DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Recently, my relationship ended. We had been together for about six months, and while this was my first relationship, it wasn’t her first. There was no cheating or animosity between us. She was the one who initiated the conversation, and according to her, the reason we broke up was that I couldn’t provide what she needed.

Over the past month since our separation, my mind has been constantly replaying our time together. I keep thinking about what I could have done differently to prevent the breakup or save the relationship. I’m bombarded by “what if” thoughts. It’s gotten so obvious that during our last conversation, my ex asked me to promise her that I’d stop blaming myself. My family and friends have noticed too, and they’ve been telling me the same thing.

I’m hesitant to go into specifics because I don’t think they matter in this case. What I really need is some advice on how to stop blaming myself.

Thanks,

The blamefool

DEAR BLAMEFOOL: I get why you don’t want to go into specifics, BF, but… specifics do kind of help in terms of how to address the situation. It can be important, if nothing else, for avoiding future mistakes; as I’m often saying, just because you think you’re having one problem doesn’t mean that’s actually the problem you need to deal with.

Case in point: you couldn’t provide her with what she needed. OK… but what does that mean? Is what she needed something that you wouldn’t provide rather than couldn’t? Was she asking for something that was actually impossible for you – whether logistically, emotionally or experientially? Was the problem a mismatch of personalities or dating someone who was ultimately incompatible?

The fact that you were only together for six months before this happened suggests to me that there was a fundamental incompatibility at the core of things. Six months isn’t a lot of time and frankly, at that stage, you’re usually well within the honeymoon period. If things were enough that whatever was going on was overpowering the New Relationship Energy, then this was likely a relationship that was going to end no matter what anybody did. Not every relationship is built to last, nor should they, and some simply can’t last no matter how badly you may want it to. It’s like the bards said: sometimes love just ain’t enough.

But for general advice, here’s what I would suggest: let go of the what-ifs. What-ifs are fundamentally useless because they’re predicated on retroactive knowledge. If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about how you made the best decisions you could at the time, based on the information you had and the circumstances you were under. Well, there’s a follow-up to that consideration: if you’re honest with yourself, is the knowledge you have now something you could have had at the time?

Please notice very carefully that I said could have known, not should. “Should” can be a treacherous word, because it implies fault. In this case, you’re feeling at fault because you’re mourning the loss of the relationship and you’re blaming yourself… and that’s the problem. It’s easy to apply the blame for things after the fact when you feel like s—t, but that’s not always reasonable and almost never helpful. Hence the focus on whether you could have known about what lead to this break up.

So again, I ask: is this knowledge that you would have had access to, had some way to realize the lack of said knowledge, or were in a position to understand or appreciate it if you did have access to it somehow? The odds are very good that, no, no it wasn’t. And if that’s the case… well, all your “what ifs” and “should’ve’s” are just the cudgel you’re beating yourself up with.

What you need to do is focus less on “how could I have prevented this” and more on just accepting that it happened. The odds are good that you couldn’t have changed things without having to be a radically different person – someone closer to who you are now. But since you couldn’t be who you are now without having gone through this, you’re beating yourself up because you weren’t Charles Xavier or Doctor Manhattan… which is just unreasonable.

You’re stuck looking at the past, and you need to embrace your present and future. Yes, this happened. It sucks. You wish it hadn’t and it’s making you sad, but it is what it is. But what you’re feeling isn’t pain, so much as it’s premature enlightenment. It’s knowledge that you didn’t have that came in a way you weren’t ready for. But it’s here now, and in accepting it, you learn from it. You didn’t know then what you know now; now the important thing is to take what happened as an opportunity to grow so that you don’t make the same choices again and end up in the same place. You know differently now, so you’ll make different and better choices in the future. As much as this hurts and as sad as you are, this is the thing that is going to make your future relationships stronger and more fulfilling.

So take this pain, recognize it for what it is. You can’t undo the past, but you can change the future. The things you learn now will make your future better.

And the most important thing I can tell you is very simple: as much as this hurts, it won’t hurt forever. To quote the sage: it can’t rain all the time. This sucks, but this too shall pass, and you’ll be ok. I promise.

All will be well.  

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am an American and I am in a relationship with a man who lives in Far-off Foreign Country With a Very Difficult Housing Market. The original plan was going to be that I would get a job-seeker visa and move to Foreign Country to look for work and live with him while I do it, then rent my own place once I had work and an employment contract. However, things blew up between him and his landlord and now he is scrambling to find another place.

Enter the bureaucracy and resulting relationship drama. In short, the new options for housing for me are:

(1) Rent an AirBnB ($$$, not a lot of month-to-month stability)

(2) Live with his parents (who live in a tiny town in St. Bumf--k, so I wouldn’t have access to the networking/social opportunities of a larger city, and, also, his parents don’t really speak English and I don’t really speak their language, so complex communication is impossible)

(3) I try to rent an apartment in the nearest major metropolitan area to his parents, where the market is less crazy (but I would have very little time with Boyfriend, and would also have to build a new social network somehow in a place where I don’t speak the language. A very lonely existence, in other words)

(4) He negotiates an agreement with his new landlords that I can live with him indefinitely, not just the seven weeks allowable to him under Foreign Country law.

It is the last part that is the sticking point for us. I would like that he ask potential landlords up front whether this is possible and take that into consideration when he signs for a new place. He did for the first few places, but then for the most recent one, the one he was the most seriously interested in, he forgot, and when I asked if he’d call back, he wouldn’t, and said he wasn’t going to be taking this into account with apartments any more, that he’d ask after he signed a lease but not before, and the amount of preferences I was expressing from my own perspective when he asked my opinions about things was stressing him out, and he was drained from apartment hunting again after six months and also from suffering from Long COVID, and he didn’t really want me involved any more.

Anyway, Doctor, I feel like s—t. I was keeping my opinions on places to transportation difficulties for me for getting into the city (that I didn’t feel comfortable driving in Foreign Country, for instance) and ways in which the places he was considering would interact with my disabilities (whether I could live there at all and for how long), not being a precious flower about the drapes.

And while I totally understand the exhaustion and housing worries, I also have a disability! I also have housing insecurities! I have not been able live in the same place for more than six months at a time for the last three YEARS. And through all that, I am taking intensive courses in Foreign Country’s language, learning how Foreign Country’s job hunting and housing search works, dealing with rafts of visa s—t and also not in a language I know well at ALL. If he doesn’t want to put out the effort to ask THIS ONE THING, or at least TRY, I really worry how much he’d be able to help me navigate life here in small and big ways while I am still learning the ropes, and I don’t want to get here only to be left out in the cold. I have a lot of serious worries.

How much energy do I want to put into this? Help.

I Hate Apartments

DEAR I HATE APARTMENTS: IHA, I want to start off by saying that this is a rough situation and I’m sorry you’re dealing with it. Your frustration is entirely understandable, all things considered, and I’m not surprised that it’s causing you such stress.

That having been said, this is one of those times when I really wish you’d included a bit more detail about things like your own disabilities and what sort accommodations you would need. That’s information that could really help in terms of how hard it would be to meet them in a very tight housing market, especially in a country where accessibility and accommodation may be held to different standards than they would in the US.

(And considering the sorry state of ACA compliance in the US, that’s really saying something.)

It would also help give more insight into what is possible for you – not preferable, possible – if you were to decide to say “Fine, I’ll do it myself” and find your own place to live.

I would also like to know how long you and your boyfriend have been together and – crucially – whether this has always been a long-distance relationship or if this was a period where the two of you were dating in person for a while before he had to return home overseas. Both of these would also affect the advice I have for you.

But right now all we have is the information in this letter, so I’m going to have to roll with that.

Now right off the top, it does seem like your boyfriend is falling down on his side of things. This is a legally tricky situation, seeing as you’re going to be a foreign resident and needing a place that can accommodate your disabilities, and it’s going to be easier for someone who’s actually in country to do the lion’s share of the legwork. If your mutual goal is for you to live with him, even if only for a while, then yes, I’d say this is something that he should definitely be taking point on. It’s not as though you aren’t doing a lot of prep work on your side of things; getting a crash course in another country’s bureaucracy, immigration and labor laws and oh, yeah, the language all take up a metric f--kton of spoons. It’s not exactly as though you’re sitting around just vision-boarding your new exotic expat life while he’s doing all the heavy lifting.

On the other hand… I have to admit, I have some sympathy for your boyfriend. Leaving aside that moving – even when it’s just you – is a stressful and anxiety-producing experience, there’s also the fact that he may be in a situation where there just isn’t a lot of housing volume, period, and he’s stuck in a “take what you can get” sort of situation. I’ve watched a lot of friends do a similar scramble in the US, especially in some of the bigger cities. Immediately post-lockdown, the Austin housing market went bugf--k after Musk started moving Tesla here. Many friends suddenly found their leases being canceled, not-renewed or were priced out of homes they’d lived in for years, with next to no time to find anything new, and almost nothing that hit the trifecta of a) affordable b) large enough for their household and c) wasn’t a superfund disaster site. Your boyfriend may well be not be looking for a needle in a haystack so much as playing three card monte with haystacks, and someone occasionally yanks the needle out while he’s still looking for it. 

The next thing that I think needs to be kept in mind is that he has Long COVID. I understand the frustration that he forgot (or “forgot”) to ask landlords and property managers about your considerations; it feels like he doesn’t care enough to remember. But considering that some of the major symptoms of Long COVID are brain fog, chronic pain, fatigue and depression, I think there really is a need for some grace and understanding. As someone who has a condition that f--ks with cognition and memory, being told that I would’ve remembered or thought about X if I had cared enough and my “forgetting” just meant I didn’t take it seriously stings a lot. It feels unfair, like an argument that can’t be won, and that any protest to the contrary is taken as proof that you just didn’t care enough, no matter what you actually feel.

The next thing that I think needs to be taken into consideration is that what you’re looking for – a place that will let you stay longer than seven weeks – may simply not be possible. In fact, depending on the country you’re talking about and their laws around visas and immigration, what your boyfriend may be asking for may well be illegal. Overstaying a visa can have consequences, and knowingly enabling that can have consequences on others. Even a sympathetic and compassionate landlord who believes in the power of True Love may not appreciate being in the position of being asked to be accessory to a crime or finding out they’re an accessory after the fact.

So right now, I think what you both really need to do is to take a moment, take a deep breath and take a step back from this discussion. I suspect this is quickly becoming a case where this is no longer about the actual issue at hand and more about you two getting frustrated with each other. That’s making it hard for you two to hear each other without filtering what you’re hearing through that frustration. That’s a tricky place to be in, but all the more so during times of high stress. You both have limited bandwidth and almost all of it is being taken up by the stress of the impending moves – his to a new home and you to a new country. This is why I think the first move is that you need to stop fighting and give each other a second to breathe and collect your thoughts. It’s all too easy to go from “this is a f--king difficult thing to do and what we want may simply not be available in the form we need” to “and this is why you’re a selfish person who doesn’t actually listen to me”.   

One of the most important rules when it comes to solving conflicts in a relationship is to make sure that you’re actually talking about the real issue, not the distractions that come up and take center stage. So if this isn’t a case where you and he have butted heads before on similar issues, then I suspect that the frustration is getting in the way of the problem solving. So taking a moment to cool off and focus on changing the nature of the problem may be necessary if you want this relationship to survive – whether you move overseas with him or not.

And if I’m being honest, I think one of the things you’ll need to do is start talking about where you and he can afford to be flexible in terms of not just your individual requirements, but also what’s available and what your alternative recourses are. You’re dealing with two sets of needs and complications that are butting up against one another, and it may well be that this is a case where the best option is also the Least Bad one. Yeah, you may not want to live with his parents in the middle of Dog’s Ass, Nowhere, but that may be a better option than continuing to fight over finding a place that may simply not exist.

Part of the question, I think, is how immediately you are looking to move. While I completely understand not wanting to delay being with your sweetie any longer than you absolutely have to, I think part of the problem is the pressure to find the perfect answer now. Since it doesn’t seem like there’s a deadline on your side of things yet – you don’t, for example, mention that your lease in the US is about to run out – then you may want to focus on finding a job first, rather than showing up and racing the clock. Even if you don’t get a job with a company that can help with the paperwork and visa process, at least knowing you have a job lined up already means that you don’t have to worry about your visa running out. Taking that time pressure off the table would also give you more time to sort out where you can live and how.

The next thing I would suggest is that you should consider not relying on your boyfriend so much for your support or your social network when you get there. While I get that moving to an entirely new country is intimidating and scary as hell, you’re already seeing a major drawback to one person being the load-bearing wall of your social life. If things fall apart between you and your beau while you’re there, but before you’ve established your own life and social circle, you’re basically s—t out of luck. You’ll be dealing with the very circumstances you were afraid of, but now with the added difficulty of possibly having to find a place to live and knowing that not finding it means having to leave the country.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that your relationship is doomed and you need to plan accordingly. What I am saying is that having your own base of support and comfort in addition to your boyfriend makes things steadier and more secure. A life and social circle that’s separate from your life with your partner is always a good thing; it precludes your partner from needing to be All Things to you and vice versa. Having a job lined up in advance is a good start for this – if nothing else, your co-workers can serve as emotional training wheels while you’re getting used to living in a new country.

However, one thing I think you may want to do is see about making connections before you go. I’d suggest starting to do some research and networking on your own; this is one of the times when social media can be invaluable. Look for relevant groups on Facebook or subreddits for folks who live in that country, especially expats. The expat community can be a valuable resource for not just knowing what to expect but also to help navigate complications and irritations that you might not know to plan for. It also means that you would, at the very least, have connections with people who are already in country and speak your language. They may not be your future BFFs, but knowing that they’re there and you already have access to them might ease some of the anxiety that you’re feeling.

The last thing I’d suggest is that you may want to accept the language difficulties as a challenge rather than a hindrance. Think of this less as a restriction so much as immersive language learning; dealing with day to day life in a foreign language tends to be more conducive to developing fluency than Duo Lingo or Rosetta Stone tapes. While yes, it would mean awkwardness and difficulty in the beginning, you would be taking one restriction off your plate, which may open up more options to you. Staying with his parents, at the very least, would mean that you could be practicing the language skills in a place where you feel slightly more secure and have people who are more likely to be patient and helpful than if you’re flying solo in the middle of a foreign city on your own.

(And considering the nature of things, I think you might be surprised at how many people in New Foreign Country have at least a passing grasp of English. Americans can be weirdly proud of being monolingual, while the rest of the world has long learned that having at least some English eases a lot of headaches.)  

I’m not going to lie: this is a rough situation and I’m sorry you’re dealing with it. Give yourself and your boyfriend some breathing room to cool down, then get back to first principles. Figure out what things are necessary, what things are possible under the circumstances and where you can both afford to be flexible. If you find a solution that may be livable at least in the short term, even if it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient, that may work out better for you both than holding out for The Perfect Choice. Sometimes you have to go with the one that sucks the least while you wait for something better to come along.

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: My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 & a half years. Last summer he came to me and said he was poly. He wants a future with me & made all these promises that are no longer the case in the sense that he is poly & I am not. We tried bringing in another woman and it went very bad to the point it almost ended our relationship but we worked through it. He tells me he still has feelings for this woman even after all the bad that happened.

I told him I would be willing to try another partner but I would like it to be someone we meet together not someone he knew previously so we can both build a foundation with said person. But he tells me he loves me and I am his future but he is also still hung up on this other woman & it has been a year now since she was with us.

What do I do? 

Feeling Like The Third Wheel 

DEAR FEELING LIKE THE THIRD WHEEL: What do you do? You break up, FLTTW. I’m not sure why this is a question.

Look, I get it. You and your boyfriend have been together for nearly four years. That’s a lot of time that you’ve invested in this relationship. You clearly love him and you’ve done a lot to try to make this relationship work. That’s admirable, don’t get me wrong. But there’s trying to make a relationship work and then there’s trying to turn a lamb into a lion, and that’s what you’re stuck in right now.

(Please nobody bring up Ringing Bell, that’s traumatized enough people, thanks.)

If you’re monogamous and he’s polyamorous, that’s going to be a problem in and of itself. Now, there are one-sided open relationships, where one partner is functionally monogamous and the other partner isn’t. However, those are relationships that take not just a lot of trust and commitment, but also varsity communication skills, time management and a hell of a lot of emotional intelligence. And to be perfectly frank, it doesn’t seem like you all are there – your boyfriend in particular.

However, it seems like you tried for a poly triad, not just a poly relationship, where you have a third person in a relationship with the both of you. If polyamory is varsity level dating, a full triad is pretty close to an Olympic level relationship. That takes a very particular type of person, especially if the third is going to be romantically and/or sexually connected to the both of you, and it doesn’t sound like that’s you. If it is the case that he’s just looking to be the hinge and neither of you are expected to have a relationship beyond being metamours… well, that’s still complicated and his behavior makes me think that he doesn’t have the requisite emotional intelligence to make this work.

Feelings can be messy and complicated, trust me I know. But there’s being in your feels about a person – even as someone who’s poly – and then there’s going on and on about the other person to your current partner, talking about how much he still wants her even after it nearly destroyed your relationship. For all that the two of you worked through it, it seems to me like he’s still got a lot of lingering issues that he’s never addressed. Possibly because doing so would mean that he understands that it’s a binary decision here: it’s you or the one who got away, not both.

Well, to be perfectly blunt, I think the best thing you can do here is just skip straight to the end and save yourself a lot of unnecessary grief by breaking up with him. I think if you stay in this relationship, you’re going to be going through this same process again and again – possibly even with the same woman. And then when the break up inevitably comes, you will have spent who knows how much time and energy trying to turn this into something it’s not.

Some people come to non-monogamy and polyamory by being what’s sometimes called “poly under duress” – that is, they go into polyamory because that’s the only way to be with their partner. Some people soon discover that polyamory and non-monogamy works for them… and some discover that it absolutely doesn’t. It sounds to me like you’re in the latter camp. But even if you’re in the former, I think you’d be better off exploring this with someone who’s got a better head on his shoulders and doesn’t seem to be determined to charge back into that minefield like an infantryman with a death wish.

So I think you should do yourself and your boyfriend a favor and end this. He gets to go back to the woman who seems to have captured his head if not his heart and you find someone who isn’t as conflicted about who he wants while wanting things that you just can’t live with.

Good luck.  

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