Is My First Relationship Already Over?

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I matched with this girl exactly three months ago on NYE and we started off with great chemistry. We felt an intense connection on multiple fronts. One month later I asked her to be my girlfriend and she said yes. We both are Indians, in India marriage is a hot topic pre 30 (She’s 28). When she met me she was in the headspace to meet people and get married eventually and that’s when we met. We discussed marriage early on. Although it’s super early, we felt we could imagine each other that way. We’ve told each other “I love you” often and that’s the first time someone told me that, however on her end she’s had multiple relationships before – one of them also being a FWB and she feels I am her third love.

During the course of the third month I could see her having some tough days, breaking down for reasons I don’t fully understand. She never tells me what’s the problem but I just stay compassionate and try to be there for her and she feels she can rely on me. Recently something happened and she had a terrible mood and when she gets into such a mood, she withdraws and doesn’t text, doesn’t pick up calls, I don’t know what happened but she said she can’t tell me – as it doesn’t affect her and it is someone else and she doesn’t want the other person to be judged. Long story short, I was still there for her to calm and she really appreciated it. Everything is great between us and feels like a new high when we’re together, she is completely in the moment with me and we share great sexual chemistry.

When she’s apart it’s a different story – she doesn’t immediately respond, she doesn’t tell me how her day is really going but for sure wants to know from me. I tend to be deeply anxious because of this. I also noticed in the last three months (currently 4th month running), she’s been teasing me about a future where we breakup and when I tell her I don’t like it she laughs. I am not sure why she does that or how I should respond.

Recently, we both discussed a plan about how we’ll get engaged next month, I planned it and agreed for it but later realised we shouldn’t rush such things and when I shared with her very subtly that “what if things slowed down” – she reacted badly and I had to really explain myself, try to convince her etc. She felt she can’t rely on me. She is someone who consistently comes late to dates and I’ve never told her she’s unreliable though that can be a red flag. I just treat it as a cultural problem. Also, whenever we click pics she doesn’t allow me to do it and prefers to do it on her phones and shares a select few later. I don’t understand that behaviour either but made my peace with it.

Whenever she responds on texts (her not being a texter, as per her claim), she responds briefly and occasionally when she misses me says I love you etc. I am not sure how to talk to her if she withdraws from conversations like this. She also lets me do the planning and doesn’t take initiative. She says that’s the “Masculine” side and she’s the “feminine” and she is a strong believer of this dynamic. I am confused at this point about our future – or if it’s there and how I can take a decision?

Should I wait and see how it unfolds? Should I force a talk? Are we supposed to part ways? How can I know when we continue to have such good sexual chemistry.

Feels Like The First Time

OK FLFT, we’re going to start this with my standard “things you should know about your first relationship” speech:

1. You think you’re in love. You almost certainly are not. What you’re feeling is what’s known as “new relationship energy”, when your brain is shooting off metric fucktons of dopamine and oxytocin, especially during sex. This feels like love, in no small part because you’ve never really experienced this before, which is why it’s important to keep a level head. This includes not making extreme future plans like, say, talking about getting married.
2. At 3 months (going on 4), you don’t know each other that well. You’re very much in the “don’t feel comfortable farting in front of each other” stage, never mind at a point where you can accurately gauge whether you two have long term potential.
3. The NRE fades. The average span of NRE is somewhere between six months to a year, at which point it levels off or feels like it drops. This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with your relationship; it just means that you aren’t producing the same heightened levels of dopamine and oxytocin when you’re with her because you’ve gotten used to things. This happens to literally everybody, don’t panic.
4. You’re going to fight. Conflict is inevitable when you have two people with agency; occasionally things will rub one another the wrong way or what used to be cute and endearing no longer is so, especially when the NRE wears off. Not every fight is going to be yelling and screaming, but the fact that you’re having any conflict at all isn’t a sign that anything’s wrong. How you fight, how you manage the conflict, resolve it and make up afterwards is far more important.
5. Fundamental issues about your relationship aren’t going to change as time goes on. The odds that, for example, she’s going to be a more verbose texter are incredibly low. In most cases, it’s far better to accept someone as they are than to get upset at them for who they aren’t and who you think they should be.
6. This is almost certainly not going to be the last relationship you ever have. That doesn’t mean that this relationship isn’t important or meaningful or wonderful, nor does it mean that you two don’t care enough for each other or anything else. It’s just that every relationship ends until one doesn’t and you never know which it will be. The odds of it being this one are low, in no small part because you have relatively little experience at having relationships. Again, this is not a judgement, any more than the odds of your winning the World Cup the first time you start learning how to play soccer being near zero is a judgement on you.

Now with that out of the way, let’s address a few things. First, as I said: you’ve been together for three months. While I realize that’s 1000% longer than any relationship you’ve ever had, that’s not a lot of time. That’s definitely not the time it takes to build up a lot of trust and connection, especially if she’s dealing with anything personal. The fact that she’s having these depressive episodes but won’t tell you what’s wrong doesn’t mean that she doesn’t trust you; it mostly means that she doesn’t feel comfortable sharing it with you yet. That’s something that is built over time. Being someone who she can rely on, who can accept a “I don’t want to talk about it” with grace and who she can lean on will help bring make it easier for her to feel comfortable with you. This is one of those areas where letting her come to you when she’s ready will pay off over time. Just let her know you’re willing to listen (and just listen; she doesn’t need you to solve her problems for her. Most of the time she knows what she needs to do and just wants someone to hold her and let her vent.)

But let’s talk about things like the texting, her preference for traditional masculine/feminine roles in the relationship and the like. This is where you want to refer back to what I said about accepting people for who they are.

She’s not a prolific texter; many people aren’t. Some people prefer talking in person and don’t like texting. Some folks can talk on the phone or Skype for hours and some would rather take an ice cream scoop to the eyes than deal with any phone calls that aren’t strictly necessary. Your girlfriend is one of the people who doesn’t text much. I get why that can be frustrating to you. Trust me: I’m entirely too connected to my phone and every instant messaging app out there.

But this is where accepting someone for who they are comes into play. Compromise and acceptance are part of every relationship, and that includes accepting things about them that you might wish were different. If it’s something you can live with, then you do far better to adjust your expectations so that you don’t get disappointed or upset by them. If you know she’s not a texter, then fold that into your mental idea of who she is and figure you’ll do more of your daily conversation in person. There are times when it’s better to make adjustments – such as anticipating her chronic tardiness in your date planning – rather than to rage against it to no avail.

It can often help if you can at least work towards getting some understanding of why this is a thing for her. You could say “Hey, why do you prefer that we take pictures with your phone, instead of letting me take some?” She may, for example, have had issues with boyfriends taking photos of her that she wasn’t aware of or had no control over – if an ex sent more private or racier pics of her to his buds, for example. Or it may just be a “I like knowing I have all the pictures of us, organized just so” kind of situation. She’s the only one who knows what’s up, so she’d be the person to ask.

Now that doesn’t mean that you need to compromise about everything. Some things may be too much for you in and of themselves, or may be the emotional equivalent of a stone in your shoe; it’s not bad now but it’s going to drive you batshit as time goes on. If that’s the case, you can and should talk it out… but you have to recognize that some things may not change. In those cases, you have to decide whether or not that is an area where you can find acceptance or if it’s something you know you can’t abide. In those cases… well, that’s where you will likely have reached the natural end of this relationship.

That sucks, I realize. And it may seem like a stupid reason to end the relationship now, when things are annoying but the highs are incredibly high and the sex is great. But when that NRE starts to fade and you’re no longer fuckdrunk, those issues will still be there, without the benefit of all the afterglow to blunt them. And that’s when you’ll have to confront whether this is a hard limit for you.

Everyone is entitled to their boundaries and their hard limits; people may have opinions about those boundaries and limits, but they don’t get a say in them. Your girlfriend prefers that you do all the heavy lifting when it comes to things like date planning and wants you to be taking a more traditionally masculine role in the relationship. If that’s something you’re ok with, that’s one thing. But it isn’t, that’s going to be a problem in your relationship going forward. This will be part of the price of entry for a relationship with her. If that’s not something you are willing to pay, then it’s better to end things than to try to force yourself to stay past the natural lifespan of the relationship. When people do this, the love, affection and respect they had for one another starts to curdle and turn bitter; it runs the risk of taking what would have been a successful relationship and turning it into something you ultimately regret or resent having been involved in.

But now let’s go to the “making jokes about breaking up” and her getting squirrely when you say that you want to slow things down. For the former… if I were to guess, I’d say it’s an anxiety joke; it’s something she worries about and so she makes jokes as a form of magical thinking. Say it enough times and that future will never come to pass, that sort of thing. But it also comes across as “anticipating the inevitability of our break up” and that can be as much prophecy and prophylactic. This is an area where I think you should explain not just that you don’t like it but why; that it sounds like she’s already expecting the break up and is just counting down the hours until it happens. That makes you feel like she doesn’t want to be in this relationship or that she’s waiting for the end, rather than enjoying what you have now and it upsets you. Let her know how those “jokey jokes” make you feel and why you can’t just brush them off.

On the other hand, there’s the issue of her getting weird when you suggested slowing things down and not making an official announcement of engagement next month. That, I think, is going to need a serious discussion and possibly a willingness to put your foot down on the matter.

Obviously I agree: you shouldn’t be getting officially engaged this early on. Quite frankly, I don’t think you should be getting engaged until you’re a couple years in, but that’s just me. But the way she reacted strikes me as being kind of extreme and I wonder if this is a point of anxiety for her. Cultural issues regarding her age and marriage may be playing into it, especially if she has strong feelings about traditional gender roles. Staring down the barrel at 30 may be sandpapering her nerves a bit, especially if there’s a lot of cultural baggage about being a spinster or “old maid”. But if I’m being honest, some of the ways she behaves make me think she’s had a couple rough break ups or feels insecure in relationships.

Your saying “hey, let’s slow our roll here” may have felt to her like you were saying “actually, I’m not sure I want to be in this relationship with you”, rather than saying “I think it’s way too early to be planning for that.” This is another area where I think it’ll be important to talk things through and give each other the space to explain what you’re both feeling and why. Listen to what she has to say, holding any objections, interjections or questions until she’s done, then explain how you’re feeling. I think you would do best to say “I care about you, I love this relationship and I don’t want it to end. But we’ve also only been together for a short time and I feel like we should give ourselves more time to relax into this and let the relationship grow before we start taking such large and serious steps like getting engaged. I would feel a lot more comfortable if we gave this room to breathe, instead of rushing through towards marriage.”

Now, how she responds is going to be the important part. If she can’t (or won’t) understand or respect your feelings or lays down an ultimatum that it’s engagement or it’s over… well, my vote is to end things. It’s not the ultimatum that would be the problem; it’s the unwillingness to listen or respect how you feel, especially about something that makes you uncomfortable. That lack of consideration and respect is rarely confined to one aspect of the relationship. It almost always bleeds into everything else. And if someone isn’t willing or able to listen to you or respect your feelings, then that’s someone you don’t want to be in a relationship with.

But for now? What I would strongly recommend is that both of you take a moment, take a breath and just slow things down. Three months into a relationship is a time when you should both be coasting along, enjoying the golden times in the beginning when it’s all effortless as you both get to know each other. Giving yourselves a little time to just be in the moment and enjoy the now goes a long way towards a successful, satisfying and happy relationship.

Good luck.

Hi there I will try to keep this as brief as I can. There’s a quite cute blonde lass who works at a McDonald’s in Stirling, Scotland that I frequent and since she caught my eye, I said to her that I think that she’s attractive and asked if she’s single. She didn’t take it well and said no but looked at her colleague and walked away and I didn’t take it any further.

I am now paranoid because of the new hate crime law here in Scotland that all it takes is a lady who didn’t like what I said to report me and that’s me with a record and my life ruined so what should I do moving forward with anyone else that catches my eye?

Unsmooth Criminal

Alright my guy. First and foremost: calm down. While yes, Dr. NerdLove is no more a lawyer than he is a doctor, I feel pretty safe in saying that you aren’t in any danger. This is just anxiety screaming at you, not an actual threat to your life, liberty and clean criminal record. Believe me, if being a little awkward was all it took to get banged up by the law, a solid 2/3rds of the country would be in jail.

And that’s all this was. You were a little awkward, a little cringe and she walked away. I think we can all agree that the teeth-gritting-well-that’s-going-to-haunt-me-at-3-AM-years-from-now is going to be penance enough for this minor transgression.

More importantly, is that this is a learning experience for you. And the first lesson is: don’t hit on service industry workers while they’re on the job. Under the best of circumstances, it’s rude and they’re restricted in how to handle these sorts of situations. At worst, there’s the fact that a lot of women in service positions – bartender, cashier, stock clerk, waitress, etc.- deal with being harassed by customers and often find that management won’t have their backs. So they’re put in the painful position of either putting up with it or risking losing their jobs for somebody else’s bullshit.

(To be clear: I am not saying you harassed her.)

If someone’s on the clock, that’s not time to be hitting on them. If they’re interested, then they can make the first move. Otherwise you do best to keep things polite and professional.

Now to avoid similar situations in the future, you want to pay attention to the following things:

• Social context
• Desire to be left alone
• Professional politeness vs. genuine interest
• How much freedom the person has to react or respond

Social context is a big one. We’re social animals and we have rules – frequently unspoken and unwritten but still extant – that help guide us to make society flow more smoothly and effectively. Many of those rules are about the sort of behavior that’s both expected and accepted in different aspects of life. You don’t, for example, behave in church the way you would at a rowdy night club, nor would you behave in court like you would at a football match.

Social context applies to pretty much all areas of life and helps provide insight as to what would be appropriate or not at any particular occasion. In bars or clubs, for example, it’s generally accepted that the reason why people go to them is to socialize. While not everyone who goes to the club is there to hook up or find a date, the general expectation is that this is a place where talking to strangers, flirting, dancing and hooking up are acceptable. So it’s entirely reasonable to approach a stranger and flirt with them; it’s within the bounds of acceptable behavior.

That’s not the case at, say, McDonalds. As a general rule, fast food restaurants aren’t places where people go expecting to meet dates. The context is pretty simple: employees are there to work, customers are there to eat. Employees in particular have pretty stringent rules on how their time is spent, and none of those rules allow for things like “flirting with the customers”. So, even if she were interested in you, that’s not the time nor the place.

It’s important to consider whether or not the average person would consider whether the social context of a situation would say that it’s appropriate to hit on someone. Yeah, you might be cool if a stranger came up and started rubbing up on you while you were at Sainsbury’s, but most people wouldn’t.

By the same token, you also want to consider how much a person would want to be hit on, or if they’d prefer to be left alone. Someone, say, sitting at the bus stop with their head down and headphones on, is making it clear that they’re not interested in talking to people; they’re giving off near-universal “Do Not Disturb” signals. If you push past that – wave your hands in their face to get their attention, try to get them to take their headphones off, etc. – and they’re not actively on fire? You’re being rude and telling them that you consider your desire to talk to them more important than their desire to be left alone. The people who are most interested in talking to strangers will let you know; they tend to be the ones who are more engaged with the people around them, making sustained eye contact and smiling, even starting conversations themselves.

Another thing to consider – especially for people who are on the job – is whether they are flirting or if they’re being professionally polite. A lot of guys tend to assume that professional politeness – the “always smiling and upbeat” vibe that customer service reps are forced into – is actually interest. Some jobs, especially ones that rely on tips, mean that service staff have financial interest in being a little flirty. Bartenders, for example, often make better tips when they flirt with their customers. That doesn’t mean that they’re actually interested in you. It’s very much like a dance, with everyone going through the steps. Done right, it’s fun for everyone and everyone goes away with something they appreciate. The customer feels a little more attractive, the server increases their take-home pay a little.

Done wrong, and you get someone who has to smile through gritted teeth at someone who’s making them increasingly unhappy.

Finally, there’s also the fact that there are times when someone may not want to interact with you but can’t get away or respond in the way they would prefer. The cashier at McDonalds can’t say “knock it off” without risking getting fired. Someone sitting next to you on the Tube is stuck until the next stop. In those cases, they’re in a position where they’re effectively trapped and have to hope that things aren’t going to escalate before they can get away. Even under the best of circumstances, when someone who has only the best of intentions still doesn’t seem to get that they don’t want to talk, it’s a deeply uncomfortable experience and not one that’s going to lend itself to actually getting a date.

I also want to point out that just because someone caught your eye doesn’t mean that you have to go hit on them. Trust me, there are millions of fine-looking women out there; you don’t have to go flirt on every single one you see.

Now look: you sound very young and inexperienced. I think one of the best things you can do for yourself until you gain more experience and improve your social calibration is to contain your flirting and attempts to pick people up to places where flirting is both expected and accepted as normal behavior. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friendly, can’t make small talk or generally get to know people. As you get to know them, what is or isn’t in bounds expands, and it becomes much more natural and acceptable to say “hey, I’m really enjoying talking to you; is it ok if I add you on WhatsApp/ give you my number?”

But if you’re going to be interested in asking a stranger for a date, keep it to those social spaces until you get better at reading the room.

Oh, also: in my experience, it’s better to ask someone on a date than to ask if they’re single. If they’re not available, they’ll tell you.

Good luck.