DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I knew this woman through Twitter last year, we share the same favorite TV show and I want to live in her part of the world, I’m studying her language. We communicated through Twitter throughout the year, liking each other’s tweets and learning about our lives from it.

Things started to change last month, when she’s started ignoring my comments and questions, even though we still had some chats and I still received her likes. Things got worse with every passing week, and tonight I couldn’t take it anymore, I DMed her, asking if I had done something wrong.

Yes, she said. She said we seemed to have different thoughts on our relationship, and she didn’t like it that I added her on other social media besides Twitter. Turns out we also have different cultures – in my culture acquaintances easily add each other on Facebook, in her culture it’s reserved for close friends.

The good news is she didn’t block me and we are still mutuals on Twitter. The bad news is she asked me to step back because I was being too intense.

Turns out I still repeat the same mistake I did in college. Two friends I liked literally running away from me and I didn’t understand what’s going on – no touch, no lewd talk, but it happened. We remained friends, but I had scared them away. Another love interest ghosted me, and when we had a chance meeting, I was so lucky she prevented the store assistant from calling the police as I was weeping inside the store.

Some people have asked me to dial it down when chasing a woman, and I thought I’ve got it, especially now I write column for a feminist website. Turns out I’ve made lives miserable for both me and another person because of my bad habit.

My question is, how does I control my intensity? How can I attract a woman better without scaring her? How can I win her trust gradually? How can I differentiate between being caring & supportive and being overbearing?

Thank you,

Too Intense

DEAR TOO INTENSE: Y’know, TI, at first, I was going to chalk this one up to a difference in how folks use social media. Some people collect followers and connections on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on while others prefer to use it strictly as a way of staying in contact with close friends and family. A clash in these philosophies can create conflicts that could otherwise be avoided.

Then I got to the part about friends literally running away. And the line about your freaking someone out because you ran into them in the store.

Hoo boy.

Look my dude, you don’t just come on too strong, it sounds like you’re getting so caught up in emotion that you’re blowing through people’s boundaries like they’re not even there. Even if we’re allowing for the fact that you aren’t touching people inappropriately or saying inappropriate things… there’s a lot of room for making people deeply, intensely uncomfortable through your behavior. And a lot of it seems to stem from the fact that you have absolutely no awareness of how your behavior comes off to other people. I mean, I hate to say it, but if you’re not engaging in hyperbole in your letter but you have literally had friends run away or had the cops come on you then the problem here isn’t that you’re coming off as too intense, it’s that you’re coming off like a psychopath.

I mean, ok I get it. I get being so into somebody or so excited by someone that you get a little over the top, in ways that make people uncomfortable. It’s a little like being an over-eager golden retriever who wants all of the attention, all of the time. In its mind, it just wants to play with its new friend. But in its enthusiasm, it’s not recognizing how it’s destroying the living room, digging up the carpet, chewing on all the furniture and leaping all over people who aren’t comfortable with big dogs.

You may not mean to be causing all of this discomfort. You clearly aren’t aware of it. But not being aware of it really isn’t an excuse. Not when it keeps happening to you over and over again, especially when people keep bringing it up to you.

It sounds to me like there are two problems here. The first is that you seem intensely needy. It’s one thing to be excited and enthusiastic about a new friendship or relationship. But many times, when we have low self-esteem or feel like we aren’t “worthy” of relationships, we can start getting incredibly pushy and clingy and emotionally over-invest in people. We want to lock those relationships down as quickly and as firmly as possible, before they can realize that they made a mistake by getting with us. We want to eliminate the possibility that they may find someone else cooler, more attractive, more interesting or more “worthy” than us so we want to occupy all of their time, spend all of our time with them and otherwise just make sure that we are their entire world. Otherwise they might stop liking us and that would be a goddamn tragedy.

But it’s rare that we recognize this behavior for what it is. More often than not, we just chalk it up as “being excited” or “being a hopeless romantic” or “having a big personality”, not realizing just how we’re demanding a far greater level of intimacy or connection than is actually warranted. And that results in behavior that is DEEPLY disturbing to people on the receiving end of it. And by even the most charitable reading, it sounds to me like you didn’t just assume a greater level of of friendship than actually existed, you started behaving like you were the only person in their lives.

I mean being ghosted absolutely sucks, but reacting so over the top at a chance encounter that the shop-owners felt like they needed to call the goddamn police? That’s some next level s

t, dude.

The second problem is that you’re very self-centered. I don’t mean this in the sense that you’re selfish, I mean this in the sense that you seem to be completely unaware of how other people feel. The way you describe things makes it seem like things had escalated to such a degree that people were literally running from you and you hadn’t realized how bad it had gotten until that point. And this wasn’t one time, this is multiple times over the span of years. That’s not good dude. That’s not a case of “not good at reading people”, that’s “verging on being oblivious” or “living in my own version of reality”.

Now here’s the thing: this is clearly not something that’s entirely out of your control. All of your examples of this behavior are with women, which tells me that this is selective behavior. If you’re able to control your “intensity” with men, then you’re able to control that same intensity with women. Yeah, you may not be sexually attracted to men, but the fact that you can apparently recognize that acting like this with guys you know would be bad means that you have the capability of acting like this with women. Even women you’ve got a crush on.

Right now, the last thing you should be doing is wondering how to win people’s trust or avoid scaring away women you’re attracted to. You need to get this s

t under control by, like, yesterday. Frankly, I think the best thing you could do is start looking for a therapist, especially a therapist who helps people deal with emotional issues and social awareness. This is the sort of thing that you need a trained mental health professional for because man it is beyond the pay-grade of a loudmouth with an advice column. You need to put in a lot of work at not just learning how to let go of your neediness and regulate how emotionally invested you get in people, but in learning how to read the goddamn room. You’ve been missing a lot of warning signs and signals and it keeps leading to increasingly extreme confrontations with people. You’ve been lucky so far, but it’s the sort of thing that could very easily have consequences for you, including getting fired from your job.

Focus on getting better. Dating can wait until you’re in a better place.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been dating my girlfriend for a year now, and we’re going strong. I love her and I know she loves me and that is an amazing thing. However, there is just one thing that makes me uncomfortable and jealous: her male best friend.

This guy best friend of hers was actually one of my good friends before I met her, and they started becoming friends when we started dating. However, as time progressed, they got closer and closer, which means more touching, more hugging, and they even say “I love you” to each other right in front of me, which makes me extremely jealous as her ACTUAL boyfriend.

These days, their friendship keeps escalating even more. They both coincidentally work at the same place they both hang out a lot over the week, and at most, I get to see and hang out with her during school and during the weekends when it’s just the two of us. It’s just gotten to the point of becoming very uncomfortable and sometimes when I’m with her and this guy best friend shows up (after she’s been asking about him for a while), I feel more like I’m third wheeling and I have to work even harder to get her attention.

I don’t want to be the controlling boyfriend that limits who she hangs out with, but I just think it’s crazy. They share “amazing” text messages, share hugs, playfully touch each other, have a crazy amount of inside jokes. Meanwhile, I’m over here with her getting mad at me for texting a good friend that’s a girl, who lives in CANADA, about how she’s doing. What should I do? Should I just bite my tongue and let it happen? I’ve been doing that for the time we’ve been dating and it’s torture and it hurts me so much. Please help.

From,

Feeling Jealous

DEAR FEELING JEALOUS: Y’know, FJ, nine times out of ten, I tell people who feel insecure around their girlfriend’s male friends to calm down and trust their girlfriends. It’s something of an insulting myth that you can’t have (straight) cross-gender platonic relationships without sex getting in the way.

(And I emphasize straight because nobody ever seems to ask this of gay men or lesbians, and bi and pan people wouldn’t be able to be friends with anyone.)

More often than not, it’s mostly a case of misplaced jealousy and the best thing you can do is talk openly and honestly about it with your girlfriend – be open about being jealous, be up front with needing a little reassurance and being walked back from the edge when you’re being an irrational bag of slop, etc and just trust your girlfriend  because, hey, she picked you.

Congrats, though. You have the dubious distinction of being that one time in ten when I think there’s legitimately something hinkey going on.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I think she’s cheating… but it sure as hell seems like it’s heading that direction. Hell, even if it’s just an emotional thing between the two of them, some lines are definitely being crossed here and that’s not cool. The fact that he can casually barge into what is ostensibly your time with your girlfriend is, at the very least, a boundary violation that’s very unfair to you.

And, to be perfectly frank, when your partner starts getting on your case about being too flirty/intimate with someone… well sometimes that’s a way of deflecting potential accusations by judo-flipping it onto you first.

So I’d say it’s time for a very long talk with your girlfriend about what’s going on with her and her bestie. It’s one thing to say “you can only hang around with the people I approve of” but it’s another to say “I’d appreciate more of your time and attention, especially since we’re, y’know, dating.” Or to say “I’d really prefer if our time could be OUR time, not me hanging around with you and your BFF”. Or to say “I’m not comfortable with the way you guys behave around me.”

Or you could quit dancing around the subject and ask her  “Are you sure you’re dating the right person? Because it sure as hell seems to me like you’d rather be with him.”

Regardless: I think it’s time you had that talk with her. Just be prepared; putting it all out there like that may well mean the end of the relationship.

Although, in fairness, with the way she seems to be treating you, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, my question is less relationship and more social, but I suppose what advice you give me I could apply to establishing relationships.

I recently got a job working as a site manager. I really like the job: Pays decent, co-workers are chill, flexible schedule, I supervise a good amount of people. Fun, right?

There’s a slight problem, though, at least in terms of appearances: It’s for a porn site.

Now, I have no problems working for this site. But socially speaking, I’ve had a really hard time discussing the extent of my profession to people. I think about 8 or so of my friends know, as does two of my old bosses who I’m on friendly terms with and my sister. For a lot of them, it was a struggle because I was really worried about what they’ll say. For most, they were supportive. A couple, however, had more straitlaced backgrounds, and it was clear that they only respected the fact I had a stable job. Talking sometimes gets dicey with them.

To complicate matters further, I’m a high-functioning/moderate autistic, and it’s not exactly easy to navigate these settings without feeling like I’m now some sex offender or something because I have trouble speaking in a way people can easily mesh with.

Of course, this brings me to my issue: If I’m having this much trouble talking to people who are long-time friends, how do I handle regular people when discussion of work comes up? I try to go for the “I’m under NDA, can’t talk about it” angle, but people get nosy these days about work, and I don’t want to look more like a curmudgeon than I already appear to be. Moreover, I live in a Midwestern city, so while there’s socially “liberal” elements, being in my field can be seen as far too much for many. On the one hand, some of my friends are moderate Christians who would not take this lightly (I was raised a lapsed Catholic).  On the other, my primary social scene (DIY music) is seeing more social-justice conservative types who speak of safe spaces and triggering, and some would certainly find my line of work to be “exploitative.” The vast majority of these people would, say, probably vote yes on Proposition 60 in California (even though it’s a poorly-written referendum). And this is to say nothing of dating women (which has never been a strong suit of mine to begin with), where answering about my work could become a very loaded question.

What do you suggest in handling these situations?

-A Different Sort Of Closeted

DEAR A DIFFERENT SORT OF CLOSETED: You have two choices, ADSoC. You can play the detail game, or you can just own it.

In the former, you give people the technical truth: you work for a company that does high-bandwidth data transfer and you manage the technical side of things. Good pay, cool co-workers, flexible hours, etc. What sort of data? Meh, mostly VOIP and streaming stuff, nothing terribly interesting. So what about you? This is the version you can wheel out at parties or family gatherings when talking about working in porn – even at several levels removed – would cause more problems than it’s worth.

In the latter, you take ownership of it and don’t treat it like it’s shameful. As I’m saying all the time – hell, I’m saying it in this very column – if you don’t roll it out like it’s something to be ashamed of or some deep dark secret, then most people won’t take it that way. Just a flat “enh, I’m a site manager for Brazzers/Burning Angel/Pornhub/whatever; I just keep the back-end running” will do. What do you do? Nothing that different from keeping YouTube/Vimeo/TikTok running smoothly. You don’t have anything to do with the content.

The fact of the matter is: you’re not doing anything to be ashamed of. While porn definitely has it’s problematic issues (especially regarding things like race or performers like James Deen), if the actors are all consenting and the company is ethical (not coercing it’s actresses into scenes they don’t want to perform, following the laws about workplace health and safety, etc.) then you’re more or less in the clear, ethically speaking.

What about the people who will judge you? Well… people are going to judge you. A

holes are gonna ass. You can’t really stop people from doing that. And – as both Tumblr and Reddit have shown – there will always be people with more enthusiasm than experience who’ll treat any deviation from their cause as a crime that makes you literally Worse Than Hitler. The fact that they act like that doesn’t make them right, however; mostly it makes them annoying.

Yeah, you’re going to run into people – folks in your social circle and potential dates both – who will side-eye you for it. You’re also as likely to find people who think it’s kinda awesome; more women than ever watch porn these days, especially online. You’ll never know if they’re one of those if you keep treating your job like something to be spoken of only in whispers.

(Of course, considering that almost everyone watches porn these days, I can almost guarantee that many of the people who’ll be looking down their noses at you will have visited that site - or your competitors - at some point in the very recent past. Possibly even that day.)

And to be perfectly honest: if you’re going to date somebody and they wouldn’t be ok about where you work, then you’re not likely to be all that compatible, period. If your job is going to be a dealbreaker, you’re going to be better of getting that out of the way early on so you can find people who are right for you.

TL;DR – give the technically correct, if general details if you really feel like you need to hide things. But I think you’d be better off in the long run getting comfortable with just letting people know.

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 in a happy long term relationship with a very stereotypical nerdy genius type. He is a great guy and with the exception of two things drive me insane, we have a fantastic relationship.

He’s a physicist who is currently earning a second degree in engineering. And in the ultimate cliche while being absolutely brilliant, he is also completely lacking in any common sense or short term memory what so ever, especially when it comes to the people and spaces around him. A few examples:

1. He recently smacked one of my girlfriends on her ass to get her to step out of the doorway he wanted to enter. When confronted on the utter inappropriateness of his action, his response was “Well if she had been facing the other way I just would have bopped her on the head. What’s the big deal?”

2. I had major surgery on my elbow recently. He came up behind me and gave me a very tight hug, squeezing the exact spot of the surgical incision. I screamed in pain and would have chalked it up to a one time error, only he did three more times after that, leading me to tell him that until I am fully recovered he is banned from hugging me from behind.

3. Similar to the second example, he has a habit of constantly coming up behind me to try and hug me or kiss my neck. He thinks it’s sweet and romantic, however he does it at the worst possible times, such as when I am making dinner. I have burned myself several times because he snuck up behind me while I was stirring a boiling pot.

And that leads me into the other issue I have. He is 35 years old and because he is over weight, has low self esteem, and is extremely socially awkward, I am the first relationship he has ever had that has lasted more then a few months. And because I have been his first in so many things, he is the clingiest, neediest person I have ever met. He cannot go more then 5 minutes without needing to hold me and fondle me which makes me extremely uncomfortable, especially in public settings. When he gets socially overwhelmed he tends to treat me like a security blanket, literally draping himself on top of me and trying to kiss my neck, shoulder, whatever body part is closest to him. If I try to get him to stop being on top of me, he will still follow behind me. Our friends have commented many times that he acts like a puppy following his human, and that dynamic disturbs me immensely.

I don’t dislike affection, but I am not a PDA person beyond holding hands or a quick hug or kiss. And even when we’re alone together, there reaches a point where I am ready to just chill out and stretch on the couch, but he still needs to be on top of me. If I make plans to go out with my friends he immediately asks to tag along and gets sulky when I tell him I need some girl time.

I’ve tried explaining to him that every time he ignores my requests to stop being on top of me he is not respecting my boundaries, his response was to say that since we are in a serious relationship we shouldn’t have any of boundaries.

I don’t know if the problem is him or me or both. I just know that these two things are driving me crazy and we’ve reached the point where we’re looking for an apartment. I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to handle him not letting me have any space at all and if he keeps not paying attention to anything, I’m afraid he’ll set the apartment on fire! Is there a way to get him to pay more attention to the things that bother me or is there a way to teach myself to get less annoyed by it? I’ll take either one at this point. I love and adore him, I just don’t know how to deal with these two aspects of his personality on a constant basis.

Thanks for you help,

Not A Security Blanket

DEAR NOT A SECURITY BLANKET: So normally like to go through letters like these in the same way they’ve been laid out, addressing each issue as it comes up. But frankly, NASB, you dropped one GIANT red flag in the middle of this and I’m not getting past it.

“I’ve tried explaining to him that every time he ignores my requests to stop being on top of me he is not respecting my boundaries, His response was to say that since we are in a serious relationship WE SHOULDN’T HAVE ANY BOUNDARIES.”

(Emphasis mine)

Holy hopping sheep s

t, NASB, how did this line not tell you that this is a bad scene? Why did his saying those words not send you running like all of Hell and half of Hoboken was after you? I’m sorry, but being in a relationship does not negate the existence of boundaries and the fact that he so flagrantly disregards them – insisting that they shouldn’t even exist – is a GREAT BIG FLASHING sign that this relationship is in trouble.

You say he’s a great guy. OK, if you say so.

I don’t believe it, but I’ll roll with it for now.

The issue is that his behavior here is telling me that he’s got a giant host of problems. He smacked the ass of someone he presumably doesn’t have ass-smacking privileges with and doesn’t see the problem with it. He ignores your very clearly stated boundaries. He’s forever clinging to you – literally – in social situations, even when he knows they make you uncomfortable. He doesn’t give you space, ever, and he gets sulky and resentful that you need time to yourself or with your friends. Knowing all this – even knowing in advance that being in a tight space with him is going to drive you nuts – you’re planning on getting an apartment together?

I’m sorry to put it this bluntly but that’s an incredibly stupid idea. You’re getting annoyed by him because the way he’s acting isn’t just immature and clingy but downright unacceptable in a lot of cases. I sympathize that the guy’s got low self-esteem and a bad case of being socially awkward but frankly, being socially awkward doesn’t excuse you from having to act like a grown-ass adult. This isn’t something you need to learn how to get over; your boyfriend needs to grow the hell up and get over this behavior. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t think he’s going to. Honestly, I think it’s going to get worse and the longer this relationship goes on, the more you’re going to be his mommy as well as his girlfriend.

Look, you tell me you’re happy and have a fantastic relationship, and honestly, I have to take you at your word. But this isn’t a case of someone with a few inconvenient but otherwise lovable flaws. This isn’t one or two problems, this is someone who’s acting like a 13 year old who continues to ignore your comfort or even basic wishes to not be smothered, figuratively and literally. If you want him to improve, then you’re going to have to lay down the law and let him know that his behavior’s unacceptable and needs to change. And I don’t mean a month or two on his best behavior until he figures you’ll let him slide again, I mean legitimate, lasting change. And frankly, if he doesn’t… well, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I strongly suggest you rethink your relationship with him.

And whether you do end things or not, do not get an apartment together. 

Sorry to be so blunt NASB, but that’s how I see it.

Good luck.

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