DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m gonna apologize beforehand but it’s one of those “I have this friend…” questions.

I’m a guy and this friend is a girl. Her boyfriend broke up with her after a very serious 2 year relationship (living together and all that stuff). The dude was very f--ked up and turned my friend from a happy-go-lucky girl into a depressed, drawn-back husk of a woman.

She is on the road to recovery but every 3-4 months that guy gets in contact with her and tells her all about how he misses her and he can change and so on, they get back to together and after 3-4 weeks leaves her again, completely destroyed.

She knows he’s bad for her but she has gone back to him several times even after breaks as long as 7 months. My question is how I can help her getting over him, so she can lead a happy life again.

Emotional Life Guard

DEAR EMOTIONAL LIFE GUARD: There are few things worse than a toxic ex. You know the ones; they’re abusive pieces of s--t, emotional vampires that drain the very life out of their significant others – and by extension, the people around them – turning them into shattered remains of the person they used to be and leaving it to the victims’ friends to pick up the pieces afterwards. And just when you think that they’re out of your lives forever, they come right back like a zit before prom and ruin everything once again. You’d think that in a just country this sort of behavior would be punished by 20 minute of special alone time with the Chair Leg of Truth, which is wise and terrible.

But since that is denied to us, we have to muddle on as best we can and deal with what we have in front of us.

The fact is, your friend is in an emotionally abusive relationship and she’s caught up in the recurring cycle… and her ex knows just how to keep pushing her buttons to bring her back around. As long as she’s willing to buy into the lies that he’s feeding her – that he can change or has changed, that things are different now, that it’ll be better than it was before – she’s going to keep coming back. It’s even worse when she knows that he’s bad for her; there’s nothing like seeing the train wreck coming and knowing that you can’t do anything about it.

And unfortunately, you can’t, ELG. As tempting as it might be to track the guy down and have a lovely discussion with his kneecaps, the only person who can break this cycle is her.

Helping friends in emotionally abusive relationships is a tricky matter. You can present her with the facts – that you’re concerned for her, that you see how upset he makes her and how much it changes her, that he doesn’t treat her with the respect or honor she deserves – but she’s not going to want to believe them. Or worse, she may believe them but still say “yes, but…”

You can refuse to be complicit in her relationship with him; you won’t hang out with the two of them or refuse to talk about him… but this will mean she may not be able to bring herself to talk about the abuse with you and end up facilitating his attempts to separate her from you.  

Trying to force the issue will only make things worse; she’ll be on the defensive and feel pushed closer to him while he explains to her that she can’t trust you guys, he’s the only one who cares for her and understands her, he’s her only real friend… which will pull her away from you and wrap her further into his net.

Until she’s willing to accept that she’s being abused emotionally and that the relationship is toxic to her and those around her, the cycle is going to continue. And as hard as it can be for you to hear, there really is no way for you to MAKE her realize this.

The best way you can help your friend is to be the friend she needs. She’s going to need your support, especially when the cycle peaks when he dumps her again and she’s full of self-recrimination and loathing. She’ll blame herself for allowing herself to be abused. She’s going to need you to be as non-judgemental as possible; even as the cycle continues and she goes back to him again, she will need your love and support even more than before and trying to criticize her for going back or guilting her out of it will only make things worse for the both of you and she may well feel that she can’t come to you when she needs to.

What else can you do? Occupy her time. Get her involved in activities outside of her relationship with the abusive d--kbag, ones involving her friends and loved ones; spending time with the people who care about her will help rebuild her self-esteem. Keeping busy and distracted will also help with the downtime in the cycle when she’s more likely to believe his spiel about how he’s changed. Encourage her to talk to a therapist or to find a support group; if she recoils from the idea, offer to go with her or frame it as help with recovering from the breakup rather than her ex’s behavior. Many people remain in abusive relationships because they don’t want to accept that THEY could be a victim of emotional abuse; abuse like that happens to other people, there’s no way she could be so stupid as to fall for it.

As tempting as it may be, avoid playing Cupid. It may seem like finding her a new, better boyfriend would be the perfect solution to the problem, but it can backfire spectacularly. Problems with the new relationship could very well be what spurs her to go back to the abuser instead.

And above all else, be there for her. Remind her – over and over again if you have to – that none of this emotional abuse is her fault. It’s her ex that’s the problem, not her. She’ll need to know that not only is she not alone but that there are people who care for her, who are always ready to listen when she needs to talk and who will be there to help her when she needs it.

Hopefully soon your friend will realize just how bad things are and will finally break out of the cycle for good. Until then, be her friend and remind her that you’re there for her whenever she needs you.

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: Please help me. I am all torn up over staying with my girlfriend or not. We’ve been dating just over 6 months, but despite how much I like her and how well we fit together I have had doubts for much of that time. She is also my first good and real girlfriend.

As soon as I realized how well we got along and how much she liked me, I got scared. I was expecting to have to date several women and hone my skills and attitudes like you teach before I would meet such a great girl. We just got together over the internet right at the time when my life situation got good for me to have a girlfriend, like the Universe lined up for me or something. I was not ready to find myself in a good relationship so soon, because I was looking forward to the hard work and experience of dating many different girls. I feel like I stumbled backwards over the finish line, rather than running the full quarter mile oval. I’m really scared because I am afraid of hurting her, just as I’m afraid of being false to myself.

A good friend/mentor and my counselor both say that building up romantic experience is better than settling down with the first good person to come along. What I did not tell them when I sought their advice, tho, is that I am also motivated by physical beauty: I want to work hard and date beautiful women that would normally render me stupid. My current girlfriend is pretty, but less than hot. Her Whole Self still turns me on, but I cannot shake the curiosity and desire for other body sizes and shapes. What you said before stuck with me, “settling down is settling for.” If I can work to improve myself to date hotties, why not? I’d like to believe there are hot women out there who are also sensitive and caring and click with me.

One of my family said to me that I since I have so many doubts for so long that I ought to free her to find someone who is ready to love her more completely that I can.

I hope my backstory is clear, and that I have provided balanced good and bad qualities of my current nature. My question to you is which voice in my head to listen to and believe: the one that urges me to keep aiming high to develop myself as a man Good With Women (currently I am only good with woman), or the one that says I am being shallow and falling for culture’s pressure of beauty and status and that I ought to just stay with the good thing I have.

Am I being stupid for wanting to drop a pretty good relationship and person for the sake of dating more people and building up my social insecurities? Is staying put the cowardly-comfortable way to avoid the stress of learning how to meet and date more women? Should I stay with her and train myself to be content? What is the most righteous thing to do? I so want to be one of the Good Guys.

Thank you, Doctor.

Bird In The Hand

DEAR BIRD IN THE HAND: Look, can we be honest here? You’ve already made up your mind. You’re just asking me for permission to do what you  want to do, which is to break up with your girlfriend and start chasing hotties because you think you can do better.

Which, hey, fair enough. You can break up with someone for any reason at all. Of course, ruining a perfectly good relationship because you want to chase supermodels is a pretty s--tty reason to break up, but there’s nobody stoping you from doing it. There’s not some board out there that’s going to invalidate your break-up because you’re feeling insecure.

But I’m going to cut you some slack here – not much, because I think you’re being an idiot, but some – because I get the impression you’re pretty young and inexperienced. But that doesn’t mean it’s not on me to pound some wisdom into your head with the Chair Leg of Truth.

First of all: there is no schedule for how relationships are supposed to work. Sometimes you have to date around a lot before you find someone amazing and settle down. Sometimes you get lucky right off the bat. Two very good friends of mine met their wives in high-school. They’ve both been together for decades and are gloriously happy. Throwing away a relationship because it doesn’t go exactly according to the plan in your head is a stupid thing to do and a great way to needlessly hurt somebody.

Especially because – and I’m going to be blunt – this is almost certainly not going to be your last relationship.  To be perfectly frank, the odds of this surviving over time are low, even without you slamming your hand down on the self-destruct button.

Which brings me to point two: all relationships fail until one doesn’t. And while my buddies got lucky and found their partners in their teens, that’s pretty damn rare. The vast majority of people don’t marry their childhood sweetheart.Your first relationship not lasting until death do you part, mind you, is not by definition a bad thing. Like I said: all relationships end. That doesn’t mean that there was something faulty in them or that one of you did something wrong. People change and grow over time; sometimes that means that you grow apart through no fault of one’s own. Sometimes circumstances change. Sometimes relationships just evolve into something else. A relationship ending doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a failure; after all, if you’ve had a long, loving and mostly happy relationship with somebody, especially somebody you’re still on good terms with afterwards, that hardly sounds like a failure to me.

Point three: monogamy isn’t our natural state. You’re always going to be interested in f--king other people. So’s she. That’s just how humans work; we love f--king. We love f--king so much, that we’re one of only two land-mammal species that have sex outside of estrus. This doesn’t mean that monogamy is bad or wrong, just that it’s difficult. All monogamy means is that you’ve agreed not to sleep with other people. It doesn’t say a damn thing about not wanting to, and being attracted to others doesn’t say anything about the state of your relationship.

Point four: just because you’re in a relationship with somebody doesn’t meant you stop developing or improving as a person. You don’t suddenly have a license to slack off and quit taking care of yourself just because you have a girlfriend. You can still grow, you can still improve your social skills and become a more attractive, dynamic person. The only difference is that you’ll have a partner who, hopefully, is supporting your growth and cheering you on.

Point five: It’s on you to decide what you want from life and the types of relationships you want to pursue. If you want to find someone to settle down with, that’s a perfectly valid choice. If you want to have many different sex partners because that’s just how you roll, that’s fine too. You may want an open relationship, or a poly triad or some other permutation. That’s all well and good. But it should be because that’s who you are, not because that’s how you think you should be or how society tells you that you should be. And I suspect part of your problem is that you’re buying into the idea that you need to be dating somebody who makes your friends jealous.

Real talk time: Being with somebody who makes you happy, who turns you on, who gets you and makes you laugh and helps you feel amazing is more important than dating somebody so hot that people wonder where to find the crossroad where you sold your soul. And frankly, part of how you build up your relationship XP is by being in relationships.

I think throwing someone who makes you happy aside in hopes of finding her-but-hotter is an incredibly stupid thing to do. By not appreciating what you have and focusing only on what you might be able to get is a recipe for being miserable, because you’ll always be looking for the next upgrade. After all, there’s always going to be someone hotter you could, in theory, be bangin’. You’re not looking to settle down yet, and you’re not going to be tying yourself to her forever. Learn to savor what you have for however long you may have it, rather than always looking to the horizon and thinking “yeah… but maybe I could still get Kat Dennings.”

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Is it wrong for me to fear women? Every time I try to talk to a girl my age they never talk back to me. They just give me weird look stare or roll their eyes. All the time. I have also had women call me creepy or weird even coworkers at my job do this. I am currently 24. I don’t look at women anymore nor do I talk to them unless they talk to me first. When I am at the store and a girl is down the aisle I will go the other way or wait for her to leave. I am afraid of women, I don’t want to be charged with a crime of stalking or something of the like. I don’t hate women, I don’t take the red pill or whatever. They just hate me. What should I do to break my fear and have a conversation with the opposite sex?

Don’t Fear The Creeper

DEAR DON’T FEAR THE CREEPER: There are a couple of issues going on here.

The first is that there is something that you’re doing that’s clearly weirding women out. You may not intend to come across as creepy, but somehow you’re giving off a vibe that women – including your co-workers – are finding off-putting. And the answer is, simply: figure out what it is and stop doing that.

Yes, I realize that’s about as useful as saying that the secret to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss, but stick with me for a second.

The problem with diagnosing yourself as a creeper who constantly puts people off with his creepy ways is that… well, creep is in the eye of the beholder, and sometimes the beholder is a dishonest narrative coming from the anxiety in your own brain. Anxiety that, I might add, that you’re pretty clearly suffering from.

Anxiety is a goddamn liar and it will tell you the worst things because you already fear them. And because we have an inherent negativity bias, you’re much more likely to believe that those fear-fueled interpretations are accurate because they confirm what you believe about yourself.

But what if it IS true? What if you’re genuinely creeping people out? How do you figure out what the issue is and fix it?

Well, the first step is doing some honest self-examination. Most of the time when a dude is giving off the creepy-vibe, people will have a concrete example – he may ignore the concept of personal space or constantly bring up inappropriate topics. He may address all of is questions to her cleavage or constantly be trying to touch someone, even after having been warned off. He may be missing out on social cues and not picking up on signs of disinterest or even indications that his presence isn’t wanted.

If you’re continually getting bad reactions from people when you’re approaching then, then I’d be willing to bet that the issue is most evident in either your body language or the way you’re starting the conversation. Now, I have a video about the most common things guys do that can make them come off as creepy — youtu.be/Mkq7EVDXfXQ — which should be a good place to start, but it’s also a good idea to talk to your co-workers. Let them know that you understand that you come off as creepy and you’re trying to fix that, and you’d appreciate knowing just what it is that you’re doing wrong. Hopefully they’re mature enough to realize that you’re making a good faith effort to improve and will respond in kind – and that they can give you something more to work with than “everything, man”.

Your fear of women is the other issue, and I suspect that it’s amplifying everything else. When you’re obsessing about the worst possible outcome – being charged with stalking,  to use your example – it’s going to end up coloring everything you do, from your body language to your word choice, even to the way you interpret the way people react to you. Intellectually, you realize that what you’re picturing is ridiculous, but hey, when your brain decides to kick things into overdrive, rationality goes out the window.

Normally when dealing with a phobia like approach anxiety, the keys are to desensitize yourself over time and to control the symptoms. The brain is ruled by the body, and the fear response is as much about your heart rate and your adrenal glands as it is about the thing that you’re afraid of. Breath control is an excellent way of calming yourself down; breathe in for the count of five, hold it for a moment or two, then breathe out to the count of 10. This helps slow your heart-rate and, in turn, calms you down.

In your case however, I suspect that you may well have a social anxiety issue, which may be an underlying cause of your other problems. It might not be the worst idea to talk to a therapist, especially someone who handles phobias and anxiety problems, about how to get that under control. Talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy can go a long way towards overcoming those fears. Anti-anxiety medication may be an option as well; many anxiety disorders are chemical imbalances, and  readjusting things may the key to breaking the mental cycle that causes you to tense up and panic.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help; it’s actually one of the strongest and bravest things you can do for yourself.

Good luck.

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