DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been with my boyfriend for two years; both of us recently turned 20. We broke up last year for two months because he and I got to a toxic point, leading him to cheat on me during an 8 day bender with his friends. 

(He made out with his friend’s sister and continued to pursue her for a month while me and him were still hooking up) 

I was madly in love with him, and we ended up back together. 

His friends play a really big part in his life, to the extent that they basically can change his entire personality when they’re around, and I dislike all of them. My reasons for disliking them are that they all dislike me, they give him advice that ruins his life, they are horrible influences on him who just want to drop out of school and party on their parents’ money. My boyfriend doesn’t have the luxury of his parents funding his partying and other antics. 

All of his friends are linked to the girl he cheated on me with, and all of them wanted them to be together which is an awkward situation for me. Recently, one of his friends and the “other woman” called me after I extended an olive branch in order to be more comfortable around them, and on that call both of them told me lies about my boyfriend. I was heartbroken and asked them to inform him about what they had told me, but rather than do that, they told him and everyone that I was insulting him and mentioning private details of our relationship. When I clarified the story to him, they kept defending themselves and made me look worse, we kept fighting and I gave up and stopped asking him to cut off that friend (who is female). 

(He didn’t believe me, nor specifically take my side over his friends; he wanted to stay neutral and have a confrontation in front of him to decide who was lying)

I feel like his entire world revolves around his friends. As an outsider, I can see are simply hurting and using him, yet he clings to them more and more. All of the fights in our relationship are based around his friends. 

I do love him more than anything and have already told my super religious family about him as we want to get married soon, but now I don’t know what to do or if I should marry him. 

I told him not to let his friends near me and not to mention me to them, including not being included in our wedding (only keeping it to family) and that in the future I don’t want them around our kids, I don’t feel comfortable around those people and now I’m wondering if he will actually prioritize me and protect me when I’m hurting. He refuses to give me extra care in this time to reassure me, and thinks I made him go through something by trying to get him to cut off his friend and wants to maintain the advantage in our relationship, while I was the one hurting and have to continuously feel uncomfortable. 

(I struggle with mental health and the lies I was told on call led to me relapsing after one year of not self-harming, they continued to manipulate the situation and lie to basically break us up and I don’t know why) 

This specific friend lives abroad and only visits once a year; the rest are also moving out of the country for their education as they can afford it without scholarships. I don’t get why my boyfriend at this stage would be this obsessed with keeping his friends at the risk of losing me and refused to listen to me just because they said so. I expected him to have my back as we’re at the point of getting married in a few months, yet I feel like I’m being treated like nothing compared to his horrible friends. I give this man everything in terms of finances, support and to the extent of being isolated and scorned by my family for being with him, as they disapprove. 

I’m here losing my family for him including my mom, yet he’s not willing to lose one friend who only texts him when they want drugs. 

Is this simply a 20-year-old boy being stupid and immature, which is something he’ll grow up from, or is this a huge red flag that I should run or just stop giving as much and maintain the relationship, I’m lost.

One of Us Has To Go

DEAR ONE OF US HAS TO GO: Alright OUHTG, I was going to start with a discussion about your boyfriend’s behavior and his friends and why he’s acting like this. But in the span of a couple paragraphs, you went from “already told my super religious family about him as we want to get married soon,” which set off some alarm bells in my head, to “we’re at the point of getting married in a few months”, which point said alarms became full-bore air raid sirens.

As a result, I feel that I have to drop this right at the top: HOLY HOPPING SHEEP S--T DO NOT MARRY THIS MAN. Even if we leave aside that you’re both 20, which is really goddamn young, the last thing you want to do is make this relationship any harder to leave. Right now, you can walk away with minimal fuss; as soon as vows are said and rings are exchanged, lawyers get involved and the process gets infinitely more complicated.

And yes, you absolutely should leave this dude. To be perfectly frank, I don’t know why in pluperfect hell you’re with him. I don’t care if he runs an orphanage for kittens with special needs or if he can lick his eyebrows and breathe through his ears, dump this guy. Dump him so hard his grandparents divorce retroactively. There is no upside to being with this guy. You thought you were getting Captain Crunch but instead you ended up with Oops! All Red Flags! and it’s only gonna get worse before it gets better.

Here’s the thing: yes, this is absolutely 20-year-old-boy bulls--t. He’s profoundly immature and thinks his dirtbag friends are the coolest. At some point – hopefully – the crippling hangovers, constant drama-fueled relationship explosions and barely-escaped-more-serious-consequences of the lifestyle he’s leading will lose its luster, especially since he doesn’t have the money or connections that his buds have. With luck, that day will come before one of them comes up with some absurd crypto investment scheme or convinces him to sink all his money on their dead-before-it-even-began startup venture… but one way or another, the day will come. But this is not that day.  And it’s not gonna be tomorrow. And quite frankly, probably not over the next four to six years, either.

And why should he? You’ve given him no reason to change. He’s getting everything he wants: you’re still with him and he’s still out partying with his bros. He’s got the best of both worlds and couldn’t care less how this is hurting you, because there’re no downside for him. The closest he’s had to consequences has been a tepid “please stop talking to this person” that you eventually gave up on. So as far as he’s concerned, you’re just making half-hearted requests that he can just ignore when they’re inconvenient.

If you’re hoping to stick things out until he matures and wakes up, you’re going to be waiting a long, long time, and you’re going to be taking a lot more psychic damage along the way. Staying in a relationship with him means that you’re committing to more time being told, implicitly and explicitly, that you come second or third to these people, and they are going to do their damndest to make you go away. And here’s the thing: they’re going to have the advantage here. As far as they’re all concerned, you’re the funwrecker. The buzzkill. The scold who thinks “because thou are’t virtuous, there shall no more cakes and ale.” To a 20 year old bro, the party-hardy-tomorrow-never-comes lifestyle is going to be more appealing than the person telling him to knock it off already.

But more importantly: what are you getting out of this relationship? OK you love your boyfriend, but why? What needs of yours does this relationship meet and does it honestly outweigh the disrespect and despair you’re experiencing? You may love him and maybe he loves you, but he sure as s--t doesn’t respect you. The fact that he cheated on you and continued to cheat on you should let you know what he’s about. But the fact that he wants to do some weird f--king People’s Court with his friends to decide which of you is telling the truth and which of you is lying and spreading gossip? It sure as f--k seems like he’s enjoying the drama of it all, even as the tire fire that is his social circle continues to spread.

There is no upside for you here. There’s only how much s--t you’re willing to eat and pretend is steak. I’m sure you care for him, but I promise: dropping him like fifth period French will feel like you’ve shrugged off a two hundred pound weight. He’s shown you who he is, what his values are and where his priorities lie… and you’re damn near at the bottom of that list if you’re on there at all. Kick him to the curb with the rest of the compost and do it yesterday.

But just as importantly: you’re doing yourself no favors by having put up with this. It’s one thing for your (the generic “you”) partner to have friends you don’t care for or who don’t care for you. It’s another entirely to let him and them walk all over you, treat you like s--t and raise only the most meager token protest over the treatment. He needs to grow the f--k up but you need to start being a much stronger advocate for your own needs and enforcer of your boundaries. Part of the reason this situation has gone on for as long as it has and as poorly as it has, is because you’ve had weak boundaries. If you’d stood your ground and said “no, your friends treat me like s--t, they encourage the worst in you and I’m not going to put up with this,” you would be in a very different position right now. A much better one. Because he would absolutely have dumped you months ago for standing your ground on this issue and you would be better off for it.

Yes, enforcing your boundaries would’ve meant the end of this relationship but holy f--ksnacks that is the outcome you absolutely need from this. You would have had that time to get over him and find a partner who is not only more in line with your values and lifestyle, but you also wouldn’t have had to deal with the constant disrespect, the eroding of your self-esteem and being a source of ridicule from his dickhead friends. Even the pain of the breakup would be a small price to pay to not deal with this bulls--t. The point of boundaries isn’t to get your way, it’s to ward off people like your boyfriend – people who are just going to steal your most precious resource: time.

This is a relationship with no upside and it’s not going to get better. It’s time to love yourself enough to dump him now, take some time to reconnect with yourself and your center, and work on being your first and best advocate. This guy’s bad news bears and spending even a second longer dealing with his s--t is two seconds too long.

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: I know you’ve covered this topic before, and I apologize for bringing it up again. However, I have a question that I’m quite curious about. I am a man in my mid-20s who is still a virgin, and lacks dating experience. I’m not looking to ask whether a guy should tell his partner about his virginity or if women care about it (though I am somewhat curious about that). My question is this: for men who find themselves in this situation not by choice, what advice would you offer to steer them away from the pick-up artist approach? 

I understand that pick-up artistry focuses heavily on practicality with little regard for genuine connection, and it often seems like a way to satisfy one’s own needs without truly bonding with a partner. How can these men be encouraged to move away from this mindset and toward a healthier way of losing their virginity, avoiding feelings of shame in the process? Thank you in advance for your response.

Unicorn Bait

DEAR UNICORN BAIT: Here’s the thing: the issue isn’t pick-up artistry per se. Pick-up and PUAs are a symptom, not a cause. The issue is the belief that being a virgin is inherently shameful and that a person’s worth is measured by the amount of sex they have or haven’t had.

If the issue truly was about whether someone has had a sexual experience or not, then it would be easily remedied. It’s a money-soluble problem – sex workers exist after all. There’re many who offer what’s known as a “girlfriend experience” – that is, providing an experience that feels more like an organic connection instead of a purely transactional exchange of money for services – and many who are perfectly happy to provide a virgin with their first experience. And honestly, for many people, that would likely be a better and more enjoyable first time than they might have had otherwise; they would be with someone who is sensitive to their needs and desires, whose focus will be on their pleasure and can help address or alleviate any of the little anxieties, mishaps or performance problems that might arise. They wouldn’t have to worry about their endurance, not being “good” their first time out or any of the other little bites from the anxiety weasels. Compare that to, say, a fumbling hook-up with a stranger you met at a bar or a date from a dating app and you can see how even the thrill of having had sex gets subsumed by the noise from their jerkbrains.

But that’s not the issue with losing one’s virginity. The issue is that what they want is to feel like they were chosen, that women have found them “worthy” enough to have sex with. This is why hiring a sex worker is seen as “cheating” or the mark of being a loser; they haven’t been chosen, they “have” to pay to get someone in bed.

Now personally speaking, I’m agnostic about how someone “should” lose their virginity. I don’t think you need to be “in love”, nor does it need to be with “someone special”. Losing your virginity doesn’t need to be a big production or special event. My only rule for how someone should have their first time is that the experience should be worth it. So, ideally, you would want your first time having sex to be with someone who is going to be a good and caring lover, who’s attentive and patient. That may be with a paid professional, it may be with a friend or acquaintance, it may be with a relative stranger. It could be a big production, or it could be the unexpected (but welcome) end to a date. It could even be a “Here, let’s get this over with/out of the way” if everyone’s cool with it.

But this approach is uncertain. Obviously, this requires the consent and participation of another person, and that is by no means assured. The appeal of PUA is that it promises men that if you follow these rules, you’re all but guaranteed success, that you will somehow convince a woman that you’re “worthy” and thus get in her pants. And therein lies the issue: it’s almost never about building a real and genuine connection; it’s about getting what you want in the way you want it. If we accept the idea that women only have sex with someone who’s “worthy” (we don’t, but we can pretend for the sake of this letter), then PUA is about how to fake being “worthy” or convince women that you are, even (or especially) if you’re not.

But as I keep saying, over and over again: women aren’t Mjolnir. People who decide to have sex with you aren’t gauging your worth as a person. Nobody has “anyone who parts these thighs, if they be worthy, shall have the power of SCORE” tattooed on their pubic mound.

(If only because that’s a lot of words to cram into a relatively constrained space.)

This is why the real problem �– say it with me now – was toxic masculinity all along. As long as guys hold themselves to the idea that sex is a measure of their worth as a person and the corresponding belief that women are the “gatekeepers” of sex, there will be shame around the issue of virginity. There will be pressure to focus on the short term goal of “get laid as quickly as possible” rather than trying to find and connect with someone who would be a good lover, or, for that matter, developing the skills to connect with that person.

PUA is, at best, a short cut to that personal development. Obviously, I’m all in favor of teaching people how to date, how to flirt, how to meet and connect with folks and how to find the sort of sex you want – whether in a committed relationship or lots of casual connections or any point in between. But PUA is about skipping ahead to the end. The success people find tends to be despite what they’ve been taught, not because of it, and most of what they learn are tricks, not real personal growth and what success they find tends to be fleeting at best. Trust me, I speak from personal experience; I learned a lot from my days as a PUA, but I had to unlearn nearly as much and untangle the toxic bulls--t from what was actually helpful.

This is why there’s not an easy or simple fix; it’s a societal issue. Without detangling sex and sexual experience from one’s sense of worth, the sense of shame and inadequacy will be there. Teaching boys that their value is distinct from who they’ve f--ked is a key part. So too are treating social skills like skills, abilities that are taught and learned, rather than a binary that you either have or you don’t.

(And then we get into the incredibly sex-negative and queerphobic cultural issues, but that’s another rant entirely…)

In the short term, encouraging them to focus on both their sense of self-worth (independent of sexual experience) and their social skills and calibration is key. This way, when they do find someone to sleep with, the experience will be a good one for its own sake… not because of what it “means” about them.

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: I’ve never been this confused in my life.

I’m 41, divorced (amicably-ish) with two kids, and, honestly, kind of lonely. Our co-parenting arrangement gives me enough time for myself now that the kids aren’t babies anymore. My eldest has a mental disability, which keeps me on my toes, but I’m managing to provide for my family just fine. Financially, I’m stable — I support my kids and even help my ex-wife. Basically, I’m just your average guy trying to survive in this crazy world.

Then, this average guy made a mess of things.

I fell for a much younger coworker (she’s 26). We’re still working together in a very close arrangement, which makes this even messier.

Here’s the gist: we work well together — so well that we started sleeping together. Then we stopped. Then we started seeing each other again. Then stopped again. Now, we’re in this limbo where we don’t quite know how to treat each other.

For my part, I’ve been clear: my feelings for her are real. I care about her deeply. She says she cares about me too but has insinuated that I’m not the guy she’d marry. That’s probably because of my status, my age, and the fact that I’m Muslim and she’s Christian.

I can handle “no.” What confuses me is the back-and-forth. When we’re together, she’s either distant or super clingy. One time, we broke up because I made a joke she didn’t like. A week later, she called saying she missed me, and we were back together.

Right now, we’re “off” again – this time because of something else I said. I told her I’d respect her decision, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. So, I’ve been keeping my distance.

Here’s where it gets tricky: she doesn’t want me to distance myself. She wants to keep me as a close friend. But I want more. This has led to arguments because she keeps reaching out, and I keep rejecting her. That cycle finally upset her enough to declare we’d only talk as colleagues.

Except… that wasn’t true. Recently, she asked to meet up and admitted she didn’t mean it. She doesn’t want to lose me as her closest friend. I explained my feelings — again — and she seems to get it now.

The problem? It’s me. I still want to be close to her, but I know I shouldn’t. It’s been weeks since our last heart-to-heart, months since we last slept together, and I still can’t stop thinking about her. Working closely with her doesn’t help. She can be so needy, seeking me out when I’m trying to maintain boundaries. I can’t even bring myself to meet other women!

I’ve wondered if I’m white-knighting. She’s had a tough past: her father left her when she was very young, she grew up in a single-mother household, and she had a failed engagement just a year before our relationship.

Help me, Doc. Is this sociopathic behavior? Will time or space fix this? Or do I quit my 10+-year job over it?

Sincerely,

Who’s The Weird One Here?

DEAR WHO’S THE WEIRD ONE HERE: Once again, I am asking people to actually learn what terms mean before they start tossing them around casually. Sociopathy has specific meanings – someone who is indifferent to right and wrong and no regard for the feelings of others, who disregard risk and safety (for themselves as well as people around them), uses lies, manipulation and trickery to get people to obey their whims and tends to casually disregard personal responsibilities or obligations while maintaining a belief in their personal superiority to everyone else.

Now I get why some of that may feel like it applies to your co-worker / ex. But here’s an important difference: true sociopaths tend to have a difficulty holding down jobs and are frequently in varying forms of legal trouble because rules just “don’t apply” to them. They also tend to be hostile and aggressive, often lashing out angrily at others and have few qualms about reacting violently.

None of that seems to apply to your co-worker. Most of what you seem to be describing is someone who doesn’t seem to know how to communicate what she wants and seems to be really immature for her age. That whole “go away closer” schtick? That’s the sort of thing I expect to see in high-schoolers and college students more than grown-ass adults. Calling her (or her behavior) sociopathic is hyperbolic at best when most of her behavior is just really consistently annoying. Understandably so and incredibly frustrating I’m sure… but not sociopathic, nor indicative of a mental condition. It sounds to me like she needs to grow the hell up more than anything else.

But that’s a side issue. Let’s focus on you and your relationship with her. If I’m being honest, I don’t think this relationship has a future, and part of the problem is that neither of you are really covering yourselves in glory here. To be sure: she’s holding onto the lion’s share of the blame, but you’ve got some issues of your own that need to get sorted.

The first thing to consider is that while you all clearly have physical chemistry together – you can’t seem to stop falling into bed, after all – you are not remotely compatible. The problem is that good sex can sometimes hide the fact that the only thing you have is that sexual chemistry. As the bard once said: “but what happens when you’re not in bed?”

Well as we’ve seen, we get something of a train wreck, because you two aren’t suited for each other. You want very different things, you’re in different stages in life and, as I noted, she seems incapable of communicating like a grown-ass adult. It would be one thing if you were only interested in an occasional fling or if she could admit what she actually wanted, but you aren’t and she apparently can’t. So here we are.

Part of the problem is that she doesn’t know what she wants, and I suspect part of this is because there’s a conflicting narrative going on in her head. On the one hand, she seems to want you in her life and gets anxious when you threaten to distance yourself. On the other, she seems to have an emotional narrative that keeps you at a distance – starting with “you’re not the person I’d marry”. Maybe it’s because you’re Muslim, maybe it’s because you’re older than her, hell, maybe it’s because she doesn’t like it when you switch hands when using a knife and fork at dinner. The reason is ultimately irrelevant because it’s just an excuse; the real issue, I suspect, is that this goes against some vision she has for what she thinks she’s supposed to want or do.

This is something a lot of people across the gender spectrum struggle with: what they think they want (or were told to want) conflicts with how they actually feel. Until they resolve that conflict and can take ownership of their decision, one way or the other, they create these absurd and frustrating loops that they can’t seem to break out of. But – dragging this back, kicking and screaming to your situation – that’s a them problem, not a you problem. It’s not on you to resolve this issue, nor is it really something you can do for them. This is a time where you have to be willing to stand up for yourself and realize that this relationship is simply untenable. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first before you can help others with theirs, and you’ve been failing to do so.

You say it yourself: she wants to keep you as her closest friend, and you want more. Well… you’re not going to get it. She’s demonstrated this often enough. She sounds like she’s in a place where she probably shouldn’t be dating anyone, never mind someone who clearly wants a deeper level of commitment than she’s willing or able to offer or accept.

But your continuing to hold onto hope that maybe there’s a way to thread this needle isn’t helping either. Your relationship was so fragile that a poorly thought-out joke is going to end it, but said joke was not egregious enough to keep her from wanting you back a week later? Cool… then the joke wasn’t the problem. Something else was, and the joke was the excuse. But if she doesn’t know what the real issue was – or doesn’t want to tell you – then the relationship simply isn’t going to work because you’re going to inevitably hit that tripwire again and set that cycle off.

Another important issue is that she seems to have no respect for your boundaries. You’ve tried to put distance between the two of you for your own emotional self-protection. This is good and the right thing to do. However, every time you do, she throws a fit because she doesn’t want to lose you as a “friend”. Which, ok, sure, it’s good to want things. But being “just” friends with her and the level of intimacy she seems to need is hurting you.

But you’re not helping yourself here because when you get the inevitable pushback from your boundaries, you fold like cardboard. All that does is tell her that you don’t have boundaries, you have strongly worded suggestions. And to be quite frank, they don’t even seem to be that strongly worded.

It’s not exactly a puzzler as to why; you’re still holding out hope that you can pull out a win like a bad poker player hoping to draw an inside straight on the river. Well, look, I’ve been there and done that myself and I am here from the future to tell you: it ain’t going to happen. All that’s going to happen is that you’re going to end up in this cycle of “you get closer, she pulls back, you suggest a boundary, she gets clingy, you give in, she pulls back” again. You’re going to have another heart-to-heart; you’re going to think that maybe this time she gets it and the cycle will repeat all over again. Fifth verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

This is, as the saying goes, a curious game, because the only way to win is not to play. Well, you’re well past the point of needing to stop playing. The only way this cycle is going to end is that you need to stick to your guns. You aren’t going to have a relationship with her. Her “friendship” is exhausting because she’s needy and dumps all her neediness on you. Breaking this cycle is going to require that you finally let go of the idea of dating her, establish some firm boundaries and enforce them. This means not giving in to her little tantrums, nor to her begging and pleading. You have to be willing to say “I told you what sort of relationship I was willing to have with you; this isn’t it,” and to refuse to fold again.

Will this have consequences? Of course. It means she’s going to be pissed. It means that you’re going to have to accept not having her in your life in any form except as a co-worker. But that’s the thing about boundaries: they come with consequences. If there weren’t consequences, you wouldn’t need the boundary. The consequences are part of how people try to push past those boundaries. Accepting those consequences is an important part of having those boundaries in the first place: you’re reminding yourself that sometimes you have to put yourself and your own needs first, even when other people object. Strenuously.

And, again, to be blunt: this is why you can’t move on. You’re holding out hope that this is a situation that will change, and it won’t. You can’t change it, no matter how many heart-to-hearts you have. It will change only if and when she is willing to change, and there is no guarantee that day will come, nor that it will change in your favor.

You had a fling with someone who ultimately wasn’t right for you, and it didn’t work. It’s a shame, but there will be others in the future. The best thing you can do is love yourself enough to let this go and move on.

Good luck.

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