The Dating Nerd is a shadowy figure whose whereabouts and identifying details remain unknown. What we do know is that he is really, really good at dating. He’s been on more dates than you can shake a lengthy bar tab at, and he’s here to help the average guy step his dating game up a notch – or several.
The Question
Hi Dating Nerd,
So I’ve been dating this girl for some months now. Generally things are nice. However the other night she did a thing that sort of upset me. We were at a club with several other people we knew, and I visited the bathroom, so when I returned, she was dancing with another guy I understand. Nothing super inappropriate, however they were definitely close. I saw this happen on the available room. When I approached them, she returned to dancing with me and acted like nothing happened. I believe like this is inappropriate Personally, but I’ve no basic idea for several. Is this okay? And what should i do?
– Dancing Danny
The Answer
Hi Dancing Danny,
Nope. Dancing with another man once you went to the toilet isn’t OK. Now, I don’t mean it’s “not OK” in the manner that I’d say cheating is “not OK.” Or murdering somebody is “not OK.” That is only a minor infraction – so minor that, for a lot of, it could not register. Nonetheless it can be an infraction – it made you are feeling strange. And bad. If if hadn’t, you wouldn’t be emailing me about any of it.
Not everyone would trust me. Actually, I’m anticipating that some individuals scanning this might call me petty, or insecure, regressive, or patriarchal, or paranoid, for saying that you ought to be worried about your girlfriend dancing with another dude, especially given that they weren’t, so far as I can tell, straight-up bumping and grinding. These people might point out that, a complete large amount of the time, people of the contrary sex dance with one another innocently.
That is absolutely, 100% true. Be it a freaking square-dance in Idaho. Or be it at a wedding, and the groom does a cute waltz together with his grandmother. Or in whatever magical culture that’s not as fraught with sexual permissiveness as ours is. But we’re in the usa, land of hook-ups and awkwardness. We’re in a culture where asking somebody out could easily get you branded as creepy, but where some individuals hand out oral sex like lollipops. The boundaries listed below are complicated and thin, and everything is meaningful. Dancing, inside our society, at a club, is charged. And anyone who doesn’t know this can discover it within 10 minutes of setting foot in whatever club suits the young and horny within their locale.
As well as your girlfriend dancing with another man is in fact interesting, because it’s sort of quasi-innocent, once you learn why. Like, she didn’t offer him a blowjob, or confess her secret feelings. She didn’t cross any major boundaries. But she did sort of smudge the boundaries just a little. She did put something out there. A little bit of sexual energy, or just the promise of physical contact. That’s not nothing. It’s barely something, but, again, it is something. It’s in the same category as her getting a friendly text from a male friend you haven’t found out about at 1 a.m. a Saturday on. The text could say “sup, how are you currently.” Nothing bad has happened particularly. The guy hasn’t asked if she’d prefer to visit his villa in Spain, or anything. But, 1 a.m. a Saturday on, right? It is a charged time. It’s when booty calls are created. So it’s type of adjacent to a lot of unwholesome behavior.
Unless your girlfriend whatsoever does not have any social skills, she knows where conventional boundaries remain these things, and she knows that she’s rubbing against them. That may lead us to a genuine amount of different conclusions. Maybe this means that she likes male attention a far more than she likes being truly a strict little, old-fashioned monogamist. Or maybe this means that she really wants to screw with you a bit – to check your boundaries, to observe how you’ll react, to see what she will get with away. Either real way, not great.
It’s unfortunate but there certainly are a lot of individuals who love having power in relationships, who love testing you. And, despite what Red Pill types may let you know, it’s a thing that happens over the gender spectrum – straight men, gay women, the non-binary, whoever. Manipulative people do exist, and they are usually very good-looking and charming. This is one way they get with being cruel away. Just like the dude who constantly leaves nice comments on the selfies of single women he knows, while assuring his girlfriend he doesn’t mean anything because of it, making her feel just like a crazy person thus. That kind of person.
I’ve been pretty close to this. For a horrific few months, I dated Daniela, who was hot, charismatic, smart, and insane. The insanity took the form of these endless double standards around contact with the opposite sex. If I so much viewed an other woman, or had a great conversation with, say, an the attractive barista at our restaurant, she would panic. But she was constantly looking into other dudes, and getting together with her ex-boyfriends, and, essentially, breaking most of her own rules.
Everything she did was just a little power grab just. When I give up smoking, she bought cigarettes before me, even though she was a social smoker just. She’d nonchalantly tell me about how precisely she just talked with her ex-fiancГ©, and that his career brilliantly was going, during some working job troubles I had. And, yes, if we went dancing, she’d occasionally dance with other men. She always wanted to let me recognize that I was on thin ice, that my behavior was constrained, while she could act with impunity. When I objected to the, she freaked out. The partnership only kept going because she actually was effective in suppressing my self-esteem, that has been a lot more fragile in those full days.
Anyways. Back. There is absolutely no one action I recommend here. Dumping someone given that they danced with another man is extreme. Hell, starting a fight about it is extreme even. But go on it up with her. Observe she reacts. If she’s defensive about it, or she mocks you when thinking about taking offense, that is a really bad sign then. You’re permitted to feel uncomfortable with her dancing with other men precisely how she dances with you. Those feelings are valid, so when you express them within an easy, non-accusatory way, she should listen and become understanding.
Not talking about it may be easier. You can steer clear of the chance for a heated argument. It is possible to avoid all of the nastiness that bubbles up when one individual says to some other, “You did a thing that hurt me.” But in the event that you let this slide, and think nothing of it, it could not be an isolated incident. Bad relationships don’t usually form instantly – they’re the consequence of slowly worsening patterns of behavior. She may not be attempting to hurt you, but if she does and you also don’t tell her about any of it, how can she know how you feel?
In sum, don’t do anything rash at the moment. But be careful available. If your girlfriend keeps indicating that she’s not at all considering respecting your feelings, it is advisable to believe her.