DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I find myself having a bit of an issue as the current political climate here in the US gets more and more tense.

I’ve been in a relationship with a guy for about four years, living together for most of that time. We have our typical couple ups and downs, but mostly things are good between us. He and I have never seen eye to eye politically, but he was always willing to engage in meaningful discourse.

Recently, and I think in large part due to some new friends he’s made, I have noticed my boyfriend's social media account become more and more vitriolic and hateful. He’s been following and supporting the likes of Ben Shapiro and other extreme-right personalities. He’s been spouting the extreme right talking points like gospel across his social media platform (though he never directly posts or shares these things, he is active in comment sections perpetuating this BS). It hurts me that someone I love is being so openly sexist, racist, and classist. I’ve tried talking to him about it, but he shuts down discussions with “I guess we just have to agree to disagree”.

I’m at my wits' end. Even though he doesn’t treat me any differently, with every comment I read it’s harder to see the man I fell in love with. I guess my question is should I be willing to ignore s

tty opinions if they aren’t being brought into the relationship directly? But if he’s willing to say that people like me (disabled, economically disadvantaged, female) are trash in social media posts, what does it say about what he thinks of me as a person? Should I just get off social media so that I don’t see these things anymore? I’m just a little lost and confused right now. I could really use an outside perspective.

 Left Behind

DEAR LEFT BEHIND: It's never easy when someone you love seems to have lost their goddamn mind, LB. Especially when you can see them doing that long, slow slide towards fascistic thinking, enabled by self-proclaimed suuuuuuper geeeeeeeeniuses, lobster daddies and failed gorilla-minded pick-up gurus. It's a pattern that's unfortunately not uncommon, especially for people who spend a lot of time getting caught in a YouTube spiral by an algorithm that is custom-built to be gamed by bad actors by equating conflagrations in the comments section with "engagement". It also doesn't help when the stalking horses for the alt-right are the faux-civility "Come, let us REASON together" types who insist that they are ever so civil and logical despite having no actual arguments beyond incoherent shouting. It helps create the illusion that the person in question is somehow being "reasonable", while, in fact, saying horrendous s

t and demanding that people engage with them in bad faith. The arguments are solipsistic garbage, the reasoning are pure appeals to emotion and all of it is a matter of playing to pre-existing prejudices while insisting that they're very smart and iconoclastic for saying things that actual, rational society has deemed as racist, classist and frankly unacceptable.

It's something of a design flaw in white male operating system that they can be so easily duped by someone in a suit saying something confidently over and over again. Even when it makes no goddamn sense.

Part of what makes this so sinister is how much this preys on actually reasonable people's cultural programming to avoid conflict. Case in point: the fact that your boyfriend insists on never engaging with you - likely because he knows that's a game that ends with his no longer having a girlfriend. He's relying on your having been acculturated to wanting to avoid causing offense or make trouble by making him upset. This is why he shuts the conversations down with "agree to disagree". It lets him continue the illusion of being "reasonable", while not actually challenging his beliefs or admitting to how he actually feels. He knows at some level that actually engaging with you about this is a losing game. If he did so, he would have to confront the hateful things he says apply to you just as much as the made-up "other" he's railing against online. In that case, then one of two things happens: either he starts to put a human face (yours) to the stereotypes he insists are ruining America and change his views... or you drop kick his ass to the curb so hard that it goes back in time and his grandparents get divorced retroactively.

Here's the thing: he is bringing those beliefs to the relationship; it's just that he's currently not doing anything directly to you. It's not as though he's an entirely different person from the screed-writing hate-monger he's being online. He's not the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll until someone puts a keyboard in front of him, whereupon he turns into the Intellectual Dark Web's Mr. Hyde; he is the exact same person, even when he's putting a smile on and pretending that he didn't just deliver a rant about degenerates that just happens to include people like you.

(Hell, I'm willing to bet a not insignificant amount of money that you're his defense against getting called out for his hate. "Well I can't possibly be X, Y or Z, I'm dating Left Behind!")

So no, in no way, shape or form should you ignore his sh

ty opinions. The fact that he participates in the behavior that makes social media a damned hellscape and contributes to hate against marginalized folks isn't something you can compartmentalize off just because he isn't doing it to you yet. It's part of who he is and part of his identity. And frankly he doesn't get to pretend the stink doesn't stick to him just because so far he keeps it to online spaces. Much like folks who reside in troll farms that insist that they're just doing it "for the lulz" or "ironically" and that they don't mean it, "ironic" hate is still hate. You can roll your eyes while you f

k a goat, but you're still deep in ungulate.

You may want to take some time to watch the Alt-Right Playbook series of videos by Innuendo Studios on YouTube. It'll give you an idea of not just how he became radicalized, but how the alt-right's arguments work. It won't necessarily show you how to change his mind back, but at least you'll understand how someone you loved got seduced by bigotry and hate.

But to be perfectly frank, I think you should dump this guy with the quickness; you're not going to be able to deprogram him with your love or your body. One of the first rules of dealing with cult members is that you don't debate cultists. You aren't going to change their mind and they're going to have a much easier time backing you into a corner where you feel like you're obligated to go along with their bulls

t. You don't want to try to out-logic them because they don't care about logic. Logic, to them, means "I make you upset by saying horrible things and you react to them like a reasonable person would." Actual, demonstrable logic and honest intellectual discussion would require them being willing to acknowledge things like the systematic nature of racism or how many racist ideas are post-hoc arguments about situations that minorities were forced into by the ruling class following the abolition of slavery.

He ain't gonna want to do that.

More to the point though is that logic won't change his mind because logic didn't change it in the first place. It was an appeal to emotion that got him there. Now if he was going to actually engage with you about his views - instead of just shutting you down - then you could point out to him what you said to me: that he's calling you, specifically, trash. When he argues that you're different, you can press him for just how he doesn't mean you when he says that the other people - who fit the same description as you - are any less valid or real. Maybe, maybe, it might make him realize how full of s

t he is.

But I doubt it. Unfortunately, our brains have robust defense systems that reject ideas that challenge our perception of our identity. Since he's put himself in the position of being both the aggrieved party and the Superior Man Who Is Speaking Uncomfortable Truths, he's going to ignore the inconvenient liberal bias of reality and respond with insults while he doubles down on his beliefs.

What you need to do is stop letting that cultural programming keep you in a situation you know is untenable. It's time for you to quit worrying about not causing a scene; you should be causing a scene. This is the exact sort of situation where causing a scene and making trouble is called for. Your boyfriend started becoming a bigot. That's a dealbreaker and he needs to face the consequences for those actions... including getting bounced so hard he achieves low-Earth orbit.

I think you should move out and dump him. And when you do - preferably from a safe distance - let him know, in no uncertain terms: you're leaving him because of his hate.

Maybe seeing what this has cost him will make him reflect on his choices. But that's on him to do. You need to do what's best for you, and what's best for you is to GTFO.

Good luck. And write back to let us know how you're doing.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This year started out pretty rough for me. The girl I had been dating, we shall call her M, and I decided it was best to break up (more like she decided she didn’t want to be with me anymore and I simply felt like I couldn’t make her stay in a relationship she didn’t want) She offered to stay friends but whether it was my pride or my stubbornness I wanted nothing to do with it. I still loved her and being friends was off the table for me. We never spoke since the breakup.

The months that followed were rough. I would keep scrolling through my photos and look at pictures of her and I together and would fall into feeling of loneliness and depression. I decided to head out and hit the gym and spend time with friends. I’ve lost weight to the point that I had to buy new clothes for I went down two sizes. I also decided to apply for a new position at work and got offered an even higher position than the one I initially applied too. I’ve also started talking with other girls and have gone on dates. It feels like life is turning around but, I still can’t stop thinking of M. I do find myself wandering into her instagram page and seeing her life going well without me, and I am happy she is fulfilling all of the things she told me she wanted to do. Contacting her is out of the question as she shut that door, locked it and threw away the key. Sometimes I think I miss the idea of her, the feeling of having another person that connected with me like she did. It got to the point that the excitement of my new job wore off and I felt lonely again.

Is this a normal feeling? How do I overcome it? It just feels like whenever I take a step forward I end up taking two steps back. I’ve tried living my life without “checking up” on her but I get anxious not knowing about her.

In Love With (Her) Ghost

DEAR IN LOVE WITH (HER) GHOST: I hate to say it ILWHG, but you're kind of the author of your own misery here. The reason why you aren't able to get over her is because you keep reopening those wounds. You keep taking a step forward by focusing on some post-breakup self-improvement, and you're making strides physically but you keep undoing all the emotional work you've been doing. Every time you go strolling through her Instagram, you're summoning the Ghost of Futures Past, a painful reminder that the future you two would have had together no longer exists and that hurts.

But here's the thing: the reason why you get anxious about not knowing about her? It's because you're still holding out hope that she's still single. That she hasn't moved on yet. That she hasn't replaced you. You dress it up as being concerned about her and wanting to see that she's living all the dreams she said she was going to live... but it's ultimately about holding onto the hope that maybe there's still a future where the two of you get back together.

Small wonder you're bleeding away all that progress. You're never going to get over her if you're constantly double-checking to see if she's still single or if she's dating someone else or comparing yourself to her new guy.

Part of why this still hurts is that you're still defining yourself by the fact that you are her ex. Getting over someone means putting your relationship with them behind you and moving forward. You aren't doing that. You may be part of her past, but she's still very much part of your present, and that's killing your forward momentum. Every time you build up a head of steam and start making progress, you sabotage it by checking in on her.

You're never going to get over her until you can let go of her. And you're never going to do that until you stop angsting over the inevitability that yes, she will be dating someone else. And I am here from the future to tell you that when it happens, it's going to kick you square in the junk like you just got dumped a second time for funsies.

So it's time to do the only reasonable thing: you need to let her go. And to do that, you need to do the one thing you haven't been willing to do: you need to give yourself closure by taking the Nuclear Option and block her Instagram, her Twitter, her TikTok, everything. It's not that she dumped you and now she's dead to you, it's that you are never going to heal if you keep picking at the wounds. As long as you're going back and letting the ghost of your relationship haunt you, you're never going to be able to put her behind you. This chapter of your story has come to it's natural conclusion. It's time to start writing the next one.

Block her accounts and move forward. It'll be ok. I promise.

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 started reading your column a couple years ago and it helped me through some issues in my first real relationship, but things have changed beyond what I can process solo. Asking for help is something I have trouble with, but I’m at my wit’s end. Maybe I’m missing something, maybe I just need a jolt to get me moving again, but I could really use a second opinion.

The backstory: a year and a half ago, my life was on track — my courses were going well, I had three straight appearances on the Dean’s list, and (after managing some minor depression while simultaneously working two jobs and taking three upper level summer courses) I found myself in the first serious (actually, first, period) relationship of my life. I was busy, but happy. I had enough credits to graduate, but needed another year to do my student teaching.

A little over a year ago, my life started to unravel. During my student teaching, I worked harder, and more, than I ever had before in my life. Paperwork, planning, creating materials, teaching, grading — they consumed me. I had had to leave my other jobs to make time, and I was living off my savings (paying for rent, utilities, groceries) while working 80+ hours a week for no pay. My marginal social life vanished, my sleep schedule became increasingly disturbed, and my panic attacks, which I had conquered six years earlier, returned in force. Somehow, I kept my long distance relationship intact.

Eventually, it became too much. Sleeping maybe four hours a night, on an even tighter budget because of dental work on a broken tooth, and with my panic attacks coming four or more times a day, I withdrew from the program. I was convinced that if I didn’t quit, the job was going to do permanent damage to my health.

As a result, my GPA was heavily dented (diminishing my chances at grad school), and I was left with an almost unusable degree in history. Cue six months of job searching, of trying desperately to convince employers that I was worth their time, that a history degree was incredibly versatile, that I was readily adaptable to any number of fields. Rejection after rejection piled up. I became depressed, but kept trying. My family applied pressure, disappointed that I hadn’t been strong enough to follow through and become a teacher.

Then, my girlfriend broke up with me, effectively saying that the whole time she’d felt she was working down a “relationship checklist.” She’d basically never really felt all that much for me. She stayed with me because of her own insecurity. We’d been together a year.

Two days later, I had to put my dog to sleep. My best friend was dying of cancer, and I couldn’t watch him suffer anymore. This, combined with the breakup, with the shame of failure, the sense of years wasted—this broke me.

Today, I’m 24 years old. I work in a presumably dead-end job in a grocery store, bachelor’s degree seemingly irrelevant, and live in a tiny studio apartment crammed next to the workshops on the family farm, because it’s the only place I can afford. At work, I am surrounded by people, but there, as in every part of my life, I am alone. Isolated, insignificant, all the potential I used to feel drowned in the bath. My breakup left me with staggering trust issues, a paranoid fear of ever being vulnerable again, and a jealous not-quite-hate of everyone who has real, genuine love in their lives. My depression has seemingly sunk into my bones.

I’ve tried online dating, but conversations peter out, everyone ghosting on me within a message or two, no matter how polite, interested, etc. I am. The last two times I tried to ask someone out in person, a panic attack hit, stopping me from getting the words out. My work schedule doesn’t align with any of my few remaining friends, preventing me from seeing them much more than once every couple of months, and that number is about to get smaller, as my best friend is about to leave to take a lucrative job on the other side of the country. I doubt I’ll get to see her again.

My psychiatrist is changing my meds, so that will help with the depression, but it won’t change any of the underlying issues. I’m trying to be proactive, trying to be more social, but the social anxiety is just getting stronger, and even though I’m happy for my friend, glad she has this amazing opportunity, I can’t shake a sense of betrayal at her leaving. Our relationship has always been completely platonic, totally safe, and she was the one person I had left I could always be totally honest with, and know that she would be the same- honest, that is.

My work leaves little time for my art, which is the one thing that still brings me any lasting happiness. One day working at my craft is generally enough to keep me going for a day or so, but those free days are few and far between. And much as I wish I didn’t, I still want to connect to people, even just one person. Maybe especially one person. It’s so much easier to be myself, to be comfortable with myself, if I know that someone other than me likes me. Even just one other person.

But looking at my life right now, I can’t see why anyone else would want to be part of it.

Anyway, there are a bunch of issues all tangled up in those last few paragraphs, and I would really, really appreciate it if you could offer advice on even one of them.

Please, thank you, and please,

Barely Holding On

DEAR BARELY HOLDING ON: I’m reminded of a somewhat famous quote: “If too much weight is placed upon [the average man].. they snap. How does he live, I hear you ask? How does this poor pathetic specimen survive in today’s harsh and irrational environment? I’m afraid the sad answer is, ‘Not very well.’ Faced with the inescapable fact that human existence is mad, random, and pointless, one in eight of them crack up and go stark slavering buggo! Who can blame them? In a world as psychotic as this… any other response would be crazy!”

The idea is that everyone is just One Bad Day away from snapping and that anyone will break if things just get bad enough.

Sounds familiar, right?

I feel for you BHO. While I haven’t been exactly where you are, I’ve had my share of One Bad Days that came pretty close to breaking me. There was a point in my life when I thought I had the perfect job, working on a feature film with some names you would very definitely recognize. I was being paid to work with some good friends of mine doing a job I loved. I was dating a woman who I thought was damn near the idea of my perfect woman. Then it all fell apart. In the span of a week, I got fired from my perfect job, my friends no longer talked to me and my perfect girlfriend dumped me.

If one of my cats had died, I probably would’ve hit a downward spiral that would have taken me a long time to pull out of… if I did at all.

So I understand where you are right now; I’ve been there. But like the old joke says, having been there before, I also know the way out.

As weird and woo-woo bulls

t as this may sound… you need to do is change the story you tell yourself about what’s happened. You have been through The S

t, no question. You were going along, doing everything you were supposed to and leading a good life and then you had an entire mountain of s

t dumped on you out of the clear blue sky.

But here’s the thing: you survived. You made it through to the other side. Battered, bruised and beaten down to your knees… but you made it. You weren’t broken by all of this. You may have had to crawl for a while before you could stagger back to your feet, but the important thing is you got back up again. I mean look at you: yes, your life isn’t great right now. It’s certainly not where you wanted it to be. But you’re still moving forward.

You’re suffering from some emotional shell-shock, sure, but you’re doing all the right things. You’re getting help from a therapist. You’re afraid of being hurt again, but you’re still putting yourself out there. You’re working, you’ve got a place to stay, you’ve got friends and you have a creative outlet that you love. You’re trying to find love, be more social and put your life back together again.

Dude. That’s goddamn incredible! That takes an incredible amount of strength! I understand how it feels right now but you should be proud of the fact that you’ve survived and that you’re pulling yourself back together.

The mistake you’re making here is that you’re looking at your current circumstances as being permanent, a consequence of your supposed failure. But that’s not it at all. You’re not a loser who’s squandered his potential, you’re in emotional rehab. You’re a bad-ass who took as nasty of a hit as you could care to imagine and now you’re fixing things. This isn’t failure, this is someone who’s taking the time to heal, to get all of the various pieces put back where they’re supposed to be and get back out there.

Do you not see how goddamn amazing that is? Do you not recognize the strength and the courage that all of this takes? Of course you’re hurting. Of course you’re scared. You’ve been through the fires of Hell and you’ve got the ashes to prove it.

Shifting that mindset, recognizing that this isn’t failure, that it’s rehab for your life, your heart and your soul, will change your perspective and help you have a clearer idea of what to do. Part of that process, that responsibility to your rehabilitation is to not re-injure yourself. Like a runner who broke his leg, trying to force yourself back in the race before you’re ready just makes it harder to recover. You re-open old wounds and set yourself back because you haven’t fully healed yet.

As frustrating as it may be, you need to dial things back a little and focus on more immediate goals like your mental health. Addressing your depression and your social anxiety should be your first priority. Start with talking with your therapist about the social anxiety; that’s part of their job. But also, take baby steps to being more social and expanding your social circle. Start with a resolution to interact a little more with your co-workers. You don’t need to make friends with them, but simply opening up a little and being on conversational terms with them will go a long way towards easing that sense of isolation. As you start feeling a little more secure, consider finding a regularly scheduled meet-up or class that interests you and just commit to going. You don’t need to go and be a social butterfly; hell for the first few times, you may want to focus on just being there and being around other people. Then, as you start getting used to it and more comfortable… then you can start being a little more social. Not much, maybe just 10% more. But even that micro-victory will help break you out of this feeling that you’re hopeless and helpless.

As you improve, find ways to start moving your life forward. Your job may be a dead-end… or it may not be. It may just be your stepping stone to the next phase of your life. Look for your next step. It doesn’t have to be a big one; it just needs to be a step up from where you are now. That, in turn, leads to the step after that. And the step after that.

Those tiny victories, those micro-revolutions may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But each and every one of them is proof that your potential isn’t gone. They’re the little cracks in the wall of your depression, the reminders that as hopeless as you may feel right now, you have control. Those cracks may not seem like much, but they build up over time. Put enough cracks in that wall, and you WILL break through.

That’s the path to building your new life and getting healthy and ready to love again.

Look around you. This isn’t the end of your story; this is just the beginning of your first act. What has gone before is merely prologue; your future is still ahead of you and it’s full of glorious potential, if you’ve got the heart and the grit to reach for it.

You’re doing everything right, BHO. You’re putting in the work to rehab yourself and get ready to take that next step, and the step after that. You’re braver and stronger than you give yourself credit for. You’ve got this.

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)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: A few years ago, I was at an extremely low point in my life. I’m a special education teacher in an elementary school (which is a great but emotionally draining job even at the best of times), and was dealing with the mess of making CPS reports regarding a couple of the children as well as training to support a student’s emerging medical issues while running a severely understaffed classroom. In addition, I was spending a lot of personal time watching a neighbor’s kids while she and her husband filed protective orders against the kids’ old babysitter, and the support those kids needed took an emotional toll as well. In addition, I was being stalked by a neighbor, as well as a man from church, both of whom I’d caught looking through my bedroom window on occasion and both of whom had been following me and making a lot of unwelcome, pushy advances. It was a stressful time.

One of my close friends, K, who knew everything that was going on, asked whether there was anything he could do for me. My school was starting Spring Break, and I asked if he would come hang out with me some time during the week. I have epilepsy and can’t drive, and since my neighbor had been following me when I went walking, I’d been avoiding going out and felt a little cut off from my friends. K agreed, cheerfully I thought, and told me he’d see me in a couple of days.

When the day we’d planned to hang out came, he sent a text to reschedule. On the day he rescheduled, he never showed. I called and sent a couple of texts, but he didn’t answer until the next afternoon, when he told me he’d been “dealing with stuff.”

I know people get busy. I’m not the only one who gets stressed! So I let it go. We stayed fairly friendly, although my physical and mental health were going downhill and I was a little less available. We still made time to talk once in a while and occasionally saw each other at the grocery store or the gym. We weren’t as close, but it was all good.

Then one night after a mutual friend’s birthday party, K casually mentioned that week and how he felt bad about flaking, but he had met a hot girl at the bar and “had to see how that would play out.” Apparently he’d sent her a few texts over the week, and had spent most of the week at home playing Xbox and waiting for her to reply (she never did).

Maybe it’s petty of me, but I was mad. That seems like a frivolous reason to blow off a friend under any circumstances, and I really needed some support at that time! I didn’t want to be needlessly dramatic, though, so I just said that I’d been pretty disappointed when he didn’t show up that night, and then ended the conversation quickly and headed home. After that, I’ve nearly stopped speaking to K. I’m polite when we see each other, but I make no effort to see or contact him and end our conversations as quickly as I can without being rude.

That last talk was two years ago, and I’m now totally indifferent both to what happened and to him. Since that night I’ve gotten more help in the classroom, moved to a safer area (those kids I was babysitting have really flourished in family counseling, by the way) and met and married my husband. Life is good. I am safe and happy.

Which is why it pissed me off to no end to hear that K is griping to people that my husband forced me to stop being friends with him. He claims my husband is too insecure to let me make my own choices. He’s hinted at possible abuse.

I don’t understand why he’s doing this. Maybe I was wrong to ask him to visit me, or wrong to be upset when he brushed me off cavalierly, but neither of those things are my husband’s fault! I know K doesn’t like the fact that my husband wears drag occasionally, but that doesn’t seem like something to make up abuse allegations over either. And the allegations are completely bogus. My husband is happy to spend time with my friends—but only the ones that I want to see.

So what gives? And what should I do?

Thanks,

Triflin’ Friend Indeed

DEAR TRIFLIN’ FRIEND INDEED: First of all, TFI, congratulations on getting help, helping those kids and getting to the point where you’re safe and happy. That’s huge!

Now let’s talk about K.

What gives is that K doesn’t seem to have ever had a moment of self-awareness in his life. Or, for that matter, that people don’t exist merely at his convenience. Ultimately, K doesn’t realize that he did anything wrong or why this might piss you off. And you have VERY good reasons to be annoyed at K, TFI.

The issue isn’t even the flaking, though that in and of itself is pretty selfish. The dude volunteered – offered, even – to help you at a time when you were in need and your safety was quite possibly in question. This isn’t quite “forgot he promised to give you a ride to the airport and now you’ve missed your flight” levels of “what the hell, dude” but his leaving you high and dry – AFTER rescheduling – is pretty awful of him.

It’d be one thing if his “dealing with stuff” was legit. Maybe there was a medical issue, maybe he was having a migraine, his brother was having a meltdown and he had to help… all of that would be understandable. It still sucked for you to be left high and dry, but s

t happens and the gods laugh at the arrogance of man making plans for the future. But the fact that he blew you off – not “wasn’t able to make it”, not “had responsibilities that superseded his promise”, blew you off – to wait with sandwiches by the phone for the POSSIBILITY of a text that tells you what you need to know about this dude.

(I mean, seriously: he’s waiting on a text. Unless you live in a cellular deadzone, dude could’ve received a text at your place as easily as his.)

But hey, we all make decisions. Nobody said they were good decisions. Decisions have consequences though, and his consequences include “F

k this guy and the mustache he rode in on”.

K seems to be the sort of person who is blithely unaware that other people might not see things his way, so when he deals with the fallout of his choices, he decides they can’t possibly be his fault. And since it can’t possibly be that you’d begrudge his right to try to bank-shot a hook-up with someone from the bar, it must be someone else’s fault. And the fact that his interpretation of events makes him the potential hero – the guy so cool and awesome that the jealous abusive husband must lock his wife away in a tower lest she be tempted by his manly vigor – well… that’s just gravy, innit?

What should you do? Well, honestly, unless these rumors are gaining traction somehow, I’d suggest just rolling your eyes at ’em and go about your life. But if he’s bringing it up to mutual friends of yours, airing them publicly on social media or otherwise causing people to side-eye your husband? That’s when it might be worth putting him on blast and dragging him for all to see.

It probably won’t change the narrative in K’s mind; it’s too easy for him to just decide that your husband “forced” you to say that. But at least it’ll put the truth out there, so everyone else’ll see what a s

tbird K’s being.

Good luck.

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