DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ll get right to it. I’m 25, male, have never been romantically/physically involved with anybody, and have a crippling fear of rejection. This is all pretty run of the mill, but I’ll explain what the wrinkles are.

I grew up in a country and environment where teenagers didn’t date. It was not a thing that happened and just generally looked down upon. The one time I told a girl I liked her she was quick to let me know that she wasn’t interested, which was enough to keep me in line from that point on. In hindsight this was pretty traumatizing, but I didn’t really put two and two together until very recently. I graduated high school with no dating experience.

I came to America for college and decided to give the whole dating thing a whirl. Freshman year, I went on a couple first dates with girls who weren’t that in to me. This was pretty demoralizing. I never tried dating after that, and ended up spending the rest of my time in college hanging out with a bunch of dudes instead. It was a fun enough time, sure, but that meant me getting another set cap and gown without ever having dated.

That hasn’t changed now that I’m a few years out of college. I am reasonably attractive, am charming enough, and make good money and all that. I’m just deathly afraid of rejection, even when I’m sure that women are flirting with me. I feel like I consciously force myself to “see past” signs that people are attracted to me for fear of messing things up in some way. 

For the most part I’ve chosen the constant low-level background unhappiness from being single to the all-at-once emotional bombshell that is being turned down. Obviously, this is unhealthy. I am very American-presenting, so most people don’t expect me to be unfamiliar with American culture. I am afraid that the longer I go without dating, the weirder my lack of experience will seem to potential dates. My knowledge of this should motivate me to put myself out there, but it’s really been having the opposite effect. Part of me irrationally worries that the ship has sailed. In short, how can I drag myself out of this ridiculous feedback loop? Thanks for your help.

Best,

Own-Head Dweller

DEAR OWN-HEAD DWELLER: Readers, I can hear you saying “hang on, didn’t you literally just answer this question? Like, yesterday?” Yes… kind of. Let me take a second to give you a little inside-baseball info here: whenever possible, I like to pair letters that have similar themes, issues or deal with complimentary fears or worries – things that play well together. And with this recent set of letters, we’re seeing two people who’ve had very similar issues and backgrounds, coming together with related-but-distinct problems. And in both cases, while the ultimate solution is very similar, the way they’re resolved is in dealing with the underlying problem rather than the specifics.

OK, so, OHD, I want you to re-read what I said to Solo Leveling Sucks yesterday,s because this applies as much to you as it does to him. The things you’re worried about intimidate you because they’re unfamiliar, that’s all. The key to breaking through this wall you perceive is very simple: you just go out and do it. You resolve that you’re going to power through the feeling of awkwardness and weirdness, ignore the fear that says “this is going to devastate me” and just try. And as I said before: everyone starts from the same place, the only difference between them and you is when you start. Nobody truly gives a f--k when you started, they only care that you got there.

Now, in your case, part of what you’re wrestling with isn’t really the fear of rejection, it’s the fear of how rejection would make you feel. You’re basically afraid of feeling bad. Which, hey, I get it, feeling bad… well, feels bad. 

(This sort of stunning insight is why they pay me the tall relationship advice dollar.)

But the funny thing is: the fear of what rejection might feel like is almost always worse than the actual fear. You’ve spent so much time building it up in your head, coming up with all these worst-case scenarios and imagining how it’s going to feel that you’ve built it up into this huge monster of a feeling in your head. And to make matters worse, our brains react to what we imagine as though it were real, so you’ve been making yourself feel all those uncomfortable and painful feelings every time. No wonder that you’re so intimidated by it; as far as your brain’s concerned, you’ve been through this hundreds of times already. Why in pluperfect hell would you willingly put yourself through this again?

Well, because there’s no such thing as a guarantee of success. There’s no dating without the risk of rejection. The possibility of rejection, and rejection itself, is the price you pay for meeting people and wanting to see if you want to date them and if they want to date you. There’s no getting around it. If you want to date, you have to get comfortable with the possibility of rejection. That’s just life.

Just as importantly: there’s no way to get comfortable with the possibility of rejection – or with rejection itself – except to be rejected. It’s like boxing or mixed martial arts: you’re going to get punched and so you’re going to have to learn how to take a punch. And unfortunately, there’s no way to learn how to take a punch and not be afraid of being punched, except to get punched. You just have to face it and learn how to deal with it.

“Well, I don’t want to get punched!” I hear you cry. Which is reasonable. But punching is part of boxing. If you want to get into boxing, you’re gonna get punched. If you don’t want to get punched, you don’t get into boxing.

So it is with dating. Rejection is a part of dating. You’re going to get rejected, because everyone does. Nobody goes 5 for 5, no matter who they are. Doesn’t matter what celebrity you think of, what influencer, model, incredibly hot stranger you see on the street – everyone gets rejected at many points in their lives. You learn to accept it, and you learn to avoid it when you can and you learn to roll with it when it happens.

However, here’s the part you don’t realize yet: rejection is almost always far less painful and far less scary than what you’re picturing in your head. The first couple times can be especially bad, sure, but that’s in part because, well, you have nothing to compare it to and most of the time, you’re overly invested, emotionally, in the outcome than it actually deserves. If you’ve built this person into more than just someone you might like to go on a date with, or someone you’d like to get to know better, then that rejection is going to hurt more because you’ve created a situation where that rejection would hurt more. If you decided that the success or failure of your deepest dreams would be determined by the flip of a coin, you’d be hurt if it didn’t come up tails, like you wanted.

That’s part of why it hurt so much when you got rejected the first time. You never experienced it before, and you almost certainly built the idea of dating her into something more than it should be under the circumstances. When she said “no thank you”, it felt like your world was crashing down because you built your world around her saying yes.

Well, the obvious thing to do going forward is to stop building worlds around people, especially people who you aren’t in a relationship with. They haven’t earned that level of importance and investment yet. They may tick all your boxes; you may be able to easily imagine the incredible time you would have with them… but you still barely know them and you certainly haven’t spent enough time or shared enough together to warrant world-building. Doing so prematurely is how you end up with unnecessary and easily avoidable heart-break.

This is why you want to go into these situations with the mentality of “ok, you’re attractive and I think you’re cool… what else do you have going for you and what makes you right for me?” You want to see asking them out on a date as the first step in simply getting to know whether they’re someone you would like to get to know better. Maybe they’re not right for you! Maybe they like to play tennis with live kittens! Maybe they think JD Vance is an insightful and canny politician! You don’t know! Do you want to spend time with a person like that? Would you feel good about investing in them only to find this out later? No? Well, that’s why you don’t invest so much importance to their “yes” until you know they’re worth investing in!

I hate to say it, but you’re going to have to make the conscious decision to go out and risk being rejected. There really is no way around it. But not only is that how you learn that rejection isn’t as bad as you imagine it to be, but you also learn that you don’t need to be afraid of it, you learn how to deal with it and you learn not to make it worse than it actually is.

There’s no learning without doing. There’s no doing without accepting the risk. But outcome isn’t that bad, and as you date, you also realize that rejection just means this person wasn’t right for you, for whatever reason. It’s not always pleasant, but better to find out they’re not right for you now rather than weeks or months or years down the line.  

You’ve made rejection into this big scary thing in your head, OHD, and it’s keeping you from what you want. The only way to really get over this fear is to face it and realize that you’ve blown it out of proportion – both through your imagination and through over-investment in others. Stop building it up in your head, avoid imbuing any one person with more importance than they’ve actually earned, ask some folks out and be ready to face rejection head on.

You’ll realize incredibly quickly that all you’re afraid of is the fear. Overcome that and the rest will start falling into place.

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 grew up pretty isolated from everyone. My parents emphasized that getting good grades should be my first priority when going to school, and as such, I was able to get a lot of scholarships and attend a pretty nice college. But I feel like I missed a lot of opportunities to develop a dating life. I was involved in all sorts of sports and extracurriculars, and I could socialize with people just fine, but I never was really a part of any specific friend group, and everything stayed in school. Toward my later years, I got along with just about everybody, but it was clear that I was kind of off to the side, and I never formed any tight bonds with anyone.

Now at college, I live in an apartment alone, and the lingering feeling that I’m going to die a virgin with no one to care about is really hitting hard. At one point I was fantasizing taking my own life just to save me the pain.

I’m not a super model or anything (or even just a regular model for that matter), but I consider myself a pretty good guy. However, I was just never a part of the loop. I never got into social media because the whole landscape feels weird, and I would probably look like a dork on it anyways. It feels like there’s this giant conversation going on, and I’m by myself with no idea what’s happening.

I just don’t know what to do to form any sort of connection with someone that could lead to dating. It feels like I never learned how to really connect with people, only ever get along, and it’s starting to haunt me a little bit. I’ve never asked a girl for her number, and I’m so afraid of looking creepy, or making the situation awkward. 

For the most part, I end up going to class, and then going back to my apartment, and I just don’t know what to do actually meet and talk to people. And it’s so conflicting because just going somewhere alone and initiating conversations with random people feels so weird and uncomfortable, but at the same time I so desperately want to find someone and actually start dating. I have no clue what people do to actually get girls numbers in college or how to keep the conversation going for that matter. I’m at a standstill right now, and it all feels helpless. I don’t know why dating seems so intuitive for everyone but me.

Solo Leveling Sucks

DEAR SOLO LEVELING SUCKS: So, there’s good news and bad news, SLS.

The good news is that this isn’t intuitive for everybody else. It’s all learned. Everyone who dates, who socializes or has a social life started from a place of ignorance and learned by doing. The only difference between them and you is that they started earlier than you did, that’s all. But here’s the thing:  you already have the skills you need to socialize with women and get numbers. You’ve demonstrated this already in high-school: you could get along with everyone just fine, you participated in sports teams, you had your extracurriculars and plenty of folks thought you were a fairly decent guy. All of this means that you’re in a better position than you seem to think you are.

The bad news is that you have to make the decision to actually put those skills to work, use that experience and, y’know, put yourself out there.

Now, you may be wondering why I labeled this as “bad news”, and the answer is… you already know this. You’re just not doing it, and you’re going to have to wrestle with the question of “why”?

I get that you were told to prioritize grades and getting into a good school growing up… well, congrats, you’ve done that. So now it feels like you’re doing a trapeze act without a net, and you’re playing it safe instead. You were used to having a very specific set of guidelines and instructions that gave you structure and rails to keep you in place. Now, you don’t, and that’s scary, and so you’re playing it safe. This is why you feel weird about getting on social media, why everyone feels like they’re having a conversation you don’t know how to join and why you just go from class back to your apartment; it’s what seems the least risky and the least intimidating. It may be misery, but it’s a misery you know.  

The issue you’re facing is that you’re so unused to dealing with the unknown and the unfamiliar that it’s intimidating the hell out of you and you’re worried that you’re going to f--k it up in some nebulous way. That whole “I’m going to look like a dork on social media” thing? That’s really not different from approach anxiety; you’re worried that you’re going to mess things up and it’s going to be embarrassing. Which seems like a weaksauce reason, but people have done more and worse things in the name of avoiding the risk of humiliation.

But this brings us right back to the good news I mentioned up top. You don’t realize it, but you’re in a better place than a lot of folks who have similar issues simply because you’ve shown you have the skills. You just haven’t applied them with intention and direction. You could’ve had more friends in school and had opportunities to date, if you’d been willing to take the next step instead of backing off to focus on your grades and getting the “right” high-school transcript. So if you want to break out of your shell, it’s time to do what you didn’t do in high-school.

And here’s the thing that you don’t know yet: you are in the perfect time and place to start practicing those skills and stretching those social muscles. College is practically custom built for making friends, experimenting with different sides of yourself and trying new things. You will almost never be in a place where you are surrounded by people more or less your age and in similar stages of life. There will never be a time when you have more opportunities to reach out and explore, while you also have as few responsibilities to get in the way.

So here’s what you’re going to do: instead of going back to your empty apartment when you’re done with classes, you’re going to stay on campus for a bit. You’re going to explore. I’d suggest starting with the student union or any of the on-campus activity hubs – places where people not only congregate and hang out, but where people post signs and notices and where events are held. You’re going to start looking for extracurricular activities. These could be anything – amateur sports teams looking for players, hobby or activity clubs, interest groups, anything that catches your attention, piques your curiosity or seems at least half-way interesting to you. And you’re going to sign up for a couple of these and start attending.

Don’t worry about whether you’re going to find something you like; you’re going to be spoiled for choice. There’ll be all of the college-sponsored options and a hell of a lot of unofficial ones as well. Pick… let’s say, three to start with, so there are at least three days where you don’t immediately rush back to your Fortress of Self-Imposed Solitude. And while you’re at these extracurriculars, your goal is going to be simple: you’re going to talk to folks and get to know them a little better. That’s it. You take the level that you socialized back in high-school and, rather than holding yourself back or sticking to strictly what would be necessary for the activity, you’re going to just chat with people, find out who they are and what makes them tick. Where are they from, what are they studying, what are they into besides $INSERT_ACTIVITY_HERE?

And, importantly, you’re going to see who seem to be like people you enjoy talking to and might like to talk to more often. When you meet a couple folks like that, you’re going to invite them to grab lunch with you. Or maybe coffee after class. Or see if folks want to go see a movie. Perhaps there’s another on-campus event that seems interesting and you all could check that out. This is going to necessitate you being able to get ahold of them to coordinate, make or confirm plans, so you’re going to have to ask folks for their contact information.

On the days when you don’t have those groups – or you don’t have lunchtime plans – go to the dining hall and see if there’re any large tables of folks that have room for one more. When you find one, go over and say “hey, I realized that I’ve been at $COLLEGE for $TIME and I barely know anyone, so I’ve made it a challenge to talk to strangers and meet folks. Is it cool if I join you? My name’s Solo Leveling.” Then, if they say yes, the same thing applies: you sit down and talk with them and focus on getting to know them, the same way you do during your after-class activities.

Do this 5 times a week, Monday through Friday, and you’ll have at least the beginnings of a social circle before the semester’s over. And just as importantly: you’re going to be used to doing some of the things you’re so afraid of – talking to strangers, asking people for their number, planning activities together, etc.

Now I know what you’re thinking: ok, that’s great, but that doesn’t solve my “want to find a girlfriend problem”. Except… it does. All of the skills you’re going to be practicing when you do this all apply to dating. The credits transfer. The only difference between planning to meet up with your bud to watch the home game and planning a date is the intent. Everything else? Exactly the same.

I promise you: none of this is nearly as scary or weird or uncomfortable as you think; you’re just not used to it and you just have to get familiar with it. There’s nothing embarrassing about being inexperienced at this, because there’s nothing embarrassing about not knowing something. Everyone starts from the same place, and quite frankly, nobody cares when you started, only that you got there.

(And people who give you s--t about having not started sooner? Odds are good that they haven’t started at all and they’re slamming you because of how they feel about themselves. The rest are just s--theads and life is too short to care about the opinions of s--theads.)

And, just as an aside: don’t stress yourself out about not “getting” social media or looking like a dork on there. This is, again, just a matter of experience. When you’re making friends and making plans with those friends, you’ll likely need to make an account on at least one site or app in order to facilitate plans. You don’t need to be a WhatsApp expert or an Instagram guru right off the bat; you can lurk for as long as you want, see how other folks use it and learn the ins and outs.

And seriously: don’t worry about looking like a huge dork on there. Everyone looks like an idiot on social media at one point or another and nobody cares. The churn is such that it all tends to vanish like tears in rain, and nobody’s really going to care about newbie mistakes. You’ll be fine. I promise.

You’ve got this, SLS.

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 am a huge fan and have been following you for many years (2013?) but have never written. This is a crazy story but sadly it is true.

My cousin (age 36) who is my best friend was in an abusive relationship for 7 years where she was subjected to violence on a regular basis. One day her boyfriend said she was bad for him and left. She called me in hysterics and we went on a girl’s night out to try and soothe her. That evening she began texting men on dating apps and paid special attention to one in particular.

I figured it was harmless but then she asked me if I could take her in my truck, 3 hours away, to MOVE a man in with her. I figured she was wasted as we had been drinking. The next morning, she asked me again and I said no. Who was this guy?? It was an old coworker (age 36) she had not talked to in 5 years but messaged the night before and confessed her long-term crush for him. He was being evicted and said he had a crush on her too. She went and got him that day and I was, quite frankly, shocked out of my mind.

She moved him in with her into her dorm where he ultimately wasn’t allowed and they got kicked out. Fast forward to 10 months later she gives birth to their unplanned child and they get married. Throughout all of this she talked to me way less and I figured it was because she had started a new chapter of her life, however hasty I thought that it was.

Five years later after only scarce contact and visits she calls me crying saying he had been verbally and emotionally abusive the entire relationship and was cheating on her. He was unemployed, binge drinking, had wrecked their car while drunk driving, and was with a woman 10 years his senior. He brought that woman into their home and around their kids when my cousin wasn’t around. He degraded my cousin on a daily basis, neglected their kids, and finally, brought crack cocaine into their home. I had enough and called my cousin’s mother, who kicked him out.

After my cousin left her husband and filed for divorce, she started talking to me regularly again and seeing me more often. But it wasn’t about me, she was the happiest I had seen her in a long time. She was finally free. Then just a few months later she stopped being communicative again and blew me off for the holidays. I figured she was just busy with her family but I found out she got back with her husband.

That was two years ago and they’ve been together since and she says he no longer drinks or does crack cocaine. I was happy to hear that and didn’t think anything of it. She took up to a week to respond to simple messages and it was back to how it was when she first got married but again, I just figured she was busy.

Lately she had been very angry and complaining about every little thing so when she insulted one of my friends, I called her out on it. I said she couldn’t just behave like that. And that’s when she told me her husband only let her go out with the children, and that he hated me with a passion. That he couldn’t even say my name without experiencing rage, and that he was “jealous” of our friendship. I’ve never had a fight with the man and have only ever been friendly when around him. In fact, I’ve barely seen him, we just never spent time together in a group.

We are due for our yearly girl’s night where we stay in, drink, and watch movies, but she isn’t allowed to go. Her husband doesn’t even want her to text me which is why I haven’t heard from her as much since she got with him. I don’t know what to do. Her relationship is none of my business, but this isn’t right. Her mother already knows the situation and just wants their 3 kids to have a present father. But I feel my cousin is being abused, probably worse than she is letting on.

-Missing My Homegirl

DEAR MISSING MY HOMEGIRL: Hoo boy. This is a s--tty situation, MMH, and I’m sorry you and your cousin are going through this.

Your cousin’s relationship with her husband isn’t your business, but your cousin’s health and well-being are. She’s family, she’s your best friend, that puts caring about her and her situation pretty firmly in the side of “yes, your business”.

And I think you’re right: it sounds like this is a bad situation all around. There’s an immediate tell in that she drops out of contact as soon as she gets with this guy. Once she reaches her breaking point and reaches out to you for support, she gets back in contact with you. As soon as she is back with the same dude… crickets. Increasingly long delays in returning texts. Unwilling (or unable, per her husband’s dictates) to see you socially. Constantly on edge and stressed out and snapping at everyone. Basic pattern recognition would suggest that this is Abusive Relationship 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Though, honestly, you don’t even need that; the fact that her husband refuses to “let” her go out except when taking the kids somewhere, doesn’t like her texting you ever and apparently explodes with rage at hearing your name are all pretty solid tells that this is a bad, bad scene. Isolating people from their support networks, especially their family and close friends is a textbook abuser move. This makes it harder for their victims to access support from people who care about them and lessens the odds that anyone will tell them “hey, this guy you’re with? I’m thinking maybe he’s not such a good guy.”

I mean, let’s be real: you demonstrated this during the first go-round. Her reaching out to you lead to your reaching out to her mom, which helped tip the dominoes that lead to her divorcing his ass. The fact that he experiences violent rage at the thought of you is incredibly unsurprising; to his mind, you were directly responsible for your cousin leaving him. Small wonder that he’s determined to cut her off from you; you’re the greatest threat to his control.

So, I think you’re right and you should trust the way your Spidey-sense is tingling; she’s in a bad place, and it’s not going to get better.

The problem is… well, honestly, there’s not much you can do, here. Your cousin’s a grown-ass woman and she’s capable of making her own bad decisions. And to be fair: she seems very determined to make them. I’m trying to be generous, because leaving a violent and abusive relationship can f--k some people up, and I doubt that she was thinking terribly clearly at the time. But even so… leaping from a violent and abusive relationship to immediately confessing a crush to a guy she hadn’t seen in years and then moving him into her dorm room suggests that maybe she’s not so great with making decisions.  

I don’t even mean that she leapt from one abuser to another; I can all but guarantee that he didn’t show his true colors until later. I just mean that this is a series of very poor choices, made at a time when she really shouldn’t have been making them. You don’t say how long it took between leaving her abusive ex to connecting with this dude to shacking up with him, but it sounds like it was a matter of days. Which, if that’s the case, really would imply that either she has seriously bad judgement or impulse control issues.

I mean, she moved him into her dorm room. Call me an optimist, but I would think that “hey, he’s not a student here, maybe I should see if this is even an option” should’ve bubbled up to the surface at least once before he was filling out change of address forms.

Now, to be absolutely clear: I’m not saying that she brought this on herself or that she deserves what happened to her. Nobody deserves to be abused, period, end of. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, no way and no how. This does, however, suggest a pattern of behaviors and decision making that’s going to make it difficult for her to extract herself from this situation. As a result, I think you are going to have to be ready for this to be a long project.

The thing is, her bad decisions are going to be one of the reasons why she stays with him. Part of why people have a hard time leaving abusive relationships is often, they don’t want to admit that they’re the sort of person who would “let” themselves be abused. And those scare-quotes around “let” are deliberate; a lot of folks see being a victim of an abuser as a character flaw or moral failing. It’s the sort of thing where you can, in the abstract, say “I’d never fall for this, I would never let someone treat me this way, I’m too smart/independent/cool/whatever for that.” But once it’s happening to them… well, admitting that they are the sort of person who could fall victim to an abuser is a bitter pill to swallow, and so many people won’t. Not at first.

People are very good at coming up with all sorts of plausible reasons and excuses for their abuser’s behavior and why it’s not “really” abuse. It’s hard to own up to – believe me, I know – and it’s harder to believe that someone you love and care about could treat you this way. And to make matters worse, abusers are very good at displacing blame, pulling a DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender) or selling a “but baby, I’ve changed!” narrative.

That’s why I wish I were surprised that she went back to him after the way he mistreated her so badly the first time. Unfortunately, this part of the cycle is incredibly common. A lot of abusers will circle back around to their victims and make a lot of noise about how they’ve seen the light and now this time things will be different and doesn’t he deserve a second chance? And to someone who wants to believe that their partner loves them and wants to be better… well, those are very seductive things to hear. Especially from the father of your children.

I bring this up because, like last time, she’s going to be with him until she’s ready to leave. At some point, she will hit her breaking point and she will decide that enough is enough and it’s time to get the f--k out. There isn’t really any way for you to speed up this process; trying to force the issue is more likely to make her dig in her heels and give him more leverage to cut her contact with you.

Now, the thing I’m most concerned about is your aunt/her mother. Getting her involved was key to helping your cousin to get away from this dude last time. The fact that she seems to think that emotional abuse and dictatorial control over her daughter is an acceptable price to pay for her grandkids to have a father in their lives is… worrying. That cuts out a very important and influential voice. If she’s erring on the side of “…but think of the children!” if and when your cousin comes to her with complaints about his behavior, that’s going to be more pressure for her to stay instead of divorcing this guy so hard his ancestors split up retroactively.

This is going to be incredibly difficult and frustrating for you, but the best move you have here is to just wait. Putting pressure on your cousin to leave is more likely to hit like a threat to her sense of self – that belief of “I’m not the sort of person who gets abused” that I mentioned. When we feel a part of our identity get challenged like that, we tend to dig our heels in and double-down, rather than admit people are right. It’s stupid, I know, but as a species, we’d rather stay in a s--tty situation than face the humiliation of admitting that we were wrong and other people were right.

The best thing – the only thing, really – that you can do for your cousin is to make sure that she knows that she can always reach out to you, to talk, to vent, to ask for advice or for help, no questions asked and no judgement given. You can even try to make sure she has ways of reaching you that her husband is less likely to find or take away from her. S--t, you could always take a tip from high-schoolers and use a shared Google doc as an ersatz WhatsApp or Discord server.

If she asks your opinion or your advice, be careful in how you deliver it. Situations like this tend to work better when other people think that their decision was ultimately their choice. You can express concern – “You don’t seem happy, lately”, or “I haven’t’ heard from you in forever, I’ve been missing you!”, and you can ask leading questions like “why would he be so against a family night out?”. Your goal is to plant seeds whenever and wherever possible and hope that they grow.

The important thing is that if the day comes that she does decide that she needs to leave him (again), that you do not give her any form of s--t. No “FINALLY,” no “Praise Jesus, at last”, no “it’s about time”, nothing. That’s precisely the sort of thing that she’s afraid of hearing, and even the slightest hint of judgement or criticism is likely to push her back to him. All she should hear is “What do you need? I can be at your door in X hours.”

If and when this happens, she’s going to need the love and support of her friends and family, and reassurance that she’s not an idiot, a victim or someone who brought this on herself.

And if you happen to encourage her to take a little more time to recover, re-settle herself and maybe take a break from dating and meeting men… well, that’s not a bad idea, either.

I hope things improve for your cousin soon, MMH. Write back and let us know how things are going.   

Good luck.

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