls between her relationship with Alex and her relationship with you, that would be one thing. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, and that leaves you in the lurch.

And not to put too fine a point on it: it seems like having a relationship with Alex is a high priority for Haley, even with the drama that happened before. And to be perfectly frank, I kind of question the judgement of someone who can look at Alex’s behavior, see how it bothers you and see that it hasn’t really changed and still want to date him again. And if she doesn’t see that it’s no different than before… well, that lowers my opinion further.  

Haley and Alex don’t need your blessing or approval to date, any more than you needed Alex’s blessing or approval to date Haley. You don’t have to like it, but the choice is ultimately Haley’s to make. Your choice is whether you want to stay in a relationship with someone who would also have a relationship with someone like Alex. That’s the nature of boundaries; it’s what you are willing to do to maintain them.

It’s certainly possible to try and make this work if Haley is determined to have Alex as a partner again – and it seems like she is. But to do so means being able to trust Haley to respect your boundaries regarding Alex and her ability to keep Alex’s bulls--t from interfering with your relationship. If she isn’t able to or is unwilling… well, that says a lot about her. And then you have to decide if you have a boundary regarding Alex, or just a strongly worded suggestion.

I get that you have strong feelings for Haley and you want to make this relationship work. But love and the desire to make things work doesn’t mean that the person you have those feelings for is someone who’s compatible with you. You can love someone to distraction, but still not be able to be in a relationship with them. I think you need to have a long and hard think about whether this is the kind of poly relationship you want to have, and if Haley really is the right person to have it with.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been reading your blog for quite a while, and I believe you can help me with my predicament

So I need some advice, I ((27/M) met a girl “Jane” (27/F) a month ago, we met at a place I frequently visit to social dance (I usually dance salsa, bachata and other Latin rhythms) I’ve been hanging out with this girl, she’s perfect in the way I want her to be, she’s so euphoric, optimistic, extroverted, she has such a warm energy and such a positive personality I just love, she’s also so smart and well versed in so many things I love, like music, movies, fashion, pop culture, history, etc. Of course, she’s beautiful in my eyes and we have such an enormous chemistry when we’re together, ever since we first met a month ago. 

As I said, since we met, we had a strong chemistry and felt comfortable around each other, there’s always a lot of light touching, eye contact, smiling, hugging, and generally hanging around each other, like the first two weeks we went out almost daily, dancing, to have dinner, to see a movie, etc. She started sending me Instagram post about places to visit, memes or whatever constantly. She would make plans for the two of us, things like that. Like she was acting the way in my experience a girl acts when they’re interested, although once I asked about her dating life and she said it was a mess. 

She dated a guy for 5 years and he left her to become a priest, and then like a year later she met a guy online and had a long-distance relationship with him for a couple of months and recently (like 2 months ago) broke up with him, and yes, she explicitly said the second night we went out “I need to learn how to be alone, I’m not looking for anything romantic”. 

That same moment, she mentioned that she had to tell a friend that was into her, to stop and that she could only offer him her friendship (his name is ‘David’, remember him)

Despite that, I thought the feeling of romantic intentions was mutual, and there was once an opportunity where she asked me “Do you like me as a woman, or as more than just a friend?” To which I said “I like you as a woman, I don’t see you as just a friend, but I like to go slow and see how this develops” to which she only said “I understand”. 

So, my having expressed my feelings towards her made me feel we were on the right track. She even invited me to her house a couple of days after that exchange to meet her mother, she made me dinner, and we hung out in her room. As I said, I believed things were going well, even a friend of mine (Chris) who she also knows, once hung out the 3 of us and told “she’s really into you, she won’t look away when you’re around. 

Remember this is like two weeks of Jane and me knowing each other. 

But all of a sudden, it crashed down, after I made her a compliment about her voice once while we were messaging, she told me that she wanted to be honest and she didn’t want it to get romantic, cause not only was she not ready for a relationship, but that she didn’t see me that way, and that she simply treated people he cared for like she treated me. At that moment I asked her “Why didn’t you say this when I told you I like you as more than a friend a couple of days ago,” to which she said “I thought I could manage it and still be friends, but I realize it’s not fair to keep it like that, you’re an excellent man and you got a lot of things in you that I would want in a man, but I just can’t.” 

I just said “If you genuinely don’t have any feelings for me, then I understand, and we can be friends” and she even said something like “Please in the future don’t try to kiss me, cause its gonna make me feel very uncomfortable, David (her friend) has tried and it has made me feel too uncomfortable”. 

After that conversation we basically didn’t hang out much for a week, so I thought that was the end of it, just another girl, whatever. But one day she texted me to hang out where we met (the dancing place), despite the conversation we had about each other, at the beginning of the night it was kinda awkward, like both didn’t know how to act, but we both started act normally towards each other, like you could feel we just needed to let the chemistry flow, and we did. And again, the amount of chemistry we have is simply too big to ignore, we talked for hours and it was not awkward at all. 

We saw each other again that week on Thursday to see Hamnet, she cried a lot and was generally feeling kinda sad (according to her it was because of her period). We saw each other again that week on Saturday, we went to a fragrance shop and then we had coffee and talked a lot, then we joined friends to social dancing, I started noticing she started acting a lot like she used to (light touching, grabbing my hand, touching my shoulders, tickling me, biting my shoulder, and letting me do all of that to her as well. Even while we danced (I usually try to be very respectful while dancing cause I think it can be very uncomfortable for a woman to have a guy squeezing her while dancing) she started squeezing me a lot and generally being very spicy with me that night, resting her head on my shoulder while sitting, letting me comb her hair with my fingers. 

To be honest that night was kinda weird in a good way but I really didn’t think much of it. Next day we basically spent the entire day together (Sunday) we went to the mall on my car, we went shopping, then we went for some groceries, we had lunch and then ice cream, and went to buy a cake cause it was her mom’s birthday that day, again, she spent the day being very, very close to me, like while walking side by side she would put her arm under mine (like couples walk), touching me a lot, teasing me, letting me touch her, tickling me, etc. Then I took her home (it was around 4PM) and she asked me to stay to the small party she was having for her mom. There were a lot of her family members, and both she and I acted like waiters for the party, I offered myself to do the dishes, to serve food, etc. 

Everything was going so well, and around 8:30 pm we noticed there was still a lot of food left and she said “we should call David and tell him to come eat some of the food” (Remember David is a friend of her, that she’s known for like 2 years and who had a huge crush on her, but she rejected him and stayed as just friends, but he supposedly even had to go to therapy to get over her and supposedly he did get over her) I said “yes of course, call him” (despite me not loving the idea). 

This dude arrived like he was waiting for the call, like 5 minutes passed and he was at the door, although when he knocked on the door, I was the one who greeting him in (I bet I wasn’t the face he expected) I said hi and introduced myself to him, she said hi as well and he remained seated on a chair on a corner, while she was sitting next to me (basically directly in front of him at the other side of the living room) and next to him was her best friend Elizabeth. Again, Jane was very close to me, a lot of looking at me, light touching me, telling things like “oh ‘Chris’ remember when we did this” or “it’s like when ‘Chris’ said ___” or “‘Chris’ and I spent the day together and did ____” and the more I looked at David, the more I notice how uncomfortable he was. 

He didn’t talk much at first, but then Jane started involving him more in the conversation and I felt like the dude had loosen up and started joining the conversation, but to my surprise, after the party was over, while I was saying goodbye, she hugged me very hard and said “thank you for today, you saved me” David was behind us watching. I went home feeling pretty damn good, but then when I got home, we texted each other and she told me: – “David left sad… what a shame.” to which I responded “Why?”��– “He was super jealous of you” 

“I think he’s not going to talk to me anymore and that there won’t be any plans for us four to hang out” 

I said, “I understand, but I don’t feel there was anything to be jealous of, right?”. She said: – “Because, ‘Chris’, I just feel too comfortable with you and I can let you tease me with the tickling and touching me because I never feel like you’ve invaded my space… but David put me in very uncomfortable situations in the past, so much so that I don’t let him touch me at all. Didn’t you see his face at first? It was only because I did everything possible to involve him with the conversation that he loosened up.” 

“He left my house almost crying, because I think he believes life’s not gonna give him a woman” I said “Do you think he had different expectations when you called him and told him to come?” She said “More than that, it’s simply the fact of me being close to another man. And that with you I can be myself. Without worrying about this or that. But he told me after you left that it was better that he distance himself from me, because he simply can’t handle it anymore.” 

We texted for hours after that and went dancing again yesterday and she still is acting all touchy with me. She even told me while we were texting “would you like to smoke pot with me someday?” (both of us used to smoke pot when teenagers) To which I said “yeah why not” and she said “We could have a road trip, somewhere where we can smoke pot without no worry and spend the night together”.

Look, the reason I’m telling you this is cause I really, really like this girl, I see myself building something with her, something that lasts, but it was her who said she didn’t see me that way, but all of a sudden, she starts acting all touchy touchy with me, acting like basically a couple, and of course I get confused cause what the hell man. 

And this thing with David only fuels the idea that maybe just maybe, she likes me and she’s just lying to herself on not liking me, cause she has this idea that she has to learn to be alone, and that she doesn’t need a couple to be happy blah blah blah, and admitting to herself she likes me would be admitting to herself that this mantra she’s been repeating to herself about wanting to be alone just isn’t true, or at least that’s what I tell myself to not go insane. 

So, I feel like Jim from The Office after he got rejected. Do you think I should move on and just see her as a friend, should I just go with the flow and see what happens and how this develops.

Thank you!

Do You Like Me (Y/N)?

DEAR DO YOU LIKE ME (Y/N): ’m going to be blunt with you, my guy: I very rarely read a letter about mixed signals where the signals are well and truly mixed. Most of the time, the only reason why the signals are “mixed” at all is because the person who is having a difficult time reading them knows what the other person is actually saying. They just don’t want to accept it.

David is an example of this – David is still holding out hope that Jane’s going to change her mind. David’s still clinging to the idea that maybe Jane doesn’t know her own feelings and that there’s this chance that maybe she really will start to return his feelings. David had to have his nose rubbed in it in order to finally get the message – one that Jane had delivered very firmly and directly.

Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.

Here’s the thing, DYLM: Jane has told you what’s up. She’s been very blunt about it. She asked you what you were expecting and once she realized that you weren’t just taking things slowly, told you straight up what the deal was. She even told you, point blank, that the reason she’s telling you this now was because she wanted to stay friends, that the way she behaves with you is how she behaves with friends, and she even drew a firm line in the sand about behavior that you need to avoid.

Things felt awkward between the two of you in the immediate aftermath because there’s often an awkward time when you give the wave-off to a friend who clearly has a thing for you, and the two of you didn’t talk for a week. Then, when you hung out again at the dance class, you did what I tell friends to do when there’s that awkward “ok, so what happens now” feeling: you powered through it and acted like friends again.

But the problem is that you’ve ignored a very important detail in that “let’s just be friends” conversation: the way she behaves with you is the way she behaves with her friends. She told you this when she told you to please don’t try to kiss her. She gave you multiple pages of the “how to be friends with me” handbook and it still seems like you’re hoping that maybe this doesn’t apply to you.

Kinda like David.

Now it seems like Jane isn’t stupid and she’s pretty perceptive. When David came over, it became very clear that he wasn’t over her like he’d said, and… well, you saw what happened. I don’t know if she invited him over specifically to drive a stake in the heart of his dreams, or if she saw how he was behaving and had to pivot to make it clear. I don’t know if she was being over the top because the time for subtlety had long passed, or if this was just Jane being Jane, and you (and David) were reading more into it because motivated reasoning is a motherf--ker. But David saw her being friendly and close with another guy and it finally made him say “I can’t do this, I need to step away”. And honestly, good for him. I’m being sincere when I say that I’m glad he’s prioritizing himself and his heart by finally taking the steps he needs to actually get over her. It sucks when someone has to do this, especially when the other person is genuinely trying to be friends. But if it hurt too much and that pain finally made him accept things, stepping away is the best choice he could have made for himself.

But the reason why I keep comparing you and David is that this is your future if you don’t pay attention. You have been given a gift: you were visited by the Spirit of Conversations Yet To Come, who gave you a sneak preview of the conversation you’re going to have with Jane if you don’t start taking her words at face value.

There really isn’t a mystery here. She has told you what sort of relationship you have. She has told you how that her behavior is how she acts with close friends. She has asked you, directly, not to make a move, because that makes things awkward and uncomfortable and she doesn’t want to have to deal with it again. I know you want to believe that maybe it’s different for you, but – not to put too fine a point on it – David thought the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not blaming you for getting your hopes up, especially when it feels to you like her behavior is going beyond the boundaries of a typical friendship. But again, you have already been given the heads up that this is how she behaves with the people she’s close with. If you don’t want to have a repeat of the scene you witnessed, with you in David’s role, you should take her at her word that this is all that’s going on. Accept that she’s telling you how things are and that she will tell you if things have changed.

But I want to make another point clear here, and something I don’t think you’ve considered. Jane drew a pretty firm boundary when she asked you not to try to kiss her; she told you that it makes things uncomfortable and hard to maintain the friendship after that. Well, you too can draw boundaries. If her behavior feels too much like flirting or too much like her treating you like a boyfriend, you can ask her to stop.

The thing that I would suggest that you say is “hey, I know that you said that this is how you act with your friends, but it always feels like it signals more than that and that leaves me feeling confused. I don’t want to feel confused with you or read things into our relationship that aren’t there, because I really value what we have together. I would appreciate it if you could not do $BEHAVIOR_THAT_FEELS_LIKE_FLIRTING with me if that’s not what you mean. I value our friendship and I don’t want to make things difficult because I read the wrong meaning into our dynamic.”

This doesn’t mean that you and she have to move to a “no touching, no physical affection” policy. If there are ways she could still be affectionate without making you feel like maybe she’s hitting on you, then give specifics about the ways that would be ok. The important thing is that you want to make it clear that the way she’s behaving feels like it sends a particular message, and you would prefer that she dial it back or change that behavior so it’s not so confusing or painful for you.

But doing this is going to require that you accept that she just wants to be friends. That part’s hard, I know. Trust me, I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and sometimes it just hasn’t worked. I’ve had to step away from friendships before because I couldn’t let go of how I felt for someone, and the pain of losing both the dream and my friend hurt like fire. Given the choice, I would’ve much rather given up the dream and kept the friendship, but by the time I reached that stage… it was too much. So, both had to go.

I don’t want you to have to go through that if you don’t have to. And right now, you don’t. But that is going to mean doing the hard thing of accepting that you and she are friends. Very close friends, but not potential lovers. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t care for you; she very clearly does. She wouldn’t have told you all of that if she didn’t, because she very clearly wants you in her life. And I know it stings when someone we care for doesn’t care for us in the way we wish they would… but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care for us, or care quite a lot.

And to be clear: you don’t have to stay friends, if you don’t think you can without serious hurt. In fact, I strongly advise that, if that’s the case, that you say that you have to step back until you’re in a different place emotionally. But if you want Jane in your life, this is the way she’ll be in it. I know it’s not what you hope for… but if you ask me, it’s pretty damn great.

For now, have that conversation with her and draw some boundaries, so that you don’t keep confusing her friendship with signs of intent. This way, you’ll be able to keep your friend… without getting your heart broken in the process.

Good luck.

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