Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

Dear Doctor, I am having a weird issue that I don’t understand and I am writing to you to ask for clarity. I simply don’t understand my own mind and why I do some of the things I do.

I’ve noticed a routine that I keep falling into, and I only just fully recognized it with my most recent relationship. I (M/24) have been dating my girlfriend (F/22) for six months now, not all continuously and two of them long distance. We started LD and then she moved to my city for school, at which point we started seeing each other seriously.

My girlfriend is a good person. She’s sweet, caring, she checks in on me to see how I’m doing and she’s the sort of person who would stop by work to drop off a home made lunch when she’s got the time. She’s good looking and she’d be a catch for almost anyone. But for whatever reason, I’m not feeling things with her. I’m not as attracted to her as I think I should be if I want to be with someone seriously and if Im honest, when we hang out I find myself feeling bored and sometimes annoyed when she wants to talk.

The obvious answer is to break up with her and that’s what I did. She was hurt, obviously, and I didn’t feel good about it but it seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances. But within a month of having ended things with her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her and having serious regrets. I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about her, I was too depressed to eat, and I couldn’t stop thinking that I had made a huge mistake. She had blocked me after we broke up so eventually I found her on campus and begged for another chance. I told her I’d been an idiot and I didn’t know what I had and she eventually forgave me and gave me another chance. It was the only thing I wanted.

But now we’ve been back together for another two months I’m right back to not feeling things for her and being bored when we’re together. The sex is ok but not great, and I know my attitude is starting to come through with her.

What I don’t understand is that this has happened to me with all the girls I’ve dated. We start dating, I get fed up, we break up and then all I want is to get them back. Then we get back together and I’m back where I was before and we break up again and that time they cut me out completely, won’t even talk to me if I come see them in person.

Why am I like this? I don’t understand at all how I can be this bored with someone until I end things with them. What is wrong with me? How do I stop doing this to myself and to other people?

Just When I Thought I Was Out

I don’t think you want to be in a relationship, JWITIWO, I think you don’t want to be single.

I realize that sounds like it’s the same thing, but there’s a pretty significant difference between the two. Dating and being in a relationship is (ideally) about wanting to be with that person, specifically. You like who you are with that person, your lives intertwine nicely, you enjoy spending time with them and like having their presence in your life. They bring joy, companionship, support and contentment to your life and you do the same for them. They are a complement to your life, something that makes it better because they’re there with you.

What you seem to want is less about the person and far more about simply not giving up what you have. It’s less that you want her in your life because she’s her and more that you don’t like losing what you have… even if you don’t necessarily care about it while you have it.

Some of this is loss aversion – where people fear giving up what they already have and prioritize holding onto things because the alternative is too scary or intimidating. People will, for example, stay at a job they don’t care for or hold onto friendships that aren’t good for them (or may be dying on their own), because they’re afraid to find something better. The search for a new, better job may feel too daunting, the friendship has been part of their life for so long that it feels like being without it would be too weird or like they simply aren’t allowed to let it go because they’ve had it for so long. There’s often a worry about how they might replace the thing that they would lose… but often the issue is ultimately just how it feels to lose something and how that often hits harder than the joy of finding something new.

In a lot of ways, it’s a drive to stick with the status quo, even if that status quo isn’t fulfilling or possibly even harmful… but it’s still what you know. There’s a comfort to the known, even if it’s not good for you; the unknown is full of possibilities and that’s incredibly intimidating. Sure, things could be better… but they could also be worse. Better to stick with the devil you know.

But another part, for you specifically, is that I think you’re more interested in having A Girlfriend than having a girlfriend. That is: you’re less interested in your girlfriend now as a person than you are of filling the hole in your life marked “Girlfriend”. And I suspect a big part of this is that you honestly don’t think that you could do better or even deserve better.

The clue here is that this is apparently a recurring pattern for you: you get with someone and quickly realize that you’re not that into them. It’d be one thing if this were a case of you needing variety or novelty – some folks just aren’t wired for long-term commitment and would do better with a series of short-term relationships, instead of trying to force themselves into a relationship style that doesn’t fit. But if your current situation is the same as your previous relationships, you’re not even making it out of the New Relationship Energy phase, when normally your brain would be flooding you with dopamine and oxytocin just for being with her. Strictly speaking, you were really only with her in person for two months before you pulled the trigger the first time; that’s incredibly early for the NRE to start dropping off. That suggests to me that, while she’s a great person and partner… you’re with her because she was available and said “yes”, not because you wanted to be with her, specifically.

The fact that you start freaking out when she’s gone and wanting her back is something of a tell, but the bigger tell is that, once you do have her back, you’re right back where you were before. The reasons why you broke up in the first place – and why you shouldn’t have gotten back together – are still in play, and you’re basically picking up where you left off… which is to say, with your dissatisfaction.

This is why you’re asking the wrong question. It’s not about what’s wrong with you, because this would imply that there’s a fault or flaw here in you. This isn’t about some bug in your operating system, it’s a decision that you’re choosing to make: you’re pursuing and dating people who you’re not attracted to. The question you should be asking is “Why?” Why are you consistently trying to date people who don’t actually do it for you. Why are you prioritizing relationships with people that you don’t seem to like – certainly not enough to want to have a relationship with. If your current… complication, let’s say… is representative of your past exes and in line with the sorts of people you tend to go for, then I think it’s important to ask why you keep making these decisions. The issue isn’t the quality of the person – you describe her in positive ways – so much as what’s going on with you.

I suspect that the chief quality that draws you to them is that they are, for lack of a better term, attainable. Not that they’re unattractive or that they don’t have other, better options, but that they are… not a challenge to you. They don’t represent a need to invest in them or to put in effort to get to know them or connect with them. They’re people who are unlikely to reject you but also whose rejection doesn’t threaten you or your pride… at least until you contemplate their loss, at which point they become immensely important. Not because of who they are, but because you’re trying to avoid losing, full stop.

So, rather than trying to focus on why you keep falling into this pattern, I think you should start looking at why you keep choosing to pursue and date people you don’t actually like. Is it an issue with your sense of self-worth? Is it a fear of making yourself vulnerable to someone who actually has the power to hurt you? Do you feel like you don’t deserve to date someone who you’re attracted to, or have you given up on trying and so you set your sights lower? Or is it that you’re so focused on having A Relationship with someone labeled My Girlfriend that you prioritize filling the hole as quickly as possible with as little effort as you can manage?

As for the woman you’re currently in this hot/cold relationship with: break up with her, accept the fact that you’re going to be The Asshole here and white-knuckle your way through the impulse to try to get her back again. Keeping her on like this is cruel; she believes that you’re trying to date her in good faith, when the truth is that she’s a place-holder at best. She is trying to make a relationship work with you, while you’re just trying to have A “Relationship”. By keeping her in this limbo, you’re keeping her from finding a relationship with someone who genuinely wants to be with her, and just making both of you miserable in the process. It would be far kinder of you to just be the bad guy and dump her, so she can be free to find someone who is looking for her.

Meanwhile, you need to do some soul-searching and asking yourself why you keep making the same decisions. The sooner you can understand what it is that you’re avoiding – or the real hole that you’re trying to fill – the sooner you can stop playing games with people’s hearts and find an actual partner… not just a temporary place-holder.  

Good luck.

Hey man, how do I know when someone has changed their mind about how they feel about me?

So I met this girl at my gym who’s a class above me at uni. She’s  athletic, sexy, funny and totally my type, so I went out of my way to get to know her. We talked a lot, texted all the times, she sent funny pics and links to me and I thought things were going great, so I asked her out, like you do, and she said ‘no’ and told me that she wasn’t interested in dating. I tried to be cool but things got awkward between us and so she got distant. I didn’t go no contact or anything but I definitely stopped trying to reach out because things felt like they were getting weird and awkward between us.

Then after a couple months, she texts me out of the blue to ask how things are going and then later said “hi” to me when we were at the gym again and we start talking again and she’s asking questions about how my aunt’s doing (she had been getting sick when we were talking before) and asking my opinion about stuff like what movies I’d been seeing. We talked a little about working out together some time and she even brought me this protein bar she thought I would like.

I’m still interested in her and it seems like maybe she’s changed her mind about me. Am I being an idiot if I ask her out again? It seems like maybe she’s decided she likes me after all and I’d hate to miss out on this if I’ve got a shot.  

Second Time Lucky

I think you’re misreading things, STL, and I think it’s coming from a place of motivated reasoning. You’re taking her behavior as a sign of romantic interest, when the reality is far more likely that it’s a sign of friendship.

You don’t go into why she wasn’t interested in dating, and it’s possible that she didn’t. She might not be interested in men. She might be asexual or aromantic. She might be in a place where she doesn’t feel like she has the time or energy to give to dating or having a committed relationship. You might not be her type, or you just may not have whatever x-factor she needs to be attracted to someone. Hell, she may find you attractive but doesn’t want to act on it, for reasons of her own.

The behavior you describe after you two reconnected doesn’t seem materially different from how things were before you had your temporary estrangement, which is as strong a sign as you’re likely to want that she feels the same as she did before. You were reading interest into it before, and you’re reading interest into it now; you were wrong before, and I suspect you’re wrong now, too. It seems far more likely that this is her trying to reconnect with a friend, not someone who changed her mind and is now interested in dating when she hadn’t been before.

The only person who knows for sure is her, and while she may not be telling, her behavior isn’t saying that she’s decided she’s ready to date. Your best decision right now is to take her at her word and to assume that this hasn’t actually changed.

It’s much more likely that she wanted to wait for things to get less awkward before trying to resume the friendship. Since you pulled back and weren’t making the effort to reach out, I suspect that she got to the point where she sent out a test balloon to see how you were feeling about things. She got a positive response back and look, you’re back to where you were before you asked her out. Seeing as everything else is the more or less the same, it makes the most sense that her feelings are the same: she’s interested in being friends and that’s all.

That’s not a bad thing, and if anything, this represents a learning opportunity for you: learning to recognize the difference between friendly and friend-seeking behavior and romantic interest. While there’re certainly people who have a hard time expressing themselves, don’t feel comfortable flirting or otherwise struggle with showing someone that they like them in ways that go beyond platonic, it doesn’t seem like she has any problem saying what she is or isn’t open to. She’s not interested in dating, and so her behavior should be read as non-romantic and non-sexual. She clearly enjoys your company and wants to spend time with you; why not let that be enough? Let this relationship be what it’s going to be, and look for someone who is looking to date instead. You’ll both be happier in the long run… especially if you both have a friend to confide in when you meet that special someone in the future.

Good luck.