DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I recently reconnected with my ex on Facebook. My friend told me that he was having a hard time since his divorce. As soon as I heard this I immediately contacted him on Facebook messenger to see if he was ok .

Well, we ended up talking all night and then we started texting all day long exchanged phone numbers. I guess that I should mention that I am married, and yes we are having problems. My ex-boyfriend and I dated back in high school. When we re-connected, he told me that I was the one that got away back then. Now I’ve been so comfortable talking with him about everything. He is the only person who ever got me to open up that way . No one has ever done that. I never loved anyone as much as I loved him. I felt like all those feelings that I had for him many years ago came pouring back. I loved him so much.

So anyway this went on for eight months of texts and phone calls, and I fell back in love with him. We had made plans for him to spend the weekend up by me since we no longer live in the same state. I was so excited that I was finally going to see him again after all these years.

My husband and I had a fight two nights before he was supposed to come visit. Then, the morning before he was supposed to come up to see me, he calls me at 6:30 am. Since it was so early in the morning I quickly hung up the phone. I texted him back two hours later and asked “what’s up”. So he sends back to me . “I’m sorry, I can’t do this. I need someone who will always be able to be there and you can not. I wish you all the best . We really could have been amazing together . It kills me to say this but lose my number.” and then  he immediately blocked me from his phone, Facebook, Messenger and WhatsApp. I feel so hurt. We had this incredible connection that we both said was the reason why we fell for each other.

But I’m feeling like if he really truly loved me the way that he said that he did, then he would not have hurt me like this. I’m so hurt; I miss my best friend so much. I’m hoping that he will come back to me. My question is do you think that he will be back? He told me that he would wait forever for me . Why do you think that he did this? I’m crying every day over this. This happened 6 weeks ago .

Thank you,

Hopelessly in Love

DEAR HOPELESSLY IN LOVE: The short version, HIL, is that at some point before he was supposed to see you, he realized that you two weren’t going to work and he pulled the plug. Cutting ties like he did, pulling the trigger on the Nuclear Option, is both to protect his heart… but also to underline the fact that this was his decision and he’s not interested in talking about it with you.

Now just why he decided to up and block you is something of an open question. It’s theoretically possible that, since you didn’t answer his call at oh-Christ-hundred, he decided that was the Sin That Couldn’t be Forgiven. If his idea of your “always being there for him” is that you literally always answer the phone when he calls, no matter what, then he’s not in good working order and you’re well rid of him. You can chalk that one up to a bullet dodged.

(I mean, if someone calls me at 6:30 in the morning, somebody better be on fire… or they will be.)

It’s also possible that you were a little more intense than he was ready for and he decided to use your hanging up on him as an excuse. Or he was calling with an actual emergency and you just hung up on him without bothering to listen.

But the more likely scenario is the fact that you’re, y’know. Still married. That’s going to put a limit on the relationship you and he can have. Maybe he doesn’t want to wait for you to go through the process of getting divorced. Maybe he didn’t want to be responsible for breaking up somebody else’s marriage. Hell, maybe your husband twigged to the fact that you were getting ready to bang this dude and gave him the wave-off. But regardless, I suspect that the fact that you’re still married and not giving any signs that this was about to change was the biggest reason for him to peace out, girl scout.

What about all those promises? What about saying he was going to wait forever for you? Well… setting hyperbole aside, there’s the fact that there comes a point where folks recognize that sometimes a relationship — or a relationship in potentia — isn’t right or healthy for them. Or they may realize that they can’t put their life on hold while they wait for someone else to get ready. There comes a point where someone has to say “I may love you, yeah, but I love me more,“; that is, they have to love themselves enough to know that something isn’t going to work and do the hard thing. And sometimes that hard thing means cutting all ties.

Yeah, his dumping you like that hurt. But honestly, the short, quick break heals the cleanest.

Will he come back? Um… no. Telling you to lose his number and then blocking you on his social media is almost certainly his final word on the matter. Waiting for him to come back is going to be a fruitless endeavor, and there’s not going to be any benefit to seeing if there’s some way of reaching out to him.

I think your time is going to be better spent deciding on what you’re going to do about your marriage which, honestly, sounds like it’s on the rocks as well. Whether it’s going in for counseling or starting the process of ending it, I think you need to devote your time and energy a little closer to home than hoping that Prince Charming is going to come around a third time.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I cannot help shake the feelings of hurt about how my birthday was handled during COVID vs how a friend’s birthday was handled/is being handled during Covid.

In the end of March my state implemented a “Stay at Home” order that of course meant to stay at home if you are not getting groceries, medicine, etc. One exception was people to take car rides to relieve cabin fever. In order to comply with the rules, I told friends they could drive by my apartment and I can wave to them to get some semblance of a birthday. Not a single one of my friends drove by.

Flash forward to the past holiday weekend. One of the friends who I asked has a birthday that weekend and had asked my wife and I to join in the festivities out of state. While the state we are traveling to does not have an order, their DHS has announced people should stay home. When I voiced my concern about it and covid I felt my concerns were brushed aside being told that “it’s okay”, “we won’t go to bars” and other things.

I’m I right to feel a little hurt? It makes me feel my friends and my wife are being contradicting when it comes to these sort of similar cases.

A Very Unmerry Birthday

DEAR A VERY UNMERRY BIRTHDAY: I feel you, AVUB. A lot of folks — myself included — had birthday, travel and holiday plans squashed by the lockdown, especially in the early days. Even though folks started having regular social get togethers via Skype or Zoom or other services, it’s not quite the same as having your friends there with you to celebrate. Seeing your friends getting people together in person for their shindig when they couldn’t or didn’t come to yours? Yeah, that’s gonna sting, and understandably so.

However, one thing to keep in mind is the difference between where we are now vs. where we were back in March. Back in March, the vast majority of the population were taking the lockdown very seriously. We all agreed that we were going to work together, flatten the curve so that hospitals didn’t get overwhelmed and hopefully we’d break the back of the pandemic.

Fast forward to May and states were starting to relax their standards. Several states — including Texas and Florida — decided to start reopening, even as cases were still surging. The message that we started getting, from the President, from certain loud voices in right wing media, even from governors of different states was that it was time to start getting back to normal. Bars, restaurants and movie theaters started reopening. Suddenly people were starting to act as though we were through the worst of it and getting back to socializing in person… even though we were staring down the barrel of a massive upsurge in cases.

That mixed messaging, combined with the frustration of being isolated and the understandable desire to connect with people in person, has lead to people treating things far more casually than they did before. And while there are some ways to socialize safely — forming a quarantine pod of people who ONLY see each other in person and follow strict protocols otherwise — a lot of people are starting to act like the pandemic is over.

Folks like, say, your friends wanting to host a birthday party during a holiday.

So yes, you are right to feel hurt. Much like the folks who’ve been masking up, avoiding large crowds, staying home and doing their part to try to stay safe and flatten the curve, it’s incredibly frustrating and hurtful to see folks running around like nothing’s wrong. As several people have said: this the pandemic equivalent of being the person who got stuck doing all the work in a group project in school. But in the case of your friends skipping your birthday? I don’t think you should take that personally, even though it feels personal. It has far less to do with you and your relationship with your friends and far more to do with where we’re at as a country. They’re getting together in person, not because they don’t care about you enough to celebrate your birthday, but because of quarantine fatigue, failures of leadership and messaging and mismanagement of a national crisis by leaders on the federal and state level.

It still stings, to be sure, and they’re making what I would judge to be a poor decision. But like I said: it’s not because they didn’t care about you, it’s that everyone was taking the pandemic restrictions far more seriously when we started than they are now.

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’m a straight, non-monogamous male. I have a friend with benefits, X, who has been my lover for two years now. She’s also one of my best friends overall and even though a traditional relationship escalator-type thing is not on the table, we are planning long-term a co-housing project on a farm. X has never been my type physically, and even though I’ve enjoyed making love with her, she’s rather shy and passive in bed which makes the sex just average, not the awesome sex I’m aspiring to.

Now my attraction for X has been going steadily down lately because she’s been taking quite a bit of weight. I know society judges this as being fatphobic because most people believe that we have no influence on our weight and it’s not supposed to affect our attraction for others, but I can’t seem to help it. I look at X and even though I’m very fond of her, the sight of her stimulates my libido less and less as she is gaining more and more weight.

This problem is exacerbated by a new FWB I’ve been f--king, Y, and she’s not only more of my type physically, she’s totally GGG and I’m having the best sex of my life with her. This doesn’t affect the strong feelings I have for X but it does make the sex with her seem even less interesting.

Where the situation gets delicate is because X has low self-esteem problems, she’s self-conscious of her body and has a hard time accepting it. I’ve always been careful to make her feel beautiful by having very sensual sex with her and telling her she’s pretty, and I never made a single comment about her weight. I believe people should choose how to manage their body and others don’t have a say in it. My philosophy is that my choice is limited to taking people as they are or not taking them at all, and I shouldn’t ask nor expect them to change for me.

I think our relationship is heading towards phasing out sex from it but the problem is that I don’t want to exacerbate her self-esteem problem, I don’t want to make her hate her body even more and make her more self-conscious about it. So I don’t want to tell her that I’d rather stop having sex with her because I’m not attracted to her anymore. I don’t want to lie to her. And I’d rather not have sex with her that I don’t feel like having, just to please her. And above all, I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship and our project.

What should I do, Dr. NerdLove? Is it me who’s wrong and I’m not supposed to be any less attracted to her even though she’s taking weight? If so, what am I supposed to do about it? If not, how can I detach my lowering interest for sex with her self-esteem issues?

– Seeking Humane Answer to Lowering Libido for Overweight Woman

DEAR SEEKING HUMANE ANSWER TO LOWERING LIBIDO FOR OVERWEIGHT WOMAN: Alright, SHALLOW, there’s a lot going on here, but there are two that stand out as being the most significant. The first is that I think you might be misattributing your loss of interest solely to X’s weight. The second is that you’re giving yourself a false dichotomy here. But there’re more than a few issues that’re getting tangled up in all of this and making things worse.

As with a lot of complicated issues, let’s roll it from the top, shall we?

To start with: I’m kind of wondering how attracted you were to X in the first place. I mean, right from the jump, you’re telling me that she’s never been your physical type to start with and that, while you like getting laid, the sex is mediocre to average at best. That doesn’t exactly make your loss of attraction to her much of a surprise; it seems rather like it was more inevitable, rather than something that’s caught you by surprise. This is especially true when you’ve started hooking up with Y who not only is your type, but also has the kind of sex you want. Not only do you have all that New Relationship Energy crackling in your brain, but you’re banging someone who you’re actually in tune with, sexually, instead of going through the motions because an orgasm WOULD be nice tonight. This is why I don’t think her weight gain is the root cause of your loss of interest. I don’t think it’s helping in this case, but I strongly suspect that it’s the easiest thing to latch onto. You weren’t that hot for her to start with, and these changes were enough to snuff out the last of your interest.

Now I get that X is your best friend and you love her… but the way you describe things makes me think that you made the mistake a lot of straight guys make: you bought into the idea that men and women can’t be just friends. One of the most pernicious myths that straight dudes believe is that sex always gets in the way between men and women — the old “yes, your guy friends all want to f--k you” bit from When Harry Met Sally. This alone makes it hard for guys to have honest and emotionally intimate friendships with women. But then there’s also the fact that, because society encourages men to be detached from their emotions and we equate emotional intimacy with sexual intimacy, men tend to confuse an emotionally close friendship with romance. As a result: you get a lot of guys who mistake friendship for romantic attraction and who try to make a relationship work with someone they’re not actually attracted to.

And that’s generally a good way to end up with a lot of hurt feelings and unnecessary pain.

I don’t know if it was just a case that the two of you had a one-night stand and decided to make a go of it, that one of you kicked things off with the other and it just kind of spiraled from there or what but it sounds to me like this is a relationship that’s had an expiration date from the get-go. And, in fairness, that’s the case with a lot of FWB relationships. As I’ve said before, friends with benefits tend to end one of two ways: either you quit having sex, or you quit being friends. Sometimes that means you quit being FWBs and move to something more committed, or the friendship falls apart. And frankly, SHALLOW, I think you’re going to end up with both if you’re not careful.

But here’s the thing: your choices aren’t “lie to her about why you don’t want to f--k her any more” or “destroy her self-esteem by telling her you think she’s too fat”. Nor is it to continue having maintenance sex because you’re trying to boost her self-esteem with your penis (which, incidentally, doesn’t work). What you should do is be honest: you’re feeling the nature of your relationship changing and that it’s shifting more to the “friends” side of the equation than the “benefits” part. She’s still very dear to you and you love her, but for you, the sexual side of your relationship is coming to an end.

And then leave it at that. This is, in fact, a normal part of relationships; plenty of folks have transitioned from FWB to friends without benefits. Sometimes it’s because one or the other has decided to pursue an exclusive relationship. Other times, it’s because that attraction faded over time… like it often does. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with her or the relationship, it just means that part of the relationship reached its natural conclusion. If you’re going to make that leap yourselves, then telling her “Bee-tee-dubs, I wasn’t that into you into the first place, but putting on a few pounds killed that dead” is the last thing you should do. The important part of “friends with benefits” isn’t the “benefits”, it’s the “friends”.

So let her down gently, SHALLOW. Make sure she understands that this isn’t about her, it’s about you and the nature of your feelings. She has done absolutely nothing wrong, this is just how things have progressed for you. Then continue to treat her like a dear friend… that you’re not f--king.

And in the future, be a little more mindful of your feelings and don’t try to round a friendship up to something more. Especially when you’re not that attracted to them or sexually compatible in the first place.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I never paid much attention to the love-related side of your internet work, but now that I’ve found myself in a bit of a situation you were the first one that came to mind when I thought of where to get help. 

I met this girl a little over a year ago through a forum that we were both a part of. It wasn’t an online dating site or anything, just a casual forum. We got to know each other through the group that we were both a part of and on a whim I started sending her messages several months ago. Eventually we realized we had the same tastes, personality and sense of humor, and I started having long conversations with her almost every day. At first we just talked about anime and music, but after a while we started talking about our personal lives, and we would vent to each other about stuff that was bothering us whenever we could. We’d frequently do Skype video calls with our longest conversation lasting four hours, and consider each other good friends and speak to each other as such, with a majority of our conversations consisting of us throwing joking insults at each other. As far as I know, I’m the only one she does this with as well.  

As you probably guessed, I’ve fallen for this girl, though it embarrasses me horribly to admit it. While I have had some female friends in real life, I never felt like I could connect with them or talk at length with them the same way I could with this girl. I really do feel like we can say whatever’s on our minds to each other with zero consequences, and I want to talk to her 24 hours a day if I could. It’s gotten to a point where I’ve felt the need to force myself into the conversation whenever she shows up or is even mentioned, and whenever I go out my mind sometimes drifts to what she might be doing right now or whether or not she’s talking to someone else. I realize it’s incredibly pathetic to think that way about someone you don’t even really know but I just can’t help myself. 

The problem is that we live in entirely different continents with any chance of meeting each other in real life being incredibly slim, making a relationship a pipe dream to say the least. Plus, we frequently make fun of another internet guy who creeps on her and she makes it clear that she thinks the concept of having feelings for someone through the internet is ridiculous. I’m worried that if I tell her how I feel, she’ll come to view me the same way as the internet creepers and passive-aggressive friends who have confessed to her for stupid reasons in the past that she frequently complains to me about. However, ever since I’ve fallen for her, I’ve started “jokingly” flirting with her as a way to express myself, which never seems to bother her at all. When I insinuated I was being serious at one point, she told me that the reason she was okay with those jokes was because she knew there was no way I would ever like her, since she’s too “s--t-tier”. This makes me feel really uncertain on what her reaction would be if I told her the truth. 

Doc, I’m fairly thick-skinned when it comes to criticisms, so I’d like you to be honest. Am I creepy or pathetic for falling for a girl this way? Should I tell her how I feel? I don’t want a relationship or anything like that since I know it’s pretty much impossible, but I just can’t stop thinking about her. Is there any way to move past this while still being able to talk to her like normal? I’m a 17 year-old with pretty much no experience in this kind of thing, so I’d really appreciate some help.

– Only An Ocean Away

DEAR ONLY AN OCEAN AWAY: I don’t think you’re pathetic or creepy, OaOA.

I do, however, think that you’re setting yourself up for a fall. I think you’re good friends and have a great deal of emotional intimacy, and from the sounds of it, she’s the first person who you’ve really been able to relate to this way, and it’s heady stuff! It’s also “safe”, in a way that your female friends aren’t because you’ve got an entire ocean between the two of you. It allows you to feel more secure and confident because that distance means that you don’t have as much at risk; you know that a relationship is impossible because, hey, you’re in opposite corners of the world!

But I’m going to draw the line at saying that “yeah, you’re in love with her”. You’re basically dealing with what’s known as “limerence“… basically a crush. That obsessive, constantly thinking about her? The way you kind of clam up when you think about trying to actually tell her how you feel and the nervousness about your feelings not being returned? These are all classic symptoms of a crush, and these can be made all the more intense when there are obstacles in the way. Like, say, an entire ocean. In short… you’re crushing on someone and it’s kinda making you crazy.

So I’ve got good news and bad news. And I’m going to give you the bad news first.

The bad news is: I think you’re kind of screwed on the relationship front. To start with, there’s the long-distance issue. Long distance relationships when you’re in the same state are difficult enough. Long distance relationships when you’re in entirely different countries are harder by orders of magnitude. Long distance relationships when you’re in entirely different countries AND there’s a global pandemic that means that most countries won’t let Americans in… well, that’s an even BIGGER complication. The level of effort and expense it takes to maintain a trans-continental relationship is immense. Now to be sure, it can be done. In fact, I oversaw the wedding of a couple of friends of mine who were living halfway around the world from one another… but part of what made that work was that one of them had already made plans to pull up stakes and emigrate. Knowing there’s a definite end-date to the separation can help keep the relationship alive and ease the tensions that arise from the distance.

This is magnified by the fact that you’re 17. You’re still riding out the emotional and hormonal equivalent of Space Mountain, which means everything is crazy intense. The constant hormone flux mixed with the f--ked up prison-system lifestyle that is high-school means that half the time, you have no idea whether you’re coming or going. So you’re now stuck with these crazy feelings you barely know how to handle and no real way of releasing them and you don’t really know what to do. Then there’s the fact that you’re within a year of graduating from high-school and (presumably) heading towards college. High-school relationships rarely survive the transition to college for many, many reasons. College is the first time you’ll be truly on your own and surrounded by people your own age – all of whom are there for the same reasons you are. You’re going to be watching your social circles change as your identity starts to mature and shift and you find out who you really are… or at least who you’re trying to be. This would test any relationship… but you’ve got an extra wrinkle on yours.

Namely: you’ve never actually met in person. And no, Skype calls don’t count. This is the thing about online-only relationships: they’re not the same as ones where you meet in person. Now, this isn’t to say that you can’t have a legitimate emotional bond with someone who you only know online – over the years I’ve made more friends than I can count that started off as text in a forum and I’ve watched more relationships and marriages that began online than you’d believe.

But what made them work was that they weren’t actually “dating” until they met in person. You can have an emotional bond with someone, sure… but that’s not the same as romantic love. We like to think that love is pure and about the soul and the mind but in reality… it’s as much about the body as anything else. Not just in the sense of visual attraction but in the myriad little ways that we’re barely aware of – the way they smell, the way they feel when we touch their skin, even the way they taste when we kiss. There’s a physical, even pheromonal component to attraction and without a meat-to-meat meeting, it’s just not going to be the same.

It would be one thing if you were in a position to possibly visit in person… but at age 17, there’s a hell of a lot of barriers in the way. And before you think it, going to college in her country is not advisable.

So I’m sorry to drop all of this on you, and I know it sucks.

The good news though is that this is going to be fairly easy to get over. I don’t recommend getting out of contact with her – you’re legitimately friends – but I do recommend that you don’t treat this as a potential relationship. The two of you are close and that’s a good thing; it’s an amazing thing to have such a tight bond with someone. But right now, the way you’re going about things is going to keep you from finding other, just as amazing relationships in your town, and passing over those for a future relationship that is mostly fantasy at this point is a bad idea.

So here’s the Doc’s advice. Live your life. Keep your friendship going.  You may find that over time, the two of you may drift apart… it’s sad, but it happens, especially at your age. Pursue relationships in your area. Get ready for college and the adventures that’s going to bring.

And after you’ve got a couple more years of living under your belt… well, maybe you can save up some cash and take advantage of the student travel programs that’ll be available to you.

Good luck.

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