Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: When I (17 F, 16) started dating my boyfriend (17 M, call him Ben), I was reluctant to get into a relationship, but willing to try it out after talking to my mom about it. I knew that Ben had a past with his ex (16 F, 15 while they were dating. Call her Jane). He was very upfront and honest that things happened between them that shouldn’t have happened. It made me a little uneasy, and I made my boundaries clear – I do not want to have sex (no shame on people who do practice this) for a few reasons. 

1. My religion. People in my church have a rule against unchaste behavior until after marriage, and I am a big stickler for this.

2. I’m a high achieving student and I don’t want my high school education, college, and career dreams to be destroyed by an accidental pregnancy. 

3. I think it’s gross. Again, no shame to people who do it- none at all. I just think it’s nasty.

Ben is in the same religion as me, but he has lower morals because of the people he associates with. Because he has sketchy friends, he ended up looking at explicit images and getting some… ideas. He ended up getting into trouble with Jane, which wasn’t hard because she had lower morals as well.

But at the start of our relationship, he respected my boundaries. He didn’t crack dirty jokes around me or touch me in a way I didn’t want to be touched. He said he regretted everything that happened with Jane, and he didn’t want it to happen again. And for the first couple months of our relationship, he really acted like it. But after around two months and a few weeks of us being together, he started making inappropriate jokes and suggesting things for us to do that I wasn’t comfortable with. 

Just before our three-month anniversary, I broke up with him because he called my standards “boring and annoying;” I didn’t want to think about explicit activities, and I think he was embarrassed because he admitted he thinks about things like that all the time. After I broke up with him, we stayed on friendly terms, and he claimed that he was “just joking” when he called my boundaries boring, but I have a faint suspicion that he’s making bad excuses for his behavior. He blamed all the inappropriate jokes on a relapse. Eventually, I got back with him with a no contact rule, and this time it took even less for him to revert to his prior bad behavior. When I called him out on it and we went completely no contact, he blamed it on another relapse, saying “I was doing so good and then I slipped up again,” when he made bad jokes repeatedly, and if for no other reason he should be behaving well so that he doesn’t encroach on my standards. 

We have been no contact for a few weeks now, and thinking it over, I’m recognizing the distinct patterns of manipulation. I know he doesn’t respect my boundaries, and I’ve tried talking to him about my standards multiple times, and every time it helps for a little bit and then he goes right back. He gets upset when I don’t tell him that something he’s doing bugs me, but then he does it again as soon as he feels like it’s safe to do it again. 

My question is: Is it possible to work with him, or is this relationship a lost cause? And if I can make this work, how?

Balls and Strikes

DEAR BALLS AND STRIKES: Oh God, you all are so very young… �OK,

I’m going to cut to the chase: break up with him, B&S. This is a relationship that isn’t going to work, period, the end.  For one thing, you want very different things from a relationship, and those things are diametrically opposed to one another. There’s no real compromise to be had without one of you having to “lose”, for lack of a better term, and no real upside for whichever of you might decide to give in. The fact that you went through this twice should tell you that this isn’t going anywhere. It’s been two strikes already; you don’t really need a third to see that this isn’t going to work. Don’t try to make it work, don’t get back together with him, don’t listen when he promises that this time it’ll be different. He can go looking for someone who also finds physical intimacy to be a priority and you can go looking for someone who also wants to wait until marriage.  

For another: hoo boy, your ex was being an absolute d--k about the issue, and that’s a problem in and of itself. 

Now I’m tempted to leave it there, but there’re a few things I think that should be mentioned, if only to benefit you in your future relationships.

First and foremost: you don’t need to justify why you don’t want to have sex. Not to me, not to others. If you don’t want to have sex before marriage, that’s all that needs to be said. Don’t want to have sex, period? Same story. Explaining your reasons is helpful for other people’s understanding and helping to decide whether you’re on the same page or not, but you don’t need to list them in order to justify your decision. This is why we say “No” is a complete sentence; once you start explaining why to someone who doesn’t want to hear “no”, all that’s happening is that they see it as the opening bid in a negotiation, not the end of the discussion. You’ve got your reasons and your reasons are yours. They’re not up for debate. People can have their opinions about those reasons, but they don’t get a vote. If someone’s not going to respect or listen when you say “no, I don’t want to”, the reasons aren’t going to change their mind.

Will it limit your dating options? Will folks decide they don’t want to date you because of this? Yes, absolutely. But that’s the trade-off of boundaries; people will self-select out of your dating pool. It’s up to you to decide if that’s an exchange that you’re happy with. If it is, then great! Everything is working as intended. Will people think your boundaries are bad or poorly decided or whatever? Sure… but that’s a them problem, not a you problem. You don’t have to listen to their arguments, because as I said: it’s your call and yours alone.  

Second: this really isn’t a question of “morals” or “getting ideas”, nor was it about his friends’ influence. Honestly, blaming them for it is part of why you did this dance with him over and over again. You ascribed a lot of his behavior and choices to the influence other people, rather than it just being about him, and that made it easier for you to believe that maybe this time would be different. But this was really about what Ben wanted and Ben’s decisions, not about his friends being “bad influences”.

I can guarantee you: he would’ve been looking at porn and wanting to have sex, regardless of his friend group, because he’s a horny teenager. Did his friends spur things on or rib him about his chaste relationship with you? It’s certainly possible, because teenagers can be dicks like that. But it wasn’t as though they caused him to think about sex or want to have sex.

Ben’s 17 years old and dead bang in the middle of one of the most tumultuous times in everyone’s development. Like every 17-year-old across the gender spectrum, is dealing with a tsunami of hormones, physical changes and psychological confusion as he starts to try to establish his own identity. He – and honestly, most people his age – are going to be thinking about sex or interested in sex because that’s a part of human biology at that age. It’s not a question of “avoiding temptation” or getting horny because he has “low morals”; he could be living a monastic existence and still be having fantasies and wanting to get off. A stiff breeze would be enough to get him thinking about sex because that’s just life as a teenager.  

But his desire for sex isn’t really the issue here. His wanting sex is inherently neutral, just as your not wanting it is inherently neutral. The issue is his lack of respect for your boundaries and his unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions or his desires.

It would be one thing if he were willing to wait and was taking care of his needs in the interim (that is: masturbating) to make it easier to not pester you about sex or sexual contact. But he wasn’t. Now to be charitable: maybe he meant it in the moment. The first time, anyway. It’s entirely possible that, intellectually, he thought he could be abstinent with you and wait until marriage. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

But even if that were the case, it’s actions, not intent that make the difference here, and his actions are the problem. He wasn’t “making jokes”, he was making comments because he was upset and frustrated that he wasn’t getting what he wanted. He told you they were jokes because he saw that it made you upset and he was trying to get you to stop being mad at him. He didn’t “have a relapse” either. He wasn’t acting like this because he failed a wisdom saving throw and couldn’t help himself. He was acting like this because he was horny and wants to have some form of sexual release. Blaming it on these fictional “relapses” was him trying to invent a “get out of consequences free” card and tossing it on the table. It was him telling you what he thought you wanted to hear so that you would keep dating him and he’d have more opportunities to try to change your mind.

And therein lies the issue. Not his libido but his unwillingness to own this and to recognize that he could either have a relationship with you, or have one with a physical component, not both.

It’s not exactly a surprise; 17-year-olds aren’t exactly the best at taking responsibility, nor thinking clearly about sex and relationships. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that the way he was behaving was not cool. He was throwing temper tantrums over not getting his way and being disingenuous when called out on it.

It would be different if, for example, he had just ended things, rather than tried to get you to change your mind or nag you about your “boring standards”. If he decided that sex or some form of physical intimacy was a priority for him and had ended the relationship over that, that would be fine. It would’ve hurt for the relationship to end, and the fact that it was over sex would’ve added an extra layer to it, but it would still ultimately be ending because he was respecting your wishes, and the two of you simply weren’t compatible in the ways you needed to be to make a relationship work. But he didn’t.

Instead, he was acting like an asshole about it, and that’s not cool. And the fact that he continued to act like that after you took him back told you all that you needed to know: this wasn’t going to work, he was being an asshole about it, and you were right to dump him both times.

Wanting sex when you didn’t doesn’t make him a bad guy. The two of you being incompatible doesn’t make him a bad guy, and the relationship not working because of it likewise doesn’t make him a bad guy. Poking and prodding and pushing when you said that you weren’t down with premarital sexual activity is what makes him an asshole.

This is a valuable lesson for you going forward: if someone’s showing that they’re not right for you, then that’s all the reason you need to end it. If they’re not going to respect your boundary, especially around issues like sex, then you don’t want to date them. Treat them like finding out the car you bought was a lemon and return it to the lot where you bought it post-haste and find someone who is compatible with you.

As for Ben… well, with luck, this will be a learning experience and it’ll help spur some maturity and growth, and he’ll look back and think “I was such a d--khead back then”. But that’s not a concern for you, going forward. Leave him in the past where he belongs and go find someone who’s right for you.

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 had an on again, off again marriage with an emotionally abusive and alcoholic man for 20 years. I divorced him 4 years ago, took him back a year later, he cheated last year and I was officially done. Never felt better or free-er than I ever have.

Reconnected with a high school friend who had a very similar back story.

We became very close friends. Talked all day every day for 2 months. He escalated it to more than friends and we dated for 3 months. He broke it off saying he wanted to go back to being friends because he doesn’t date people right out of relationships. He was really upset about ending it. During dating, we got very close. He opened up to me about so much. He was thoughtful and sweet. During the breakup talk, he said he found me attractive, enjoyed the sex, had the best fun he’s ever had with anyone, but it wasn’t me, it was him. He was always caring towards me. 

I told him I didn’t want to lose him and if that meant I only got to be his friend, I would take it but that I needed time. Do you think he just got cold feet? Or was I really just not enough for him and I should just give up hope already? 

It’s been a week and haven’t really heard from him.

How Long Is Too Long?

DEAR HOW LONG IS TOO LONG: I wish you had given me more information about how long it’d been since both of you had been seeing someone; it’s the sort of detail that would help give a better idea where this dude’s head is at. You mention that you dropped your ex last year, so I’m going to guess that it was somewhere between three to six months which, honestly, is not an unreasonable amount of time between ending things and dating someone else.

I’m also assuming that “I don’t date people right out of relationships” means that he doesn’t want to date other people who have only recently left a relationship, rather than “I don’t date people when Ihave recently left a relationship”; the phrasing’s a bit ambiguous and I could see a case being made in both directions.

However, I’m not sure the details matter that much because, at the end of the day, this is ultimately about him deciding that he doesn’t want to be in this relationship. To a certain extent, the reasoning isn’t important or helpful, simply because there’s not much you can do about it.

If he’s being sincere with his “it’s not you, it’s me” and is genuinely sorry that this is ending, then whatever rattled him was likely not something you could control or account for. It’s certainly possible to have tripped over a particular emotional landmine without ever knowing it was there. It could also be that he is worried that he would be a rebound for you (or that you’re one for him), that he worries that you’re not entirely over your ex yet or that you’re not in a space where you’d be ready or able to commit to a serious relationship, or vice versa. And in any of those cases… well, how do you “prove” to someone that they’re wrong, especially if they’re reacting to something that may be illogical or not even real?

If he’s not being sincere and is trying to be kind while he ends things… well, you probably don’t actually want to know. This is one of those times where the answer almost certainly wouldn’t make you happier or bring you peace; it would just end up being something that made you feel worse about yourself for no good reason. And if it was a case of something like “I rushed into this and I realized that I was rounding up attraction to romance” or “This relationship is more than I wanted from what we have”, then not only is there literally nothing you could have done, but it’ll just feel like a personal judgement on you, as though you had some control over how much or how strongly he felt.

And it’s always possible that he doesn’t know why. Not that he broke things off because he suddenly got a wild hair, but that the reason he gave is not the actual reason; it’s just the one that makes the most sense to him in that moment. A lot of times, we often don’t know the true reason why we chose to end a relationship until much later, when we’ve had more time and distance to get perspective on the matter. So while he wasn’t lying to you or misleading you, he wasn’t correct about it either.

But this is why I tell people that closure is something you have to give yourself; more often than not, the answers will either not bring you catharsis or satisfaction and often will only make you feel worse for no good reason. Better to decide for yourself what you will take away from this and move forward.

Now as to the second question: first of all, a week isn’t that long, especially when he’s made a sudden decision to end things and is off dealing with his own feels. It’s likely going to take time before he is ready to know what his next steps are. If you’re going to need time, then you have to accept that he is going to need time too.

However, I think you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and heartbreak if you’re expecting to go back to being friends right away. I know the urge is there to say “ok, we were friends before, we can be friends again”, but under the circumstances, this is far more likely to be part of you hoping to hold on until he realizes he’s made a mistake and wants to take you back. And that’s not a good place to be, for either of you.

I know you weren’t dating very long, but it takes time to get over a relationship, especially if the feelings were intense. Trying to force yourselves to be friends in the immediate aftermath tends to be more aspirational than practical; neither of you have had the time to come to terms with the end of the relationship, to process your feelings or to have a genuine opportunity to move on. A lot of times, if you’re going to be friends after the breakup, you need time apart. It’s hard to heal and process when you’re constantly reopening those wounds, after all.

As much as it hurts, I think you should resign yourself to not hearing back from him for a while and to work on your own recovery and healing. Focusing on your feelings – about him, about the breakup, about dating in general – and working towards healing the wound the breakup left behind is important. It takes time, energy and effort. If you’re putting that off as you wait with sandwiches by the phone for him to call… well, it means you take that much longer to actually start healing. Better to start the process now than to put it off and aggravate the wound with that false hope.

You were friends before. With time, you’ll be friends again. It won’t be the relationship you had before – not the friendship, nor the romance – but something new and different. But first, you have to give it time. Take that time and put it towards yourself; the sooner you do, the sooner the healing will begin. Then, when and if he is ready to try something new, you’ll be ready to meet him where you need to be.   

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 been officially with my boyfriend for 6 months now. So we’re still in the honeymoon phase. Everything has been perfect from the start. We met through university, which we both study at. And we’ve been together every day since then. We’ve gone on trips together, he’s come home with me for Christmas, and we’ve really been each other’s person. I thought from the first time we met that this man would be mine forever. He tells me that he loves me every day, does everything for me. And has been the perfect boyfriend.

I’ve been open with him from the start and told him that I have a hard time trusting people because of previous relationships where I’ve been cheated on. He’s promised me that he could never do something like that to me. And I trusted him 100%. I believed him.

But, one week ago everything turned around. I was on his phone, out of pure curiosity, and I find out that this man has an extra Snapchat account where he’s been sexting with other girls. And talked to dozens of girls every single day. He has sent pictures and videos of himself that make me sick just thinking about it. And he has asked girls to send him the same things. He has had this Snapchat account for years. Even through his entire relationship with his ex.

As soon as I found out, I packed up all my stuff and left. We have met once since then, and he has cried and cried and told me that he doesn’t know why he did this, and that it was a way for him to escape life. He tells me that he has never regretted anything so much before, and that he is sorry that he hurt me. And that he will become a better person and that he will do anything in the world to fix this, because he cannot lose me.

All I want is to forgive him, because I truly love him more than anything in the world. But another part of me tells me that I deserve better, and that I need to respect myself. But it’s hard, I feel like I am going to die. Our whole relationship has been a big lie, and everything he has told me is a lie. He has made a choice, every single day, to cheat on me. What do I do? I can’t take this anymore.

Twice Bitten

DEAR TWICE BITTEN: I’m sorry you’re going through this, TB; it sounds incredibly rough. It sounds to me there’re a few disparate threads in here that I think need to be dealt with, because I think they’re all tangled up into one big complicated knot that’s only going to get worse as time goes on.

Let’s start with what I think is an underlying issue here: you have trust issues from a partner cheating on you in a previous relationship. That’s entirely understandable; this is the sort of thing that feels like a deep and personal betrayal, and it’s not surprising that it would leave some scars.

I am, however, wondering if you’ve ever actually sought out help with those issues. One of the things I’ve seen over the years is how often people who have trust issues who don’t actually try to address and resolve those issues themselves run into similar patterns. The details vary, but they tend to follow the same path: they go out and find a new partner, convince themselves that this time things will be different, ask their partner to help manage those trust issues and then something ends up happening that triggers those trust issues and the relationship falls apart. Sometimes there’s a good reason for those trust issues to have been triggered, sometimes there’s not, but it happens frequently enough that it almost has become a trope.

It’s also notable that a lot of times, those trust issues can turn toxic if they go unresolved. I’ve seen far too many relationships where one partner’s “trust issues” became less of a matter of security in the relationship and more of the club they wielded over their partner.

Here’s the thing: relationships can’t exist without trust. You either trust your partner or you don’t. If you don’t or can’t trust them, then you’ve basically started a countdown clock to when this relationship is going to end, one way or another. Whether the other person actually commits some violation of your trust or not – and this is in general, not your case specifically, TB – the fact that you’re always feeling like the possibility is there, even likely makes it next to impossible to feel safe and secure with them. And while I understand that the origins of your trust issue – like those of others’ – is because of what your previous partner(s) did, it’s ultimately on you to manage those issues, not on your future partners. Otherwise you end up in these sorts of situations.

In fact, that’s part of what leads us to the next thread: you went snooping on his phone. This is one of those things that gets tricky to adjudicate; I’m generally of the opinion that snooping is almost always wrong and is only justified in retrospect. That is: unless you go and actually find something – which you did, in this case – you’re violating your partner’s trust. That, in and of itself, is bad. But to compound this, there’s also the fact that, when you go snooping, the odds are that you’re going to find things that you didn’t want to know. Not, mind you, proof of infidelity or wrong doing, but often things that, once seen or read, can’t be unseen or unread, and you were likely happier beforehand. These are often private thoughts, past experiences, even things written in frustration with the understanding that they, or a select few, were the only people who would be likely to read those things. Reading them may be hurtful or surprising or distressing… but they were never intended to be shared or read by others, often for precisely that reason. And honestly, that’s fine. Everyone has a right to privacy and a right to their thoughts, preferences, interests, and so on, even ones that their partners might find upsetting or distressing if they knew. Going looking through their stuff violates that right, and you’re taking a high risk that you’re going to find something – or anything, really – that you’re not going to like but that won’t retroactively justify the snooping.

And honestly: if you’re at a point where you’re snooping into their stuff, you’re likely at a point where the relationship is into its final days, no matter what you find. Even if you find nothing to be upset over, the fact that you went looking means that you were expecting to find something, and the absence of evidence is often not taken as evidence of absence of wrong doing. And if you do find something… well, now you get to live with what you now know.

Now in this case, your guy was sexting with other women. That’s a violation, especially of the commitment the two of you made to each other, and you’re feeling hurt. That pain is especially fresh right now, and I’m sure it’s also triggering the older pain of your past relationship, which is making things worse. I think that’s part of what’s hitting you right now; the memory of the older pain plus this fresh new one is what’s making you feel like “everything was a lie”. To be honest, I don’t believe that cheating is proof that someone is lying when they say they love you, nor that they want to make a relationship work. People are imperfect and flawed; they make mistakes, cause friction and hurt people they love without meaning to or negating everything else in the relationship. It’s part of being human. We’re all complicated and messy and nobody goes through life perfectly without making mistakes, errors in judgement or just plain f--king up. Those f--k ups don’t automatically negate everything that came before, just as not every mistake or f--kup is made with malice, intentional cruelty or deceit. People can make bad decisions without also being liars or manipulators.

That’s why I think making grand declarations like that isn’t helpful for anyone, especially if you harbor some sort of hope that you could work through this and come through to the other side.

And to be clear: people can and do work through and move past infidelities all the time. In many cases, they’ve found that this has actually strengthened their relationship because it forced both parties to actually confront underlying issues within their relationship and their commitment to one another that had gone unaddressed and unspoken.

But for people to work through the pain to healing and forgiveness, the first thing they have to do is answer a very simple but important question: is it possible for the cheater to earn the other person’s trust back? Or will this always be a pebble in their shoe and a burr in the middle of their back? Because if it isn’t, and then it’s not fair to anyone to try in the first place. If someone making a good faith effort to mend things and make things right is only going to have their past mistakes thrown back in their face, then it’s kinder to everyone to have as clean of a split as possible.

Which now brings us back to you and your situation, TB. Your guy says he doesn’t know why he does this. I doubt that’s 100% true; I sincerely doubt he is on Snapchat sending sexy videos to people and requesting them out of pure compulsion. He does it because he gets his rocks off. It’s possible that he doesn’t know why he does this even when he’s made a monogamous commitment – which would imply that he’s someone who shouldn’t be making said commitments in the first place – but it’s also just as possible that he’s saying whatever he thinks he needs to say to get you to take him back. Quite frankly, I think it’s the latter. I think that’s far more about his trying to make you less angry and more willing to let him try again. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think that’s helpful for him to do. If he honestly doesn’t know why – I mean, besides getting his rocks off – then he needs to be talking to a professional. But as it is, it sounds to me more like a way of not taking full responsibility, which is a vital part of being able to make a relationship work after a violation of trust like this.

I’m not going to adjudicate whether he’s sincere about trying to fix things, or even if he’d be able to if he is. I think it’s possible, even likely, he’s genuine about not wanting to lose you. But that’s not the same as “not knowing why” he does this.  I think that’s still a dodge on his part.

What I am going to say is that I don’t think you should take him back. It doesn’t sound to me like he’s fully ready to actually take ownership and responsibility for what he did. I also think that you aren’t in a place where you would be able to take him back. I think that if you do, you’re going to be in the situation I mentioned: that you’re never going to fully trust him and always be on your guard, no matter what he does. And I think that would be unfair to everyone. As much as this hurts, I think this is a time when the kindest thing would be to recognize that this relationship isn’t going to work – especially not with the way that you’re feeling – and let this be the end of it.

What I do think you should do, is talk to someone about your trust issues and the heavy and complex feelings you’re carrying around. That, I think, should be a priority for you going forward, especially before you think of getting into another relationship. Until you address those issues, I think you’re going to have other strings of painful relationships that will only make things worse.

So my recommendation is two-fold. The first is to suggest that you talk to a counselor or therapist about your having a hard time trusting people. Working through those feelings is going to be important, especially when you want to be able to truly trust someone 100% in the future.

And as part of working on those issues, the second thing I would suggest is reading Esther Perel’s The State of Affairs. I don’t think it’ll change your mind about having been cheated on, but I think it might help bring a little more nuance and understanding to things, so that everything won’t feel so immense and overwhelming. Even if you disagree with every word she says – including “a”, “the” and “the” – and hurl it with great force out a window, I think it may at least help you find some peace and give yourself closure on your past relationships.

And hopefully, going forward, you’ll find someone special who is deserving of your trust and proves it, day after day.

Good luck.

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