DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am a gay 27-year-old male and I was raised in a very conservative household: coming out when I first realised I was gay (15) was completely out of question. I kept it well hidden for about five years because, really, I had no choice. When I was in my early 20’s I fell head over heels for a boy. To me, he was perfect, and he also liked me. This happened only weeks after I came out for the first time to a friend. It seemed like a sign… except it wasn’t. Some time passed without seeing him after I first met him. We saw each other again a year later. We began seeing each other from time to time (nothing romantic), but I slowly began to get in my head… because I was a virgin (I have read everything you have written about being a virgin and all the troubles it brings, but I always find a way to see myself as an exception to all of it), and he, although he was younger than I was, wasn’t. He was your typical gay “slut”. I liked him (more on that later), but I thought I could never be enough for him. It was the first time I felt anything like this and I did not know what to do. I felt inferior to him: he had experience; I didn’t. He had lived his life and had no regrets; I had nothing but regrets. I could never be good for him because he had done all the things I wanted to do and he had done. The mistakes you can’t make are the ones that hurt the most.

It did not go well. I began to get in my head for two reasons: one, I liked him, I REALLY liked him and being what I was was keeping me away from him. Second, I began to realise that I was trailing behind virtually ALL OF HUMANITY -not just him- in a fundamental part of life: sex. Every younger person that I met knew what it was like, and I didn’t. I had been carrying a bad depression ever since I realised I was gay, but this took it to an extreme. Had I had the option not to hide as a teenager, like everyone else my age (and younger), I could have been living my life all those years, and I could have been with him, because I wouldn’t have gotten in my head the way I did. I could have said that I lived my life to the fullest. But I couldn’t. And I can’t. I will never know what it is like to be a teenager and it is something that haunts me every day and will do so all my life.

I eventually I did ask him, explicitly, if he could help me with my issue. He said “no”, that it was “too much responsibility”. He knew about it when we first met (I told him) and he didn’t seem to have a problem with it back then. I asked him two years later and, by then, I had gotten in my head for too long and it was obvious to him. Don’t get me wrong, I am aware that I was the one who turned it into “too much responsibility”, but that would not have happened had I had my time to develop like a normal human being. There is a fundamental part of my life (some would say the MOST important part of my life) that was stolen from me. Without having tried it, I have developed a genuine fear towards sex. I can’t go a day without crying my eyes out. I feel trapped by the past I couldn’t have.

After many years, I realise that I was not (only) physically attracted to him: I felt admiration towards him. That admiration eventually turned into jealousy and obsession. Not a day goes by in which I don’t think of him and the perfect life he has: how he was able to be a teenager (he lost his virginity at 15), how he can have a normal, heathy sex life and how I can’t, how he doesn’t have to deal with a depression that is, quite literally, destroying every aspect of my life (I can barely write this). I WANT TO BE HIM. But I can’t: he was a teenager and I never will be, even if I suddenly started acting like him, which isn’t possible, because I’m too much responsibility at this point. He sleeps around with everyone and has no problem with it. I can’t do that after all that has happened: sex has gained such a negative meaning for me. I am disgusted that everyone else knows what it is like to be a teenager and I never will, I am disgusted that I could be too much responsibility for someone who is willing to sleep with everyone. No matter what I do, I will always be inferior, to him and to everyone else. No matter what I do, he will always be there being better than me in every way possible. I have lost too much time and I have missed too many moments and experiences life has to offer. Getting into a relationship won’t fix anything either: that’s for adults. I genuinely feel you can’t be an adult without being a teenager first; it’s like going from 1 to 3 without going through 2. Not possible. Also, I feel by this point I’m too tormented by the frustration and impotence to be with anyone. I would make them miserable.

I have been to therapy, I am on medication and I have read everything there is to read on similar subjects (many things by you). I’m fighting the fact that there’s no turning back time and I am losing it. Again, I can’t accept that a fundamental part of my life has been stolen from me while everyone else had a chance to live it. Any advice you can give me will be useful. I don’t know what to do anymore.

Thank you so much.

Man Without a Life

DEAR MAN WITHOUT A LIFE: OK MWaL, here’s what I want you to do: I want you to repeat to yourself “There is nothing wrong with me.” Make this your mantra. Repeat it every morning when you get up. Tattoo it backwards onto your forehead so you can see it in the mirror. Shave your head if you need the room.

Because – and stop me if you’ve heard this before: there is nothing wrong with you. You’re a virgin. You’re not broken. You’re not defective. You are not a failure. You’re not trailing behind anyone because you’re not in a race with anyone. 

Here’s a truth: you’re going through what a lot of young LGBTQ people have gone through: you’re wrestling with your social development now because, quite frankly, you weren’t able to go through it when straight kids did. You have been in a place in your life where you couldn’t be your true self because it was dangerous for you. Now that you’ve been in a decent place for a few years, you are in the position of having to go through the struggle and drama most of us go through in our teens. You couldn’t work this crap out then because you weren’t safe. Now you’re in a better place.

Here’s another truth: your journey is your journey. I know that there’s a lot of pressure for men – gay or straight – to be hypersexual, to lose your virginity as early as possible. But thing is? That’s bulls

t. It’s part and parcel of the same toxic ideas around male behavior that encourages us to treat sex like the end-all, be-all of life, regardless of what it may do to you.

Your crush lost his virginity at 15. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was – or you would have been – ready for it. A lot of guys I know who lost their virginity when they were younger will posture and brag about it in public… but in private, once they’ve had a few beers in them, the truth comes out: they weren’t ready, it was a confusing, complicated mess and it took them a long damn time to sort things out.

Here is a third truth: comparison is the thief of joy. Your life will never be like your crush because you are not him. The more that you try to measure yourself by somebody else’s metrics, the worse you will feel because you are not them. They didn’t have the life you did. You didn’t have the life they did. Beating yourself up because your life isn’t like theirs is like a dog beating itself up because it can’t fly like a condor.

Your life is uniquely your own. Your challenges are uniquely yours. Nobody else is going to have your story, just as nobody else will have your crush’s. Nor will anyone else have mine. Trying to live someone else’s story is only going to make things worse because you’re not them.

Here is a final truth: it is never too late. You haven’t missed “your time” because your time is NOW. These are your teenage years; you are just dealing with them now because you had to put your life on hold until it was safe to live it. Society may fetishize the life of teens, it may make being a teenager the pinnacle of your life… but that’s just marketing. They do this because it’s easier to sell high-school drama to the 12-19 year old set. You may be learning more about you, your life and your social mores now, but you’re doing so at a time when you have the age and maturity to handle things in ways that your peers, gay or straight, didn’t.

It is not too late for you. It will never be too late.

Now here’s what you need to do. You need to get yourself to a therapist. It’s good that you’re on medication, but as someone who deals with depression himself, medication alone doesn’t do the trick. Having a therapist, especially one who’s familiar with LGBTQ issues, is going to be incredibly important. They will be able to help hold your hand and guide you through these rough times. They will be better able than a loudmouth with a blog to remind you that there is nothing wrong with you.

Just as importantly: don’t forget that not all antidepressants  work for all people. It takes time to figure out the correct medication and to find the correct dosage. If one isn’t working after a period – could be weeks, could be months – then be willing to advocate for yourself and tell your doctor that they’re not helping.

And as important as the therapy, as important as the medication: find your community. Find your Team You. Not the people you want to sleep with, not the people you think have perfect lives (trust me: they don’t), but the people who love and care for you. You want the people who will help you up when you’ve fallen down, who will have your back and who will call you on your bulls

t when you need it. Because having your team in your corner is going to be important. You are strong. You had to be to survive until now. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use the love and support of your friends and family.

And most of all, as you work with your therapist, as you connect with your Team You, remember: there is nothing wrong with you.

You’re going to be ok. I promise.

All will be well.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m female, single, in my 30s, and I’ve never been romantically attracted to anyone. Ever.

Sure, I’ve dated, but I’ve never gotten beyond half-a-dozen or so dates before … well, I just don’t want to take it any further. I don’t want to hold hands, I don’t want to kiss, I don’t want to officially be their “girlfriend.” So I end up having to give the “let’s just be friends” talk and … that’s that.

I hate it because these men have done nothing wrong. Some of them were really great guys. And yet every time I have to be the “bad guy” and break it off for seemingly no reason. (And I know you don’t need any reason other than “I don’t want to be in this relationship anymore” to end a relationship, but it doesn’t stop it from feeling pretty awful.)

(I’ve been asked if I’m gay before – mostly from friends or family with whom I’ve discussed this and they’ve tried to look at my situation with an objective eye – but I don’t think that’s it because I’ve never felt attracted – romantically or otherwise – to women, either. But at this point, can I even say I know what romantic attraction feels like?)

A glimpse into my mindset: I’ve always found it strange that people can jump into romantic or sexual relationships with people they’ve only known for a few weeks or months. I can’t imagine having that kind of closeness with someone without having been friends for literally years beforehand. But there’s no way I’m going to tell that to a guy – “hey, let’s be friends for a real long time, and then maybe, maaaybe I’ll be open to dating you in a few years, but no promises!” – because that’s just ridiculous and mean.

And yet every several months (the frequency has gotten lower as I’ve gotten older and this has happened more and more) my family or friends will set me up on a date with someone they think I’ll like, and I’ll acquiesce due to a combination of “everyone thinks I’m weird and need help, I better at least give it a try” and “… maybe this time will be different?”

But it never is.

Luckily, at this point in my life, I am quite happy being single. No, really – I promise you it’s not a case of “she doth protest too much” (like my mother suspects). But will I always feel this way? Will I regret not finding someone when I’m much older and alone? (And I’m allergic to cats, so I can’t even be a crazy cat lady!)

So, my question is: should I keep trying? Is it really just that I haven’t found “the one” yet (as so many of my older relatives keep telling me – “oh, you’ll feel differently when you find the right person!”)? Do I have intimacy issues I need to work through? Or is this really just who I am?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.

Not Sure if Romantically Broken

DEAR NOT SURE IF ROMANTICALLY BROKEN: First of all, no, you’re not broken. Remember that. Nor are you alone in this. There’s actually a name for people like you: aromantic. It means that you – like many others – just don’t feel romantic attraction to others. It’s not common, but it’s also not unheard of; in fact, it’s often folded in under the asexual umbrella. It can be hard for people to realize that not everyone needs to be part of a couple or in a relationship to be fulfilled. A lot of our culture is based around the idea that coupling up is the end-goal of life and so it can be difficult to feel ok with being ok about being single and not wanting a partner.

Will you be like this all of your life? Hell if I know. You may be watching TV one day and realize that you’re fantasizing about your dream wedding to Rhianna. Or Zack Efron. Or both. Or you may never want a romantic partner in your life.

My question to you is: are you happy? Do you have friends, family (biological or by choice), a community? Do you feel connected to others? Do you have things in your life that bring you satisfaction?

If the answer is yes… well to hell with worrying about it. You’ve got a good thing going. Why stress about stuff that you clearly aren’t interested in?

Meanwhile, check out the Aromantic FAQ over at Asexuality.org and the associated forums. This may give you more insight into people like you and the vocabulary to describe it to others.

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 bisexual woman in a very happy relationship with my fiancé (a dude). Recently, we have been discussing the potential of having threesomes, as a way of exploring our sexuality further together.

I have had something of a long-standing crush on a mutual friend of ours. He’s a part of our main group of friends who we hang out with weekly to play D&D with. We’re all slightly awkward nerds. I’ve been getting a general vibe lately that the attraction might be mutual, especially after we spent the majority of the last party we had basically cuddling. But I feel I could also just be reading what I want to be into what may just be friendly interactions for him! I’ve been thinking lately that I might want to be straightforward about my attraction to him, and ask if he’d be up for a threesome. My fiancé is aware of all of this and is open to it as well.

I just really don’t want to make things uncomfortable between us. I really like him as a person and value his friendship more than anything. I think a threesome could be a lot of fun if he was interested, but I don’t want to be creepy, or make him feel like I’ve been his friend under false pretenses. If his answer was no I would be absolutely ok with that, and it wouldn’t change how I feel about him as a friend. I’ve only ever had sex with my fiancé before, so this is really a varsity level conversation that I don’t know how to even start, or if I should start at all. What should I do?

Thanks, 

Don’t Know If I Can Make This Diplomacy Check

DEAR DON’T KNOW IF I CAN MAKE THIS DIPLOMACY CHECK: short version: this is a bad idea, DC. There’re just too many unknowns involved here and too many ways that could end up with a critical fumble at the wrong moment. Then suddenly you’re stuck with a drama bomb that’s about to go off, messily and all over the place.

Now as a general rule, I’m all in favor of adding some adventure to your sex life. I’m very much pro threesomes, if that’s what you’re interested in. But finding the right person to bring into the game is important, because the stakes can be surprisingly high. The wrong addition can turn sexy fun and games into an unpleasant mess. Somebody who doesn’t respect the boundaries of your relationship can cause strife even when they’re not there. Plenty of people have had issues with special guest stars – or their partners – deciding that if it’s cool for all three of you to bang, then a little one-on-one time is just fine too. Then there’s the issue of handling the relationship with the third party afterwards.

One of the reasons why finding a third can be tricky is because so many couples treat their third like a toy; they only want that extra person for as long as the sexy times are going on and kick them out before the sweat has even cooled. And ideally, you want someone who will understand and respect the relationship between you and your fiancé and not cause a fuss in the middle of things.

The ideal partner for a threesome, especially if it’s your first ever, is either often someone you already have a good relationship with – an ex you’re on good terms with, for example – or a professional. In both cases, you’re far more likely to have someone who can communicate clearly, who will respect the rules you all lay out in advance and who won’t cause problems afterwards.

In this case, I think you’ve picked the wrong potential addition to your party.

Let’s start with the fact you don’t really know how much he’s into you… or how. I mean, yes, cuddling in general can be a sign someone’s interested. By the same token, some folks are cuddlers and have no problem being part of a puppy pile with their friends; that doesn’t mean that they have any sexual interest in the people they’re cuddling with. This is information that you might want to have before you try to making your move on them.

But even if he is interested, starting off with a threesome is a pretty big ask. I mean, sure it’s possible he’d be down for hooking up with you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to be the meat man in your particular sexy sandwich. It’s one thing if it were just the two of you. It’s another entirely – if he’s down in the first place – to say “OK but it’s not just me, it’s me and my fiancé.” That adds all kinds of extra layers of difficulty that’s going to have you rolling with disadvantage.

To start with, there’s the immediate question of whether he likes threesomes in the first place. Yeah, porn tells us that threesomes are the top-tier prize, but sexy is in the eye of the beholder and not everybody is into it. Some folks don’t want the pressure of trying to please two people at once – or be pleased by them, for that matter. Others don’t do their best work with a crowd. And if he were into you and into having a threesome with you right off the bat, the fact it’s with your male fiancé may be a line. There’re a lot of folks out there who’re down for hooking up with two women but get vexed at the thought of another dude in the room.

And even if you rolled that particular natural 20: he was into you, and into a threesome off the bat and cool with it being with you and another guy… he may just not be cool with the idea of doing it with your fiancé, specifically, participating.

That’s a lot of stackable modifiers to that particular persuasion check. And it’s already a varsity level conversation to have with someone. The last thing you want to do is invite him over, wave in your fiancé and ask “So how do you want to do this?”

Now, if your fiancé is amenable to opening up the relationship somewhat to let you pursue things with this guy, then you might be able to work towards eventually having a threesome. But in general, I think this is a bad idea and a bad way to try to leap straight into advanced-level fooling around. This is something you might want to table and come back to once you’ve got a few more levels under your belts.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: First of all I’m sorry if you’ve been asked this before. I’ve been a long time lurker and you give some good advice and I hope you can help me.

I’m 24 and I never kissed or held hands with a girl, figure out the rest. I know it’s pathetic but I can’t stop thinking about everything I missed and I’ll never be able to experiment. Missing out teen love mortifies me and I think it fucked me up. I mean, in your teenage years you get your first relationships and you learn the basics about being with someone, what is like, how it works, what to do, what to don’t, how to behave, etc. And you do it with someone as inexperienced as you in that wonderful time of your life when you had no big worries at all. I know it may sound cheesy or maybe I have an idealized, but that’s what I observed from the shadows and now every time I see a young couple walking in the street I want to cry and it ruins my day. In fact, I can’t see pictures or tv shows where romance is involved without wanting to cry.

I know I’ll be single for the rest of my life. I know I can’t predict the future or know what will happen, but I look at the odds. To meet someone you need friends or acquaintances so they could introduce you to someone they know or just be in the right place at the right time. I don’t have friends or acquaintances. So the chances of meeting a girl are nearly impossible or have a low-probability, while dying alone and no one noticing it after several weeks because of the smell is more likely. Believing that out there is someone who can love me is like thinking that pink whales exist. It’s true I never approached a girl, but when I see a girl I find cute, I always think that she’s too pretty and I’m unlovable. That’s why avoid girls like the plague and I try to not be close to them, because is a constant reminder that I’ll be alone forever. I’m hideous, too weird, I don’t have social skills and I’ll never approach someone because that’s like telling them ‘hey, I think you have low standards, bad taste and poor eyesight. Wanna hang out?’ I know every girl will reject me so there is no point in trying. High school taught me girls are disgusted by my mere presence and that I should stay away from them and never dare to look at them. That’s what I do everyday and I try to not show any interest at all. No girl deserves me because they deserve someone better because it’s simple: there are millions of guys out there and I know I’m among the worst (excluding criminals). I can’t enhance their lives, because I have nothing to do it. They deserve someone normal, not me.

My question is, how can I accept this? I mean I KNOW I’ll end up alone and that I’ll never get a girlfriend or to love someone that loves me back, but it hurts me to the point I haven’t slept well in months. I stay up hours thinking and ruminating about this and sometimes I cry. A lot. I just want to be able to say “I’ll never experience love, so what?”. I don’t want to get sad knowing I’ll never get a girlfriend, get married, have kids and raise them together. I just want to accept my fate and stop worrying about something I can’t change. Or at least be able to sleep well and be somewhat happy being alone.

-Quasimodo’s Ugly Inexperienced Twin

DEAR QUASIMODO’S UGLY INEXPERIENCED TWIN: I think you came to the wrong place, QUIT, because you’re asking me to sign off on your decision to give up and that’s not what I do. If you want to give up, lay down and rot… well, that’s your decision. You don’t need my permission to do that. But I’m also not going to be the person to tell you that this is the right decision or to applaud you for doing so. My job is to help people fix things and find solutions and I’m NOT going to be the guy to tell you “nope, nothing you can do, time to die.”

And, straight talk: you don’t need to be talking to me, my dude. You need to be talking to a therapist, because the things you’re describing? They’re not reasonable. If you’re feeling this much emotional anguish over being a little to the right on the far-end of the virginity bell-curve, then the issue isn’t whether you’ll be forever alone, it’s the negative thought patterns and the pain they’re causing you. I mean, I hate to break up the pity party (no, that’s a lie; I really don’t) but you’re not that rare of a beast; nearly a third of men are still virgins between the ages of 20 – 24.

But to be perfectly blunt: you’re talking a lot of shit my dude. It’s like I’ve told folks before: you’re not a prophet. You can’t see the future and no, you DON’T know that you’re never going to have a girlfriend. What you have here is a metric ass-ton of self-imposed, self-limiting beliefs that are based on sweet fuck-all and a heaping dose of self-pity.

I mean, let’s start with the fact that you didn’t have a girlfriend when you were a teenager. Neither did a lot of people. You’re right: you have a completely idealized – and completely fantastical – idea of what dating and teen love was like. It sounds to me like a lot of your ideas about what dating would’ve been like in high-school came from TV and books because it sure as hell doesn’t look like anything most people have seen. You don’t come out of your first relationship as a teenager with a new knowledge of how everything works; half the time, you don’t know what the actual hell happened and you’re as confused as you were before… if not more so. Nor, for that matter, are you guaranteed that you’re going to be with someone who’s as equally clueless as you. The fact that you’re the same age doesn’t mean that you have commensurate levels of experience. Just as some people were late bloomers, others bloomed early and may have been sexually active at an earlier age.

And honestly: having had a relationship in high-school doesn’t automatically set you up for dating success later in life any more than not having had one dooms you. You may want to try talking to some of your LGBT peers; many of them lived in places where there were no other queer kids for them to date. Hell, there’re many who didn’t come out until long after high-school and didn’t start dating until they were in their 20s. All not having gone through the emotional roller-coaster that is dating in high-school means is that you’re just going to be going through that ride a little later than some folks. That’s neither a good or bad thing. It doesn’t mean that you’re at a permanent disadvantage or you’re doomed to failure. It just means that you didn’t start at the same time as other people did and that’s fine because you’re not actually in competition with them. There’s no prize for getting to any particular dating milestone first. You don’t get bonus points in life because you lost your virginity before the median age (17-18)

(And show me someone who had no major worries as a teenager and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t remember what being a teenager was like. Everything was a cause for stress; you just didn’t have the experience or perspective to know what things you were supposed to get stressed out over.)

But literally everything else you bring up is either self-inflicted, easily corrected or both. Your complaints are almost word-for-word the same as many of the other people who’ve written into me before, and the solutions are almost identical as well. Just about everything you describe is the sort of thing that you could change in the matter of weeks.

Let’s be real here: just about everything you’ve told me is based on pure speculation. You say it yourself: you’ve never approached anyone before. Cool so then you don’t know that you’re going to get rejected. You’re just assuming you will. Why are you assuming that you will? Because you believe nobody could possibly be interested. And you know this based on…. what, exactly?

Well, going by your letter, high-school. Except, as we’ve already covered: not only is high-school not like real life, but we’re already in a position where we can’t really trust you to be the honest assessor of your own life right now.

There isn’t a thing that you’ve mentioned that can’t be fixed and most of it is just a matter of an order of operations. You don’t have friends or acquaintances. OK… so it seems obvious to me that the first step would be to start working towards making some. You don’t have social skills? You can actually develop those. They’re called social SKILLS for a reason; you build them through conscious and deliberate practice. You think you’re hideous? Well, first of all, I would love it if I had a nickel for every single average-to-good-looking dude that told me he was so ugly he made blind people scream. So I’m already calling bulls

t. But second of all: that’s fixable too. Not with plastic surgery or some other actually-trying-to-dodge-the-topic answer but really simple grooming and style techniques. I mean, all you need to do is watch any given episode of Queer Eye to see just how transformative some decently fitting clothes and a haircut can be.

But before you do any of that? You need to be willing to actually let go of the f

ked up, bulls

t incel logic you’ve got going on. You need to get the hell away from the incel boards and subreddits I know that you’re visiting – trust me, I’ve heard all of this before – and quit pretending that the fact that something hurts means that it’s true. No, the fact that something hurts just means that it hurts. Truth can hurt, but there’s something that hurts because it’s true and then there’s what you’re doing: the emotional equivalent of self-harm.

You need to talk to an actual therapist, QUIT, and preferably one who specializes in sexual and emotional anxieties like you have. I would strongly suggest that you go to the website for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists; they have a referral directory that can help you find a professional in your area. Working with them will help you take the most important first step: they can help you learn to put down the pain that you’re inflicting on yourself so that you can finally heal and realize that you’re wrong. The world isn’t the cruel, cold and dark place you think it is. You’re not doomed, you’re not forgotten and you’re not destined to be forever alone. You’re just lonely and in pain.

Start by addressing that pain. Once you’re not hurting yourself as much, you’ll realize just how much potential you have and how much this world actually has to offer, once you stop viewing it through eyes clouded by self-hate.

This can and will get better. I promise.

All will be well.

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

(Doctor’s Note: today’s letter deals with abusive relationships.)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I would normally dispense with the niceties and whatnot, but I feel like I’m in the middle of a potential crisis.

The long story made short is that I’m a 23 year old guy who had just graduated from college with a bachelor’s, and there’s a female friend of mine  – “Annie” — who had recently turned 29 (although if you ask her, she’s around 32 but that’s a detail I’ll get to later).

I’ve become increasingly concerned about her, to put it lightly. We’ve built up a rather strong friendship over the course of well over a year, but it seems like something has been very off over the past few months.

I know this because she was willing to become good friends because she gave me her number to text her (before that, we were DMing each other via Instagram). We’ve shared quite a lot of similar interests in just about a lot of topics (ranging from our favorite movies to particular styles of art), as well as recommended each other various new things to try. We’ve even vented to each other about our more personal secrets.

But like I said, it seems like there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark.

I noticed that Annie wasn’t really reading my messages or my DMs anymore plus her overall activity on Instagram and Tumblr have been significantly reduced, so I decided to email her. Some time ago, I asked her (through email of course) if she would be able to come to my graduation ceremony as well as let me stay over at her place (I graduated with honors and there was a cosplay convention on that same weekend as my graduation, and the con was about a couple of hours from where I live).  I was actually kind of expecting “no” because she wasn’t used to people staying over at her place, nor was she the kind of person to attend events with loud music and tons of people.

(In fact, neither am I, but graduation is pretty much a huge stepping stone that deserves commemoration).

The reason why wasn’t what I expected at all. She declined both offers because as of this writing, she has a fiancé that she’s been with for about three years now, and if her fiancé found out that another guy (even a male friend) took her to an event or let him stay at her place, then in her own exact words, “he would be significantly less than pleased… to put it lightly.” She then added that if her fiancé were to find out that we had been messaging each other as much as we had been in the past, then she would be forced to block me from all social media.

This wasn’t the only strange behavior I’ve seen from her. She has mentioned that she’s incredibly introverted and antisocial, but at least when we were talking more, she would at least take the time to talk when she was available. Not the case anymore. In fact, she was perfectly willing to give me her number in the past, but now it seems like she blocked my number for no apparent reason. She then DMed me on Instagram about that, trying to brush it off as a bug on her phone.

When another friend of mine tried to reach out to Annie, to check if this were a potentially abusive relationship, the she straight-up blocked them.

Finally, her whole demeanor has become a lot more… subdued, to say the least. I remember when we were texting until the wee hours of the night (it helps that she’s a night owl), she would get very emotional and very passionate about various topics. Nowadays, her personality seems to have just deflated into a shadow of her former self. She’s way less emotional now, and has become somewhat impersonal, almost robotic.

I’ve talked to another friend who recently got engaged , and they said that being engaged can come with less engagement with other people (especially on social media). According to them, it does kind of come with the territory. I do figure that’s understandable, except this feels less “guess they can’t stop bangin’” and more “blink twice if your soul is being held in a jar.”

Initially, I just brushed off all of this strange behavior from her because she recently became a business owner who works with several different countries (specifically China). Knowing that and her night owl tendencies, I could understand why she would be less active because I imagine that it’s a very demanding job that requires several hours of commitment. I mean, we’re both adults here, we both have real-world work to do.

In fact, I would even understand her having a fiancé and would have otherwise backed off because that kind of relationship requires a special kind of commitment… if her fiancé in question hadn’t been showing some serious red flags.

I just want to confirm that these are in fact red flags, and that I’m not going crazy:

– Annie telling me that her fiancé would be significantly less than pleased if any guy (including a male friend) took her to an event or let a male friend stay at her place.

– Annie telling me that if her fiancé found out we’ve been messaging each other as much as we had been in the past, then her fiancé would force her to have her block me from all forms of contact

– Her suddenly becoming way more willing to burn bridges with people, even with people she’s called friends for years (I can’t confirm this, but it seems like she’s unfollowed more friends who happened to be abuse survivors)

– Her outright disappearing from all social media and forms of contact (including her removing me from her Pokémon GO friends list for no apparent reason); she mentioned she’s a business owner who works into the wee hours of the night, but this disappearance is unusual even for her (I mean, she’s a diehard Pokémon fan for life!)

– Her apparently changing her age online to be “older” than she actually is (she has a history of dating men older than she is because she apparently finds herself unable to connect with guys around her own age, but this was well before I came into the picture)

After she told me about all the things with her fiancé and whatnot, I sent her a response email telling her about the potential red flags their relationship is showing, as well as all the strange behaviors that she’s been exhibiting over the past couple of months.

I haven’t heard from her since.

Interestingly enough, as of this writing, she hasn’t even unfollowed me on Instagram (she decided to follow me after her account had gotten hacked by Russian spammers; that was cleared up within a matter of hours), not even after I sent her that last email or after she blocked that friend who reached out to her.

This isn’t like she’s just “unfamiliar” with abusive relationships in the past; if anything, she has quite a history with them. Apparently when she was approximately closer to my age several years ago, she was in an extremely abusive relationship with a man who was about twice her age at that time. She doesn’t really want to talk about the details, but it more or less left her impoverished as soon as she left. Not too long after that, she met another guy and they started dating soon after. This now-ex had psychologically and sexually abused her, including forcing her to take alcohol and hard drugs to force her into caving in. As a result, she ended up alienating people she cared about, did some things that were uncomfortable and stranger for her, and developed C-PTSD as a result.

After all of this, she even created a sort of charity for abuse survivors and even creates hypnosis tapes for those survivors in order to help them recover (she’s a certified hypnotherapist, complete with degrees).

Additionally, I even did some asking around on online forums and chat rooms in order to determine if her fiancé’s behavior was indeed becoming abusive, and the overall consensus was pretty much “yes, the relationship is toxic AF and she should nope the hell out of there ASAP.”

While all of this might be bad enough, here comes the part where I screwed up. After her mentioning that she had a fiancé, I was in panic mode because of past friendships that would cease to exist because that friend would immediately ghost me after that relationship had started (that’s another story entirely), and as a result, I let it slip that I was planning on asking her out someday. At first, I saw her as someone that I could summon up the courage to ask out, but as time passed, I got to know her more and saw her as the good friend I now have, to the point where I simply forgot to ask her out.

As a result, she got scared and put “romantically unavailable” on her Instagram bio (apparently because two other friends had tried to ask her out around the same time; I honestly didn’t know about this until another friend told me).

However, the number-blocking and deletion from her Pokémon GO friends list happened way before I let that slip out, so there’s no correlation here.

Besides, if she had been for fiancé for about that length of time, asking her out would have been a moot point back then.

I know you’re going to summon the Chair Leg of Truth on me for this cardinal sin, but screw it, I honestly don’t care anymore because first and foremost, she’s my friend. I care about her as an individual, and I most certainly care about her safety (especially her safety).

I suppose I could sum it up to that being an inconvenient crush, but who knows? But then again, not knowing is part of the human experience, isn’t it?

It’s just that I really think she’s an awesome person, that’s it. In fact, she’s actually one of the few people I can actually talk to not just about personal items, but also about intellectually stimulating topics in such a way that I really can’t with most other people.

However, I am myself NOT ready for another relationship due to baggage that I won’t get into here (because then this will be a hell of a lot longer than it needs to be). I don’t feel emotionally ready for it, is what I’m trying to say. I even have plans to see a therapist to address this kind of baggage. On top of that, something like “getting into her pants” is NOT something I’ve thought about at all, not when she could be in potential danger.

Besides, it’s not like I can just drop her and move on with my life either, because like I said, her life could potentially be in danger.

In any case, I’ve asked my other friends for advice on what to do about this, and the best advice I’ve received so far is to just give my friend space. That’s… exactly what I did. I haven’t spoken to her in weeks, although I still find myself worrying about her every now and then, to the point where I check up on her to see that she’s doing ok (and that she hasn’t blocked me yet in case I finally decide to reach out to her).

I really don’t know what else to do. I guess I’m just looking for additional insight (especially from a professional), but more important, I just need advice on what I can do for my friend who may have potentially trapped herself into yet another abusive relationship.

Thank you for your time.

Stuck in the Middle with a Scorpion

DEAR STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH A SCORPION: Hoo boy. There’s a lot to unpack here, SitMwS and I have a lot of questions.

But let’s take it step by step.

First and foremost: Assuming everything is as you say it is, then yes, it sounds an awful lot like she’s in a toxic, if not outright abusive relationship. A lot of the behavior you’re describing sounds like someone who’s being isolated by an abuser. Take your friend burning so many bridges and cutting back on everybody in her life. While everybody’s different, getting engaged usually doesn’t also involve cutting ties with one’s friend. Someone who’s in an abusive relationship, however, often will suddenly withdraw from friends, from family and from activities they used to love.

This is entirely deliberate. Abusers will frequently try to cut their victims off from friends and family. The more isolated that their victim is, the more they come to rely on the abuser. It also helps keep them under the abuser’s thumb. By cutting their victim off from their friends, the victim has fewer voices warning them about the abuser’s behavior. Just as importantly, if the victim is cut off from her friends and family, then she has fewer available resources and fewer places to turn if and when she decides it’s time to get the hell out.

Abusers will frequently frame this in ways that may seem reasonable. It’s rarely “I don’t want you talking to anyone who isn’t me” – though there are those who will make it about how jealous they get. More often though, abusers will try to poison the well and sew discord and mistrust while convincing their victims to cut ties – the better to inoculate themselves against accusations of abuse. So they’ll frame the request as “they’re bad friends” or “they’re trying to break us up because they’re interested in you” or “they’re trying to turn you against me because REASONS”. This way, if someone tries to point out how awful his behavior is they can say “see, they said exactly what I said they would.”

Unfortunately, if her fiancé IS abusing her, then you played into this narrative by Nice-Guying your way through this. It’s much easier for him to sew doubt and mistrust by pointing out that you were hoping to ask her out at some point. This puts pretty much everything about your relationship with her into question, like asking if you can stay at her place, even knowing she was probably going to say “no”. Now anything you have to say about him is going to be through the filter of “yeah but he wants to date me,” regardless of whether that’s true any more or not.

I also want to come back to something you mentioned earlier: you’re surprised by this because she’s familiar with abusive relationships, having been abused before. This, unfortunately isn’t uncommon; a number of victims of abuse – especially as children – will end up in other abusive relationships. This can actually put something of a whammy on people who find themselves in abusive relationships; they don’t want to believe or accept it because they should supposedly “know better”. They believe they shouldn’t be the kind of person who’d get abused, especially again. It’s incredibly difficult to say “yes, this happened to me”. It’s even harder to say “It happened to me again,” especially to friends who may have pointed it out before. This mix of denial, shame and embarrassment can make it harder for them to decide to get out.

And it is hard to leave an abusive relationship. Abusers are very good at getting into their victims’ heads and convincing them that things are better and it’s all going to be fine now. They’ll lovebomb their victim and reinitiate a honeymoon period where they’re on their best behavior and it can feel like things are getting better. This lasts long enough for the victim to recommit and let their guard down… and then the cycle of abuse begins again. A victim of abuse – physical or emotional – often will leave and go back to their abuser multiple times before they leave for good. This can be maddening for their friends because… well, shouldn’t they know better by now? This cycle of leaving and going back often grinds people down, to the point that they’ll sometimes throw their hands up and say “fine, you know what, you chose this, I’m out.”

Which further isolates the victim.

Now someone call Sir Mix-A-Lot because there’s a huge “but” coming.

BUT. That’s all assuming that’s what’s going on here. Yeah, the activity that you’re describing all sounds like very typical abusive red flags.

They ALSO sound an awful lot like someone who’s trying to wave off a dude she barely knows who’s way more invested in her than she is in him.

You’ve known her for a year and over the course of that year — a year in which you’d been planning to ask her out. That would be a year in which you’ve known she’s had a fiancé.

And her dialing back contact with you has been happening over the course of several months. And the reduction in contact with you seems to have started around the time you invited her to your graduation and asked if you could stay at her place

All this raises other red flags with me.

Straight talk: a lot of the things you describe could be someone who’s giving soft excuses as to why she doesn’t want you visiting or staying over or wanting to dial back her relationship because you’ve been getting way too intense for her comfort.

Frankly, it wouldn’t be the first time that somebody wanted to turn down a crush and shifted the blame to a jealous partner. The increasing ways she’s disconnected from you – and the lame excuses – could be depression, it could be a way of trying to put boundaries between the two of you… the possibilities are fairly robust. Her withdrawing from the various friends could well be because she’s getting tired of a bunch of folks getting wound up by someone telling her that she’s being abused.

The truth is that there’s a lot that’s pretty damn ambiguous here. First of all, you’re getting a tiny sliver of her life and extrapolating worlds of information from that without any real justification for those conclusions.

There are loads going on that you don’t see and that you don’t know. And let’s be honest here: you’ve got some motivated reasoning going on here to want it to be abuse and not just her rejecting you.

But before everyone gets angry in the comments, all of the things I just mentioned? That’s part of what makes it so damn hard for an outsider who wants to help and support their friend. All of the potential ambiguity, the potential other reasons for the suspicious behavior… all of that muddies the water and makes it hard to know how to respond. And even if you are 100% correct, they may not see it that way yet.

That’s why the hardest part for someone on the outside is that, at the end of the day, there’s very little that you can do to get somebody out of an abusive relationship before they’re ready. You can’t “rescue” someone from an abusive relationship. The only person who can make the decisions for their life is them. The only thing you can do is provide support and a non-judgemental space. If she comes to you – IF – and asks for help, then you can provide her with resources like the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 and help her create a safety plan. But those have to be her choice, and pushing her could very well push her away.

So if you’re right and she’s being abused, then you’re going to have to accept there’s not much you can do. Check out the resources for friends and family of domestic abuse victims at the National Domestic Violence Hotline (https://www.thehotline.org/help/help-for-friends-and-family/). Call them yourself if you want to talk out potential options and how you can best help your friend if she asks for it. You can contact her and let her know that you care, that you’re worried about her, that you’ll always be there if she needs you and that she can reach out to you at any time for any reason.

But then… you have to leave the ball in her court.

Hopefully you’re wrong. Hopefully this is all a wacky misunderstanding and everything is just fine and there’s a logical and sensible reason for all of this. But if there isn’t… well, the best thing you can do is be the friend she needs, when she needs it.

Good luck.

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