DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’d like some advice.

I was with my boyfriend for almost 7 years. Most of our relationship was good. It started to deteriorate in the past year. I don’t want to rehash all the details, but the primary issue is we would argue a lot because my anxiety and low self-esteem. I doubted his love and how much he wanted to be around me. We broke up because of this. At first it was just a break, and we planned to check in in two months. However, he thought I wouldn’t be able to grow long term in this time frame and if I was doing it for him.

When it was just a break, I was doing pretty well. I was journaling, doing affirmations, going on walks. Reaching out to friends. And I was starting to feel a little better.

Now it’s been hard to think about anything except that I’ve lost him. I told him this and he said he does still love me and he’d be open to the possibility, but not until at least 6 months pass and if I do show growth. He didn’t say it meanly — he was incredibly kind and I know he wants me to improve, whether we get back together or not. He said he didn’t want to hurt me anymore.

Based on past experience, again, if I do the work, I think he’d be open as well. His previous long-term ex he waited 6 months to even try dating again.

My problem is I can’t focus on the work. I’m too caught up in him. I know I need to improve myself for me, in the end, and not worry about the outcome, but I’m not sure how to do that. How can I move past him enough to not obsess over him.

Against All Odds

DEAR AGAINST ALL ODDS: I realize this isn’t necessarily the point, but this is why I really dislike when people say “we’re going to take a break” when what they really mean is “we’re breaking up, just slower.” I think it’s needlessly cruel and often a cowardly way of ending the relationship without actually taking responsibility for saying so.

And to be fair, there are times when taking a break from the relationship may be warranted – when work, school or family demands are so high that you simply don’t have the capacity to handle the responsibilities of also maintaining a relationship, for example. Those are times when it’s feasible to pick things up when s--t has settled down and you have the time and bandwidth again.

But I don’t think anyone can say “OK, you’ve got two months to solve all your long-standing self-esteem issues” and honestly think that this is a reasonable request or timeframe. I hate to say it, but I think this was him trying to backdoor his way out of the relationship without feeling like the bad guy for doing so.

But let’s be honest, I’m kind of stalling here because these are the sorts of questions I really hate answering, because I know my answer is going to contribute to a heart that’s already breaking.

Here’s the thing… while I think he shouldn’t have proposed that this was “a break”, I also think he’s not entirely wrong. You aren’t going to resolve those issues if you’re doing it for him. I think you’d reach a point where you think you’ve solved them… but what you will have actually done is gotten better at masking them or trying to pretend they aren’t there. And all that would happen is that you’ve pushed them down and compressed them. And like all contents under pressure, they will be building in intensity until containment fails, messily and all over the place.

This is why I think you were feeling ok about things when it was just “a break”; I think you were engaging with the appearance of making progress, in the same way that throwing clutter into the closet and under the bed gives the appearance of having cleaned one’s room. It’s quick, it’s easy, and for a little while you can pretend that you accomplished something instead of just putting it off… and at some point, you were going to find that your room’s a disaster area again except worse because you also have to deal with all the stuff you shoved out of sight, too.

Which really sucks because that feeling of “whew, did it” is real. But there’s always the part of you that knows that at some point you’re going to have to eventually deal with the mess; you just pushed that time it a little further down the road.

Now, however, you’re in a position where you don’t have that sense of “I just need my room clean enough to pass inspection and we’re back to it”. Now you really need to do the work, because, well, because there’s no going back. And I think the reason why you are struggling is because you’re still holding onto the hope that this is a temporary thing, a break in all but name. A little longer than you’d prefer, but surely just a matter of time.

I mean, you’re still thinking of it in terms of the time investment before he’ll take you back – like how he’d been broken up with his ex for six months before they got back together. And that right there is the problem: as long as you’re seeing this as “how long until we’re back together”, you’re not going to make real progress. It’ll be for the sake of fixing the relationship, not for improving yourself. You’ll be looking at the calendar more than you’ll be looking inward and saying “ok, how’s my progress?” And it’s very easy to convince yourself you’ve made more progress than you actually have. It’s a little like Luke abandoning his training on Dagobah; he wanted it done ASAP and he convinced himself that he was ready before he was. It was as much motivated reasoning as it was impatience, and it nearly made things infinitely worse for the Rebellion.

So as much as it sucks, and as much as I hate to say it like this… your way forward is to let go of getting back together with him. As long as restarting the relationship is your goal, I think you’re going to be more focused on that and not the difficult work of digging into your feelings and limiting beliefs and traumas. It’ll be about what your ex will find acceptable, not actually healing the wounds you’re carrying around. So I think you have to accept – really accept – that it’s over between the two of you. That you could do all the hard work, build yourself back up, really deal with these issues… and at the end, he won’t be there. It’ll just be you – happier, healthier, more secure and confident in yourself, ready to meet someone and have the sort of secure, loving relationship you want and deserve.

I hesitate to even say “well, and if the two of you are still right for each other, you’ll be able to circle back around and start over,” because I know from personal experience how quickly that goes from “could” to “will”, simply because that puts you right back at “I’m doing it for someone else, not for me”.

So, I think you have to accept that this break up was final, that this relationship ended. I think holding out hope in this case is going to end up being counterproductive and get in the way of the progress you make, because it won’t be you becoming your best self. It’ll be the self you think you need to be for him, and that’s not the same thing.

Any relationship you have going forward, whether platonic or romantic, isn’t going to be a continuation of this one. It will be new and with a different person, in no small part because you will be a different person.

Let him go. Close the book on this relationship. It will be hard. It will hurt. A lot. But it’s the sort of pain that cleanses, the kind that comes at the beginning of the healing process. And when you come out the other side… I think you’ll be surprised at how you feel about this.

Good luck

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So some context first – about seven years ago I (26M right now) confessed my feelings to a coworker – we’ll call them P (26F right now). We were super friendly, had a lot of common interests and had similar senses of humor and beliefs. But she was very taken aback when I confessed and after sleeping on it decided she did not reciprocate my feelings. She stated she was too afraid of hurting me, too anxious, and wanted to get their life in order before dating anyone. She said that maybe really later down the line she would be more open to the idea, but not at the moment. I accepted the answer and did my best to remain friendly at work. But less than one month later, she was dating a completely different coworker. I had a hunch they had feelings for each other even when I confessed, but I did it anyway because I couldn’t live the rest of my life thinking “what if”. 

Regardless, even though I expected everything to go down like it did, that didn’t make it all hurt any less, so I put some distance between myself and them for a while. Still friendly, but never too close so as to see them interact a whole lot. Eventually I was able to sort out my feelings, accept what happened, and understood that she was merely trying to protect my own feelings when she said she “wasn’t ready”.

Fast forward to now and I’ve been dating my current girlfriend, Q (27F) for just over six years. We’re a really great pair and I’m definitely satisfied with how our relationship is. But of course, we talk about everything, and eventually P came up early on. Needless to say, Q has never liked P at all despite never having met her. She doesn’t like how she was dishonest with me and how she hurt me, but also doesn’t like that I forgave her for it and still consider her a casual friend. She would get jealous whenever I interacted with her and pressured me into speaking with them less, even though P and I were no longer coworkers. Eventually Q convinced me to mute P on Twitter so that I would like P’s tweets less and they wouldn’t show up on Q’s feed (this is back before the site made likes private). But eventually life took me and P in different directions and we fell out of contact for about three years or so.

But recently I saw P playing an online game that we both really enjoyed back in the day, so I decided to play a few matches while also getting the chance to catch up. I didn’t want to make it seem like I was talking to someone behind Q’s back, so I told her what I had done for the sake of transparency. Q was not happy at all. She hated that I did something she knew would upset her, and how I “just couldn’t stay away” from P, even after so long. I told her that I would do my absolute best to reassure her – that I love her, that there are no more feelings of attraction at all between me and P, and that if she ever needed any additional TLC or wanted to talk through her feelings, I would always be open to do so and not judge her for feeling how she feels. Q keeps saying that if I really cared about her feelings, I wouldn’t have reached out to P at all. It makes her believe that I care more about a friendship with someone I’m not particularly close to than her own feelings. Even though P is not my ex since we never dated, Q treats the whole situation like P is an ex I just can’t get over and still secretly lust after, which I do not. But I also believe that it’s unhealthy for Q to restrict my platonic friendships like how she’s doing.

I never liked the fact that Q pressured me into distancing myself from a friendship – especially when I’ve felt similarly to some of the friendships, she’s had but we talked it out and she reassured me. I know it’s possible to get through this, I’m just not sure where to go from here. How can I help guide her through these emotions?

– Every Which Way

DEAR EVERY WHICH WAY: Let’s get this out of the way right up top: this isn’t a problem for you to solve for her or “guide” her through. If she’s going to deal with these emotions and feelings about P, that’s on her to do. If she wants your help, she could ask for it. But she hasn’t, and quite frankly, I doubt she ever will.

The way your girlfriend is acting ain’t cool. In fact, it’s borderline toxic and, quite frankly, is setting off my Spidey-sense. This is someone who is making her feelings your responsibility to manage and she’s punishing you for how she feels, as though you were doing something wrong here. And you’re not.

As a general rule, I really dislike folks who police people’s relationships and friendships and who use manipulative language and behavior in order to make it seem like it’s the person being policed who’s at fault.

In fact, we collectively got a prime example of this sort of s--tty behavior in 2023 when actor Jonah Hill threw a tantrum over the fact that his sexy surfer girlfriend was continuing to be both sexy and a surfer. He complained about – and demanded that she stop – posting pictures to her Instagram, having “boundaryless friendships” with men and continuing to have relationships with “inappropriate” and “unstable” women that he didn’t approve of, in the name of being in a relationship with him. To add a bay leaf of f--k-you to this toxic stew, he framed this as being a matter of her ‘violating his boundaries; her refusing to go along with these demands meant that she was the bad guy here, not him. He was just “asking her to respect his boundaries,” so how could that possibly be toxic or abusive or controlling?

Well, the answer is “because that’s not a boundary, that’s trying to dress up being a controlling dickhead, especially when these are all things you knew about when you started dating her.” Which is just yet another example of “guys don’t want a girlfriend; they want a possession to put on their shelf.”

(We can insert the whole “that’s not how any of this works” meme here, because that’s a whole rant in and of itself.)

Q is doing much the same thing that Hill did, just using different language. I wasn’t inclined to be thrilled about Q’s behavior to begin with, but her use of “… if you really loved me” hit a particularly sour note for me. Instead of abusing therapy-speak, Q is instead accusing you of not caring enough; it’s framing this as a flaw on your part, instead of someone being insecure (at best) or outright abusive and controlling (at worst) about an absolutely anodyne relationship.

Now in the interest of being as fair as is reasonable: I could see Q not liking P at first simply because P hurt you. That’s a level of reflexive “how dare you hurt my friend” I could understand, especially since P was not actually present in your life at the time. When all you have are second-hand accounts, it’s easy to create a strawman version of this person as-what-done-your-lover-wrong in your head. But Q’s getting upset that you forgave P �(in as much as there was anything to forgive) made me raise an eyebrow and start to give some side-eye. Getting upset that you and she are still casual friends and demanding that you stop talking to her at all, anywhere, is where this takes a turn from the “ok, not great but I can understand it” to “no, f--k right off with that, actually.”   

While, in general, we owe it to our friends and partners to do our best to not do things we know upset them, there are limits. And those limits especially and specifically come into play when the thing that upsets them are things that affect them not at all. Being friends with someone they don’t like, especially when that person has no meaningful direct presence in their life, is a prime example.��What we don’t have is a duty to manage their emotions for them, which is precisely what Q is demanding you do. The fact that Q has gone all bitch-eating-crackers about P is a Q issue, not a you issue. P isn’t a threat to the relationship, your friendship with P isn’t taking anything away from Q, nor is P doing anything that any reasonable person would see as being disrespectful to Q. P just has the temerity to have a) turned you down when you asked for a date and b) continue to exist.  

The reason why you aren’t going to be able to guide Q through these feelings – nor should you – is because there is no path through them. She doesn’t want to work through them, because she doesn’t see her feelings as being the problem. This isn’t about P, nor is it about how you’ve betrayed Q’s trust somehow. This is about you and her desire to control and dictate the terms of how you move through the world, and with whom.

What Q has demanded and continues to demand of you is unreasonable. Insisting that you not be friends with someone, not interact with them on social media or have any sort of contact at all because it gives her a sad is toxic behavior. Framing it as “if you really loved me, you’d do it” actually makes it worse, and it’s the sort of manipulative bulls--t that folks would recognize immediately if the genders were reversed. If P came to you and said that her boyfriend – who has never met you nor interacted with you in any way – insisted that she couldn’t talk to you any more or be your friend, I suspect you would immediately recognize how f--ked that is.

And even if – and this would be a massive goddamn “if” �– I were willing to conceded that maybe she has a point, I think it says something that Q doesn’t see how this goes the other way too. If she actually cared about your feelings, she wouldn’t insist that she has veto power over your friendships. She has any number of options available to her, starting with “muting/blocking P on social media” so that she didn’t “have” to see your interactions with her, to “sit with her feelings and ask whether maybe this is unfair of her”, all the way to ending the relationship with you over it.

The thing to note about those is that all of those are things about her, things that she can do for herself. This is what boundaries are about; they’re about what you won’t put up with or endure, not “other people have to do these things in order to make me happy.” But if she unilaterally breaks up with you because you’re casual friends with another woman, that makes her the bad guy here. If she frames this as being about your not caring about her feelings, then you are the bad guy. And that’s more important to her, it seems.

What she’s demanded of you isn’t reasonable, EWW, and honestly, I feel like giving ground the way you have already was a mistake. That made it easier for her to demand more, and to smack you for not giving in further. I think you need to establish some boundaries of your own: that you don’t appreciate and won’t tolerate someone who feels they have the right to dictate who you are or aren’t friends with. She doesn’t have to be friends with P, she doesn’t have to like P as a person, she doesn’t even have to be in the same room as P if she doesn’t want. She’s perfectly welcome to think nasty thoughts at P all she wants in the privacy of her own head and to complain about her to her friends. If she wants your help in overcoming her jealousy, you can help in limited ways; those ways don’t include your limiting or ending your friendship. Because Q – or anyone, really – doesn’t get to make demands about how you conduct your friendships and with whom. If she doesn’t like that… well, the door’s over there. And if she’s going to continue to insist on this sort of manipulative bulls--t? Then you are going to leave.

That’s the path forward, EWW: she gets over her bulls--t, or else.

Now to be clear: if you draw this line in the sand, you have to be willing to go through with it. That’s the point of boundaries; establishing them means that you accept the consequences of maintaining them and enforcing them… and that can include triggering a break up. If you lay down this boundary and Q continues to ignore it without consequence, then you didn’t actually establish a boundary, so much as a strongly-worded suggestion.

But to be perfectly blunt: I’ve got a general rule of “if your partner demands that you choose between them or your friend/pet/hobby”, unless there are very specific circumstances, you don’t choose the partner. 99 times out of 100, you don’t want someone who would be making those demands of you in the first place. And quite frankly it sounds like Q is well within the 99%.

If she’s going to act like this – especially with her manipulative bulls--t about how this proves you “don’t really care” – then this is a relationship that probably needs to end.

Good luck.

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

DOCTOR’S NOTE:  I occasionally get letters that don’t merit a response or are so short that they aren’t practical for a full column, I’m going to spend a ki point to clear out some of the inbox with flurry of replies…

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Something you should know about me? I’m a bit of a J-horror junkie. I’ve been a horror fan in general since I was in middle school.

Recently, I’ve been listening to H.P. Lovecraft audiobooks and I’ve even fallen asleep to them a couple of times. I’ve watched anime adaptations of Junji Ito’s manga like Uzumaki and Gyo. Just last year, I got into this obscure anime called “Hell Girl”.

So where does dating come in? Well…I guess I’m a “ghost chaser”?

I know that’s not an actual slang term, and I understand that’s kind of weird to say. But I recently found out I like women with pale skin and long black hair.

I’m a fan of a few female characters from Japanese horror: Sadako Yamamura from “Ring”, Kayako Saeki from “Ju-On”/”The Grudge”, Tomie Kawakami from “Tomie”, and Ai Enma from “Hell Girl”.. What do they all have in common? Pale skin and long black hair!

And just a few months ago, I found out about this former J-metal band called NECRONOMIDOL, and one of the members is this woman with…well, you get the point. She’s now a soloist that goes by Ilisveil. I remember seeing her and thinking…”Wow, she’s really cute!”

I think you get the point. And as cringeworthy as this is, if a woman with those traits happens to be of Asian descent (like Ilisveil), that adds to her charm because it reminds me of J-horror.

So you kind of get the point: My interests kinda shaped my tastes a little bit. If a woman looks like a or like she might crawl out of my TV screen, one half of my brain tells me “Wow, who’s THAT? You should hit her up!”

But the other half of me is saying that I’m weird for this. I also don’t have much dating experience; I’m a big introvert. Has my interest in the macabre become unhealthy, or am I okay? Also, do you have any good dating advice that I should take? Thanks for your time.

Love Is Kinda Crazy With A Spooky Little Girl Like Yu…

DEAR LOVE IS KINDA CRAZY: That was a lot of words to say “I’m into Asian goth chicks”, my guy. 

If you’re that determined to put the “boo” in “weeaboo”, and really want to put a Ringu on it, go put on some Buck Tick and Kizu, maybe a little 69 Eyes for Western flavor, get a pair of New Rocks and pants with an excessive number of straps, and hit up your local anime con and see who wants to complain about the Uzumaki anime with you.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I need advice and have some questions to ask. I am 19 years old and a virgin. I am underweight (5’11, 115 lbs.) So I just don’t talk to girls because I know the answer. They will always say no because I am too skinny and have no muscle. Please help!

No More Heroes (of The Beach)

DEAR NO MORE HEROES (OF THE BEACH): First: do yourself a favor and google “Perry Farrell” and realize that this dude was sex-on-toast of the alt-rock scene, then quit pre-rejecting yourself and go talk to some girls.

Failing that, you could always eat more protein, start with some basic body weight exercises before going to a gym and working with a personal trainer to ensure that you don’t wreck your back and shoulders and lift some weights. And you’re still going to be single, because this has nothing to do with a lack of muscle and everything with watching all the wrong TikTok vids on your FYP.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I can’t seem to stop having sex with coworkers… I keep being drawn to them. I have had sex with many of my coworkers… some are even married. How do I stop being drawn to them.

Home Wrecker

DEAR HOME WRECKER: I’d point out that you’re only half the problem, since I doubt you’re kicking the feet out of these dudes and pinning them to the ground against their (increasingly aroused, learning things about themselves) will. It takes two to tango after all.

But like I’m always saying: attraction isn’t an obligation and horniness isn’t a commandment, so you could always, y’know…

Not f--k them.  

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:, YOU WANT BE IN RELATIONSHIP THAT YOU KNOW HIM BUT YOU WANT LET KNOW YOU ALWAYS READY FOR NEW THINGS AND STAY LONGER WHO YOU LOVE THEN FAMILY AND THEN OTHER MEN ,BUT SEE YOU DOESNOT MATTER WHO WAS ALREADY LOVING SOMEONE WHO WAS YOU WHEN SHE DIDNT KNOW HIM, AND I WANT TO TELL ALL LOT THING I KEPT SECERT FROM HIM.

DEAR YELLING PERSON: …ma’am, are you ok? Do you need me to call someone for you? Are you having a stroke? Do you smell toast?

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: “Nobody is obligated to give you an opportunity any more than you are obligated to give others the chance to talk to you if you don’t want.”

I am obligated to do this. I am a member of civil society. I am a human being. I am obligated to give others the chance to speak to me in public. It’s called society. Maybe you have heard of it. Some have even claimed that we live in a society. I hate talking to people. I hate when people talk to me, particularly out of nowhere. And yet every time some Moonie or schizophrenic homeless person tries to get my attention, I will speak to them and at least listen to what they are asking me for. I have an obligation to my fellow man to hear their entreaties and possibly offer my assistance. I do not have an obligation to help them, but I do have an obligation to speak to them. The idea that we do not is rank Hitlerism, it is the core of fascism, i.e. the destruction of civil society.

Also, you know that you are lying. There are plenty of “famous” “feminists” (women with thousands of twitter followers) who insist that men should “never” (verbatim) speak to them in public, and they will not even assist men with simple human requests (such as giving literally “the time of day”). It is antihuman, anti-social (in the most literal sense) and thus pro fascism. This is obvious, and yet you do not critique this. Why?

When I was in college a few years ago, many times while walking (I walk very fast), even with headphones in, either Christian proselytizers or random non-English speakers asking directions would very intrusively get my attention. One time, after a particularly persistent old Korean woman basically forced me to remove my headphones, I thought to myself “I am going to stop responding when people try to get my attention”. I had a bit of an epiphany, that perhaps this is what those “feminists” felt like.

I immediately critiqued this in myself as a sign of my own authoritarianism and anti-social attitudes. No. I do owe humanity towards other humans. I do owe the “time of day” to my fellow man. We all do. I will not degrade myself by resorting to treating others like objects simply due to my own discomfort. My point here is not to make myself as some sort of paragon. In fact I am a very nihilistic and cynical person. I am a technoaccelerationist who is very openly ambivalent towards biological life on Earth, and revel in antihumanist and pessimistic ideologies. If even I am capable of maintaining this self-critique of my own authoritarianism, then how violently fascistic must your audience (and yourself) be?

I have had people knock on my car window at night alone at a gas station. I have had people honk at me walking. I will always answer them, even if angry or frightened, because that is part of being a human person. It is, in fact, the actual Rousseauvian Social Contract which you seem to reference but do not seem to understand or uphold. The idea that woman can not do this is unironically more sexist than anything I have ever heard from an “incel”. You are literally saying that women can not be full human persons. This is an idea which I obviously disagree with.

- We Live In A Society

DEAR WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY: When you think about it honestly, don’t you have to admit that women refusing to talk to someone is exactly the same as annexing the Sudentland?

Sir, while I appreciate that you apparently have also watched a season of The Good Place, I am obligated to inform you that watching The Joker fifteen times in one day is not the same as having a personality, writing like Sephiroth isn’t going to make anyone take your word salad more seriously, and that hot takes are only interesting when there’s actual thought behind it instead of buzzwords that you use incorrectly to bolster an argument you’re failing at making, and an underlying message of “but the social contract says you have to put up with me!” isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.  

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