Bad Friends, Poor Communication, and “Yeah, But You’re Adorable-er”

by A Dude

I have a friend who is a genuinely nice guy (not a Nice Guy). He’s smart, cute, reads books, watches good movies, etc., but he’s got some weird ideas about feminism and women. He thinks that everything can be abstracted into theoretical and philosophical arguments, so it’s impossible to talk to him about anything even remotely feminist-y. Like if a famous artist abuses his wife or rapes someone, the discussion is about whether the creator’s life taints the creation, not about “hey, it’s fucked up that X happened and we shouldn’t give that dude money anymore.” He also kind of mocks me for taking this stuff seriously and will, when I’ve had a few drinks, egg me on to talk about sex and feminism while quietly smirking, like “haha, isn’t this funny how much you care while I am cool and aloof and above it all.” It’s starting to really piss me off because it’s like a personal insult. “You’re my friend and I know this is important to you and I just don’t care.” If he was into, shit, I don’t know… stamp collecting, I wouldn’t smirk at him while he discussed it because WE ARE FRIENDS.

Do you have any suggestions for how to deal with this dude?

Yes, throw him off a bridge because he’s the worst person ever. And I know exactly the kind you mean: Unable to have a real conversation. Arrogant, egotistical, lords over others with his precious intellect. Every conversation with him is just a competition to see who can care less, approach the problem from a more abstract and detached perspective that absolutely derails any kind of real discussion. Ugh, I hate him and I don’t even know him!

My advice is: Who cares what books he reads or if he’s cute, he’s terrible and you need to get away from him immediately. You are not crazy; your hurt feelings and sense of disrespect are completely justified. He’s being a dick. Friend-breakup with him. Twice as fast because you seem to have a crush on him. Get out of there! It’s like watching a horror movie. NO, DON’T GO INVESTIGATE THAT WEIRD NOISE! JUST RUN!!!

OK, Dude, here is my problem. I love my boyfriend, but I have a really, really hard time trusting him, and since we’re talking about the long-term: living together, eventually getting married, etc., that’s a pretty big problem. (Also, I apologize if this is too long, but I just want to give you the specifics.)

To give a little backstory, about six months into our relationship, we hit a little rough patch. I felt like he was being really distant and weird for a while — not too long, maybe a week or two, but distant enough that it was really bothering me — and I subsequently got a little clingy (bad bad bad, I know, but easier said than done when the person you love seems like they’re slipping away from you) and kept asking, “What’s wrong? Is it me?” etc. etc. He kept saying no but not changing his behavior, and so I sort of half-assedly tried to break up with him (just by saying, “I can’t do this anymore, I can’t be with someone who seems so miserable, it’s making me feel horrible”). He, of course, was all, “No, I can’t lose you,” etc., and we stayed together.

Cut to the following evening (!), when we went to a party of a female friend of his I’d never met. She was very pretty and super nice, and even though things had been awkward between me and the boyfriend I was trying to be happy and have a good time at the party. But after a while, it seemed sort of obvious he was hitting on her. I mean, he wasn’t, like, kissing her or falling all over her or anything, but he kept putting a hand on her waist/hanging out at the party with her rather than me, etc. I’m not the type to need to stick to a dude’s side all night, and if it hadn’t been for the weird vibe I was getting, I would’ve been content to hang out with the other people at the party (which I did all night up until I spoke to him). I took him aside and confronted him about it, and he admitted that he was hitting on her. That night, we had a looong, horrible talk that basically revealed he’d been talking to his friends about wanting to break up with me, basically because he just wasn’t “feeling us” anymore, admitting a lot of that was because of me being super-clingy during those few weeks. Then I found texts on his phone that he sent to the girl the night of the party — the party I was at! — trying pretty hard to get with her (apparently he’d had a crush on her a while ago, so it was a lost-love kind of a thing), and she was sweet but shot him down, saying, “Why? Your girlfriend’s adorable!” to which he responded, “Yeah, but you’re adorable-er. And besides, I’ve had a thing for you forever.” Yup, gag.

Needless to say, I felt horrible, we broke up, but we remained friends, and got back together probably two weeks later. He said the only reason he ever did it in the first place was because he’d been thinking about us breaking up, and felt like we were going to break up anyway so “why not,” basically, and that if things had been going well prior to that night that nothing ever would’ve happened. He clearly felt horrible and I still loved him, so we got back together, obviously under the assumption that he would never do anything like that again — to which he responded, “I won’t make the same mistake twice, etc., I can’t lose you ever again, blah blah blah.”

Before I found the texts (which I found the next day), he had already texted her to apologize for what he said the night before, calling it “completely out of line.” And since then (that was about five months ago), he hasn’t done anything of the sort. He leaves his phone around all the time and there were never any bad texts, and I saw things that girl sent him twice asking him to hang out (just for parties and such, nothing seemingly lecherous) and he never responded or else politely declined. (And yes, I know I should never ever have looked at his phone, but this was recently after the whole would-be cheating debacle and I was clearly out of sorts.)

Wow, this is long. I just want to cover every angle, because after getting advice from all my friends it’d be nice to have an impartial opinion. The only other hitch is that when we had our big talk that night, he admitted to cheating on a girl in a previous relationship (he made out with a girl at a party while they were dating) and then they broke up. Naturally I was like, “How can you say you’d never make the same mistake twice if you already made it before?” when he was trying to get me back, to which he responded it took losing me to realize how much I meant to him/how he couldn’t be without me, and that with me he’d never mess up again because I’m sooo great or whatever, etc. You get the picture. And all his friends talked to me about it (separate from me) and said they didn’t think he really would’ve gotten with the girl if she had responded favorably that night/how much he loved me and all the good stuff he said about me while I wasn’t around (but they’re his friends, so obviously they wouldn’t be all, “Yeah, he wanted to ball her so bad!”).

OKAY. Phew! So, I figure you’re going to read this and say, “Well, you answered your own question, because if you still have so much trouble trusting him, you probably shouldn’t be with him.” But I really, really love him. We get along like I don’t with anyone else, he makes me laugh, he is so sweet and romantic, our sex life is amazing, and I really can’t imagine finding anyone more perfect for me. So what I want to know is: Can cheaters really change? I hate hearing that “once a cheater, always a cheater” thing, because it seems like a life sentence, and I really, truly love this man. I’ve forgiven him a long time ago, but I can’t forget, and I can live with that if I know that there’s a strong chance all the nice stuff he said to me (most importantly, that he’ll never do it again) is true. I cheated on an ex in an unsatisfying relationship, but I wouldn’t do it with my current boyfriend, ever. So, nine hundred paragraphs later, do you think it really is possible that I can trust him, and that us breaking up was perhaps the catalyst he needed to realize what a mistake it would be to ever cheat again? Or am I just believing all this because I adore him? Help!

First things first, stop checking his phone when he “leaves it around”! (If you haven’t already.)

OK, now on to more specific advice. I have to point out that, though what he did was totally, totally out of line and absolutely constitutes emotional betrayal — and you are fully entitled to your hurt feelings and attitude of mistrust — he didn’t act on his urges and didn’t physically cheat on you. Stay with me here.

In the law there’s a technical term called “mens rea” that means a person has a “guilty mind.” The “actus reus” is the guilty action, the objective part of the crime (like actual stabbing, for instance). They are both necessary elements of a crime; if I do something criminal but I didn’t mean to, I can be punished but I’m not a criminal (no mens rea) and if I just think about doing something bad I’m also not a criminal (no actus reus). All this nonsense is just to say that he thought about doing something bad. He played with the idea and he flirted with this girl to see if it was actually an option available to him, but he never followed through on his urge, and you don’t know if he ever would. His friends are right to point that out: They seem to think that even if this girl had been totally into it he wouldn’t have been able to follow through. That might really be the case! Also, bear in mind the context of the night in which he was acting so inappropriately: You’d almost broken up just the night before. It seems like he was sure your love was not long for this world. He was probably still feeling hurt and angry that you’d wanted to leave him the night before, he may have been acting this way purely out of spite? You know him a lot better than I do. Maybe he is a slime ball. In which case all this legal talk has put me in the mood to LOCK HIM UP. Don’t do the slime if you can’t do the time, buddy. *puts on sunglasses*

The other thing I would tell you is that holding his previous drunken makeout cheating against him might not be fair. You yourself have cheated, and you say you would never cheat on this guy. Why do you think it’s fair, then, to not afford him the same charity you give yourself? Cheating happens for many reasons, but I’m of the mind that it’s often a symptom of a problem, not a problem itself. Your relationship with him is different than her relationship with him; you don’t have to assume he will treat you the same way.

OK, finally, I’ll say this. Trusting someone is giving that person permission to hurt you, and you have to accept that. You say, “yes, I’m trusting you and giving you my heart, and if you wanted to you could destroy it. I’m in love with you and that means that you have power over me, and the ability to seriously mess me up for a long time.” You will always have good reasons not to trust someone if you aren’t comfortable giving them that kind of power, or if you suspect that the individual to whom you’re giving the power might abuse it. So, which reason is it here? Are you looking for excuses not to trust him because you’re afraid, or is he actually shady?

I don’t know enough about your relationship to say one way or the other, but to his credit it sounds like he’s done everything he can in the time since the incident to make it right. He wrote the girl and apologized to her, taking back his advances. That must have been a pride-swallowing exercise, and if you were surprised to see that on his phone, then he did it even without your prompting. He’s also apologized often and promised it will never happen again. So it’s up to you now: You either take off that armor and risk getting your heart broken, or you leave it on and let this person you love walk away. That sounds loaded, but I’m honestly not telling you which path to take either way. There are good reasons for doing either, which is what makes this so hard. So which path is it gonna be? Risk heartbreak, or protect yourself with armor?

Please write back and tell me! Oh brother, what if my internet is being weird again. We should all get each other’s phone numbers or postal codes at least.

Starting today, it’s taken me longer to get over being dumped than my relationship lasted in the first place. What the hell is wrong with me?

A little background: I’ve only ever been in one relationship because only one person — the person who just dumped me — has ever found me attractive. Actually, he wasn’t ever attracted to me either, as he told me the day that he dumped me. I’m in my twenties, so this is a fairly substantial blow. I don’t even miss him so much as the feeling that I was worth something to someone, that I wasn’t just a useless lump of flesh taking up the earth’s resources. It’s been quite some time and I still can’t go a few hours without something reminding me of him that I’ll never get back again. Needless to say, there’s no one waiting in the wings, no chance of any kind of a rebound — if none of that worked for twenty-some years, why would it work now? I also can’t avoid this person, as we work in the same field and thus have to at least pretend we’re on good terms.

Is there a way to feel normal again? Nothing has worked.

Awww STRANGER GIRL! Stop. First, you are depressed, or you’re suffering through a depressive episode, and you need to talk to someone about it. Seriously. All this negative self-talk! It’s terrible. How can anyone else love you if you don’t even like yourself? That sounds like an empty platitude, but it’s actually true! You’re not a waste of human organs! You need to change the script in your head. Get outside and exercise! Take up painting, or an instrument, or both! Volunteer somewhere in your free time! There are so many things you can do that will make you feel great, boost your self esteem, and all of them are fun anyway! I don’t mean to sound like an overly positive cheerleader type, but you can seriously get through this.

As for getting over this guy, that shouldn’t be too hard because if he actually told you he was never attracted to you on the day that he dumped you he’s a goddamn demon from outer space, and you can do way better than that. The secret to getting a cool boyfriend is to be yourself, put yourself out there, and let the chips fall where they may. Easier said than done, I know, and not everyone will like you, but some people will, and they’ll be the people worth knowing. You could also get a cool dog. I recommend this little guy.

But please, please stop being so hard on yourself.

I’ve got a weird question that I think I probably already know the answer to, but I just need confirmation from a male perspective. I’ve been going to physical therapy to rehab my knee since February because I had pretty major surgery on it in Jan. Anyways, I tend to work with the same physical therapy aide who’s a guy (can’t bring myself to say man, for some reason) two to three times a week. So, we see each other a lot. We get along, we banter, we laugh — he tells other people I make him laugh. He seems to be a little touchy-feely, as in takes advantage of every opportunity (not inappropriately, though!), compared to other PT experiences with male aides. I think he’s definitely a flirt because that’s sort of his M.O. per my observations of his with the female patients and co-workers, but it does seem a little more involved/intense with me (but, I could be hallucinating).

And, then there was this time where we sort of crossed a line into new territory where we were having serious (only because the tone changed, not necessarily the content) conversations about our dating past and the “types” of people we’re interested in, what we’re looking for, how long we wait once we’ve gotten to know someone before we start dating them, blah blah blah. By the way, I definitely do not sound like his “type,” didn’t check off any of those boxes. And, he even told me straight out that he has dated patients in the past and is trying to stay away from that. In conclusion, I’m pretty sure he just thinks the whole flirting thing is harmless fun since he made it clear he doesn’t want to date any more patients (but, then my overthinking self says: well, why did he bring it up then if he’s not fighting back “the feelings?”). So, I’m just curious if he’s trying to signal something because it would be inappro if he initiated but not so much if I did? Thoughts?

Hm. Since i) he went out of his way to tell you that he’s dated patients in the past and he’s trying to stay away from it now (and you are a patient), ii) he’s a confirmed flirt with other people, and iii) he’s made it clear you aren’t his type, I would guess that he isn’t interested in dating you despite his flirtations. He isn’t fighting back “the feelings” when he tells you that he doesn’t want to date patients, I would guess that he’s sending you clear signs of disinterest. I’m sorry, stranger girl.

I had a great (or so I thought!) year-and-a-half relationship with a guy who finally dumped me after admitting the sex stunk. This was over a year ago. He claims he keeps hoping it will get better and he wants things to work out, but he won’t actually TRY — no communication, no, “hey let’s try something new in the sack,” nothing. What gives? And more importantly, why do I stubbornly refuse to admit defeat and move on to a guy who appreciates my sexy self?

Here’s a secret: He’s the one who sucks in bed. Communication is the only important thing. Well, communication and a will to please. I might be completely wrong about that. My only qualification for having this job is a Y chromosome, so you can’t expect too much.

However, I’ll tell you what I think this is actually going on here. You say that he “dumped” you ”over a year ago,” and that you “stubbornly refuse to admit defeat and move on to a guy who appreciates [your] sexy self.” I take this to mean that the relationship has ended, and that for over a year you’ve been trying to prove to him that you’re good in bed (ostensibly by sleeping with him?) but he still fails to appreciate your sexy self. Sleeping with him just to prove him wrong! He’s getting free sex from you. It’s like, his ideal dudely situation. Wake up! He’s in your head! Have you heard the fable of the pancake lady? She makes the best pancakes in the kingdom, but she’ll only make ONE pancake for everyone. This adventurer dude stops by, she makes him a pancake, and he’s like “yeah, that was a decent pancake”. So she makes him another, and another, and he keeps saying “No, no, don’t get me wrong, they’re alright and everything. They aren’t gross.” Anyway, he eventually admits that every pancake was amazing and he just wanted more and more free pancakes. It’s horrible, but I think this is actually what’s happening. How are all these people so awful? Yeesh.

Yes, you do need to be with someone who appreciates your sexy self, but also who tells you so! And doesn’t manipulate you or play games. I wish you the best of luck.

Previously: Previous Commitments, Facial Expressions, and Men With Little to Offer.

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude?