DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time now and I absolutely love it ! You provide a lot of advice and a lot of food for thought, sometimes brutally honest, sometimes challenging but always on point and relevant.

I’m writing you today for an unconventional question, I think it’s a topic that has never been treated here. So here I go. I am a woman in her late 20s. Due to difficult social experiences growing up, I have been a social outcast for most of my school days and during my 2 first years of college, I never got to develop a healthy confidence and self-esteem. I am now an adult, with an education, in a long-term relationship, some hobbies, passions, goals. I also try to exercise several times a week and maintain a social life, despite being “socially challenged”. I’m also in therapy, which helps me a lot. That being said, I still encounter some resistance to change and have recurrent struggles in my professional life and in some of my interpersonal relationships.

As an anxious person, I often need a lot of reassurance and need to find “answers” to my numerous existential questions. On several occasions, I came to the conclusion that not being “conventionally attractive” might be the source of many, if not all, my struggles. I sometimes get jealous of beautiful women and imagine they probably don’t have any real nor serious issues in their life. I also tend to imagine they don’t struggle with stuff like feelings of inadequacy, rejection, difficulties socializing etc. I imagine their life to be a never ending bliss made of an amazing social life, everything being handed to them on a silver plate, no failure nor setbacks.

I also tend to compare myself to them and I often conclude I’m just not good enough and desperately falling short, even if I have stuff going on in my life.

I made some changes in my appearance, as I mentioned before I exercise frequently and I try to dress well. I even get complimented both by males and females. Despite this, it all seems that compared to a bombshell, I’m absolutely nothing.

So, how can I get past these feelings? How can I know if my appearance is really my main problem?

Anxious Mind Looking for Answers

DEAR ANXIOUS MIND LOOKING FOR ANSWERS: Alright AMLA, I could give you the usual song and dance about how this isn’t a rational conclusion because it’s coming from anxiety and anxiety is inherently irrational. It’s an attempt to protect you from things, but often in a way that feels worse than the thing you’re trying to avoid. I could tell you about how you can’t logic yourself out of a position you didn’t use logic to get into in the first place, or about how you could look at the so-called beautiful people and realize that their lives aren’t perfect and effortless either.

And yeah, we could go into talk about the Halo Effect and how that doesn’t really exist outside of labs, or how beauty privilege is a real thing but that doesn’t make people’s lives perfect, doesn’t insulate them from the bad s--t in the world and it’s certainly not something that would magically change your life.

(You think the bold and the beautiful never suffer f--ked up social lives? Look at how many feuds all the various models, YouTubers, singers and so on get into with their supposed “besties”. Gossip rags have entire verticals dedicated to who’s beefing with whom and why.)

Hell, I could even talk about how many incels who hold similar beliefs have sunk the equivalent of a new car into getting plastic surgery only to find out that it only made them angrier and more upset instead of changing their lives.

But again, I’m not sure how much it would actually help in this case because, as I said: this isn’t a position you came to through logic and careful examination. It’s a belief that ultimately comes down to how you feel about yourself and how that belief plays into your feeling that there must be a reason for this instead of, as the famed philosopher Didactyclos said, “Things just happen. What the hell.”

And since this belief comes from inside, rather than being a gimlet-eyed observer of the world and that means that the answer has to come from within, too.

So let me flip this around and ask you something: what sort of evidence would you accept and would help you change your mind? What level of proof would you require to say “ok, maybe it’s not like this at all?”

I’m not being rhetorical here. I want you to actually sit there and think about the answer to this for a moment. Not just the answer you think other people (myself included) want to hear, but what would actually change your mind and make you say “I think I’m wrong about this?”

Now, after you’ve thought about it for a second, I want you to imagine a friend of yours who’s in a similar situation as you: long-term relationship, an education and a job, a social life, hobbies and so on, but who also has struggles in her career and in her personal life. I want you to imagine that this person has come to you with the same complaints and same questions: is it because she’s not “good” enough? Isn’t it true that other people who are “better” just wouldn’t be having these problems?

What would you say to her in that moment? What sort of things would you point to that would reassure her that everyone struggles, that everyone has setbacks and nobody has a life so perfectly smooth and frictionless that they never actually deal with hardship or trouble?

The odds are good that you could point to a number of things that would prove or reinforce that point. I’m sure you’d have a number of examples that popped right off the top of your head as you read this.

Now compare the answers you would require for yourself over the answers you would give to a friend. How much more stringent or exacting level of proof would you need before you could allow yourself to believe different things as compared to what you would tell your friend. And while you’re asking that… why would you need a higher level of proof than you think other people would?

I mean, the obvious answer is because your anxiety is about you and perception is based around our expectations and feelings more than it is about objective reality and because we have a 24/7 feed of our own anxieties and thoughts going through our heads that make it feel like these only things that matter and how those feelings about ourselves bleed into all areas about our own lives. But it doesn’t feel that way in our heads. It’s gotta be more serious for us, right? Sure, other people have problems that look very similar – even almost the same – as us but ours have to be worse… right?

Well, sometimes the answer is you have to look at things as though you were looking at it from an outsider’s perspective, to separate yourself from your own thoughts and circumstances to get a better view. A view that isn’t immediately colored and filtered through the way that we feel. A view that isn’t based around how we know our own features so well that we immediately zoom in on what we perceive as our flaws and assume that because we are hyperaware of them that everyone must be.

Sometimes you need to get a little distance from yourself in order to actually know yourself. And sometimes we need to look at ourselves through the eyes of a stranger to shift what we think and what we see. And that gives us the first step in realizing how much of this is our brains f--king with us because of how we feel, rather than showing us what’s real.

Now, it certainly doesn’t help that social media encourages these sorts of thoughts because everyone is doing a kayfabe. The people you see on TikTok and Instagram who go on about their “perfect” lives are showing a carefully curated – and occasionally completely fake sliver of their existence. Not the whole thing. I mean, look at someone like Caroline Calloway who has been trying to live the life of the “beautiful people” you talk about and is pretty much just a hot mess of failed grifts, crippling debt and occasional outright delusion. Or some of the so-called “dating coaches” or “masculinity influencers” who were busted for hiring escorts to hang around them for photo and video shoots to ‘prove’ they were living the life they were selling to other people. Or even folks like Sydney Sweeney who – while being legitimately talented and conventionally gorgeous – also has to keep busier than a one-legged woman in an ass-kicking contest because turns out being a talented and beautiful actress doesn’t actually pay the bills and she’s a couple failed projects away from being in deep financial s--t… like pretty much the rest of us.  

So what I would suggest for you is a four-pronged approach to changing things. The first is, as I said: do your best to step outside of yourself and try to look at your situation the way you would look at your best friend if she came to you with the same issue. To separate yourself as best you can from your feelings and look at things from a different perspective.

The second would be to cut way the f--k back on the things that reinforce these feelings. Just as I tell the dudes with red-pill bulls--t burning through their self-esteem, quit going to the places that directly and indirectly reaffirm these feelings of inadequacy. Stop consuming content that “proves” to you that the “beautiful people” live frictionless lives. After all, if you’re eating food that burns a hole in your esophagus and makes you feel like you’re going to throw up for hours after you eat it, the best thing you can do is stop f--king eating it.

And the third thing would be to actively doubt your doubts. To challenge those thoughts when you feel them come on. But you want to do it the right way. You don’t to try to attack them logically; as I said, this isn’t about logic. You don’t want to try to pretend that you’re not feeling what you’re feeling; those feelings are real. You want to ask yourself a simple question: “what if I’m wrong about this?” That’s it. Plant the seed of doubt in your own mind: “what if I’m wrong about this and this feeling is based on incorrect information? What if I am completely incorrect here and things are different than they appear?” You just want that little hint of skepticism, that little irritant that scratches away at the back of your mind when you have these feelings, because that little irritant scratching away starts to undermine the entire structure of that belief.

And the fourth thing is perhaps the hardest. You should live as though you already believe that you’re actually as attractive as you wish you were. You want to conduct yourself as though you’ve achieved what you hope to achieve, regardless of the supposed reality on the ground. Does it feel fake? Well, fine. Do it anyway. Tell yourself it’s practice for when you get there. Or tell yourself that you’re a trickster goddess, pulling a fraud on the universe and upending the order of things because the order of things is bulls--t. When you feel fake or like you’re deluding yourself, push through and keep acting like it anyway, telling yourself that you’re going to get there anyway so you may as well get used to it now.

Because as it turns out, we’re actually very bad at lying. If we do something for long enough, behave as though it were true for long enough… well, it tends to be true to us. The saying “we become what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be” is true. But while Vonnegut wrote that as a warning, it also works as advice. If confirmation bias means that you’re going to see evidence all around you that proves what you believe, you may as well believe things that benefit you.

Does this seem like weird woo-woo bulls--t? That it’s completely illogical and irrational? Well, yes. But it’s also as illogical and irrational as how you’re already feeling, so what’s wrong with being illogical and irrational in ways that help, ways that make you feel better?

Sometimes it’s through telling ourselves the correct lies that we actually come to the truth. Or at the very least, pull away from the lies that hurt us and allow us to confront reality, instead of a twisted, funhouse mirror version.

So get that distance from yourself,  challenge those anxieties. Make the anxieties prove themselves instead of accepting them blindly and feeding them the slop that makes them grow. And then turn the power of your own mind to benefitting you instead. Even if it’s not “real” – or less real than what you already believe – it’ll still make you happier and make your life better.

And that matters a hell of a lot.   

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 my girlfriend struggles with jealousy and her ex bf cheating on her. I was dumb and got nudes from other women while we were dating. I explained it to her it was my fault and it had to do with my own insecurities. I worked on it with my therapist, knowing I seek acknowledgment with others.

Now it’s been 4 months of something. I’ve been good, no more incidents. But the problem is when we argue, every time she threatens that we should break up or that she had enough and starts to pack up. I struggle with abandonment issues, so I usually beg her to stay. After a while she stays and we move on.

Recently we had an argument when we we’re playing a game, I wasn’t paying full attention and didn’t listen to the question that was asked, which was “who is the prettiest girl in the room?” I just pointed to the person who was being most pointed too, and we ended up in an argument. I tried giving her space, last night she said we could live out our contract on the apartment as friends. She blamed me said I was hitting on those girls, I did not. For the most part I tried to talk with the boys to avoid conflict, but I get she lacks trust in me. At the moment, I’ve been sleeping on the couch. She removed the pics of us on Instagram (as she usually does). The difference is that I haven’t begged her to stay and groveled. I was unlucky and lashed out that she needs help with her jealousy. Please remember every time we argued this has been the case were we “break up”. Sorry for my English, not my native language.

Living Room Refugee

DEAR LIVING ROOM REFUGEE: Break up with her, LRR. Do it and don’t look back.  

Look, I’ll be honest here: what you did was dumb and bad. I don’t think it’s quite the sin that she made it out to be – and God knows people disagree with me about this – but it was something you shouldn’t have done. I get that you’ve got issues regarding seeking validation, but this was a conscious decision. It wasn’t exactly as though you were helpless to stop your hands from typing out the words or that you woke up one morning and discovered that you had a Jekyll/Hyde situation on your hands and your alter ego had done things without your knowledge. You’re the one who pulled that trigger, apparently multiple times. So to a certain extent, your girlfriend has the right to be angry with you about this.

But please notice very carefully that I said “to a certain extent”. There’s an appropriate level of anger and then there’s this s--t. Especially since this seems to be part of a pattern for her and your relationship.

(I have questions and quibbles about the game you were playing that triggered the most recent issue because Jesus tapdancing Frog, that sounds like it was almost designed in a lab to spur fights between couples.)

This isn’t just her still being angry at you for violating a monogamous commitment, this is her holding your relationship hostage and using it as a weapon every time you have a disagreement. That’s the sort of thing that veers dangerously close into toxic behavior; she’s basically threatening to shoot the hostage every time she gets upset at you. That sort of all-or-nothing behavior is a form of control – give her what she wants or else – and it all but insures that nothing is ever resolved. You can’t have a meaningful discussion about problems in the relationships when one person’s response is to immediately start packing things up and threatening to leave. All this does is set things up so that either you give in unconditionally to whatever she wants or else the relationship is over. It’s impossible to have any sort of real resolution to issues – large or small – when everything is a relationship extinction level event. Nor is it fair to continually hold the sins of the past over someone’s head when you’ve supposedly resolved things. Either you’ve forgiven and moved on or you haven’t, and pretending the former when it’s really the latter is cruel at best. So now you’re stuck walking on eggshells and feeling obligated to give into her every demand, lest she throws a fit and walks out on you forever.

Especially if she knows that you’ve got abandonment issues. That’s just cruelty on top for no reason other than keeping you in line.

She’s weaponizing her “trust issues” and using them against you and to control you. I can understand what she’s doing and why; this is a form of emotional self-protection. She’s trying to ensure that she doesn’t get her heart broken again by making sure that it doesn’t happen again. She wants to ensure that she’s never in the position of being hurt like that and that others don’t have the opportunity to do it to her.

But there’s a world of difference between understanding what she’s doing and condoning it. Similarly, there’s a difference between asking for occasional reassurance when the anxiety weasels in one’s brain are fired up and this s--t – especially when she’s also using your anxieties to fuel things.

While I have sympathy to being afraid of being hurt or rejected, that doesn’t give her the right to be a relationship terrorist or to demand that you manage her feelings and maintain her emotional state for her. It’s ultimately her responsibility to handle her insecurities and anxieties, not to offload them on you or to wield them like a club in order to enforce compliance.

I’m also entirely sympathetic to your having abandonment issues. But, my guy, you are begging someone to stay when you should be offering to pack her begs for her and call her an Uber. She has created a situation where you can never feel secure in this relationship. You are being put in a state of hypervigilance, where you have to be on constant alert for any changes in her mood, making any sort of moves she might see as an infraction and basically smiling at her as her “trust issues” shrinks borders of the world you’re permitted to live in into a smaller and smaller box. She’s giving you constant s--t and if you don’t eat it and pretend like it’s steak, she throws another fit at you.

Well, it sounds to me like you need to go ahead and let the break up happen. Stop begging, stop acceding to her demands and just shoot the hostage yourself. Let her walk out the door and slam it behind her because, honestly? This is intolerable and it’s not going to change.

I get that you don’t want her to leave. I get that the idea of breaking up is painful and triggers a panic response. But let me ask you something: do you ever have a moment where you are able to relax and let your guard down? Do you have even a minute in your day when she’s not demanding that you reassure her that you’re not committing sins against her, when you feel like you aren’t having to gauge her mood and current anxiety and adjust your behavior accordingly?

Let’s game it out: how long are you able to live like this if you knew that this was never going to change? Five years? A year? Four more months? A week? Because I promise you: it’s not going to change. Certainly not when you fold like paper every time. And even though you haven’t folded and begged this time, this has gone on for far too long. She’s shown no signs of actually making any changes and the toll its taken is just too much.

I’ve said many times that you don’t have to be in perfect mental or emotional condition in order to date, you just have to be in good working order. Well, she’s not, and honestly I’m not sure you are at the moment. But as it is, she’s dragging you down with her. The fact that you say she doesn’t trust you – and God knows she’s proven it with her actions – is the sign that this relationship is already over. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve broken her trust or she’s incapable of trusting. If she doesn’t trust you, regardless of the reason, the relationship simply can’t work. And if she can’t or won’t allow you to actually re-earn trust after you broke it? Then allowing you to believe that you can or have when you can’t or haven’t is just cruel.

You didn’t cover yourself in glory with the whole “getting nudes” issue, but her behavior is worse and ongoing. This isn’t healthy and it’s hurting both of you. You can’t force her to get the help she desperately needs, but you can stop letting her continue to inflict this harm on you. We’re past compromises, past couple’s counseling and past “peaceful coexistence until the lease runs out”. This relationship is already dead; it just doesn’t seem like anyone is ready to acknowledge it while it shuffles around like a zombie. It’s time to take it out back, put two in its dome and bury it in the yard. Let her move out; if you can’t, break the lease and call any penalty the price of getting free of this because it’s not going to get better. It’s only going to get worse.

Break up with her and book more sessions with your therapist to work on these abandonment issues and to get reassurance that yes, this was intolerable. Maybe your refusing to dance this dance any further will be the slap to the face that’ll make her realize that she needs help.

But the important part is that she won’t be your problem any longer.

Will it hurt to tell her to get out? Absolutely. But that’s going to be the pain of debriding an injury and cleaning out the infection, the pain that precedes a festering wound finally being allowed to heal. The pain of ending things with her will fade, sooner than you realize, and I think you’ll realize that you’ll be able to breathe freely and easily for the first time in a long, long time.  

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: Me and my husband have been together 17 years. The past 2 months, he swears up and down that I have another boyfriend with a secret phone and ear phones. I know for a fact that I’m not seeing anyone else or have any secret devices. He has gone as far as sitting up cameras to watch me sleep. He says I talk to the other man in early hours of the morning. He has searched for these devices many times and they can never be found. He says that the videos are proof but when I look at the videos I don’t see what he sees. I talk in my sleep every night. He even talks in his sleep.

This has gotten to the point where he wants me to admit to it and break it off with the mystery man or he’s leaving me. I can’t even produce the mystery devices let alone break up with someone that doesn’t exist. I have apologized and beg that he believe me. But he says the video is concrete evidence that I am having an affair. I am at my wit ends with this.

Un-Secret Squirrel

DEAR UN-SECRET SQUIRREL: Hoo boy.

USS, I need to be 100% clear here: Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor of any stripe or form. I am a loudmouth with an advice column, not anything that could be considered to be a mental health professional and literally nothing I say should be taken that way. Because, I’m going to be real with you: this is the sort of thing that is far above my pay grade.

I have some questions, and I suspect having some answers will make it a lot easier when you do talk to a medical professional. Does your husband have a history of mental disorders, like bipolar disorder or depression? Has he started new medication recently or possibly stopped taking one? Has he had an accident or a sudden health emergency, like a stroke? Or maybe there’s been a traumatic incident recently – the loss of a family member, being fired from his job or a sudden change in your finances?

I ask because a sudden change like this – where he seems to have had a switch flipped in his brain – is worrying as hell. I think you need to get your husband to a psychiatrist or other mental health professional right away because it sounds like he’s had a psychotic break. What you’re describing – the paranoia, the seeming hallucinations, the conviction that you have secret communication devices, all of it – sounds to me like someone dealing with schizophrenia and this is very much the sort of thing you should be talking to a real doctor about, and preferably in person if you can.

The hard part is likely to be getting him to agree to see a doctor and be diagnosed. Part of the problem is that you aren’t going to get him to recognize that all of this isn’t real or that it’s irrational. It’s easier to work with his feelings and world-view to get him to listen and hopefully motivate him to get help. It’s a little like Judo in that way; you’re using his own momentum in order to help move him in the direction you want – getting help. Being empathetic and trying to address the things that he’s feeling or issue’s he’s having makes it easier to help make your goals (getting help) align. That may mean, for example, agreeing to go to couple’s therapy or something similar in order to get him to go.

What this isn’t is something that’s going to get better on its own, nor is it something you can reasonably manage on your own. Even playing into his delusion – “breaking up” with this mystery suitor – isn’t likely to make things better. This isn’t mere jealousy or feeling insecure about a perfectly innocent relationship you have with someone else. This is someone whose connection with reality seems to have broken and now he is seeing threats where none exist. You aren’t going to be able to argue or make rational connections because this isn’t coming from a rational place. Empathy is going to work a lot better – not agreeing and playing along, per se, but understanding how he feels and acknowledging that while the beliefs aren’t real, the emotions they’re inspiring absolutely are.

And quite honestly, they’re likely hellish for him. I know that right now it feels absurd and insulting and frustrating to be on the receiving end of his behavior. But he’s not doing this for s--ts and giggles. He’s not getting his jollies out of this. If you can accept that he absolutely believes this is all 100% real, then imagine how it must feel to him right now. The idea that you’re cheating on him and betraying him in these subtle, secret ways that he knows are there but can’t find or prove exist must burn like acid in his soul. The combination of certainty and being unable to prove it along with believing that you’re cheating? That sounds like the worst form of torture, like a nightmare you can never wake up from.

So I have a lot of empathy for the both of you right now. This is an awful situation for the both of you to be in. 

I know words like “psychotic break” and “schizophrenia” sound scary and God knows there’s a lot of ableist bulls--t myths around mental illness that make people with mental issues like this sound dangerous. The truth is that people who have mental issues like this are more in danger from other people than are likely to be a danger to others.

That’s why I would not suggest calling the police or emergency services unless he’s in immediate danger of hurting himself or someone else and you live in an area that has first responders for mental health crises. That’s far more likely to end with your husband getting hurt than anything else.

Incidentally, I’d also recommend that you talk to someone too while you’re dealing with this. This sort of situation is hard on everyone and caretaker burnout is very much a thing. Talking to a counselor – possibly even doing couple’s therapy when he’s more recovered can be helpful. Even when you know that none of this is ‘real’, it’s still painful to have your beloved husband accuse you of lying and cheating and it can put a strain on the relationship. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, even while you’re helping to make sure your husband is being taken care of, too.

This is a difficult and scary place to be, and I’m sorry you’re dealing with it. Talk to a doctor and work towards getting your husband to agree to get help. Then write back and let us know how things are going.

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