Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This might be outside your scope, but I’m going to give it a try and reach out. Lately, I’ve been really struggling, to the point where I’ve had some dark, depressive thoughts. My life has been a tough journey, and right now, I’m really wondering if there’s any light ahead. It feels like it’s just too dark right now.��I grew up in a very difficult environment, marked by emotional neglect and bullying. Ever since, I’ve been trying to find my way, but I’ve often ended up in toxic social circles and had bad experiences in work. It’s only in my 30s that I’ve started trying to heal, but it’s moving so slowly, especially since I’m still stuck in the same environment where a lot of the pain started.��I desperately want to move forward with my life, but the financial strain and lack of job security are holding me back. The issues with work were never my fault – I just had a habit of choosing bad employers, and it involved some battles (which I ultimately won). On top of that, I’m in an area where there’s not much for me to do, and people my age are nowhere to be found. Everything interesting or fulfilling is far away, so it feels very isolating.��Because of all this, I don’t have any real friends. People generally say nice things about me, and I can tell they like me, but I also notice I’m often kept at a distance. While others are chatting in group chats or making plans, I’m usually on the outside looking in. For instance, I overhear people at work talking about their most recent outings together, and I’m sat there wondering why I was never included. It feels nearly impossible to form deeper connections. I used to go to one meetup where I was a regular, usually being the one who would try to arrange other get-togethers, but I stopped attending a few months ago, and it feels like my absence hasn’t been noticed.��On top of that, I haven’t dated. Honestly, I wouldn’t even know where to start even if I were in a better place mentally. I know social media and public life aren’t always an accurate reflection of reality, but seeing couples and attractive women often leaves me feeling envious. I realize you’ve mentioned FOMO before, but I can’t help feeling like I missed out on my twenties, and now, it seems like my thirties will be a repeat of the same loneliness.��So here I am, depressed and alone, occasionally hugging a pillow and bawling my eyes out. It feels like I’ve regressed to an angry teenage version of myself. I honestly don’t believe I could ever be loved, either platonically or romantically.��I get it though – anyone who’s endured trauma is going to come out of it scarred in some way, and it’s a miracle I’ve made it this far without completely breaking down. The fact that all these emotions are finally coming up, piece by piece, is probably a good sign that healing is happening, but it’s still a painful process, especially when I’m isolated and stuck in an environment that feels suffocating. Plus, dealing with aphantasia makes a lot of the therapeutic work, like “comforting my inner child,” feel impossible. I’m lucky to have a good therapist helping me, but I can’t shake the feeling that even she might be losing patience with me.��What frustrates me most is that deep down, I know I’m a great person. I’m empathetic, kind, and deserving of love and happiness. I’m adventurous, playful, smart, and capable of doing amazing things. In some alternate reality, I’d be the guy who has a great circle of friends and is the one everyone loves. I have the character, the looks… I just don’t know how to get there from here.��Up Against The Glass

DEAR UP AGAINST THE GLASS: Before I get to the meat of your question, UATG – have you talked to your therapist about how often these feelings are coming up, or that some of the advice they give is harder to put into practice because you have aphantasia? You are allowed to say “hey, I don’t know if this is working the way it should be”, along with “I’m experiencing a lot of X, and I don’t know if that’s normal or not but it’s been distressing to me”.

But one of the things that leapt out of your letter at me seemed pretty important: you make a lot of assumptions about how other people feel based on nothing other than your self-perception, and you treat it as though this were 100% fact. Both “it feels like my absence hasn’t been noticed” and “I can’t shake the feeling that even she might be losing patience with me” are statements that go more to how you feel about yourself rather than how other people feel. It’s a statement that you can’t imagine that other people care about you, not that they don’t, and treating that as fact quickly becomes a way of punching yourself in the nuts for no reason other than you continue to exist as yourself.

I think that is something you should be digging into, because it ties into something I say over and over again: it’s very hard to accept love from others when you don’t love yourself. You don’t believe it’s possible for other people to love you or to accept it from others, simply because you don’t believe you’re deserving of it or have qualities that people would value.

This is why I kinda question whether you actually believe what you say at the end about having those great qualities and being deserving of love. I’m not saying that you don’t and that you aren’t; I’m saying that I hear you say them but I don’t know if you mean it. It’s easy to say the words, but it’s a lot harder to say them with the conviction that they’re true. And if that’s the case… well, honestly, that’s a place for you to start: to say it until you make it come true.

This is part of why I tell people that one of the best things they can do for themselves is to fake it until they make it. This isn’t about putting up a false front or pretending to be something other than what you are, it’s about teaching yourself how to be the person you want to be – which includes loving yourself in the way you deserve to be loved. Humans are bad at lying – our brains don’t like the dichotomy between what we say and the reality around us. So part of how they deal with that cognitive dissonance is to start accepting the lie. This is one of the reasons why, for example, actors who play lovers often end up in relationships or sleeping together; going through the motions of being in love convinces their brains that hey maybe this is love.

Well, you can do the same thing for your life. Treating yourself as though not only are you deserving of love but that you are loved helps train your brain to respond accordingly and to believe it. And what’s especially nice about doing this for yourself is that, well, it works.

To tie this to another piece of advice I give regularly to people in situations like yours, if you go into situations where you assume that you’re already friends with people, you’ll find that yes, they do in fact like you and want to be friends. I know it sounds like woo-woo-manifesting nonsense, but it’s actually a lot simpler and more grounded: people like you because you’re acting like you like them. When you assume that you’re already friends with the people you’re meeting, your body language is more open and inviting, you show more interpersonal warmth and interest and you prime your brain to interpret their actions and behaviors in a more positive and welcoming light. This has the overall effect of creating a sort of feedback loop; you give off friendly and welcoming vibes, people respond to those vibes and return them and so you feel valued and appreciated and thus give off more friendly and welcoming vibes.

Put that together with behaving and treating yourself as though you were already loved and appreciated and you create a self-fulfilling prophecy: you find that yes, people do love and appreciate you, because you believed it first. After all, if you’re going to see evidence that confirms what you already believe, you may as well believe in things that help you. And trust me, you can do this. If you believed in Santa Claus for years with minimal evidence, you can believe in yourself too. 

This is going to be important because, honestly, I suspect that it’s not that your coworkers are holding you at arm’s length, you are. When you don’t feel like people like you or that you’re not likeable, you’re more likely to keep your distance, to not get as involved and not make as strong a connection as you might otherwise. It feels like you’re being excluded, but it’s more that you’re not making an effort to include yourself because you have already assumed that they don’t like you and your presence would be an intrusion. And – in the inverse to assuming that people like you – when you feel that way, your brain interprets everything they say and do accordingly. You’re going to read hesitancy and rejection into every word, tone and gesture, you’re not going to make the same effort because you think you’ve been rejected in advance and when you do get a “no, thank you”, you’re going to accept it as being because you’re unwanted and be less inclined to try again… even if the real reason was “we’d like to, but we’re just busy.”

And look, I get it. It’s really easy to interpret radio silence as being a lack of interest, but the truth of the matter is that these days people in general are really bad about reaching out, even if you’re close. Even I deal with this on occasion; I’ve got friends I know like me and like to hear from me, but I worry that I’m bothering them if I message them first. I also have friends and acquaintances who feel the same way about me, even though I’m thrilled to hear from them. So sometimes, you just have to be willing to be the one who does most of the reaching out, until an equilibrium can be reached. It can be frustrating, sure, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t like you or don’t want to hear from you; it just means that everyone’s caught up in their own bulls--t and anxieties and that can make it hard to realize how it seems to others when we’re the ones who’re responding rather than initiating.

So, I think part of your fake-it-till-you-make-it, assume-you’re-friends-already practice should involve reconnecting with your meetup group, making a point of talking to your co-workers and simply treating them as though you are friends instead of worrying about if you are. This includes recognizing that it can take time before you’re at the “getting together outside of $EVENT” stage of things. A lot of the time, this is a matter of just conversations and time spent at the event – whether at work or the meetup, as you get to know each other and move through the stages of “stranger” to “acquaintance” to “friends”. It really is a matter of time spent, more than any other factor.

Just as importantly, you need to recognize and understand how goddamn difficult it can be to make plans as you get older. One of the jokes in my social circles is that we have to plan lunches and hangouts weeks to months in advance, simply because there’re so many responsibilities and obligations that we’re all dealing with on a daily basis. To paraphrase the sage: life, uh, uh, gets in the way.

The last thing I will suggest is that part of the cure for despair is action. You talk about feeling stuck in place, especially in a place where there’s little to do and few people your age. Well, that’s a place to start taking action.

For one: there may be more going on than you realize; it’s just that none of it is happening in places or at times when you’re likely to encounter them. If you’re in the habit – as most people are – of doing the same things every week, taking the same routes to work and home, eating in the same restaurants and so on, then you’re not going to have as many opportunities for discovery. You’re on autopilot and a lot of what you perceive is what you expect to perceive because it’s more efficient for your brain that way. Shaking things up – going places you don’t normally go, looking up opportunities in your local alt-weekly or your city’s subreddit or Facebook groups – forces you out of the routine and you’re going to see stuff you never realized was there.

Another thing you can do is to start taking steps to move. Opening a savings account and putting money aside to cover rent, living expenses, moving costs and a cushion for finding work is going to provide you with a tangible sense of “I’m making this happen, I can see the forward progress I’m making”, that helps counteract the sense of helplessness. Even if you ultimately decide that maybe your current locale offers more than you thought, knowing that you’ve made it possible to pull up stakes reminds you that you have agency and options. You’re not as stuck as you think; you simply needed that little reminder that you really are in charge of your life.

But even if you do move, the rest of my advice still applies. Just changing your locale can do a lot but as the wise man says: wherever you go, there you are. You bring yourself with you, so it’s time to work on being the “you” that you would want to be in that new place, even before you go.

So start taking those steps to teach yourself to be the man you know you can be. I think you’ll find you like who you’ll become when you do.

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: Been reading your column for years and have suggested it to more than one teenage boy when they’re thinking or asking about relationships. You also answered a geeky work question for me, Way Back When.

Now, the reason I’m writing is because I’m looking for advice. I’m female, in my forties, small fat with a huge rack. This does not tend to bring out the best behaviour in straight men and boys, in my experience, and my interactions with men over the years have all been some flavour of unpleasant. Being called names, having eggs thrown at me, being laughed at, jeered at for not being DTF immediately after meeting someone, being called frigid and also a whore (I could multitask apparently!)

I also had what might be termed an… interesting path to adulthood, which included some serious emotional trauma, and I assumed for years that my lack of sexual desire for a partner was down to that. In essence I thought: Bad behaviour from masculine people meant that I was afraid of sex or sexuality. I thought that I was broken, because I never looked at anyone and immediately wanted to shag them. I also assumed that it meant I would never have a partner, because alas I seemed to be straight and what man would want a fat, mouthy woman who never put out?

Turns out, things were a bit more complicated than that, though.

A few years ago I found the term demisexual, and for the first time I felt like maybe I wasn’t broken, like maybe my experience of desire made sense. Last year I also began unpacking all the toxic BS in therapy. I also began thinking about what I might want in a partner. It’s a work in progress, and it will be a while, I think, before I’m ready to date, but at least now I think it might be possible. I have my sense of style down, and my presentation; I’m in a good place in my life professionally, too, and I like who I am now, which wasn’t always the case.

So with all that going on, why am I writing to you?

Well, I am a woman and I appear to be attracted mainly to men… But a lot of mainstream masculinity really turns me off. I don’t want someone loud, brash (sorry, “confident,”) or dominant. Being bossed around or controlled gives me the Ick. The things that turn me on tend to be quietness, nerdiness, kindness and gentleness. All of these seem to be considered taboo among men and manly types, though. I also suspect I’m pansexual because I don’t always only fancy blokes. I think I’m some flavour of Queer and Ace essentially, but I’ve been read as straight and cis my whole life and that’s only changing now.

So I’m wondering, where might I find the sort of partners I might like, male or otherwise? I have considered looking at faith-based dating because there might be less expectation of sex immediately, but I am an atheist and I don’t think that’s fair. I have tried the dating apps but when I say I’m demisexual I’m either asked “what that means?” (as if Google isn’t a thing) or whether I’ve been sexually assaulted and is that why I’m “like that?” Neither are optimal. But even though I’m not ready to try dating yet, I would like to have an idea of where I might start, rather than it becoming a Big Unknown for me to worry about. I don’t want to give it more power than it should have, you know?

So where might I find the sort of men (and others) I want? Are there other options than the standard straight guy I keep running into? In short, what would be your advice, Doc?

Looking For The Soft Silent Type

DEAR LOOKING FOR THE SOFT SILENT TYPE: I’m glad you’ve made all this progress, LFSST, and that you’ve gotten more in touch with yourself and your sense of your sexuality. That’s a pretty big deal, especially when it means first confronting a lot of misconceptions and self-limiting beliefs you’d been carrying around for all this time.

Now, that having been said, I think there’re also some other misconceptions that you’re still holding on to – in this case about men. And to be clear, I absolutely understand how this came about from most of the encounters you’ve had with men; it’s not exactly surprising that having this sort of mistreatment from people isn’t going to leave you with the most nuanced view of them.

So, this is going to feel like a weird digression from your question, but stick with me for a moment, I promise it’ll make sense. One of the things I’ve been hammering on lately has been how much of gender is a performance, rather than anything inherent. And many times, the performance of gender that’s required is contrary to people’s actual wants, desires or personalities. The performance is mandated for social acceptance, and any deviance from it gets punished – primarily socially, often physically, but also frequently (and with this administration, increasingly) legally. It wasn’t that long ago in the United States that there were laws that, for example, declared that if women didn’t have a certain number of “feminine” articles of clothing, they could be arrested for cross-dressing. So, just the act of wearing pants could get you arrested if you were a woman.

And it’s telling that these were things that folks felt had to be legally mandated because it reveals something important: the supposed “standards” only exist and have power as long as everyone agrees to follow them. When people start refusing to go along, it becomes very apparent, very quickly, how arbitrary and bulls--t these expected standards and behaviors are.  

A lot of the pushback that we’ve seen to the increasing equity of men and women and to rights for queer and trans people is about punishing people who refuse to play the roles their gender supposedly dictates. After all, if – in the minds of insecure sexists and bigots – men can just “become” women and women can “be” men, then the supposed “natural” order of things is revealed to be a house of cards. This is why, for example, people get whingey and upset about loud, brash and outspoken women – women who display seemingly “masculine” behaviors or personalities. The same goes for men; men who aren’t hypersexual (or aren’t willing to attempt to be) or who are more soft-spoken or are less assertive are deemed to be too “girly”. These behaviors tend to get people subjected to various forms of “correction” by others – sometimes through shaming and insults, sometimes through force. We’ve just gone through several years of increasingly unhinged bloviating from people like Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh and Jesse Watters precisely because more and more people are saying “f--k all that noise,” and they need people to keep up the performance for them to have any credibility or authority at all.

I bring this up because this pressure to perform and behave a certain way in order to “be” a man or a woman is directly overlapping with your experiences trying to date. There’re a lot of men who aren’t loud or domineering or brash, but they often seem thin on the ground, especially ones around your age. They’re out there, but they tend to not be the most visible – both by nature, but also because they’re not used to having room to be less assertive or to not be the dominant one in the relationship.

And honestly, there’re more than a few who end up putting on the performance of restrictive and toxic forms of masculinity because they think that’s what women want and what they need to be to find a partner.

Now, there’ve been more than a few softer, gentler and more submissive men who’ve written in, asking where to find women who are fiery, assertive and more dominant; it may be helpful to read a couple of those pieces as a starting point for where you might find some cis men who are your speed. Overall, however, finding the folks (of any gender) who you’re going to be most compatible with is going to require a not-insignificant investment of your time.

I don’t think you’re going to find a lot of the ones you’re looking for on the dating apps. Part of it is just the nature of the apps themselves – the massive gender imbalance in the user base, the algorithmic push to monetize the users, the dudes who swipe right on every woman in hopes of maximizing matches – and some of it is how it’s very hard to determine compatibility when you don’t meet in person. Part of why dating apps can be frustrating is that so much of what makes us attractive and attracted to another person can only be determined in physical proximity; even video chats can’t convey the almost subliminal distinctions that say “yes” about this person and “no” about another.

But another part of the problem is that the apps aren’t necessarily where you’re going to find folks who are right for you. I have to be honest, I quite literally snort-laughed when I reached the part about your looking at faith-based dating apps and scenes; that is probably the last place where you were going to find people who click with you. While folks can and do vary within communities, most of the men you’re going to find on the faith-focused apps are far more likely to be… let’s call it “more traditional” than you want. These tend to draw folks who are more small-c and large-c conservative, and who aren’t necessarily going to be cool with a brassy, possibly demisexual, possibly queer woman. Or rather: they would be, but only in the sense of “correcting” her. You may notice how many dudes chase after baddies and then immediately start demanding she change all the things about herself that drew them in the first place. This is precisely the sort of thing that you are trying to avoid – dudes who want to show off the girl (and I do mean girl, not woman) they caught, “tamed” and shoved into a cage.

The same goes with finding someone who understands what demisexuality is (even if they may not know the term) and can rock with it. More folks are learning how sexuality isn’t binary but a multi-axis spectrum, even recognizing it in themselves, but the ones who are around your age and are on the apps and are cool with it aren’t going to be as obvious or visible as the ones who are going to demand that first you educate them and then that you make an exception for them.

The third thing is that you’re (possibly, likely) demisexual and need that emotional connection to really feel the sexual connection. That’s hard to do over a dating app, simply because the apps are really (theoretically, anyway) focused on “match, meet, date”. They tend to be faster paced than a lot of demi people would prefer, simply because most people are allosexual and want to establish a sexual connection fairly quickly. That’s not a bad thing, but it means that it’s a less optimal way for someone like you to meet your people.

This is why I think one of the better choices for you is to prioritize being social and meeting people in person – not necessarily in dating contexts but in places where you can meet people, take time to know them and vet them and see if you can build the emotional connection that makes the rest of it happen.

Now, one thing that can work in your favor, is that you’ve learned that you may not be entirely straight. Queer spaces tend to draw people who aren’t necessarily going to feel constrained by traditional gender roles or performances. Since you’re still learning more about your sexuality and who you might be attracted to, taking part in the queer community, meeting people who are on the same journey as you and generally just making friends and connections would probably be a good starting point – especially since you’re something of a slow burn when it comes to sex.

To be sure, people are people regardless of sexuality, but I think you’re more likely to meet folks who are your speed, have more compatible personalities and temperaments and are more likely to understand concepts like demisexuality, than you are at bars or hetero-focused meet markets.

The other thing I would suggest is to focus on your hobbies and passions and pursue them in public. Finding groups, meetups and gatherings of like-minded folks means that you put yourself among people that you already share commonalities with – making it a lot easier to get to know people and seeing if they’re folks you could rock with or not. You might also look into volunteer opportunities, especially in areas that encourage softer skills and personalities – ones that involve compassion, empathy and agreeableness. You’re far more likely to find someone who’s sweet and gentle and maybe a little on the quiet side working with, say, the elderly or taking care of animals than hitting up the speed-dating events at the local pub.

But in any of these scenarios, you’re going to have to be the one to make it clear what you’re looking for, to be willing to make the first move and – importantly �– to be on the lookout for them as much as hanging out your shingle and waiting for them to find you. But considering the qualities you want to see in someone you’d date? I suspect they’d love it for someone confident to come along and sweep them off their feet.

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 have a question that’s less about should I stay or go but more about whether it’s worth waiting for someone or not. 

I (26,M) have been casually seeing “Summer” (28,F) casually for about eight months. Summer and I had been friends for years and we’ve always had an unvoiced attraction to each other. Our friends had been pushing at us to date because according to them, they were getting tired of watching two people who clearly were into each other never doing anything about it. The timing was never right for it to happen and for a long time, Summer was actually involved with someone else, so it’s not like anything could have happened anyway. 

To make a long backstory short, Summer’s boyfriend (“Tom”) was a judgmental prick who did his best to keep her away from all of her friends, gaslighting her and trying to convince her that I (and her other friends but mostly me) were trying to break them up because I wanted to be with her instead. This was half-true; I was interested in her, but I never made a move on her, never hinted at her leaving him for me, and I’m not the guy who’s going to go around badmouthing people’s partners anyway. 

Eventually, Summer realized what a prick Tom was and there was a prolonged break up that took place over the course of a year. He dragged it out for as long as he could, apparently just to be a jerk about it, and it left Summer in a bad state. 

A while after the break up was final, Summer and I ended up sleeping together one night. It wasn’t a planned thing and we weren’t on anything like a date. We were hanging out because she had been having a bad week and need cheering up, we had a couple drinks and we ended up falling into bed together. The next morning, we talked about it. We were both surprised that it happened, but we both agreed that it was a good thing and that we wanted it to happen again. 

Over the course of the next several months, Summer and I would go out on dates and end the night either at her place or mine.  We were trying to keep it from our friends because of drama that came up during her break up and because Summer’s a private person, so we’ve had to be careful about where we go together and how we act in public. While I like seeing Summer, I’m kind of tired of our dynamic. I’d like something more open and serious with her and not having to sneak around. I appreciate that she’s a private person who doesn’t like people knowing too much about her business, and honestly, at first having this secret affair was sexy and fun. But this arrangement is starting to feel stifling to me. 

On paper, it sounds like everything should be fine, right? The problem is that the break up and all the crap that her ex pulled while they were together made Summer realize that she’d been really neglecting her own life and she wants to focus on getting things on track. She recently moved into a new place with a lot of upkeep, she’s looking into going back to school part time to pursue a new degree to help her advance in her career while still working, and this doesn’t leave her with a lot of time. On top of everything, her break up with Tom has made her seriously reconsider what she wants from relationships, her own sexuality (she might be demi) and whether she’s even ready to date again.

When we’ve talked about the possibility of being an actual couple, she asked me what giving our relationship a label would actually mean and why it would be different from what we had. I told her that it would mean that at things were moving towards some sort of future instead of this nebulous “whatever happens” thing we have. She told me that she wasn’t sure what she could see in any future because she’s still trying to figure out her present, so this was all she could offer for now and she hoped that I was ok with this. She made it clear that she wasn’t seeing anyone else and not interested in pursuing things with anyone else, but I shouldn’t consider myself locked down by her and I should feel free to see other people if I wanted to. 

I know this sounds like I was getting brushed off, but we’re still seeing each other when we can. It’s not as often as I’d like, and these days I’m feeling like there’s some distance between us. I don’t know if that’s real or just a matter of my being frustrated, but it feels like I’m being held at arm’s length, but she swears she’s not trying to do that. We talk regularly, but trying to schedule time in person to do more than grab a quick lunch or dinner is a struggle and we haven’t had sex in a couple of months now.

I know she genuinely likes me and I really like her as well. We have a great time when we can get together, but it feels like those are further and further apart as she’s pursuing things and she’s been straightforward about not being able to give me any sort of timeline when she’d be likely to know what she wants or can give me the kind of relationship I want.  

I don’t want to end things because I really like what we have, when we have it, and I haven’t met anyone else I like as much as her. I just wish there were more. I hate feeling like a dirty little secret, and it’s frustrating not being able to see her and feeling like there’s this distance. Is it time for me to give up and move on, or is it worth sticking things out and giving her more time and hoping for things to change?

500 More Days Of Summer  

DEAR 500 MORE DAYS OF SUMMER: This is a tough one, 5MDS, and I feel for you. While I’m someone who advocates for taking action instead of waiting and hoping for someone to change their mind, the fact is that sometimes there really aren’t any new actions to take.

Sometimes it really comes down to how badly you want this and what you’re willing to endure in the process, with an understanding that it may still never work the way you hoped.

I’ve had relationships where I wanted more than what the other person did or could give, so believe me, I understand that frustration. I’ve also been in situations like yours, where someone told me, straight up, what they were and weren’t able to give, and I hung in because I figured if the choice was between “what we have now” and “nothing”, I chose “what we have” and hoped that I could hang in long enough for things to change… and in a couple cases when I was younger, hoping that maybe I could change their mind.

Spoiler alert: this rarely worked the way I’d hoped.

Here’s the thing, 5MDS: you’ve had the conversation. You’ve laid out what you want and what you’d like to see this relationship be. Summer’s told you where she’s at, and it sounds like she’s been straightforward with you about what she wants and what she’s able to give. That’s ultimately the limits of what you can do; everything else is going to be about whether you’re willing to roll the dice on this working out the way you hope.

I’m going to make an awkward and inelegant metaphor, but stick with me for a moment. Think of what you have with Summer as equivalent of a risky investment. There’s a chance at a big pay-off at the end – a committed, serious relationship with her – but the odds are long and the amount you’d be risking (time, emotional energy, missed opportunities) is significant. You’re going to be dealing with a lot of potential turbulence in the meantime, where things are going to feel like maybe you’re watching your investment about to crater and it’d be better to pull out and accept your losses instead of risking the loss of even more. You have to weigh what you know – what Summer has said, how she’s behaving and how it’s making you feel – against what you believe and what you hope for. You feel like you’re being kept at arm’s length and you’re getting frustrated; are you going to take that as signs that maybe she’s slow-walking you out of this situationship, or are you taking her at her word that she likes you but circumstances aren’t favorable right now?

There’re lots of folks who’d make all the usual noises, either telling you HODL (hold on for dear life) or to recognize the sunk-cost fallacy for what it is and bail. But it’s easy for other people to tell you what to do; it’s hypothetical for them. They don’t have the actual investment in this that you do. So the big question really does come down to: how badly do you want this and how much faith do you have that this will pay off in the end?  

With regards to Summer herself, I think she’s playing you straight. She’s going through some serious life changes and those require a serious investment of her time and energy. It makes sense to me that she doesn’t have as much free time to see you if she’s having to work on her house and she’s trying to work and pursue a degree. And if she is demisexual, the fact that you’ve been and are apparently still sleeping together suggests that she feels close and connected to you. So I don’t think she’s trying to wave you off or passively-aggressively trying to end things. That’s all good.

But that doesn’t guarantee you a happy ending. This is a situation that not only has no end date in sight, but one that also isn’t likely to be static and stable the entire way through. Signing up for this means signing up for potential turbulence and greater challenges the longer you wait. The odds are good that, as she gets closer to meeting the requirements for a new degree, she’s going to have less time than she does now. There’s also every chance of chaos entering the equation – she loses her current job, she discovers that her new place needs more work than she thought previously or some of the fixes come back around to bite her in the ass. There’s also every chance that, as she gets further along on this journey, she realizes that what she wants from life has changed too… and that may mean that her feelings for you change, too.

There’s also the possibility that you might find that your feelings change. The frustration gets to be too much, you feel neglected (even unintentionally) or you simply don’t have enough meaningful time together to keep things going. That’s always a possibility too.

So, ultimately, the question becomes: how comfortable are you with the risks that you’re facing? Are you willing to invest the time and emotional energy in Summer, with the understanding that there’s no clock to wait out and no guarantee that this will ever pay off? What level of frustration are you willing to accept? Game this out in your head: how long would you be willing to stay in this relationship if you knew that nothing would change and this was the status quo from now going forward?  A year? Six months? Six weeks? Is what you currently have enough to invest time in that you will never get back?

Alternately, you could trust in that what makes you right for one another now will means you’ll still be right in the future. Do you feel strong enough in what you two share that you’re willing to put it on pause and then circle back around to one another when things are less chaotic and more settled? Are you willing to make as risky a choice that you and she will both be single and still interested down the line when she’s got the emotional bandwidth and available time for a relationship? Or are you holding on to what you have now because you worry that if you let go, she’ll find someone else? I can tell you from experience that when someone says “this is all I can give at the moment”, it stings a lot more when they remind you of that while you’re making your final plea for more.

I don’t mean to imply that you don’t have hope, simply that you’re playing long odds, whichever way you choose. You are the one who has to decide whether what you have now is worth what you’re giving up in exchange, because there is no guarantee that it will be more than this. If the level of risk and frustration is within what you’re able to handle, then holding on doesn’t seem like the worst option. But regardless, you’ll want to go into this with your eyes open and an understanding of what you’re signing up for. You’re ultimately the only one who can decide whether it’s worth it.

Good luck.

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