You can subscribe to “Love School for Nerds,” my podcast with Jay Jackson on iTunes. This week my Essence advice column addresses a reader who wants to move from booty call status to a advice relationship. My MommyNoire column is a conversation with Sheena LaShay on healing from sexual abuse. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-656-HOPE, the national sexual assault hotline. Pass it on.

Dear Abiola and Jay,

My man and I have been together for two years and I love him to pieces! We have been through the toughest life events so early in our relationship, before we even made our relationship “official”. His brother passed away from cancer two months shy of us dating and I didn’t know how to be there for this person I barely had knew. It was a rough period but I made the decision to stick it through and stay by his side. I never lost a loved one close to me so I didn’t know the depth of what you go though when grieving a loved one and most importantly the changes.

I unfortunately never even got to know the person he was before his brother passed because it happened only almost two months after we met.

Fast forward to two years later we are together and he is still grieving and trying to cope with his loss. He has ups and downs just as anyone would in his shoes. I am there for him, have done research and prayed for God to use me anyway I can to be there for him.

Here’s the problem: When in the beginning of his loss he was all on me because I was all he felt he had. He was about me and in love with me. Now, I feel alone, unwanted and unloved. His heart is no longer full of joy. It left with his brother. He’s not affectionate and he completely shuts me out.

What am I to do? I don’t want attention from other men or love from other men, I want his. But I’m starting to like hearing compliments and getting attention from the only ones that’s giving it to me which is everyone but him. And that spells
T R O U B L E…

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