Ask the Singlescoach®
Want to raise your dating game? Need to solve a relationship dilemma? Ask the Singlescoach®! Post your confidential question here. By submitting your question, you agree to have your question and answer published by Nina Atwood and/or Singlescoach® both on this site and elsewhere. All published questions become the copyrighted property of Nina Atwood Enterprises. Only select questions will be answered. If yours is chosen, you’ll receive an email from Singlescoach® letting you know when it will be posted. To protect your identity, only your first name or a pseudonym will be used if your question is posted.
Dear Nina: I truly feel I’m addicted to my wife. We have been separated for 3 years and we have 3 children together that I have full custody of (yes I’m a male). She lives with another man, and still sees me and a third guy who is the reason we split up in the first place. I keep telling myself that I’m through, I’m done, yet find myself right back in the same situation a few days later. It’s a vicious cycle. I’m literally on the verge of complete insanity. I love her and I want our family back together. She claims she wants the same yet she continues to hang out with this younger guy AND still lives with the other guy who I honestly don’t think has a clue about what she is doing. We’ve been together for 15 yrs, separated for 3 of them. I really just don’t know how or what to do anymore. Please help me. – Dave, age 39 Dear Dave: You are definitely in the throes of love addiction, defined as the inability to get basic relationship needs met, yet [...]
Continue Reading November 30th, 2012
Dear Nina: I just read Internet Dating for the Savvy Single – AWESOME. Packed with common sense dating advice. I am trying to get back to dating but I am having trouble getting over my last relationship. We met on a dating site and instantly clicked – rare. We had an eight month relationship which was fantastic. I got a STD test and found out I have HSV-1. Asymptomatic – I have NEVER in my life had a cold sore so I was shocked by the results. Needless to say my girlfriend told me that the HSV-1 was a deal-breaker. I offered to take suppression meds - Valtrex - so it would minimize her risk. She wouldn’t do it and broke it off. This one is taking me longer than usual to get over due to the fact that there was nothing really wrong with the relationship. Any suggestions on how to overcome this, or just let time do its thing. – Mitchell Dear Mitchell: I have known TONS of people over the years with the herpes virus, [...]
Continue Reading September 9th, 2012
Dear Nina: I am a 40-something male who has never married or been in a committed relationship. When I ask why all my friends married and I didn’t, all I can think of is that in some sense, I never learned how to pursue a woman. I’m used to being a loner. The desire is there to have a soulmate, but I’m not in the situations to meet attractive, available people and I fear I didn’t learn the skills or get the experiences I should have gotten 20+ years earlier. But I’m turned off by overly aggressive women who come on way too fast as well. But being in any situation where I’m having to lead others, especially women, feels awkward like having to use my left hand in everything. Any thoughts? – Randall Dear Randall: I’ve heard similar stories from other men, so you are not alone. You are in a catch-22: you’re inexperienced in the art of pursuit, but uncomfortable with women who might pursue you, so a relationship is unlikely to occur [...]
Continue Reading July 8th, 2012
Dear Nina: I listen to your podcasts and I have read and refer back to Temptations of the Single Girl quite a bit! I became acquainted with a man at my new gym. He happened to be an employee there, selected to evaluate me for a personal fitness consultation. However instead of asking me questions pertaining to my health and fitness I was being interrogated with questions about my relationship status, my career/life choices, and travels. Felt like a date. Long story short I could feel an instant attraction and I could feel it was mutual. Upon returning for another personal training session a few days later I could still feel the sparks flying. In a situation like this, is it safe to say he should make a move to set up a date if he’s interested? Personally I prefer men make the first move, although the alpha female in me wants to take things into her own hands. But I feel like I miss out on opportunities in doing so. What do you think? Am I [...]
Continue Reading June 7th, 2012
Dear Nina: My wife and I have been married for 12 years and have two children – a 9-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl. We have a difficult, unhappy marriage. There’s no outward fighting or drama, and our young children may not know there’s a problem. But my wife and I rarely have meaningful talks or display affection. We’ve become essentially roommates. We would like to divorce but are worried about the impact on our young kids. Our marriage isn’t completely intolerable. So should we stay together for the kids’ benefit? Or should we consider our own (selfish?) desires and divorce? –Martin O., age 39 Dear Martin: First, you are correct to be concerned about your children. There is no question that they will be affected by a divorce. Research shows that children of intact families fare better than children of divorce. They perform better in school, they tend to be physically and emotionally healthier, they are less likely to get involved in drug or alcohol abuse, they are more likely to go to college, and [...]
Continue Reading April 29th, 2012
Dear Nina: I am in a relationship with a 48-year old man and we are together to determine if this could possibly be long-term. I would like it to be but I feel he’s stalling. I say this because we have been off and on-again for over 6-8 years. It always seems that at the third month of us getting back together and I ask “where is this going”, we break up–again!! Presently, we are together and trying to see if we work but I feel we both have some issues with trust. I have changed the way I ask questions and I feel he’s opened up more but we both seem to guard our hearts. We had similar ex-spouse problems and have fun together but I’m not sure if we will ever be long-term and if not by the end of this year, I feel the need to end it and move forward without him. When he goes out-of-town, he will give me a quick call and then nothing in-between until he’s headed back [...]
Continue Reading March 4th, 2012
Dear Nina: I recently started dating a new guy who I met online – we are both in our early thirties. We went out on dates for about a month. Then, we had a couple of dates at our homes and on about our tenth date we had sex; there was alcohol involved. Up until then he was really pursuing me, but now he has backed off. We had no date this past weekend and none planned. I’m afraid that I opened up too much and told him I really liked him, and that being in a relationship is scary to me. I’m frustrated because I feel like somehow I screwed things up . . . again. I want to be open with him, but I’m afraid that things went too fast in a short amount of time and now he’s pulling away. I am also worried that I should have waited longer for sex and now he’s lost interest. I feel like I’ve been repeating this pattern. I was previously married, and all I want [...]
Continue Reading February 19th, 2012
Dear Nina: Should I be tolerant when it comes to a girlfriend hanging out with ex lovers? They are not people she dated, but people she has slept with. Recently, she blew me off for a “friend” coming into town, and I found out the “friend” was someone she had a threesome with, and the friend was spending the night at her apartment. She was not upfront or honest about it. She had other recent ex- lovers she wanted to hang out with, too. I broke it off, because I’m not cool with it. I said she should give these people up if she wants to be with me or at least make the effort to explain why I should be comfortable with it. Did I do the right thing? – Adam Dear Adam: There are major red flags all over this “relationship.” No, it’s not okay to have threesomes, and it’s not okay to have someone you once had a threesome with spend the night with you and blow off your boyfriend. It’s not okay, that [...]
Continue Reading February 15th, 2012
Hi Nina: I am attracted to emotionally unavailable men. However I am also emotionally unavailable; I always look for an escape clause. I watched my parents, who loved each other, have a miserable marriage for over 30 yrs (they divorced when I was 26). I swore that if I cared for someone & he or I wasn’t happy I would be strong enough to leave. I was in a relationship with a man for 6 yrs & as usual I left. I believe this was the right thing to do, for both of us. Now when I meet someone I am interested in I automatically start to push them away, even before there is a chance to know if they are interested. I am very independent & have been told by my mother & others that I am too independent. My mother even went so far as to say that no man would ever want me because I would make him feel emasculated. So instead of waiting to find out if someone is interested in me [...]
Continue Reading January 4th, 2012
When a single dad is dating, how long should he wait before meeting the woman’s children and vice versa? And how should the father describe the relationship with the woman before the kids meet her? It depends. The timing varies depending on the age of the children and the circumstances of the Dad’s single life. Most children fantasize that their divorced parents will reunite. Meeting someone new crushes that hope, and that can be difficult for them. There are no hard and fast rules about the timing of introducing someone new to your children. What’s important is to consider all the circumstances and make your best judgment call. The first consideration is when to begin dating following a divorce with children. Ideally, you invest in healing the relationship with your Ex first; i.e., restoring good communication, making sure that you don’t do anything offensive or inflammatory such as bad-mouthing your Ex, doing some family counseling if needed. The goal is to align on being co-parenting partners going forward. This protects your children and greatly eliminates the [...]
Continue Reading December 16th, 2011
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