Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 30 year old male, living on my own and mostly independent. I’m also in college after 8 years, continuing my education. When it comes to public things or social situations, I tend to get overwhelmed after a while and just stand around hoping someone picks me out of the crowd. I’ve been on some dates throughout my life and was in a brief relationship, I also quit pornography last month which was challenging. But sometimes I don’t even know what the hell “just be yourself” means and it seems so vague coming from someone who has a bit of social anxiety.

How can one “just be themselves” if they’re afraid of rejection or introverted? So 90% of the time I’m just waiting around for serendipity or something out of the blue to happen. And I also have these thoughts of becoming Jeffrey Dahmer if nothing happens in 5 years from now.

Holding Up The Wall

DEAR HOLDING UP THE WALL: OK, we’re going to tackle these in no particular order, HUW, starting with “Just Be Yourself”.

Just being yourself is just that: you want to be yourself, not to try to be someone that you’re not in order to partner up with somebody. We as a species are very bad at lying and pretending; the dissonance between who we actually are and who we’re trying to pretend to be causes all sorts of issues. At best, it’s incredibly stressful to keep the false front up at all times. At worst… well, there’re reasons why a lot of the people I knew in the pick-up scene had mental and emotional breakdowns.

But being yourself doesn’t mean that you’re static and unchanging or that you’re stuck being someone you don’t like being. It means that you’re authentic to yourself, not that you step outside of time and never grow. “You” are a fluid concept, and that definition of “you” can grow, change and improve… but if you want to do this in a healthy manner, then it needs to be in alignment with your best self. So, getting treatment for your anxiety would not be going against the idea of “being yourself”, nor would discovering sides of you that you weren’t aware existed. Or you may discover that things that were true years ago are not true now – anything from your taste in clothes and music to the people you’re attracted to.

Similarly, discomfort is different from not “being yourself”. Something may be outside of your comfort zone, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not organic or authentic to who you are. It’s just that you haven’t given it a chance to be part of you or for you to allow your sense of self to grow to accommodate it.

Which brings us to things like waiting around for other people to notice you. Serendipity and luck are great, don’t get me wrong. But they both are far more effective when you put yourself into serendipity’s path, rather than hiding and hoping that it’ll find you.

Part of the problem of waiting around for someone else to notice you is that you’re going to be waiting for a long, long time. While making sure the walls don’t fall in and crush everyone is a noble calling, it also means that you’re not doing the things that would make serendipity more likely to happen. You’re not, for example, being approachable or sending out signals that you’re someone that people should want to talk to. Quite the opposite, in fact.

More often than not, if you’re standing at the fringes and not interacting with anyone or just staring at your phone or your shoes, then you’re giving off “do not disturb” signs. Most people are going to take that at face value; they’re going to assume that you don’t want to be bothered, rather than you’re lonely and quietly dying inside. And even the folks who might see you and take pity aren’t necessarily going to interested in committing to more than getting you involved in the party. They’re certainly not signing up to be your social sherpa and do all the heavy lifting.

If you want folks to approach you, then you have to make a point of not just being approachable, but giving them a reason to want to stick around and talk. The guy with closed off body language who’s responding to everything in one or two word answers ain’t that. Someone who is, at least, having a good time, looking around the room, making eye contact with folks and smiling is going to be more inviting. The guy who does those things and actively (and happily) engages with folks who do come over is going to do better.

But if you’re hoping that standing around is going to get the “must rescue the lonely puppy” vibe going… well, you’re dealing with a very small number of people and even fewer who won’t be expecting you to hold up your end of things too.

Which brings us to those feelings of overwhelm and anxiety – not to mention the vague “I’m going to become a serial killer and memetic cannibal” bits at the end of your letter. It sounds to me like dealing with your social anxiety should be a higher priority than worrying about being single. As I’ve said before, luck is the intersection of random chance, preparation and opportunity. You’re much more likely to get lucky when you’re putting yourself out there, because you’re putting yourself in places where opportunity is more likely to happen. If you’re not in those places and, instead, you’re either holding up the wall or keeping vigil in your apartment, then the opportunities aren’t going to happen for you. And if you’re not prepared to take full advantage of those opportunities when they crop up… well, you’re not going to reap the benefits of being lucky.

So, as I’m always saying: if you want things to be different, you’re going to have to do things differently. And one of the things I think you should be doing differently is working on getting your social anxiety under control. This may mean forms of talk therapy, medication, journaling and paying attention to your triggers or all of the above. Managing the anxiety will make it that much easier to step away from the wall and find ways to keep from being overwhelmed by all the people, which will, in turn, make it much easier to meet people who are in the mood to meet you.

Getting that under control would then mean that this new concept of “you” would be in a better position to be warmer, more engaging and better able to connect with the people around you. That, in turn, makes it much more likely that you’re going to meet new, cool people, find new friends and possibly even new partners.

But that’s going to require your deciding to make those changes and committing to the process. It’s not quick, it’s not easy and the rewards aren’t always immediate, nor are they always obvious. It can take time, and the benefits may not come in the form that you might expect. But the ways they improve your life can’t be denied.

So if you’re really worried about where you’ll be in five years, then it’s time to start now. Think of it as the kindness you’re doing to your future self; you’re setting him up to have an incredible life, full of things that you can’t imagine yourself doing as you are today.

Start taking those steps now and that version of you will arrive sooner than you can believe.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, first things first: my partner (38NB, they/them) and I (28F) both have histories of abusive relationships. Their most recent partner before they met me was physically, sexually, and emotionally violent towards them; I had gotten out of a sexually predatory and abusive relationship with a much older man. We both understand that the trauma we’ve undergone shapes us, but does not define us. We’re working through it.

My problem is that I’m scared that I was simply the first partner in a long time to show them kindness and compassion, and that because of that they’ve spent the last five and a half years in a relationship in which, on some fundamental level, they do not want to be. This is in large part because I have a lot of flaws as a partner.

We live together and have done for nearly five years, but it was a case of me moving into their flat straight from my parents’ house rather than us picking a place together. I am long-term unemployed and contribute to household expenses as much as I am able but they’re still the primary breadwinner and I feel like I am leeching off them. I have triggers relating to showers (which I would rather not go into) that make personal hygiene difficult for me. I clean and help out and cook and the like, but I’ve had to learn how over the time we’ve lived together. I have serious depression and anxiety, for which I am receiving treatment and medication, but they had to poke and prod me into getting any treatment at all. I constantly feel like I have nothing to offer but being a considerate and caring partner – something that should be the default for any relationship, though the both of us are keenly aware that it is very much not.

Both of us drink heavily, something which lockdown has made worse, but they’re getting through a litre of gin every couple of days. They’re much more outgoing than I am and not being able to see their friends has hit them very hard indeed. When they’ve been drunk on the sofa, they’ve talked about how they didn’t see themselves ending up like this. Illness took their dreams of being a dancer in the West End, and now they’re pushing forty in a provincial fishing village that makes Toshi Station look like the height of urbane cosmopolitanism. And they look so sad when they say it. And then the next day, it’s like a switch has been flipped and it’s all smiles, and when I try to bring it up they brush it aside as me being paranoid. Which, to be entirely fair, is one of the symptoms of my anxiety disorder.

I love my partner, I really have to stress that. I love them with all my heart. I’m just terrified that I’m not worth loving back as much, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I’m making my partner as happy as they make me. I struggle to tell what’s my paranoia and what’s a genuine issue that I should talk about with them. They’re a really awesome person and I just… worry that I’m nothing more than the first person to be a good partner, and that having had such an unbelievably fucking shitty partner for five years makes me look way better than I actually am.

We’ve been together, like I said, for five and a half years. I’ve been really happy. The happiest I can ever remember being. And I wonder if I’m the only one in the relationship who feels like that.

Or if it’s all in my head.

Thank you for reading,

Relevant Black Sabbath Song

DEAR RELEVANT BLACK SABBATH SONG: Well let’s get this out of the way first, RBSS: yes, your partner is settling for you. But you are also settling for them. This doesn’t mean that they’re choosing you because you’re the closest warm body that said yes, or only person they could end up in a relationship with. It means that everybody looks at their list of what they want in a partner and realizes that no one person can provide ALL the things they want. Everybody goes into a relationship saying “Ok, I’m willing to give up on X, Y or Z because what I do get from this person is worth it”. And that goes for you too; nobody gets 100% of what they want in a relationship, but they get enough that they’re happy with the exchange.

Problems only arise when somebody prioritizes “having a relationship” over “a relationship with a person I want to actually date” — they’re just trying to fill a whole marked “relationship”, rather than choosing that person specifically.

Now with that said, let’s talk about the specifics of your situation. First and foremost, I think you’re drastically undervaluing offering someone kindness and compassion and what that can mean to someone… especially someone who was in a horrifically abusive relationship. Being somebody that they can trust, somebody who is safe and reliable and lets them feel secure is no small thing. The sense of being able to let your guard down and let somebody in without having to tense up or be afraid of how they’ll treat you is huge. That’s not “well anyone could provide this” or something cheap or meaningless. It’s very, very important and I suspect it was at the top of your partner’s “must have” list. So stop talking yourself down on that level.

Similarly: you have your flaws. Ok… and? Everyone does. Maybe it means that you wouldn’t be compatible with some people. But you’re not dating those people, you’re dating your partner. Similarly, you have depression and anxiety and your partner has been poking and prodding you to get into therapy. Here’s the thing: they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t care. People, on the whole, don’t try to push folks they don’t like into getting help. And hey, if it helps you process things, look at this as your partner saying “here’s something you can do: taking care of yourself will make our relationship better.”

You’re also seeing this relationship on a transactional basis and worrying that things aren’t perfectly balanced. But perfect balance is for Thanos… all the rest of us deal with things being a little unequal on one side or the other. But not only is that not inherently a bad thing, successful relationships balance those aspects out in other ways. You aren’t the primary breadwinner, but there are other ways you contribute, both to the household and to the relationship. They can be anything from housework to being the emotional port that provides them safety from the storm.

And then there’s the part about “I didn’t think my life would end up like this”. First of all, a thing you need to keep in mind is that alcohol is a depressant in the literal and emotional sense of the word. As I’ve said before: we’re bad at understanding why we feel the way we do. Our brains don’t just feel emotions, they interpret the input they’re getting from the body and backfill the reasons for it after the fact. As a result, getting drunk can make you feel lower than you actually are because it’s depressing your nervous system. It can even drag up feelings that you’d resolved because it removes filters and hinders your judgement. So, just as getting drunk impairs a person’s ability to consent, because they may be agreeing to something they don’t actually want to do, your partner’s discussing how their life isn’t the way they expected doesn’t mean that they don’t like the way things are now. It just means that there’re things that they wish could’ve been different. And hey, we all have that. Show me somebody who doesn’t look at aspects of their life that they wish  could’ve gone differently and I’ll show you a fictional character. But life not going in the direction you expected doesn’t mean that they can’t be — or aren’t —  happy now.

Shit, 90% of Christmas movies are people discovering their lives aren’t going the way they expected and realizing that this is OK.

(The rest are about terrorists invading Nakatomi Plaza or crime waves in Gotham.)

The biggest problem you have isn’t that your partner is “settling” for you. It’s that you aren’t recognizing that what you’re giving them is actually very goddamn valuable indeed. Safety, security, care and love are huge. Are you perfect? No. Neither is anyone else. Are you The Perfect Partner? No… but neither are they. Are there things you could possibly do to make things balance out a bit more? Probably, and you can talk with your partner about ways that you could do this. But that’s not the same as “being a bad partner” or “being the first person to be nice to them”. The important question to ask is are they happy? And are you happy?

And then it’s your responsibility to listen and take yes for an answer. Because the thing that’s worse than “settling” for somebody? That’s being told you’re settling, when you really aren’t. It’s telling your partner that you love them and being called a liar for saying that. Yes, there are things you can work on; everyone has those. And it may well be worth doing so, when you can differentiate actual areas of improvement from your anxiety dripping poison in your ear.

But most importantly: you need to recognize your worth and value and how important the things you contribute actually are. Being kind, caring and supportive isn’t just baseline, it’s important and it’s clearly something your partner lacked, desperately needs and that you provide. Don’t diminish that. And don’t steal misery from the future; enjoy what you have now.

All will be well.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This is a pretty minor problem compared to a lot of the ones that you deal with, but I’ve really valued your advice over the years, so I thought I’d send it in anyway.

I was very nervous and awkward as a teenager, but I have spent the last decade working actively on my social skills. I’m proud of how far I’ve come! I’ll always be a bit dorky, but I am able to have conversations with a wide range of people. I have an upbeat personality and really like getting to know people, but I am also a bit over accommodating.

This leads to a dating problem—I feel like I lead guys on. When I’m on a date I tend to smooth over any conversational rough spots, get enthusiastic about their interests, and actively listen to the things they want to rant about. If someone isn’t engaging with me and I have to carry the entire conversation, I can and will do that. I can tell that a lot of guys leave our dates feeling like they’ve really connected, only to be completely blindsided when I reject them. I feel like I’m the woman on the other side of every story about how “I thought it was going so well, I just don’t know what happened.” Rejection hurts, and it especially hurts when you didn’t see it coming. I’m sure all women experience this to some extent, but my I-Don’t-Want-To-Date-You conversations can get super messy and make me feel like the bad guy.

I’m not trying especially hard on dates and never promise anything–it’s my default conversational style that’s the issue. I really want people to have a good time, and don’t know how to do “lukewarm.” To a lesser extent this is also a problem in my friendships, as it’s become a pattern that other people get much more invested in me than I do in them. I think sometimes by trying to be nice in the short term I end up hurting people in the long term, and I feel awful about that.

Do you have any advice on dialing it back? Should I learn to let awkward silences hang and invest in a resting bitch face? I know that there’s got to be middle ground between “what I’m doing now” and “actively being mean” but for some reason I’m finding it hard to navigate. Or should I just accept that part of life is sometimes accidentally hurting the almost stranger that you are eating a giant plate of tacos with? I don’t want to close myself off to other people.

Thank you for your time!

Feeling Rotten About Unrequited Desires

DEAR FEELING ROTTEN ABOUT UNREQUITED DESIRES: This is one of those weird times when I can understand what you’re going through, FRAUD, but man I can empathize with the folks you were on dates with. It can be really frustrating  and confusing when it seems like you were really vibing with someone and having a great conversation only to find out that… well… they weren’t actually feeling it. Now you’re left wondering just what the hell happened, when all signs pointed to everybody having a great time.

But while I can see why there would be dudes who feel like you’re leading them on, the problem is, ultimately, one of discomfort in the short term.

You mention that this is an issue that you have with your friendships too, which I think is a bit of a clue as to where the problem lies. The fact that this tendency towards over-accommodation seeps into your entire social life suggests that you have issues with being a people-pleaser. On the surface, that’s the sort of thing that sounds like a non-problem; what’s wrong with wanting to make sure people are having a good time? Well, it comes down to the cost of paying so much attention to other people’s emotional states. One of the problems that people-pleasers have is that this desire to accommodate others’ needs comes at the expense of their own needs. Giving so much to others often means that either the people-pleaser is missing out or giving up resources that they might need, whether those are material resources or intangibles like time or emotional bandwidth. So someone may agree to take up responsibilities at work that tax their ability to get their own work done. Or they may agree to so many things that they don’t have time or energy for and run headlong into burn-out.

And of course, people-pleasers tend to be a magnet for toxic people who love to take advantage of them.

In your case, your behavior is giving the impression of being far more invested than you actually are, leading to lopsided — or non-existent — relationships. I have to imagine that there’s also a psychic cost to this as well; dealing with the constant mistaken impressions or imbalances in your friendships must get exhausting under the best of circumstances. And that’s before we get to the (understandable) guilt at feeling like you’ve lead people on.

I absolutely get why you feel like you need to carry the conversation. There’s a strong sociological aspect involved here; even in this day and age, women are socialized to prioritize the feelings and emotions of men over their own… even when that hurts them. And let’s be real: those awkward silences or the inability to keep the conversation can be uncomfortable, even anxiety-producing. So I get why you feel like you have a duty to carry on the conversation. But — as you’ve noticed — the end result is a problem of its own.

So my first suggestion is that you start to interrogate just why you feel the need to be the person who makes sure everyone has a good time, no matter what. Does this come from a sense of a lack of self-worth? Are you trying to prove your value or justify your presence in people’s lives by being a people-pleaser because you don’t feel like you have any value on your own? Do you feel like you need to take on the responsibility because someone told you this is what you need to do? Do you not feel like you have the right to just hang back and not carry the entire conversation on your own? Or is it just as simple as feeling like someone needs to do something about that uncomfortable moment and you just end up always being the one to step up?

The more you can understand just why you feel compelled to do this, the easier it will be to dial it all back.

Notice I say “dial it back”, not “be mean”. There’s a vast difference between the two. You don’t need to overcorrect from being too accommodating to being mean or contemptuous.

That’s why my second suggestion is to do less. I realize this seems like a duh-George answer, but I think if you look at your life, you’ll see many places where you go above and beyond the call of duty, to the point of absurdity. By choosing to do less — to embrace the concept of choosing not to fill the emptiness — you carve out more time and emotional bandwidth for yourself. So, rather than rushing to fill in the conversational gaps yourself or carrying the entire conversation on your own shoulders, simply… hold back. Let the silence or the awkwardness be, instead of trying to fix it. This has two benefits. First: it means that the other person is going to have to take responsibility for their end of things. Dates — and conversations, for that matter — are collaborative exercises. The whole point is for mutual engagement and mutual connection. When one person is doing all the work, it’s no longer a partnership. At best, it’s a lecture. At worst, one person is doing all the work and the other person is alternately reaping the reward or sitting there in increasing discomfort. That ends up being lose/lose for everyone. The second benefit is that it ensures a more genuine connection with the people you’re dating. One of the mistakes a lot of people make is that dating is supposed to be easy. If you’re struggling to connect with someone, for example, that’s often a sign that there’s a fundamental incompatibility at play.  You may have incompatible interests or personalities. You may have a clash of values, or they may simply be uninterested. Forcing the issue by carrying the entire conversation on your own creates a false sense of connection because, well, one person’s trying to paper over that incompatibility by themselves.

(It’s worth noting: there’s a notable difference between an awkward but genuine connection and a lack of compatibility. It’s the emotional difference between trying to figure out what side of the USB plug faces up and using the wrong plug entirely.)

My third suggestion is that you get comfortable with discomfort. If you don’t fear an occasional awkward moment or lull in the conversation, you won’t feel the need to fix it. Every conversation has its peaks and valleys. Sometimes those moments where the conversation dies off aren’t signs of something being wrong; it’s just the natural rhythm of the interaction. If you can learn to be comfortable with momentary discomfort, you’re in a better position to tell the difference between companionable silence and signs that the two of you aren’t connecting. Plus: it means that you won’t be forcing yourself to prop up somebody’s entire emotional state on your own.

Don’t be afraid to prioritize your own comfort or your own lack of interest, especially on dates. You’re seeing if you and that person are a good match, not acting as a cruise director. Take a step back and let other people carry their end of the interaction. You’ll have much stronger connections with the people you do like, and you won’t end up accidentally leading on the people you don’t like.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com