DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So this is a very hard issue for me. I have been divorced for 2 years from my wife. We were together for twelve and a half years and have three boys together. While I was stationed overseas, I admitted to cheating early on in our relationship. Holding that information from her drove a lot of guilt and negativity that turned me into an angry person who used alcohol a lot to try to mask my issues. Fast forward 2 years after coming clean, she decides that she can’t deal with everything that’s happened and my actions and divorces me. We tried a few times, but I couldn’t swallow my pride and accept my failures and then I would leave when angry and go and do my own thing.

Finally, I found an amazing woman and realized a lot of my failures and how I am as a person, allowed myself to be vulnerable and just had an amazing 3-4 month relationship. 

Recently I saw my ex with another man and something hit me that I wanted to rekindle our relationship and become a family again. I feel like a total piece of s--t because I have this girl who I was dating who is “in love” with me, and my ex who I never wanted to divorce but wants to try again and I do also but then there’s this innocent bystander who gave my her heart and I have this love that left me that I had almost totally given up on. 

I know it sounds like a mess which it is but I really think the best thing to do is try to give my new self to my ex who I feel deserves it but then I know this other woman I was in a relationship doesn’t deserve to be left.

Do I Stay Or Should I Go?

DEAR SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO: Long time readers of my column know that I have a series of questions for people who are trying to decide whether to get back together with their ex. These questions are:

Question #1: Why did you break up in the first place?

Question #2: Has the reason why you broke up changed?

Question #3: Why Now?

Question #4: Do you miss THEM, or do you miss what they represent?

Question #5: Are they right for you, NOW?

The point of these questions is to get people to think about what they actually want and whether the desire to get back with an ex is because they honestly think that things will be different and better, or simply because they miss the familiar and the known.

Now, if we go through the questions, we have pretty solid answers to questions #1 and #2. But as soon as we get to question #3, I think we hit a snag. You’d been doing the work, you were getting your demons under control and you’d gotten over your ex-wife and were in a relationship with a lovely young woman who was making you very happy…

…and then you saw your ex with another man.

I think that’s the real issue here. This is a tale as old as time; it’s easy to be over an ex when they’re not actually there. It’s another when you see them having not just gotten over you, but having gotten over you and under someone else. Suddenly there’s a whirlwind of emotions – not just “someone is touching my stuff!” but the weird jealousy of someone getting to experience the little things you used to think of as exclusive to you, the little things you found special or significant or exciting. Now not only are you reminded that you no longer get to have them, but you see proof that someone else does.

This can trigger all sorts of weird covetous feelings under the golden veil of nostalgia. Maybe the sudden reminder of the absence makes it feel acute and immediate. Maybe the idea that someone gets to experience similar intimacies with an ex makes you feel less special, and you want that feeling back more than you want the person. But ultimately, the specifics matter less than the fact that this is often less about your ex and more about you.

And that’s where I think the problem lies: this feels a lot less about you wanting another chance with your ex specifically, so much as this is about you. You were doing just fine and happy with your life right up until you saw her with this guy. That sounds to me like you’ve got something to prove more than feeling like this relationship could still work if the two of you gave it another try. 

Then there’s the fact that right now this is entirely one-sided. From what you’ve said, you saw her and suddenly decided you want her back. You haven’t so much as had coffee with her, never mind asked her about the possibility of another try. You don’t know if that’s even something she’d want any more. She’s a person in the world; she hasn’t been sealed in amber or put into cryogenic suspension. Yes, you say she never wanted to get divorced in the first place, but a lot can change in two years. You’ve seen it yourself in how much you’ve changed; there’s no reason to believe that she somehow has managed to remain exactly the same as she was before the divorce was finalized.

I would also point out that y’know, you saw her with someone else. While the specifics of that relationship are currently unknown, you’re setting yourself up for trying to convince her to not just give you another chance, but potentially to ditch her current relationship in exchange for you. That’s gonna be a really high bar to clear under the best of circumstances. This isn’t a Hallmark Christmas movie where the new (or current) boyfriend (played by James Marsden because apparently he’s just destined to play the dude who gets dumped) is just an obstacle to be worked around and they give up easily because who’s going to be the asshole who stands in the way of true love? This is (possibly) an ongoing, committed relationship that you may be trying to insert yourself into with no warning.

Oh and then there’s also your current girlfriend. She’s a factor in this too.

I think you should take a lot of time to really sit with your feelings and think about what you’re hoping to have happen and why before you decide to do anything. And whatever you decide, you need to decide definitively. No half-assing, no wishy-washy-ness. Which means that if you’re really going to entertain the possibility of trying to approach your ex-wife and get back together, you need to break up with your current girlfriend now. The last thing she deserves is to be treated like the back-up plan in case things don’t work out with the ex.

Yeah, she doesn’t “deserve” to be broken up with, but she does deserve to be with someone who is with her because he wants to be with her, not because he couldn’t get with who he really wanted.  

Good luck.Top of Form

Bottom of Form

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: If you’re demisexual, how fast is too fast to propose? How do you know when the New Relationship Energy has worn off?

I (38F) have had three romantic relationships in my life: one lasted two months (we’d been friends for a couple of years before that), one lasted ten years, married for five (we were friends for a year before we started dating), and my current relationship has been going for six months (we were friends for a year and a half first).

In short, I have a lot of experience *being in* relationships, but I don’t have a lot of experience *getting into* relationships. I know myself well enough to know that I need to have a deep emotional/romantic connection with someone before I’ll even begin to start feeling sexually attracted to them, that I’m the one to initiate all of the new romance/dating/sex/marriage things because potential partners don’t know how to read that (which works for me!), and that I don’t find the initial “whee, we’re f--king now!!!” part of a relationship all that pleasant – I don’t like the giant rushes of feeling, and I really feel safest (and sexiest) within stable, familiar predictability.

I also know that the five years of dating before my first marriage was not actually a good sign. I really had everything I needed to know about the guy’s character and how we worked as a couple within the first three months of dating, and certainly by the time I met his parents. The whole experience was a sort-of-good-for-each-other-sort-of-not kind of thing that predictably crashed and burned into not. The five years of dating I spent hanging around was an attempt to convince myself that there was more in the “for” column than there was, and looking for evidence to write off what was in the “against” column. LOL, don’t do that.

Enter Mr. Current Guy. Everything is…great, actually? We’re there for each other even in our most idiosyncratic ways, we communicate well, we’ve been through a couple of disasters together, due to some interesting logistics we were living together for two months and during that time running a shared household was seamless, the sex is excellent, I love his family and friends and get along splendidly with them, they treat me well, and it’s like…what am I waiting for?

From my end, what issues do exist are largely (1) boneheaded communication problems we resolve within ten minutes of discussing them, (2) he has some time blindness issues, which, once I figured out that was what was going on, became just a logistics issue, and (3) he likes anal sex and I don’t. We’ve already discussed marriage, and we’re basically on the same page that commitment and relationships are one thing, paperwork for legal rights is another, and neither one of us likes big parties.

I could run the clock longer in case something new and unexpected comes up. But, in general, it’s been burning me inside that I haven’t straight-up told this man that I love him so much, that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and it’s fine with me whatever he’s feeling on that, but I just wanted him to know. I want to tell him that! I want to get him a nice gift and take him somewhere pretty.

On the other hand, we’ve been dating for SIX MONTHS. The only people I’ve known who got engaged after a relationship that short were my grandparents, modern drunk idiots, and a friends-with-benefits couple who made an oops baby and decided to roll with it.

What gives???

Sincerely,

OMG

DEAR OMG: I like to joke that if you read enough relationship advice columns, you would be amazed to find out that anyone manages to date without ripping each other’s heads off, never mind fall in love, get married and do more than put their couple’s counselor’s children through college. This is the nature of the beast; an advice column is mostly for people who are struggling in some way. Folks rarely write in to advice columns to say “hey, I don’t have any questions, I just wanted to say that while other people are married and will spend the next 80 years locked in stone, my partner and I are having AMAZING sex.”

There’s a reason why the movie isn’t called Blackhawk UP, after all.

Well, “rarely” isn’t the same as “never”, because this is what we in the relationship advice biz call “a good problem to have”, OMG. Finding a guy who’s sweet, caring and compatible, crazy good in bed and has a loving and open family… we should all be stuck with such problems.

So what’s going on here? Well… honestly, I think you’re finally experiencing that New Relationship Energy you just mentioned you don’t usually feel. The thing about NRE is that your brain is being flooded with oxytocin and dopamine and making everything feel amazing. The way it hits can vary, but the common denominator of the experience is feeling like everything’s amazing, and your partner may not be perfect but their flaws are more like endearing quirks and you’re often wondering why you never felt like this with other partners and so on.

And while some of that is unquestionably chemical, some of it is emotional and situational. With your ex, it was never really a happy or healthy match. You weren’t trying to make the relationship work so much as make it something you could endure. Lots of people have struggled through relationships like that, where they weren’t looking for reasons to stay so much as trying to tell themselves that the reasons to leave weren’t enough and they had to continue to tough things out because something something sanctity of marriage, something something ‘til death do us part.

So here you are, with a guy who you’ve known for a bit before you ever started dating and now you’re finding that things are going great. It may even be the first time that you’ve been in a relationship where you haven’t been having to convince yourself that if you weren’t happy, it was something close enough for government work. Small wonder you’re twitterpated with the guy.

And therein lies the issue, such as it is: you’re twitterpated. You’re finally getting that honeymoon period in a relationship that doesn’t have the same sort of “it’s fine as long as I cross my eyes and don’t look too closely” vibe that your previous marriage did. That alone has to be refreshing. 

After a s--tty marriage, a guy like that is going to be like a cool washcloth on a fevered brow, a delicious feeling of everything unclenching and finally relaxing after years of every muscle and nerve being on edge.

Now please notice very carefully that I don’t say that this is a bad thing. Far from it! You should luxuriate in this feeling! Dive into it like Scrooge McDuck diving into his money bin, swim around in it, toss it in the air and let it hit you on the head! Feel the f--k out of it because hey, it feels great, and you should enjoy it for as long as you possibly can!

But that doesn’t mean you need to do anything about it. Not anything that would require lawyers and paperwork to undo, anyway. Not yet, anyway.

If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve seen my advice to guys in relationships who’ve developed crushes on other people or who suddenly found themselves painfully attracted to friends: an erection isn’t a commandment. That is: just because you feel something doesn’t mean that you need to do something about it. Just as being attracted to someone doesn’t mean that you need to try to sleep with them, realizing that you’re in love and happy doesn’t mean you need to lock this down. As you said: it’s been six months. That’s really early in the relationship. And while you’ve known this guy for a year and a half already, you haven’t known him in a relationship context. There are still sides of yourselves that you two haven’t seen yet, not fully. Even when you’ve known someone for decades, you can still be surprised by what you didn’t know about them until you’ve tried to make a life together.

But again, I want you to notice very carefully that all I’ve said is that you probably don’t want to be proposing marriage yet. I don’t think it’s advisable at this stage, but I also don’t think it’s necessary just yet either. You’re living together, you’ve dealt with some crises, you’ve been introduced to his family… I think you and he should continue as you are currently while you ride this wave of happiness and exploring the sides of you that make you good partners for each other.

So, y’know, if you’re vibrating with wanting to tell him you love him, I say, go for it. You don’t need to hold that in. I just don’t think it’s the right time to talk marriage. It’s not as though putting a ring on it is necessary to keep the good times going, nor is it a prerequisite for spending the rest of your lives together. “The rest of your lives” starts when you decide, not when you’ve bought into DeBeers’ propaganda.

Think of it as laying the groundwork and building the habits for dealing with the inevitable slings and arrows that come with sharing space and a life with another person. You’re already doing some of this – recognizing his time-blindness, dealing with his communication blunders and so on – so you’re already on a good path. Keep at it for a bit and see how things go. In another six months, maybe a bit longer, it’ll be a good time to revisit the question of marriage. Its long been my opinion that marriages work best when the couple has more time to get into the swing of being a couple in the long term. I know folks have stories about how their parents or grandparents or whomever got married after a few weeks and made it work and good for them… but those, in my experience, tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

(And occasionally the result of marrying at a time when divorce either was very hard to get or unavailable entirely. There’s a reason why so many old country songs by women involve husbands who mysteriously disappear…)  

Now if you absolutely find you can’t wait or he jumps the gun with a surprise proposal you didn’t see coming… well, I mean, go ahead and get engaged, but make it a long engagement.

But otherwise? I don’t think there’s much need to question your good fortune here. Enjoy this glorious feeling. Everyone could use some unbridled happiness, especially now.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Flirting, showing attraction to others, and all dating skills are skills, right? And like all skills, require making mistakes and learning from them in order to get better, right? So HOW is any man who is not good at these supposed to get better at them if there’s no grace given whatsoever for any misstep? 

If I’m attracted to a few women in my social circle, I get one or two, MAYBE three chances at max before I start to get a reputation, thus poisoning the well when it comes to any further attempts. Is THAT enough practice to get good at this? 

Do I really have to be a guy with an extensive amount of non-intersecting social circles before I’m even allowed to try dating? Is online dating really the only option here?

How is it even possible to get better at flirting, dating, and attraction given all these hurdles?

Stuck On The Struggle Bus

DEAR STUCK ON THE STRUGGLE BUS: When I talk about responding to the problems in your head rather than the ones that happen in life, this is precisely the sort of thing that I’m talking about.

The issue here is that you’ve created a scenario in which you have to walk a perilously thin line and setting a foot wrong in any direction is going to have dire and lasting consequences. Which would be something to be concerned about if this situation actually exists outside of your own expectations.

Here is an important question for you to answer: is this nightmare scenario happening now? Has this actually, demonstrably and unquestionably happened, either to you or that you witnessed personally, or is it something that you’ve heard of third hand? Doubly or triply so if this is based on other people’s stories from social media (particularly TikTok, Instagram or YouTube).

Was this “reputation” issue something you experienced or have personally seen the results of, or is it a situation where the actual outcome was up to interpretation? If it has happened to someone else, are you sure you have the entire story and not just a highly and selectively edited version – especially one that just happens to coincide with what you already expect?

And more to the point: have you actually done anything that might trigger these results, or is this just what you’re afraid might happen if you actually did something?

Here’s the thing: these all sound like excuses to avoid actually putting yourself out there and talking to people, not things that you’ve actually experienced. It takes very little to go from “the thing I’m afraid will happen” to “the thing that absolutely will happen” and for folks to be 100% certain of the accuracy and inevitability. They can illustrate their reasoning for everything with charts and graphs that show how obvious it is that this would be the result and why they can’t do anything about it… and still be 100% wrong. It feels logical and obvious to them, not because they’re gimlet-eyed observers of reality who can see The Matrix, but because motivated reasoning is a motherf--ker. They’re starting from the point of being afraid of an outcome and working backwards from that outcome until they’ve convinced themselves that it’s as unbreakable as the laws of physics.

It also raises other questions, such as “what, exactly, would you be doing that would get that sort of reaction out of people?” Because, questionably-sourced nightmare stories aside, it takes a lot to go from “mild flirting” to “…and this is why none of my friends will talk to me anymore”. Asking someone on a date and then taking “no, thank you” with grace isn’t going to lead to “getting a reputation” unless you’re either completely out of pocket or else dealing with people so high-strung or so off their chain that they shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision. When this has happened to people, if you dig in, you usually discover that it’s because somebody’s behavior was especially sustained and egregious, not just “said the wrong thing by accident”.

But even if we set aside the whole “you get one shot, no second chances” aspect, you seem to be working from limited definitions of “flirting” and artificial restrictions. Flirting isn’t acting like Pepe Le Pew, chasing someone down as they try to run away from you or holding them in place as they squirm while you ask them to run away with you to the Casbah, nor is it just hammering away at someone until you get a date. Flirting, at its core, is just talking with people. You’re expressing interest, but in a light and low-stakes way and ideally in a fun way.

Can you pay someone a compliment that they appreciate? Great, you can flirt. Can you joke back and forth with someone without offending them? Also flirting. Are you capable of telling someone that you think they’re really cool? Check it out: you’re flirting. It’s not even something limited to your social circle or people you already know. If you’re capable of talking to people you don’t know and making friends, you’re capable of flirting.

Similarly, you seem to miss the point about practice. Practice means doing the thing that you’re trying to get better at. That doesn’t mean that it needs to be an all-or-nothing event. If I want to get better at basketball, I don’t need to just be suiting up and playing tournament matches. If I spend several hours shooting baskets from different parts of the court, that’s practicing. Same with running drills, practicing my dribbling, passing or the other skills one needs to cultivate to play the game.

Since flirting is simply being social, you can practice flirting basically anywhere. It just requires going out and socializing.

You can smile at someone at the mall and tell them that they’ve got amazing fashion sense. You can strike up a casual conversation with the person standing behind you in line to get a latte and tell them how cool you think they are. You can banter and joke with friends or acquaintances. It doesn’t need to be serious, intense or leading to anything; people can and do frequently flirt without intent or just because flirting is fun. If you can compliment someone or banter with them or otherwise play around without an attendant desire to get into their pants, you’re fully capable of flirting without intent.

S--t, you want an example of what flirting without intent looks like, even intense flirting? Watch The Legend of Vox Machina and watch how Vax’ildan and Gilmore interact. They’re clearly flirting, but without an intent of anything happening (except on AO3), because it’s the nature of their friendship. It may have started because Vax wants a discount and Gilmore wants people to test his gear (and provide word of mouth marketing), but it’s become a game, something they both do just because it’s fun. Sure, Gilmore wouldn’t say no if Vax decided to make a move (and according to Liam O’Brian, Vax might be open to it) but the flirting is the point in and of itself.

The other issues you raise are the anxiety weasels in your brain jumping around and poking at things. These supposed missteps you’re worried about are avoidable by being able to read the room. If you can tell that maybe a joke wouldn’t go over well with a particular audience or that it may not be appropriate to make a certain type of comment to a specific person, then you’re well prepared to avoid the pitfalls you seem to think are everywhere. If you genuinely can’t tell… well, flirting shouldn’t be your focus so much as working on your social calibration.

(And if that’s the case, I wonder how you avoid getting fired from your job for offending your supervisors.)

Here’s the thing: what you’ve done here is create a series of nested obstacles and objections that primarily serve to create a permission structure to not try. You’re not any more restricted in practicing flirting than you are in going out and meeting new friends or even just fielding a pick-up game of basketball. You aren’t limited to friends you find attractive. You’re not pushing up against the limits in objective reality, you’re talking about the thing you’re afraid of. 

And look, it’s understandable. This is classic anxiety getting in the way of things. The point of anxiety is that it’s your brain trying to protect you from things that might happen in the future. But there comes a point where you can let your anxiety rage out of control and create so many convoluted and bizarre scenarios that you end up paralyzed. It just feels logical and reasonable because you’ve started from the outcome and invented all the steps that will lead there.

Instead of working from “well I have to try to get with someone I know in my social circle”, start with “I’m going to be more social” and work on being more confident in talking with people in general. The more people you can hold a conversation with, the more opportunities you have to practice your other social skills. And as you get more comfortable with that, the more prepared you’ll be to pull those skills out when they actually count.

Good luck.

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