DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Hello Dr. NerdLove! I am a 17 year old nerd girl who needs some help. 

Basically, I’ve been desperately madly in love probably three or four times in my life. I have always thought of myself as fat and unattractive, so in relationships, I have found myself to feel as if I put in much more effort into the relationship than the other person, to have either me ending it because I feel as if I am the only one who cares, or the other person ending it because they feel as if I like them more than they like me.

These two relationships were a few years ago. After that I had some minor crushes, until I once more fell head over heels for an amazing guy. I was in love with him for a good about six months… during which he a) broke up with his first girlfriend and b) got a new one. As I got over him, I noticed that I was starting to fall for my best friend (this all happened in boarding school). All my life, I have claimed that all humans are bisexual, and that we fall in love with a person and not a gender, but this was a theory I developed before I started feeling sexually attracted to people at all. 

I left boarding school this summer to move to my hometown, where I was overwhelmed with loneliness – a feeling that only got worse as I started school here. My friend (acquaintance, person in my life whom I don’t really care for) told me that she’d met her girlfriend over an LGBTQ dating website – and since there aren’t really any other dating websites for people under 18, I figured why not.

Over this website, I met a girl. We met up in early December, and have sporadically been going on dates since. I’d call her my girlfriend if someone asked.

This is where my problem starts.

I am not actually attracted to her. 

She is beautiful, and smart and everything, but I’m not actually attracted to her, or in love with her. Now, you might be wondering why I’m together with her if I’m not attracted to her, but the thing is, I feel like I would so much rather be in a relationship than be single. Being single is the worst thing ever. And it is completely insane that someone actually wants me! She actually likes me and says that I’m pretty!

I find myself feeling a bit turned on by her every now and then – but then I realize that I’m not actually desiring her as much as I’m actually just desiring another human being. I’m quite introverted and like being by myself, I often even prefer that to being with her – and if she asks to hang out, it’s a mix of “woo Achievement unlocked: got a girlfriend” and “I really just want to be on the internet”. 

So basically, this is making me confused. I thought I was attracted to girls as well as guys (I will also admit that I went through a phase where I watched lesbian porn a lot, even though I found it objectifying), but not being attracted to her has me thinking that I might actually be painfully, boringly straight. Or maybe I’m just not attracted to her – and I can’t decide what’s worse. 

As I said, I’m a bit introverted (outspoken and witty at times, but social interaction exhausts me), and I’m very picky about who I hang out with. It takes a lot for me to like a person for who they are and not just because I need a friend and they will have to do. 

I am quite intellectual, and I have quite high standards of intelligence for the people around me. I don’t find that anyone in my new high school matches the intelligence and depth of the classmates in my boarding school, and I’m not patient enough to get to know them well enough to discover such a side to them. I have a feeling that my relationship with my girlfriend an attempt at making up for the intimacy (physical and emotional) that I lost moving away. If I break up with my girlfriend, I will be alone. It’s not Oneitis – it is being realistic. Two years went by with me being single, no matter how I tried. Boys don’t like me, and the 0.3 who might, I don’t. I’ve been asked to a date once in my entire life, and I have never had someone else initiate a relationship with me. Really it’s all about loneliness. Both platonic loneliness and romantic loneliness. I love being alone – I just want it to be of my own choice rather than because I don’t have anyone.

So, what I’m really wondering is can I make myself fall in love with, or at least feel more attracted to her? And if not, should I break up? She knows I’m not in love with her – we’ve talked about that. She doesn’t know that I’m not really attracted to her. 

I don’t want to be alone. I really, really don’t. I suspect that I am somehow, subconsciously, waiting for something else, and that I will leave her as soon as someone else comes along. Is that wrong though? If I know it is not going to happen within the near future?

And the other part, is it possible to be in love with only one girl in your life? I don’t want to be a hasbian – but I am attracted to quite a lot of boys, and not that often or to that many girls in real life. But if a guy only enjoys gay porn, wouldn’t that be a sign that he is at least bisexual? 

Please help! 

– Confused Nerd Girl

DEAR CONFUSED NERD GIRL: There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s take it by urgency. The more immediate needs first, the other, longer-term issues after.

So first things first: break up with your girlfriend.

You know all of those guys you dated where you cared more for them than they  did for you? Remember how much that sucked?

Guess what you’re doing to your girlfriend.

You said it yourself: you’re not attracted to her, you prefer not to spend time with her and you’re keeping her around because you think being single is worse than being with someone you don’t actually like all that much. This is selfish behavior; you’re basically using someone else, someone who actually cares for you, because you’re afraid of being alone. All that’s going to happen is that eventually either your girlfriend is going to realize what’s going on – that she’s a glorified security blanket – or you’re going to find someone whom you are attracted to and end up dumping her. In either case: this is going to hurt her like you wouldn’t believe and it’s all your fault. It’s unfair to her for you to be in a relationship with her under false pretenses, a relationship that she has no reason to believe is not genuine and based on mutual respect and attraction.

Break up with her. Now. Do it quickly and cleanly; don’t give long rationalizations about it, don’t tell her that you’re basically using her. Just “I’m not ready to be in a relationship with anyone and it isn’t fair to you to keep stringing you along”. The cleanest break heals fastest and she’ll be able to move on to someone else, someone who actually cares about her and wants to spend time with her, not treating her like a trophy that says “I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!” to make you feel better.

Next: human sexuality isn’t nearly as cut and dry as some people make it out to be. Sexual orientation isn’t just a continuum, it’s a multi-axis graph, including who you’re sexually attracted to and who you’re romantically attracted to. Some folks are sexually and romantically attracted to people of other genders. Some are sexually and romantically attracted to folks of the same gender. Some are sexually attracted to all genders, but may be more romantically attracted to one than others.

And even within those parameters, there can be a fair amount of variation. Some of those in between fall closer to being gay and may round up to gay rather than bi or pan; others fall closer to straight and may round up to straight. Still others may bounce around a bit as they learn more about themselves or even find someone who is the exception to their usual preferred type.

Now, I’m definitely not the person to tell you what your orientation is or what any of this means. That’s ultimately something that you’ll figure out — and you may find that it changes for you over time. Getting worried about what-this-all-means will cause you more stress than anything else. What it means is that sexuality can be a moving target and as you get to know yourself and grow more confident and secure in yourself, you’ll find your answers. You may be straight-ish. That’s perfectly fine. You may be bi or pansexual. That’s completely legit too. You may find that you’re sexually attracted to people in general but romantically you lean towards men. That is also real and legit.

But the thing to keep in mind is that how you feel for this person specifically isn’t strictly definitional for your entire life. You may just not attracted to your girlfriend, specifically, rather than it being an issue of not being attracted to women in general. One stale relationship with a girl doesn’t automatically mean that you’re not bi; it just means that she doesn’t do it for you.

(Incidentally, it’s worth examining the type of porn that you’re watching; a lot of “lesbian” porn is filmed by men, for a male audience. If that’s what you were watching, then it’s no wonder you found it objectifying. There’s a lot of porn out there made by women, for women, and that may be more to your taste in general.)

Finally: a very big reason why you’re so determined to find a significant other ASAP is because there’s a part of you that still believes that you’re unattractive.

You want to believe that you’re attractive to others and having someone to date is a sort of proof that hey, you’re actually pretty awesome after all!

The problem is that a) this is a s--tty basis for a relationship, b) it’s unfair to the person you’re dating and c) it doesn’t actually solve the underlying issue. Right now, whether you’re in a relationship is about finding a source of validation, someone (or something) that makes you feel as though you really are attractive after all.

Except… it won’t. Not for very long.

Your real issue – how you feel about yourself – is still there; all that’s happened is that you’ve papered over the hole and are trying to pretend that it’s all taken care of. And as with any surface solution, it doesn’t last. You’ll still have those nagging insecurities creeping around your brain, making you need more and more reassurance and validation from your partner that yes you are attractive… and there will still be that part of you that eventually will quit being able to believe them. And so the cycle repeats itself, over and over again as you keep trying to treat the symptoms instead of addressing the actual problem at its source.

You need to spend some time working on yourself and learning how to love and accept yourself and internalizing that locus of control. I know it sounds like pop-psychology-good-feelings-woo-woo bulls--t but it’s true: you need to be able to love yourself before you can really have a healthy relationship with others. When you can’t love and accept yourself, it’s much, MUCH harder to accept or receive love from others. You have harder time believing that they could love you when you don’t believe you’re worthy or deserving of BEING loved.

And that also damages the relationships you get into. After all, what you want is a partner-in-crime, not a nurse or a shrink who’re supposed to magically heal you through the power of their luuuuurve.

I’d recommend talking to a counselor or a therapist to help with your self-esteem issues, as well as learning how to make yourself feel attractive. And – of course – my standard recommendation of “live an awesome life” filled with passion (even if it’s a quiet passion), exploration (even if it’s by yourself) and intellectual engagement: it will make you feel better as a person as well as making you more appealing to others.

And honestly: you’re 17. You’re VERY young. I realize that time seems to drag on forever and everything feels amplified and larger than life when you’re in your teens, but being single – even for an extended period of time – isn’t the worst thing in the world. You need to cultivate patience. You don’t know people at your school because you’ve made snap-judgements about them and – by your own admission – you haven’t taken the time to actually get to know them on an individual level. Your own attitude towards them is part of what’s holding you back. The sooner you start to change that, the more emotional intimacy – and more potential relationship partners – you will have.

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: How do you handle a mutual acquaintance that is just too mutual? I met many friends through my local frisbee club two years ago. The club friendships blossomed into separate gatherings for parties, trivia, and movie watching. These are my main group of people who I love to hang out with……and Tiffany.

Tiffany is a long-standing group member who has known many of my close friends for much longer than I have. She even lives down the street from one of them and works with another. Most group events involve Tiffany in some fashion since she’s close to everybody in the group besides me.

I find it difficult to hang out with her, since she is my total personality opposite. Tiffany is an anxious extrovert, while I am a decisive introvert. I could throw a frisbee around for hours, while she mainly plays frisbee as an excuse to talk to people. Tiffany hates competition and I love trash talk and close games.

Every time I see she’s attending a group event I’m at, I let out a huge sigh. Events with her have been marked by people missing amazing frisbee throws, since she had to show the crowd a video right this second. I was bantering back and forth with a friend in the middle of a course, and Tiffany has to chastise me for being “too mean”. She’s super chatty and has known most of these people 5 years longer than I have. This leads to me feeling left out of conversations, since I don’t know enough to keep up with what’s being discussed.

I know I have no right to kick Tiffany out of the friend group, since she’s not an awful person. I just need a better way to accept we will never be best friends and deal with the fact Tiffany will be at most group events in the foreseeable future.

Overlapping Circles

DEAR OVERLAPPING CIRCLES: Ah yes, the dreaded ONE person. I think most people have experienced this at one point or another: somebody in your social circle who you — for whatever reason — just can’t get along with. Sometimes it’s somebody who’s just objectively awful and you can’t wrap your head around why they’re still around. It’s even worse when that one person is a classic Missing Stair — someone who’s an active danger to others that your social circle has learned how to avoid, but not excise. Other times, it’s someone who has, for whatever reason, decided you are their nemesis and treats you like shit. And then there’s the person you just don’t like, but they’re embedded in the group like a tick.

The way you resolve things depends on precisely what the issue is. Often, when there’s one person who’s demonstrably awful, the problem is that the group overall is afraid of confrontation. Sometimes it’s the classic Geek Social Fallacy that Ostracizers are Evil and it’s sub-fallacy The Person Who Points Out The Drama Is The Problem. Groups with a Missing Stair — or just That One Asshole — often don’t like to face up to the fact that they’ve abdicated the responsibility of making sure a space is welcoming or safe and would rather ignore the problem. Or worse, they feel like they can’t excise them because… reasons. So they just let them stay and decide that it’s easier to kick out the people who point out the problem. So that often ends up falling to the person who’s willing to make the fuss, break that group’s social contract and, hopefully, pull enough people together who felt the same way but couldn’t speak up.

In your case though, it doesn’t sound like Tiffany is a bad person… just someone who you don’t click with. And hey, that’s legit; Geek Social Fallacy #4 — that Friendship Is Transitive — ain’t any more real than Ostracizers are Evil. Just because you all have friends in common doesn’t mean that you and they are going to be close; the Venn diagrams of your friendships don’t overlap that far. There’s no reason you need to be friends with her. It’s good if you can be friendly, or at the very least, polite, but you don’t need to like ’em.

Now the key is how to handle things in ways that let you keep things cordial with Tiffany but without letting her existence kill your ability to have fun with your friends.

The trick, in this case, is to compartmentalize as best you can. There will be times when you can get by without needing to interact with her much. At more social gatherings — parties, trivia events and so on — you can more or less minimize how much direct contact you have. You can, for example, have separate conversations with friends that don’t involve her. You can even use the 3:2 rule in group conversations where Tiffany is involved. Since people can only really pay attention to so many people at once, conversations can really only sustain about four active participants. When a fifth person gets involved, the conversation tends to split in a 3 to 2 ratio, with two people branching off into a side-conversation. You can use that to your advantage and use something as a springboard to a new topic; you just need a brief transition like “oh that reminds me…”

Also: beyond the fact that just listening is a perfectly valid way of contributing to a conversation — especially until you get more context — you can also ask questions about the discussion. Often, people are happy to fill newcomers in, especially if it means a new person to hear some of the stories that everyone else already knows.

Now when it comes to games of frisbee… well, that’s a point where you may have to recalibrate your expectations. You may be looking for competition, but if most of the club is expecting a social event with occasional tossing of the frisbee, then you may just have to adapt to that mindset. If you’re looking for a group that plays the game with deadly seriousness, then you may have to look at a different group to meet that particular need.

(Though if you and your buds are enjoying the in-game chirping back and forth and Tiffany doesn’t, then she doesn’t have to participate and you and the others can leave her out of it. If she’s objecting to it happening at ALL… that’s a her problem, not a you problem and she can deal with it on her own.)

Don’t forget, however, that you’re options aren’t limited “put up with Tiffany’s presence” or “never see your friends”. You can set up events and get-togethers with your friends in the group that don’t involve Tiffany. Now, this may or may not run into Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do  Everything Together, where folks feel like if you’re getting the gang together that has to include Tiffany. If that’s the case, then you may have to organize events with different sets of people at different times. Having smaller, slightly more intimate get-togethers means you may not get the full “yay, I’m seeing my whole squad” experience, but it’s less likely to trip the feeling that you’re being rude by leaving Tiffany out.

That having been said: don’t feel like you have to pretend that you and Tiffany are buds, even to the others. There’s nothing wrong with saying “hey, she’s perfectly fine. She and I just don’t click, that’s all.” Make it clear that this isn’t a problem that needs solving, just that you and she have personalities that don’t mesh well and it’s easier to just keep things polite but distant than to try to mix this particular blend of oil and water.

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 reaching out to you because I feel like I’ve reached my wits end with trying to find a date or find a girl who’ll give me a chance despite my extreme ugliness.

Anyway, a little about myself, I’m 21 and I’m a University student living in the United Kingdom. I’m brown, short and ugly and no, please don’t think I have bad skin or that I’m obese; my problems aren’t really circulated around the things I do have control over, rather the things I don’t. I have a weird looking face, soft jaw and chin (growing a beard has helped there but it still doesn’t look that great), a bad eye area and a huge and crooked nose.

I’ve tried dating apps, since that’s the avenue most people my age take yet not avail. I don’t get matches with real people at all and my experience with online dating is practically harmonious with my real life experience. I’m just invisible.

Anyway, I just want some realistic and useful advice, I still do have a little bit of hope but it’s slowly slowly dwindling.

Thank you

Phantom of the Soccer Pitch

DEAR PHANTOM OF THE SOCCER PITCH: I’m going to start by pointing out that I get variations on this letter more or less constantly. In fact, if I had a nickel for every time I got a “I’m too ugly to ever date” letter — usually from someone who’s completely average at worst — I’d be having mecha fights with Elon Musk off the coast of Los Angeles. And that’s before I get to the folks on Twitter, the NerdLove Facebook groups and elsewhere.

For all that we talk about unrealistic beauty standards for women — and don’t get me wrong, they absolutely exist — men tend to have incredibly twisted ideas not just about their own looks but also what women find attractive. The incel community in particular has this down to a pseudoscience, inventing new, exacting forms of phrenology that would be fascinating from an anthropological standpoint… if it didn’t come from places of curdled hatred and rage.

The idea that “a few millimeters of bone” is all that differentiates someone from being a sex god and being completely unf--kable leads dudes to drastically overrate their own ugliness, often to the point of absurdity. You expect someone who looks like Deadpool crossed with a rotting avocado and what you actually get is… someone who’s completely unremarkable. Weak jaws turn out to be just not being as lantern-jawed as Bruce Campbell, weird noses are usually well within the norm, sunken eyes tend to be more of an issue of replacing sleep with caffeine and so on.  Most of the time, the issues that folks have aren’t that they’re irredeemably ugly, it’s their attitude and their presentation. Every time I’ve seen people insist that they’re too ugly to date, they’re wearing clothes that don’t fit, had nothing approaching a sense of style and often looked like they hadn’t seen the business end of a washing machine in days. Their hair is a greasy mess and they look (and on many occasions, smell) like hygiene is something that happens to other people.

Similarly, their attitude — both explicit and implicit — ends up being what drives people off, far more than any issue with their looks.  For all that people mock the “Virgin Walk/Chad Stride” meme, there’s a part of it that is accurate:

The “head down, refusing to look at anyone, closed off ” posture of the “virgin” is classic “don’t talk to me” body language. It radiates irritation and unhappiness — all of which pushes people away and encourages them to not engage with the person walking or standing like that. That  body language tends to be the visual representation of the sort of negative attitude makes people want to keep their distance. After all,  negative people tend to be emotional black holes; they suck the life out of the room and make other people feel uncomfortable.

So as I said, POSP, I’m skeptical that you are some mutant, fresh from a remake of The Hills Have Eyes. I think that the far likelier issue, both in person and with online dating, is about how you present yourself. Lighting alone can transform someone from a goblin to a sexual dynamo.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are, in fact, not blessed with facial symmetry. What do you do?

Well, you start with the fact that there’s a reason why “good looking” isn’t the same as “attractive”. There are more people out there than I can easily count who aren’t going to show up in a compilation of People’s “Sexiest Man of the Year” but who get more strange ass than a guy who got into a car chase, crashed through an ass cart and then plowed through a plate-ass window. The classic example, of course, is Serge Gainsbourg, a man who looks like his parents spent too much time in Innsmouth. Vincent Cassel, likewise, is someone who is best described as “very French”, not “good looking”, but is doing quite well for himself. Steve Buscemi — he of the meme’d out eyes — had a decades long marriage before his wife passed away. Vincent Schiavelli, who has Marfan’s syndrome, was cast whenever a role needed a character with an immediately recognizably odd face; he was married twice. Michael Berryman, who has made his living playing freaks, mutants, and monstrous killers, is happily married. Doug Jones, most known for being under makeup in various creature features, also has an incredibly unique and unusual face and build… and is not only married but has quite the devoted fanbase of adoring women who think he’s hotter than an erupting volcano.

The secret to not letting their looks — which range from “striking” to very, very odd — get in the way of their romantic success is due in no small part to presence and charisma. Their overall attitude isn’t (or wasn’t) woe-is-me, it’s “yup, this is who I am and I don’t give a good god damn if you don’t approve”. They aren’t hiding or trying to excuse their looks; they became comfortable with themselves. They don’t treat their looks as something that makes them unloveable, but rather as what makes them unique — and uniqueness tends to win out over classic good looks, especially over time. By owning who they are, rather than treating it like a liability, it becomes part of what makes them interesting.

Now it also helps that they’re charismatic as hell; they have to be, they’re actors, after all. But charisma is something that you develop, not something that you’re born with. A warm smile, swagger, confidence and authority all make you more magnetic. So does spreading positive energy to others — when you make others feel listened to, understood and appreciated, they’re more drawn to you than they are to others. This is known as The Reward Theory of Attraction. When you make people feel good, they prioritize their relationship with you versus with other people; we’re drawn to people who make us feel good, after all.

But you also have to treat yourself well too. Much of self-confidence comes not from what we’ve accomplished but from what we believe about ourselves. When you believe that you’re the human equivalent of a popped zit, you tend to treat yourself accordingly. This is one of the reasons why so many of the self-proclaimed uggos who write to me tend to have a presentation problem. They think they’re garbage and so they don’t see the point of doing more than the socially required bare-minimum. They don’t believe that they deserve good things and so don’t bother to put the effort in to take care of themselves or present themselves well. And since they’re dressed like a slovenly pile of crap, they feel like a slovenly pile of crap, and since they feel like they’re a slovenly pile of crap, they treat themselves like one. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, and one that only stops when they choose to break it.

This is one of the reasons I tell people that it’s important to fake it until they make it; by acting with confidence they may not feel (yet), dressing stylishly even when they don’t feel like they’re someone who can be stylish (yet) and so on, they’re training themselves to be more confident and self-assured. This is one of the reasons why, even if you think you’ve got a weird nose or chin or whatever, it’s important to take care of yourself, emotionally and physically. When you’re willing to treat your presentation as something that matters — wearing smart, well fitting clothes, working on your grooming and so on — you start to feel like you matter. And that attitude grows into self-confidence and self-assurance.

And here’s the thing: even small changes can be absolutely transformative. Watch any episode of Queer Eye and you will see just how much a simple hair cut, beard trim and properly fitting shirts and trousers can be a complete metamorphosis.

So what should you do, POSP? Treat yourself like you matter. Don’t beat yourself up because you think you’re too ugly; it just creates that self-perpetuating cycle I mentioned. You have to be the one to break that cycle.

Maybe online dating won’t be the best venue for you to meet people; that’s fine. Not everyone meets their partners on dating apps, nor is it the best place for everyone, even the conventionally attractive. Meeting people in person and letting them get to know how awesome you are can play to your strengths far more than Tinder or Bumble. While nobody is saying that conventionally attractive looks don’t help, the truth is that majority of people don’t date or start relationships with folks they just met; they tend to get to know folks over time.

Dress like the sexy bad-ass you wish you were, carry yourself like you’re worth a million bucks. Take your face — whether it’s unusual or completely average — and treat it as what makes you uniquely you rather than a source of shame. Learn to be bring those positive vibes, that personal warmth and authority, even that hint of swagger and attitude. The more you develop a positive sense of presence and an attitude of warmth and bonhomie, the more you will draw people to you. That, in turn, will help you meet more amazing people… including folks you may want to date and who will want to date you.

Good luck.

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