Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My wife and I have been together for six years and married for four. We have a son who is about to turn two in a few weeks and we have been having marriage problems since February of this year. No sex and constant fighting.

We sought out marriage counseling which has been helping a lot since June and still going. Still no sex though. She wants to and I want to but neither one of us can force it to happen. She has even bought some lingerie to help make it happen.

Here is why I can’t and where the advice is deeply needed. I know she has a crush on her boss at work and has been flirting with him for a while. I asked her about it one day and she said it was nothing. I broke the golden rule and looked in her phone and texts. Her best friend and her talk about it and I read about her flirting with him and she told him to run away with her and how she wishes he would touch her. All of this is between her best friend and her. She doesn’t text him, email him, or DM him. I looked there, too.

Should I man up and confront her and tell her I looked or should I lie and say at the Halloween party your best friend told me you wanted him or maybe should I take advice from another friend and just let it go? What should I do doc? I have been cheated on before in the same fashion. Girlfriend had sex with a married man who had three kids and this is the same situation but now my wife and I have a son.

I forgot to mention how the man is similar to her dad and she says she could never be with a guy like that and he is religious and for several years my wife has said she is not but in her texts with her friend she claims to have some religion in her. She’s Buddhist and this guy is a Christian who goes to church three times a week. Not to mention he has three kids and is having marriage problems, too. 

I will take any advice I can get. I have been tempted to just walkout many times but can’t because we have a son.

Desperate Snooper

DEAR DESPERATE SNOOPER: Good for you for going to couple’s therapy! I’m glad to hear that it’s been helping… but your neglect of your sex-life needs to be addressed. Especially considering the root cause is that you went snooping and found out things you wish you hadn’t.

First of all, I’ll give my standard disclaimer: I’m against invasions of privacy, whether it means snooping through someone’s email, texts, Facebook messages, computer files, whatever. As a general rule, even if you’re already sure they’re up to some sketchy s--t, you’re almost never going to like what you find and you’re gonna have to live with not being able to UN-know what you now know.

Now, that having been said, you’ve gone and done it already and now it’s time to deal with the fallout.

So, you say that all you’ve found are texts back and forth between your wife and her best friend – no indication that she’s been having contact with this guy outside of work, no smoking gun that she’s actually cheating on you, just gossip and the indication that she’s at least fantasizing about it.

That’s actually not quite as bad as you’d think.

It’s normal, even amongst happily married couples, for one or the other to develop a crush on someone – a co-worker, the cute guy at the Starbucks, that hot woman you see at the gym every Tuesday; it’s a heady emotional rush of teenager-y giddiness, especially when you’re in a long-term relationship where the initial passion has faded into a less-frantic but more intimate companionship and love.

We’re a novelty-seeking species, and we ESPECIALLY like sexual novelty. New sex partners make us fire off a massive volley of dopamine and oxytocin straight to the pleasure centers of the brain. When we’re in a long-term relationship, that level of dopamine and oxytocin production dips down to lower levels.

So when we find ourselves attracted to someone new, we get that chemical rush again and so we develop a crush or infatuation. That doesn’t mean that you (or they) don’t love your partner or aren’t attracted to them. All it means is that you’re a primate with a sex drive.

The issue in your case is that when you’re having relationship problems – as you and your wife are – that crush can be more intoxicating just by contrast. This, in turn, can lead to someone having feelings like they haven’t in a long time.

You say that she mentioned that she WISHES that her boss would touch her or make a move. That should tell you where things currently stand. Absent other indications – no smoking gun emails, prolonged absences, long nights at the office, sudden changes or improvements to her appearance – I would hedge on the side that your wife is enjoying the flirting and the emotional rush of an office infatuation but hasn’t stepped over the edge into actual infidelity… yet.

Confronting her on this would be a bad idea. First of all: so far, you only have gossip to go on. Second: you got this gossip through snooping through her stuff. All this is going to do is turn the conversation from “Are you cheating on me” to “How dare you violate my privacy”, which will only make an already tense situation worse. Trying to cover your snooping by dragging her friend into it isn’t going to help or cover your ass; the first thing her friend is going to do is deny saying anything to you… because she didn’t. And let’s be real here: lying is only going to compound the problem of your having snooped in the first place.

I’m not saying that you should only confront her when you have the means to win, I’m saying that a confrontation isn’t going to do anything to help. Neither, for that matter, is “just letting it go”. If you care for your wife and your relationship, then yes, you need to man the hell up up… not by accusing your wife of infidelity but by confronting your problems and working with her to fix them.

I know it’s tough, even intimidating; you’re having flashbacks to your previous girlfriend who cheated. But this time you have the chance to stop any potential infidelity before it happens again.

Men and women cheat for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that their emotional or sexual needs aren’t being met… which is exactly what’s happening here. You’re both stressed – two-year olds are nothing BUT stress magnets – you’ve been fighting and, critically, you haven’t been f--king.

You want to. Your wife wants to. But going by your letter, you’ve been the hold-out because you’ve got this fantasy of her and her boss in your head. This is what needs to stop. Her emotional and sexual needs aren’t being fulfilled by you, so she’s been indulging her crush. She’s enjoying the flirting because it has all of the thrills of a new relationship – that giddy mix of nervousness and excitement – that she hasn’t felt in a while and that she isn’t feeling in her relationship with you now.

If you don’t want her to cheat on you, BE the man she’d cheat on you with. You need to seduce your wife.

Remember all of the little things you used to do early on in your courtship when everything was new and wonderful? You need to summon that back and remind her just why she fell in love with you in the first place; the little compliments, the gifts for no reason, the unexpected sweet moments, the passion. Don’t let the sex just happen, make arrangements in advance. Call a babysitter, rent a hotel room, make reservations for a romantic dinner and give her the full-court press. Force the image of her and her boss out of your head however you have to – hold back from masturbation until you’re so horny you could f--k concrete, having a drink, smoking a joint, whatever – and make the moment happen. Sweep her off her feet and back into your bed.

Things may look dire, but they’re not hopeless. You’ve got a chance to save your marriage – even to make it better than it has been in a while – if you’re willing to take it.

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: Last summer, some ex-friends and I had a falling out. 

From since 2014/2015 we’d spend almost every night talking to each other on Skype. Around 2017/2018 I wasn’t in as many of these group calls because I would be hanging with my in-person friends or out on dates. At some point during this time, we discovered that a friend was lying about a lot, and they were pretty much endangering a child, owed some people in the group money and betrayed severals trust. I chose to not get involved and I had no opinion because of what I had going on outside of the friendship.

Because of this I assumed thing got tense;  they either think I didn’t care or think the friend did nothing wrong.  In, 2019 there was a lot of back and forth arguing because I didn’t express my feelings, limited what I shared on my social media, and didn’t share everything I had going on in my life and kept somethings private.

Things came to head last year during the pandemic because I didn’t have a therapist to go to or couldn’t do any of my therapeutic/self care activities. This was about the time when we started playing D&D. I didn’t take to how the game worked and was slow to adjust.  By this point, we were fighting a lot because they believed I didn’t care and was wasting their time. Meanwhile, I was just frustrated with myself for being a slow learner. I was trying to convey these feeling and they didn’t believe my sincerity or my apologies. I was told my behavior was seemed as abusive,  misogynist and transphobic, based of previous arguments and things I had shared from my personal life. I was blocked from all the groups and by them.

I gave a one last apology before this mass blocking and left them alone. 

Then a friend who was mutuals with the others sent me a text refunding me money for art I purchased, saying they were told by friends I’m a predator towards minors, woman and trans individuals. They and 2 other mutuals have removed and or blocked me. I’ve tried to confront the individuals who I assumed were the source of these allegations, only to be blocked by them on all social media. I’ve made attempts to tell as many people I know and who are still mutuals with the others to ask for evidence if this gets brought up, but it seems they don’t interact as much. I know best thing to do is move on and just live my life, but I just feel hurt and angry that they felt the need to go this far after I’ve just left them alone.

Do you have any advice?

The Great Schism

DEAR THE GREAT SCHISM: his is a frustrating situation to be in, TGS.

Now, without having seen things go down, or without watching the replay and following the transcripts, I can’t say anything about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s justified and who was just stirring s--t. So, while I’ll take you at your word, I can only offer you advice based on my own observations and experiences of watching friend groups splinter and split. Because the truth is that every social circle will have drama, and sometimes that drama can blow up all over the place, full of accusations, recriminations and backbiting, where personality conflicts become evidence of deep character flaws that in turn become signs of… something.

I think one of the most valuable resources that had ever been published to the Internet is the concept of Geek Social Fallacies, because of how much they speak to the mistakes we often make in our social circles. Two of the most important fallacies to recognize are often the hardest to shake. The first is “Friendship Before All” — that is, that these friendships trump everything, up to and including personal boundaries and personal circumstances. This often gets positioned as a “friendship test”, where putting your own interests over The Friendship means that you’re Not Being A True Friend. While the author brings up conflicts like “being asked to keep a secret from other friends”, I’ve found for a lot of folks — especially younger people — having “secrets” or just not sharing everything often gets seen as inherently sus. People feel annoyed or shut out or excluded and that you’re not Being A True Friend, when all you’re doing is having healthy boundaries.

The other fallacy that trips people up is “Friendship Is Transitive” — that all of your friends will all get along because if they’re your friends then they should have the exact same level of relationship with everyone else. This often comes packaged with being part of the same community — such as a particular fandom — where the shared love of $GEEK_PROPERTY means that you should all be friends and love the same things and do all the same things… preferably together.

Unfortunately, this falls apart very quickly because it turns out that having friends in common isn’t the same as being compatible with one another. Nor, for that matter does being part of the same fandom or loving the same things mean that everybody is cool with each other and that you all are capable of being the closest of friends.

Even the most devoted fans of any property are going to be individuals, and where you have individuals, you’re going to have conflicts. Sometimes those conflicts are minor and dissipate quickly. Other times, however, those conflicts create flaws and cracks that become fissures… and those become greater points of conflict, that spiral, rapidly out of control. And what can make it especially maddening is sometimes the conflicts that break everything apart seem to have come out of the clear blue sky when, in reality, the conflict was merely the trigger; the source of the break were those conflicts and fissures — often ones that folks thought had been resolved long ago and weren’t.

Of course, all of this is made worse by the fact that they were held against the backdrop of the nightmare that was 2020. I suspect that the stress of the global pandemic and the attendant lockdown, the political and social upheavals, violence and fear took any number of simmering issues and conflicts and threw them into a pressure cooker. Everybody already working at reduced emotional capacity; it would take very, very little to turn those conflicts into full-bore conflagrations.

One of the truisms about fights within social circles, especially when you’re young, is that those conflicts can’t just be because of petty disagreements and disliking people on a personal level. You can’t just say that you don’t like X because you think they’re an asshole or you think Y is selfish and self-involved. To admit that would be to lose the moral high ground and — worse — make it harder to get what you want. So those fights often become about other things, things that make your being pissed at them not just justifiable but morally correct. And so things are misunderstood or taken out of context, blown up to immense proportions or possibly even just straight made up.

Worse, because of the friend-of-a-friend nature of groups, particularly when your relationships are primarily online, it’s easy for the Telephone Effect to kick in. Stories get twisted past all point of recognition and what was previously just gossip becomes gospel truth. And if it’s not actually true, then it’s fundamentally true; they may not have done X, but they probably would because “they’re just that type of person,” so really it’s fine to say they did it anyway. And sometimes people’s reaction to one person will have absolutely nothing to do with them; it’s a reaction to other s--t within that social circle and got thrown at someone else because the original cause has long passed.

So, what do you do about this?

Well… unfortunately, not much. You’re dealing with individuals, and so those individuals will all have their own reactions — both in the moment and in the aftermath. You can’t control what people are going to think or believe. And while it’s reasonable, even understandable to be frustrated with the folks who didn’t come and say “hey man, what the f--k?”, you don’t know what they were dealing with in their lives at that moment.

So all you can do — as maddening as it can be — is to just… live. You know that the things they said aren’t true or are wildly misunderstood, so the best option you have is to live your life with authenticity and integrity. Apologize where it’s needed (and won’t cause further harm), make your amends where you can and then let it go. Live your life with integrity. You may not want to just brush the dirt off your shoulders — you may well feel intense amounts of resentment and anger over this — but there’s nothing else to be done. You can swear up and down that people are wrong, you can even show the receipts (if there are any), but some folks won’t accept any of it. It’s a matter of deeds, not words, so show them who you are with your actions. That means living your life as best as you can, in the most authentic, upright and sincere way you can.

Everything else after that is out of your hands.

What you don’t want to do is dwell on things or the unfairness of it all or getting people to acknowledge that they were wrong. You can’t control that. Likewise, you can’t control who will or won’t remain in your life in some form. Some folks will be determined to believe what they want to believe, some folks will believe what they hear because someone they trust said it and some folks will never believe it. Some will recognize that they were wrong and come apologize, some will insist that YOU need to apologize to THEM and others will persist in believing that you did horrible things.

As I said: I can’t adjudicate the rightness or wrongness of any of this. If there are areas where you fell down or hurt folks, then you want to make your apologies and try to make things right. You may have lessons to learn about how you’ve said things or done things that may have been insensitive or ignorant.  Or you may not. And if it’s the case that this was just a drama bomb that went off and you happened to catch most of the shrapnel… well, that’s out of your hands. You can’t control what people say or think or how they feel. You can be a living saint and there will still be people who will be pissed off at you for sitting there eating crackers. That’s just life.

You focus on the only thing that you can control: yourself and the life you lead. Live a good life, one in line with your core values and your deepest truths. Do your best to live your life like Mr. Rogers (both of them) would want. It may not necessarily change what those folks think, but it’ll put your mind at ease. And sometimes that’s the best thing we can do.

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: So long story short I am a single guy approaching 30, never been in a relationship and only went out like 2 dates in my entire life. This all boils down to this major issue.

Basically my brother has been in a toxic relationship for as long as I can remember and this relationship has left scars on my self esteem. He is 35 years old, he has been with her since he was 18 years old and she was 14 years old at the time {they are married now with a daughter of 6 months). His wife is a gold digging materialistic manipulator, has never worked a job for more than a couple of months and constantly picks arguments with my parents over bulls--t issues. She always requests either myself or my parents to do favours for her and then she literally kicks our asses to the curb afterwards (and my brother does not utter a word of protest that his family members are being treated like dog s--t). My brother spent Euro 80,000 on their wedding without her paying a single f--king dime and she only found a job recently so that ”my brother will shut the f--k up about their depleted finances already”.

The issue here is that all my life I have been struggling to try and find a partner and settle down because this always keeps cropping up in my mind… I don’t want to end up like my brother. Mind you my parents constantly keep reminding me to not let this situation effect my opinions on relationships and women because there are awesome women out there who are career oriented and just want a loving partner to come home to.

And also another thing I have been getting into the habit where whenever I start thinking about relationships and women, I start to get really pissed off, angry and frustrated and that having a relationship will set me back in my life. Part of me says its all in my head and that I am overthinking this however I still fall back in the cycle of negativity and bad thoughts.

Any ideas on how to fix this please? I am going to admit, I might be wrong and the above scenario has nothing to do with me however I appreciate a second pair of eyes on this.

Thanks for your help.

Anger Issues

DEAR ANGER ISSUES: There’s a lot to unpack here, AI, but I think the first and most important thing is to recognize that your brother’s in a toxic relationship… but it’s not your relationship. Watching what your brother is going through is unquestionably painful; it’s never easy to watch someone being mistreated by a person they love and who supposedly loves them. It can make you want to tear your hair out. I mean, how in pluperfect f--kery can he not see the damage that she’s doing to him and to your family? But, unfortunately, your brother’s a grown-ass adult and he’s gonna make the choices he makes.

The unfortunate truth about toxic or abusive relationships is that you can’t pull people out of them. It absolutely sucks to feel this powerless when someone you love is being harmed. But you can’t stop people from making mistakes — or sticking with those mistakes — when they’re determined to make them. You can try speaking up and making it clear that you find her behavior unacceptable, sure. You can talk to him about how she treats him and your family. However, all of  these run the risk of pushing him further away or causing his wife to isolate him from you all further. And you don’t want that. His connection to you and his family are vital for him to have any chance of breaking away from her.

The most that you can do is make sure that he knows that you love him and you’re ready to support him if and when he’s finally ready to leave. And that means making it clear that you’re ready to support him and welcome him back without judgement. Part of why it can be so damn hard for people in toxic or abusive relationships to leave for good is the shame of having “let” it happen. Everyone has a mental image of what someone who gets abused looks like… and nobody wants to think that they could be someone who “lets” themselves get abused. And to make things worse, many times when they get away, their friends and loved ones will say “WELL GODDAMN FINALLY!” instead of “welcome back, we’re so glad you’re back with us.” That judgement, that “f--king finally“, is often the very thing that moves the needle away from leaving. The fear of the judgement and shame is greater than the pain of the relationship and so they choose what they think is the lesser pain.

Does this make sense? Of course not. But this isn’t about logic, this is about emotion, and those emotions utterly cloud your judgement. So making sure that you and your family can provide your brother a soft place to land is going to be vital for his eventual escape.

But you already knew that this wasn’t logical… after all, there’s no logical reason for this to affect your relationships. But it has.

So, as I’m always saying: Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor, and I’m certainly not a mental health specialist. However, I have had plenty of experience with jerkbrains f--king you around, and I know what you’re feeling from experience. That’s not actually anger you’re feeling… at least, anger isn’t the primary emotion you’re feeling. What you’re feeling is pain — specifically, the pain of helplessness and frustration. You’re looking at your brother and you’re aching for him, but you’re also frustrated by the fact that he’s still with her. You’re looking at all the awful ways your sister-in-law is treating him and your family and not only is he enabling this, but there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You can’t pull him away from her. You can’t make her stop being an awful human being who treats her family like garbage. But it feels like you should be able to.

This is going to sound like I’m veering wildly off-topic for a second, but I promise you, I’m going to bring tie this all together.

So, towards the end of 2020 and into 2021, my cat’s health deteriorated rapidly. It’s not entirely a surprise; he was over 20 years old at that point. But watching his world get smaller and smaller as his body started to shut down was enraging because I couldn’t stop it. It was bad enough that a dear friend of mine had died suddenly, but now it was like 2020 just had to get one more shot in. I just had to sit there and watch my best friend lose more and more of himself until he was no longer capable of enjoying being a cat. I had been his father, his brother and his god for his entire life, the person who took everything that was wrong and made it right and I was helpless. I was getting slapped across the face with the fact that I was not actually God, and the only thing I could do was keep him comfortable and safe and ease his passage into the clearing when the time came.

And I was angry. I can’t tell you how angry I was. It was full-bore “I want to get my hands on God” levels of anger, because I was powerless to do anything. And I’m not gonna lie: it was a struggle not to unleash that anger at people around me. It wasn’t until I said goodbye to him, mourned his loss and just let myself scream that I was able to accept that I did the best that I could. Unless I had the Infinity Gauntlet or was imbued with the Phoenix Force, there wasn’t anything I could do and I had to just realize that I was the best possible friend to him in the end that he could have had.

That anger you’re feeling — at women, at yourself, at everyone? That’s anger you’re feeling because you can’t do anything for your brother. And just between you, me and everyone reading this: it’s anger at your brother too, for being in this situation and contributing to the pain it causes you and your family. But there’s that part of you that knows that it’s unfair and unkind of you to be angry at him for this… so with that outlet blocked off, it seeps out elsewhere. And so a lot of it gets directed at a generalized target — the vague concept of women and relationships — and turns inward because… well, because you’re helpless and you shouldn’t be.

And yet, here we are. Recognizing the source of this anger isn’t the cure-all folks often think it will be, but it does make things easier. Understanding the why means that you can, at least, deal with it and channel it in productive directions. Anger can be fuel for a force for positive change, as long as you use it wisely instead of letting it rage out of control.

Case in point: you don’t ever want to be caught in the same situation as your brother.

Now, as cold-blooded as this will sound, your brother’s situation is a lesson to you. The best defense against a toxic relationship is to not get trapped in one in the first place… and the way you do this is to ensure that you have strong and effective boundaries. Abusers, narcissists, toxic people… they all look for folks with weak boundaries, people who won’t stand up to them or for themselves. Having strong boundaries tends to chase them away and keeps them from latching on in the first place, but they also serve to keep you from getting stuck if a relationship becomes toxic.

I mean… been there, and quite literally done that. I was stuck in a toxic relationship for years precisely because my boundaries were weak and I let folks walk clear past them. There were multiple points where, if I had stronger boundaries and actually enforced them, I would have cut the whole thing off long ago. Thanks to hindsight being 20/20, I can even point to exact moments where I could’ve shut the whole thing down. But I didn’t, and I wouldn’t for a long time afterwards.

But here’s the thing: you are actually in a position to see what this looks like from an outsider’s perspective. You’re able to see those same points in your brother’s relationship and how things could have been different. Because you’ve seen it, you are in a better position to recognize the s--t that needs to get shut down hard if it crops up in your own relationships. That awareness is the first step to making sure that you don’t make the same choices your brother did.

The second step is harder. That step requires being willing to face the consequences of having strong boundaries. Because here’s the thing: part of having strong boundaries means that you’re going to piss people off. Sometimes those people will be toxic assholes who’re hoping to take advantage of you.  Other times, they may be ordinary folks who don’t like it when you tell them “no”. People who trade on your having weak boundaries aren’t always cartoon villains rubbing their hands and cackling about how they’re going to hurt you; they’re people who just get pissy that you don’t let them do whatever they want. They may be potential lovers. They may even be friends. But telling them “no” can make them upset or angry, even cause the relationship to end. And you have to be willing to face that.

You’ll also have to learn when you’re willing to ease your boundaries and decide who gets greater access and influence and who doesn’t. Sometimes you’ll realize that maybe you’ve set your boundaries in the wrong place and you’re causing drama where none was warranted. Other times, you’ll realize that you didn’t set your boundaries high enough and now you have to push them back. It’s an intimidating and uncomfortable process and unfortunately, it’s very much a case that you can only learn how to do this by doing it.

But if you look at your brother and what he’s going through — and putting you all through, for that matter — you  can see why it’s necessary.

All of this isn’t to say that hey, just resolve not to make your brother’s mistakes and everything will be fine. I would strongly suggest talking to a counselor about that anger; even if you understand the cause and the source, you’re still feeling it and you’ll want to cultivate ways of managing it. The last thing you want is to let it fester inside you until it becomes something horrible. But I think that, if you can channel it in a way that leaves you feeling less helpless and gives you something positive you can do, you will find that it will hit you less and be much less of an obstacle in finding your own relationships.

And I can’t emphasize this enough: keep lines of communication open with your brother. You may have to enforce those boundaries against him and his wife for your own emotional protection… but make sure that he always has a way to reach out to you and knows that he can always get ahold of you. Because at some point, he’s going to need your help and knowing that you’re there for him is going to make the difference between more time lost to this toxic relationship or finally breaking free.

You’re in a s--tty situation, AI. You’re a reasonable person who’s stuck in an unreasonable situation and your feelings are a natural result of the bulls--t you’re dealing with. But you’re strong, you’ve got a caring heart and the courage to face it.

You’ll be ok. I promise.

Write back in and let us know how you and your brother are doing.

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