DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been an avid reader of your blog for a few years and have finally mustered the courage to ask for advice. I really enjoy the laidback approach to answering some really serious matters, and the fact that you provide pictures of cute animals when things get really serious or disgusting. And of course the nerd culture references, especially anime references.

I understand that while I am from India and given the different social and cultural customs it might not be the wisest idea to ask someone living in the US for non academic advice, right now I would appreciate your advice. I honestly haven’t found any Indian contemporary who is not misogynist or believes women are a hive mind.

As for my background, I am a 25 year old dentist planning to pursue a master’s degree. I live with my parents and elder sister, which is pretty normal in India.

My parents are a classic example of everything that can go wrong in a relationship. My father is financially opaque and allegedly is more involved in his brother’s family and way more interested in chatting with strange women on facebook and watching really crude porn (he always downplays it by saying that he pressed some weird link, but that is all a lie, he is tech savvy enough to know how to block his facebook account) and complaining about my mother to anyone and everyone he meets, including me. My mother sees that as tantamount to cheating. Even prior to that she has felt that he is diverting more of his earnings to his brother’s family (who is employed).

This is not to say my mother is without blame. She has been narrating tales of all the injustices to me and my sister for as long as I remember, emphasizing how she sacrificed her pleasures after becoming a homemaker, while my father would be the representative of the family at all the gatherings of our extended families. I sometimes have felt sorry for my father who is never appreciated for whatever little he still does. Mother being a chronic complainer always sees the glass as half empty. 

Even my father has recently resorted to using emotional blackmail against me and my sister. For example, he likes to repeatedly mention how he gets emotionally hurt every time I have to physically shove him away from my mother when things turn nasty. When I reason that violence is not negotiable he counters by saying that I should atop mother’s nagging. It is like if mother uses words, he’ll use his fists. He wants to get a licence to hit my mother without consequences. And things get nasty, slapping, hitting with sticks and there was one time when he bit my mother on the arm.

For my parents, the house and the cyberspace are war zones and they must gather people to their sides. Their arguments stem from ridiculously petty issues but escalate to trash talking and in bringing up events that happened before I was born.

It comes as a surprise to me how I remained a good student all through my school years and eventually have become a dentist. 

The only impact of my parents’ toxicity that I am aware of is that I have grown to be extremely wary of expressing anger in particular and confrontations in general. My social life has been rather ordinary, even today I have a few friends from my school days with whom I am in touch. In dental school too I have been friendly with my peers, only the coming years shall tell me how many of them will remain in my life but I am optimistic.

What I wish to know from you is how should I approach dating. 

Seeing the disaster my parents are, I have no intention of getting matched with a person I have no compatibility with or to even have her live with them. I fear she’ll become just as bitter, resentful and toxic as they are. The conclusion I have made at present is to focus on my education and career, get a place of my own away from my parents and then think of dating. 

But I cannot exactly control when people come in my life. In India, most women get married before thirty and I fear that by the time I have enough money for a house away from my toxic parents (I assume i will be in my mid thirties by the time I become financially independent) there would be no single women left. Even during my years in dental school, three women got married and one of them gave her graduation exams while pregnant! It kind of like a biological clock for men.

This is what is always on my mind whenever I am interested in someone at the present moment. Though I fully understand that not all relationships will end in marriage and may collapse after that too, I don’t want to be the kind of person who is dating without any end point in mind. This may be an atypical thought coming from a man born in the late nineties by that is my old-fashioned way.

And I don’t think that anyone is there to “go on a journey to build and grow together.” Everyone seems to want the finished product, not a work in progress, financially or emotionally.

And to top it all off, it might all be pointless since the woman in question might be married off by her parents to someone else anyway. (Arranged marriages are very prevalent in India). Of course that applies to me too, but I don’t want to go down that path knowing how badly it can get when living with someone you are not compatible with.

I will appreciate your regarding my situation.

Thanks in advance. 

Joyless in The City of Joy

DEAR JOYLESS IN THE CITY OF JOY: So I’m going to have to give an obvious caveat at the start of this, JTCJ. Like you said: I’m an American and you’re living in India. There’s going to be a difference in outlook, culture and customs, and I’m going to be ignorant of circumstances on the ground that folks in Calcutta would find obvious. So I’m going to apologize for any blind spots in advance and recommend that you take my advice with suitable amounts of salt.

And with that, my thoughts.

My first thought is that arranged marriages aren’t automatically joyless or, worse, full of animosity. I actually have friends from India and Pakistan who chose arranged matches, and their relationships have been successful and happy. One of the keys for their success had been a willingness to take things at a relatively sedate pace; after they met people that they found interesting and compatible, they spent some time getting to know each other before getting married, with the acknowledgement that they could call it off if they had reservations. Another was that they (and their matches) focused on compatibility and mutual respect in who they were looking for. But most importantly were that they acknowledged that they were going to have to work to make their marriage successful. That meant that they were going to have to prioritize clear and open communication, to make sure that they understood each other. They also had to be mindful of how they handled disagreements and fights and make sure that they were actually resolving issues instead of just trying to stop the fight. That way, they weren’t going to be hoarding resentments and grievances like a passive-aggressive squirrel, storing hate-nuts for the winter. And they made a point of complimenting each other, admiring each other and expressing gratitude and their appreciation for one another; in fact, they made a point of trying to keep a fairly solid ratio of compliments to complaints. Complaints can trigger our inherent negativity bias, which makes them hit five times harder than compliments and gratitude. That makes it important to try to ensure that you don’t only appreciate or admire your partner, but that you express that appreciation, openly and frequently.

My second thought is that, well, they f--k you up, your mom and dad. It sounds like your parents marriage was a nightmare to grow up with, and I’m sorry you and your sister had to go through this. But while you can’t change your past — or your parents — their marriage doesn’t have to be your destiny. In fact, you’ve made the conscious decision to try to avoid that, which is awesome. Having that template of “ok, here’s what I don’t want” gives you something to build from. Because you’ve seen the way that bitterness and resentment can fester, you can look at the behaviors, beliefs and attitudes that lead to your parents acrimony and make a conscious choice to do things differently. They’ve given you the map of the traps and pitfalls that their relationship fell into, and you’re in a better position to avoid them.

Of course, knowing what you don’t want doesn’t automatically translate into knowing what a positive relationship looks like. And while there are some things that you can only learn through experience, I would suggest is that you might want to look for positive relationship role models. Those may be the marriages of friends or the parents of friends who are happy and nurturing. Talking to them about their experiences may well go a long way to helping you map out what you’re looking for and how to achieve it in your future relationships. Or, failing that, you may look to examples in pop culture for the kind of relationship you would want to have and work towards developing the skills and communication that you would need to help encourage that sort of connection. They’re not a perfect guide — after all, those relationships work because the writers say they do — but they can go a long way towards helping shape what you would want your relationship to look like.

(And here, I have to confess: I have a fairly limited knowledge of Indian pop culture, so I don’t know who I could recommend; perhaps readers could provide some suggestions. Though I will always recommend Gomez and Morticia Adams as an excellent starting point…)

My third thought is to be careful about falling into traps of making assumptions about others, especially on the individual level. While there’s a strong tradition of women marrying young, that doesn’t mean that every woman is looking for someone who’s a “finished  product”, nor is that even necessarily what they’re looking for. One of the ways that men can make dating harder on themselves is that they often end up responding to what they think women expect or are looking for, rather than what women actually want in partners and relationships. This is one of those times when having women as platonic friends is incredibly helpful; it gives you a much more accurate idea of what women want, as well as what their dating and relationship experiences are like.

By that same token, while I understand that you’re worried that there will be a shortage of single women by the time you’re ready to date… well, I hate using this phrase but feels aren’t reals, man. This is an incredibly common — and cross-cultural — anxiety in men; they worry that if they don’t pair up by some artificial deadline (usually their late 20s) then they’ll have run out of available women to date. Why? Because they’ll all have settled down and found boyfriends and husbands.

Except that’s not true. Even in conservative cultures, or cultures where there are traditions of marrying young, there are still people who don’t follow tradition or who don’t want to get married that young. I suspect that your experiences and outlook on relationships aren’t as uncommon as you might think, for both men and women. In fact, I suspect there’re more people than you realize who feel the same way, and it may well be worth your time to seek them out. These could be networking events for young (and single) professionals, social organizations, even just clubs for people who dig movies, anime or what-have-you. Expanding your social circle will go a long way towards helping you meet more like-minded folks… including women who may well be looking for someone to grow with, rather than someone who’s “finished”.

But more than anything else: pursue relationships with intention, modeling the kind of relationship you want and the behavior you want to see from your partners. And don’t be afraid for you and your partner to write your own “rules” for your relationship. One of the reasons why relationships will often fall apart is because they try to force themselves into a relationship model that doesn’t fit them. But the great thing about life is that you don’t have to follow other people’s rules; your relationship is a collaboration between you and your partner. While other people may have opinions, they don’t get a vote. You and your partner can define for yourselves how you want this relationship to work, what rules the two of you agree to follow and how you want things to progress. When you find someone you’re compatible with, the two of you can decide what you want your relationship to be.

Now in fairness: sticking to your guns and making sure that you find the partner (and relationship) that you want may mean being single for longer than you’d prefer. It could take time to find somebody who’s right for you and who you’re right for. It’s understandable that you may want to examine your “must-haves” and decide that maybe you can be flexible on some of them. That’s a completely valid decision. However what you don’t want to do is drop your standards out of a fear of being single. Getting into a Somebody, Anybody, Everybody relationship — where you’re just trying to fill the hole marked “girlfriend” or “wife” — is a great way to end up in a bad relationship. It’s one thing to compromise; it’s another when your relationship is compromised from the start. Make sure that you’re getting into a relationship with someone because you want to be in a relationship with them… not because you want to be in a relationship.

You’ve got a lot going for you, JCTJ. You know what you want, you’ve made great choices and you’ve got a game plan for a solid life. That’s all to the good. Don’t let your worries overpower your goals; the fact that you’re worried about something doesn’t mean that there’s actually something to worry about.

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: I tried searching your site to find any stories about this, but didn’t find anything in the results mainly by title. Anyway, to the point, I wanted to ask if you have any tips in dating when the issue is that you may like the girl (or guy) you are dating, but you dislike (some of) her friends? Specifically, if you think some are enablers of bad behavior and/or having a negative influence on the girl (or guy) you are dating; and even worse if they also may not even like you anyway in return.

I think you must have come across this situation before and/or been asked this question right?

I am somewhat conflicted about this topic. For some things I read online, they seem to indicate that the friends your date have may determine your own compatibility with the date; that they can be red flags of issues to come. Other things I’ve read mentions about how you should try to be friendly with and/or impress your date’s friends so that they can provide some sort of positive feedback to your date by winning their approval. I know I can’t expect her to confront or disregard her long-time friends just for me as just a new date in her life. But I also definitely feel there are some stark contrasts/difference between her friends and I – compared to herself and I – which can lead to tensions, if not now then in the future.

How should I approach this situation?

Love Me, Love My Friends?

DEAR LOVE ME, LOVE MY FRIENDS: As a general rule, you can tell a lot about someone by who they hang out with. The saying that “you’re the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with” is fairly accurate. After all, we tend to connect with people who are like us; if you’re not a big fan of their friends, then the odds aren’t great that you two will be a good match.

But that’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule. God knows plenty of people don’t have friends so much as “friends”; people they associate with and may call their friends but who are actually incredibly toxic.

Similarly: it’s generally true that the opinion of a person’s friends can affect their decision about who they date or how long their partner sticks around. But it’s also incredibly common that folks date someone that their friends all hate.

(Notice very carefully that I’m trying to be gender-neutral about this. This is a phenomena that reaches across the entire gender spectrum.)

Now it’s a little unclear from your letter whether this is a thought experiment on your part or if this is something you’re dealing with right now. But in either case, I’d say that if you’re finding that you and your date get along like a house on fire, but you and her friends don’t mesh, it’s worth examining just why that may be. There can be a number of reasons why you and they may not get along that doesn’t mean that they’re either toxic for her or that spell doom for you. It could be that she had some bad experiences and her friends are very protective. It could be that you are someone who’s outside of her norm and they feel put off by that. Or you may have accidentally made a faux-pas out of ignorance or not being as up on some topics as they are.

Or it could be that you and they are just diametrically opposed in some way and that’s going to make it very difficult to get their approval (or for them to get yours).

But while our friends can influence who we decide to date… dating isn’t a democracy. If your partner is into you and you and she have something good going on, then that’s between you and her. The best thing I could recommend is to demonstrate that you’re somebody with honor and integrity who treats her with respect. You and they may never click or mesh well, but that’s ok; you don’t need to be best friends with HER best friends, any more than she needs to be BFFs with yours.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with having “your friends, my friends and our friends”; having separate social lives is good for the long-term success of relationships.

Although if they’re assholes or Trump voters, then nobody would blame you for not really wanting to hang with them in the first place.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a woman with a dating question—particularly a dating app question! I matched with a guy on Hinge about 2 weeks ago. I sent him a like first, he liked me, then we matched. He left it up to me to start the conversation; I was super busy so I never got the chance to message him, but I finally messaged him a couple of days ago. He hasn’t answered yet, what do I do?

We happen to attend the same university, and we have a mutual friend or two. We’ve never spoken in person, but would it be weird to friend him on Instagram (in hopes that he replies to my message on Hinge)? Thanks in advance—I really want this to work out with this guy!

Left On Read

DEAR LEFT ON READ: You don’t do anything, LOR. The ball’s in his court. It’s on him to respond or not respond.

Here’s the thing: there’re a lot of reasons why someone might not have responded yet. It could be that he’s not terribly active on Hinge and so he hasn’t seen that you responded or hasn’t logged in to see your message. You, after all, were super-busy before you messaged him; the same could be true on his end. Or it could be that he’s shy and isn’t sure how to respond. Alternately, he feels like it’s been too long for him to reply and now it would be awkward if he did.

Or — and this one always kinda sucks — it could be that he’s not that interested. He might have been just casually browsing Hinge and swiping on people without really being that interested in dating. Alternately, he might have matched with you, but decided to pursue something with someone else who messaged him before you did. Or — in what is the most unfortunate but likely scenario — he wasn’t that into you but swiped right on you just in case. This, unfortunately, is a really common thing that men do, especially on dating apps with swiping or “yes/no” mechanics: they swipe right on everyone in order to maximize potential matches, and then decide who they’re actually interested in after they match. Women, on the other hand, tend to only swipe on people they’re actually into. So many times, women will match with somebody that they really liked, only to discover that he was just trying to get a little serotonin boost from seeing the number on the notification badge go up.

What you don’t want to do, however, is jump to a different app to to try to connect with him. Or take it offline for that matter. This is a thing that a lot of guys do; they may get rejected on Tinder or Hinge, but message that person on Instagram instead in hopes of trying to get a second shot. It’s intrusive, it’s cringey and it’s an indication that they feel like their desire to get a date (or a blowjob or…) overrides her stated lack of interest. And while the dynamics are different when you reverse the genders — on average, women pose far less of a physical threat to men than men do to women — it’s still intrusive and not cool. Doing so in person is, likewise, not cool, for much the same reason; it ends up tells the person that you’re ignoring what is, in all likelihood, a soft no, because you don’t like the answer.

I say this because, at the end of the day, no answer is an answer. It’s “I’m not interested”, and that’s the end of the discussion. If he is interested, but hasn’t gotten back to you for reasons… well, he knows you messaged him. It’s on him to make the next move.

And if you do run into him in person… I wouldn’t bring this up unless he does. You can chat, flirt and see if the in-person interaction makes things easier than the potential awkward of a late reply on a dating app, and “hey, you never responded to my message on Hinge” can be a cute thing to discuss down the line if the two of you hit it off and go on a date or two. But unless that happens, bringing it up is going to be more cringe-inducing than romance-facilitating.

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: 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