This week in Savage Love: Quickies

I was dumped in August by a guy I was seeing for ten months. He told me that he wants to work on himself and “needs to be selfish” right now. Since then, we have spoken every day, shared numerous dinners, and gone on hikes. Our friendship is killing me. With him I hold it together. Away from him I cry all the time. I’ve started seeing a therapist and I’m on medication. I’m trying to be mature about the breakup and match his level of “coolness” but it’s destroying me. My friends tell me that I should stay away from him, allow some time to pass, and reassess. But the thought of losing him is almost as bad as the thought of keeping him in my life.
Simply Heartbroken And Talking To Ex Really Extending Depression

P.S. I should also mention that I ended a ten-year relationship for the opportunity to date him.

“Hey, Dan, what I’m doing is making me miserable—should I stop?”

Yes, SHATTERED, you should stop. Your friends are giving you excellent advice: Stay away from this guy for at least a year—don’t talk on the phone (with him), don’t share meals (with him), don’t go on hikes (with him)—and then see how you feel after you’ve talked, shared meals, and gone on hikes with other people. It’s always nice when exes are friends, MTP, but it’s not an easy pivot, and it can’t be executed instantly. And transition to friendship is always much harder for the person who was dumped—because of course it is—and it’s even harder when a selfish dumper accepts or demands the kind of attention and emotional support from the dumpee that the dumper is no longer entitled to.

P.S. If you ended a 10-year relationship to date someone—if you ended it for a romantic prospect, not a romantic certainty (and there’s no such thing as a romantic certainty)—then that 10-year relationship needed to end. If your ex-boyfriend implored you to end that 10-year relationship and 10 months later dumped you to “work on himself” and then did everything in his power to keep you all to himself even after dumping you, then that “friendship” needs to end too. At least for the time being.

You had this woman over to yours, NTG, and she viewed the premises without incident. Okay, so you didn’t rape or kill her when she dropped in and that speaks well the absolute bare fucking minimum of your character. But it doesn’t obligate her to keep seeing you. If you can prove you’re not John Smith, High School Principal Assaulter, and she doesn’t care, NTG, then there’s some other reason she doesn’t want to see you again. (Was there a MAGA hat on the premises?) But whatever her real reason is/real reasons are, you’ve been given a “no.” And like everyone else, NTG, you have to take “no” for an answer even when it feels unfair or arbitrary.

Bail.

There’s nothing stopping you from asking—asking directly—for a little clarity: “Hang out? I’d love to! But do you mean ‘hang out’ as in ‘spend time together as friends’ or ‘hang out’ as in ‘Let’s go on a date’? I ask because I’ve wound up on a couple of dates that I didn’t know were dates and it was awkward.” As for why this is happening… well, either the poly people in your social circle assume—incorrectly—that all queer people are poly or you’re much more attractive than you’re giving yourself credit for, NOTPOLY, or some combo of both.

Only a small percentage of the people you meet will notice your nipples, TITS, and the thought processes for 99.9% of the people who do will go something like this: “Big nips. Eh, whatever”; the noticers will immediately file this useless-to-them information about your tits away and never give it/them another thought. (Unless you’re Andrew Cuomo.) I think you’re self-conscious about your tits because you know why they’re so prominent: extensive and, I assume, highly enjoyable BDSM play, TITS, and you worry other people—straight people, vanilla people, judgy gays—will take one look and realize you’re a kinky motherfucker. But most people won’t make that leap and the ones who do are either kinky themselves or, if not, they aren’t going to dwell on your tits or hold them against you. Stop kink-shaming yourself. You earned those tits—you suffered for them—and you should be proud of them!