DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My entire family is dead, and I’ve been living with my only close and reasonably well-off friend and her husband since losing my job and housing in the summer of 2020. I have severe anxiety and a number of physical health issues that all together mean I am not capable of working more than part-time for the foreseeable future. (Yes, I’ve applied for disability; apparently I’m not disabled enough.)

For the last couple months my friend and her husband have been increasingly hinting that I need to move out — they want to have a baby before she’s too old, but my stuff and I are taking up both their spare bedrooms. For my part, I can’t stand babies, and my anxiety is exacerbated by being around anyone under 18 (from 0-9, it’s the loud noises and sudden movements; from 10-18 it’s the triggered memories of bullying). But if they accept that I’m unable to work enough to support myself, then my only other option is to find an SO to support me.

My friend thinks the only reason I’m reluctant to do this is that I’m a 38-year-old virgin, I grew up in a conservative Christian home and town (where I continued to live with my parents until their deaths), and while I came out as pansexual several years ago, I still have hang ups about actually expressing it. So she’s been trying to talk me through that. And while those are factors, I’m ashamed to talk about the most major factor. Which is simply that I don’t think I could stand to kiss or have sex with anyone as ugly as I am.

This is not just low self-esteem: I’m morbidly obese, with about the least attractive weight distribution possible; I have a gigantic double chin; adult acne; short, thinning head hair; gnarly body hair; and between my face fat and the thickness of my glasses, my eyes are so minuscule you can’t even tell that they’re blue. The only person I can imagine going for me is someone equally fat and/or ugly who is desperate for sex, but can’t get anyone better — and I feel like I’d rather die than touch someone like that, no matter how smart or nice or rich they are. I seriously don’t think I’m the kind of person who could ever become attracted to someone I wasn’t attracted to before just because of their personality. (And that’s only fair — I’m really smart, funny, kind, loyal, progressive, etc., but no one has ever been attracted by that, even people who liked me as a friend.)

But is it right to choose to continue to be supported by my friend instead? My part-time job covers my groceries, meds, car expenses, etc., so all she really has to do is provide a roof. We’ve been close since grade school and I’m confident she would never throw me out in the street, even if she couldn’t have a baby and her husband (who I can tell pretty much hates me) left her. But I’d really hate for it to come to that.

So please tell me: is there any possibility of someone like me getting an at least average-looking, non-overweight partner? Would I be better off focusing on women, since women (as a whole, I know I’m an anomaly) seem more open to dating people less attractive than themselves? (E.g., you see attractive women with unattractive men a lot more than vice versa.) The problem there is that I’m more attracted to men, so I’m not sure even that would be good enough — I’ve had crushes on fairly average men, but only on really beautiful women.

Finally, there’s no escaping the fact that if I could just get paid what I make now plus the cost of a one-bedroom apartment, utilities, TV, and internet, without working any more hours, I would never even consider trying to date, but continue to satisfy myself with crushes and fantasies of people light-years out of my league. Is this unhealthy, and might my friend be right, and dating actually be good for me? How can I get over feeling like a whore if I go into dating primarily because I need support? Is it morally better to be a leech, because at least you’re not selling yourself, or a whore, because at least you’re providing something in return?

Sincerely,

Leech Or Whore? (she/her)

DEAR LEECH OR WHORE: Let’s dispense with two things right off the bat. First: you aren’t a leech or a whore (and let’s not use references to sex workers as an inherent negative going forward) and defining yourself as one or the other says a lot about what the ACTUAL problem is. Because this ties into the second point: this isn’t about leagues. This is about something deeper.

I’m not going to lie, LoW; this is the kind of letter I hate getting because, honestly, there are relatively few immediately actionable answers here. Most of the answers to your situation are going to involve long-term effort, which aren’t going to pay off in the short-term or provide an interim solution to your issues.

Part of this is due to the fact you’re coming to this with some fairly serious self-limiting beliefs; you’re treating your issues as permanent  and personal, defining yourself as a person who’s  hideous inside and out. You don’t just see yourself as unloveable because of your body and weight, but by what you have to offer to others. I mean, you literally give the two options that define you as “leech” and “whore”… neither of which exactly make it easy for you to work out the solutions to your situation.

And here’s the thing: for all the bulls--t we grow up with about “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me”… words not only hurt us, but they have the potential to wound us deeper and more seriously than mere physical damage ever could. The way we talk about ourselves directly affects not just how we see ourselves, but our emotional resilience and our ability to succeed in the face of adversity. Words are indeed magic and names have power, which is why we need to be careful how we name ourselves; when you’ve labeled yourself a leech or a sex worker or a loser or the worst, you set yourself up for failure. You end up creating a negative feedback loop that plays directly to the inherent cognitive biases we all have; you trigger your confirmation bias, which causes you to focus like a laser on all the ways you fail and miss or discount the ways you succeed. Each failure — or perceived failure, which isn’t the same thing — is  taken as proof that you’re an unredeemable loser, while every success or potential for success doesn’t count.

This is one of the reasons why I tell people that one of the most important things you can do is consciously reframe the way you look at things. Choosing to look at things in the most positive light — yes, you have these handicaps and setbacks but look at how much you’ve accomplished despite them — functionally hacks your confirmation bias and helps train you to look for the most positive options,  even in a sea of s--tty ones. As the sage once said, since your beliefs control the outcome, you may as well choose the beliefs that serve your needs… regardless of whether they’re “real” or not.

Case in point: you believe that you’re undesirable because of your weight and fat distribution; you aren’t “thicc” in the way that means you’re curvy, you’re just fat. It certainly sounds like you’ve absorbed the negative messaging that society drowns people in about obesity — that fat people are lazy, undesirable and that they “deserve” the disdain they receive because it’s all their own fault. It becomes a moral judgement, where obesity is treated as an external manifestation of some internal fault or sin… and it certainly sounds like this is one more thing you use to flagellate yourself with. In reality, fat people — men and women, both, and not just the ones who are conventionally attractive or “fat” in approved ways — have sex, get married and have long and fulfilling relationships. Many have them with folks who are conventionally attractive or who fit the more socially desirable body type. They aren’t anomalies, they aren’t unusual or dating freaks or dating gold diggers… they’re people who found folks who loved them for who they actually are. It does happen.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying “just be positive and things will happen for you.” I don’t believe in bulls--t about manifesting things through the power of belief and positive vibes. What I believe — and science backs me up on this — is that attitude and belief contribute to giving us the strength, motivation and resiliency to succeed, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

I mean, take the way you’ve described yourself in this letter. Would you be willing to date someone — someone who’s successful and physically attractive to you — who talks and believes the way you do in this letter? That alone is going to make it harder to find someone, anyone, to date… doubly so if you’re just looking for someone to support and provide for you. Relationships are partnerships, with both partners contributing to the relationship itself, and right now, you make it pretty clear that you don’t feel like you have anything to give that people would want.

(And as an aside: there are relationships and marriages that are about affection and companionship but not romantic love, sex or a physical connection; they’re called “companionate marriages”, and they’re more common than you would think.)

But like I said: this isn’t about “change the way you describe yourself and you’ll be successful beyond your wildest dreams”, it’s “change the way you describe yourself and you’ll be equipped to help yourself“. The solution to your issues isn’t to be a leech or to rely on sex you may not want to have, it’s to try to address the underlying problems so that you can succeed. It sounds to me like the first step would be finding ways to help manage your anxiety, which I suspect exacerbates all of the other issues. I know finding mental health care can be difficult and expensive, even seemingly out of reach for someone with limited income, but there are options out there. Captain Awkward has some invaluable posts about finding low-cost or even free mental health resources in your area. Even apps like BetterHelp and Talkspace can help get you started on handling your anxiety and other emotional issues. Will these be a magic bullet? Hell no; even under the best of circumstances, therapy (and medication) are a long term process… but getting started means that you are better able to make progress to where you need to be.

Besides therapy, I would also suggest looking at practical steps you could take towards short-term solutions that would make it easier to support yourself in the long-term. While these aren’t going to be a magical solution, any more than therapy would be, those steps could provide a feasible foundation that would also help you feel less like a useless “leech”. As much as I see the gig economy as an indictment of end-stage capitalism, picking up freelance work on sites like Fiverr or Taskrabbit might help supplement your income enough to make it possible to at least put money towards a one-bedroom apartment. You might also look at finding a roommate or roommates to make it more feasible to find a place to live if and when you have to move out of your friend’s place. It might feel odd to do this as a 38 year old woman instead of  some up-and-coming 20-something… but honestly, it’s not that different from the situation you have now.

You may notice that I don’t bring up things like “lose weight”; that’s in no small part because not only are there a s--tload of factors that make significant weight loss more difficult than “eat less and exercise”, but because even if you fit into smaller clothes, that doesn’t change how you feel about yourself. Even if you were suddenly able to get gastric bypass surgery (which is fraught with issues  in and of itself) or magically wave a wand to suddenly lose body fat, it doesn’t change your outlook. You’re not fat because you’re a bad person, nor are you a bad person because you’re fat; you just believe you’re worth less.  The internal belief that you’re a leech is going to sabotage things, even if you were a size 8.

Do I think it would be unhealthy for you to forgo dating entirely and just satisfy yourself with crushes and fantasies? Not really,  so long as you actually have a social life with friends and people who you care for and who care for you. There are folks don’t date or pursue romantic relationships and life fulfilling and happy lives; the love of their life is the love of their life.  Loneliness, on the other hand, is a literal killer… and I worry that you’re trying to justify accepting loneliness as the only option.

TL;DR: you’re presenting a false dichotomy, where the only options are to be a leech or to trade sex for companionship. I reject the idea that these are the only options you have, and you should as well. Focusing on your emotional and mental well-being will help you see that, and put you in a better position to decide what would be the best life for you… whether it ultimately entails trying to find a relationship, being satisfied on your own, or some combination of the two. Giving yourself the love and care you need will make it easier to find love elsewhere if you want it, and to support yourself in the long run. But that needs to start with active steps towards improving your mental and emotional health. Start to work on those, and the rest will be that much easier.

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: My girlfriend and I (a lesbian) have been together for almost 2 years now. I love her very much she understands me better then anyone and I can’t see my life with anyone else… but I have an issue with her attitude.

She has a bad attitude towards me: she tends to take little things out on me and when I tell her she is being mean, she tells me she is not doing anything wrong. I don’t know how show her that when she talks to me like that it really hurts. We have had many fights because of her attitude; that’s what we mostly fight about. And she realizes finally when we both are in tears that she was being mean, but then I feel like we go through the same process.

I don’t know where to go from here and I DON’T want to break up with her I love her too much.

Pretty Poison

DEAR PRETTY POISON: Break up with her. Now.

I realize that’s the opposite of what you just told me, but the fact of the matter is, you’re in an abusive relationship. It’s an all-too-common cycle – she yells at you, finds fault in all the little things you do and refuses to see that she’s hurting you until you break down in tears and then she’s apologetic and promises you things will be better. But they’re not. She’s keeping you off balance emotionally and dangling just enough hope to keep you around, then proceeds to start the whole process over again.

And unfortunately, it’s not going to end unless you make it end. And that means leaving her. You may love her, but she’s not showing you love back. Her behavior isn’t that of a loving partner. She’s not showing you that she cares for you or respects you. She’s hurting you. And she’s doing it deliberately. Her abuse of you isn’t your fault, no matter how much she may insist that it is.

Get out. Get out now and find somebody who’s good for you. Someone who doesn’t pick on you or bully you, someone who actually cares for you and treats you with dignity and respect. It will be hard to leave – you’ve spent years building a life together, after all –  but you have the strength.

You can do this.

And be sure to write back and let us know how you’re doing.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My partner and I have been together four years now. I have been going to her family reunion every year since we have been together. We bring our two girls every year to spend time with family, most of whom we see just once a year.

This year she told me she invited her friend to the reunion. I don’t mind spending time with her friend, but our reunion is a weekend long event where we all enjoy camping, hiking, relaxing and spending time with family.

I feel like having her friend there would take away her time to spend with the family. Is it wrong to say she should not invite her friend?

How should someone go about it without hurting anyone’s feelings and seemingly feel like a jerk?

Three’s a Crowd

DEAR THREE’S A CROWD: I’m not entirely sure this is a fight you need to be having, TaC. This is a family reunion for her side of the family; it seems to me that this means that she would be in a better position to decide what would or wouldn’t be appropriate, including whether she invites a friend or not.

In fairness, it strikes me as a little odd, but honestly, different families have different dynamics. You leave out a lot of potentially relevant information: who is this friend, how long has your partner known them, what kind of friends are they, etc. If this is one of her oldest and dearest friends — someone who’s family in all but blood — then that’s one thing. If it’s a co-worker that she hangs out with on occasion, that’s another.

I’d be curious to know just why she wants to invite her friend along and how her friend would be fitting into the dynamic. Would the friend be staying with you all, or would they have their own place? Is she thinking that this would be a good place to play matchmaker with another family member? Or is it more of a case of “well, I think %FRIEND would really enjoy the event”?

Those are questions you’d have to ask your partner. But as I said: ultimately, it’s her family and her family’s events. I think that gives her the final say in who comes or doesn’t to the family reunion.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: A lot of the profiles on dating apps contain little to no information about the person and only a couple of pictures at best. I tend to skip over these profiles as it seems the woman isn’t really making any effort to find someone or doesn’t have much to offer (no hobbies to mention, likes/dislikes?) 

I also feel like I may be missing out if I don’t attempt to message some of them.

What are your thoughts on this? Are they worth pursuing and how would you message someone who gives you little to nothing to talk about when messaging them the first time?

Thanks!

Silent Snake

DEAR SILENT SNAKE: As a general rule, if they don’t have anything in their profile, my vote is to just swipe left and move on. A completely blank profile with only a couple of photos tends to be one of three things:

1. They haven’t bothered to fill things out before taking  it live and are planning to come back to it eventually… maybe

2. They don’t feel like they need to bother doing so/ don’t feel like they have anything to say

3. It’s a fake profile — likely a bot or trying to be a bait and switch

Regardless of which is the case you aren’t missing out on anything by skipping right over them. At best, that blank profile is neutral; at worst, it’s a mark against them. Not only are they not giving you anything to work with, but they’re also not giving you any reason to be into them in the first place. Yes, their pictures may be hot… but you’re getting nothing else to tell whether it’s worth your time to talk to them and every reason not to. If it’s a bot or bait-and-switch, then you’re never going to actually engage with the person in those pictures. If they’re a real person but they don’t feel they need to put anything in their profile, then that’s all you need to know to swipe left. If they don’t know what to say, same thing. And if it’s a case that they put their profile up before they finished it and will come back… well, it’s a shame, but that’s their mistake. Since most apps are swipe-based these days, there really isn’t a “hold this until later” mechanic to see if anything changes. And if they aren’t going to take it seriously, then why should you put in effort that they hadn’t felt the need to put in?

Plus, swiping right on the off chance that it’s a mistake and not a bot has s--tty odds even under the best of circumstances.

You’re better off ignoring them and looking for someone who actually takes it seriously enough to fill out their profile completely.

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 28-year-old straight white male. I am a virgin who’s had some minor success with online dating in the past though I still haven’t gotten a full-on relationship. I’m kind of socially isolated: I have plenty of acquaintances but no close friends that I hang out with.

Anyway, after having taken a three-year break from OLD after a few hard rejections online in order to take care of my mental health, I created an OKCupid account three months ago. Initially, I wasn’t taking it that seriously, I just wanted to see who was out there as well as whether or not I could get any likes with new pictures (I’ve had life long body image problems, I was worried that no one would like me since I’ve gained a little weight). To my surprise, I got several likes from girls on the platform. Most of these turned out to be duds: they were either too conservative (anti-trans, for example), not attractive to me, didn’t seem to have anything in common with me, or were bot accounts. However, there was one girl on there, let’s call her C, who seemed like a good match: she was liberal, chubby but cute, and shared my interest in video games and tabletop roleplaying. She mentioned that she wanted to get married and have a child within the next five years. This was alright with me, I wanted a relationship with a girl that could ultimately be my wife if things worked out, I eventually want children, and five years from now seems like a fine time-frame for all of this to possibly happen (I still live with my parents, but I recently finished my Masters and hope to get a job that allows me to live independently soon).

So, after a few weeks of hesitation, I liked and messaged C and we seemed to hit it off. After a few messages, she asked me what I was looking for on the site. I told her that I wanted to find love, eventually, get married, and have children. She seemed happy about that and we continued messaging for a couple of days. I was asking basic get to know you questions about her interests, her spirituality (pagan), and her life. When I ask her about her childhood, she gives a message detailing her life story: her father was a deadbeat who abandoned her and her mother when she was young, she dealt with bullying and depression all throughout middle and high school because of her weight, and she and her mother had to live with their meth-head uncle for several years after her mother lost her job. Now, this set off some alarm bells for me. I’ve had a relatively blessed, middle-class life and, besides some bullying in middle school and generalized anxiety disorder in college, it’s been pretty happy. I started to wonder if we could relate to each other, having had such different lives. I’ve also had bad experiences with girls with difficult pasts, which I’ll talk more about later on. Ultimately I decided to ignore these warning bells and keep messaging her, I couldn’t know how we’d work out in the long run, so there was no reason to give up yet.

We kept messaging, but eventually, her replies started to become shorter and less detailed. I thought maybe it was because she was growing tired of using OkCupid’s messenger and was unsure if I wanted to progress things beyond just talking on a dating site. I decide to message her my cellphone number in case she wants to text, but she says she’d feel more comfortable using snapchat, so we do. We continue messaging and out of nowhere, she asks me if I have any major health problems. I say no and ask why she asked. She replied that she just wanted to know for future children. When I joke about her thinking too far ahead, she says she was just wondering and that she wants to have a child “sooner rather than later”.

Then, she asks me the big question: exactly how sexually experienced was I? I know some girls don’t want to date virgins, and I was hoping to get into this topic later after we’d been on a few dates. However, I decided to be honest and told her I was a virgin. She said she was fine with it and that it was pretty obvious since I was reluctant to flirt, and told me that she feared my conservative parents were to blame for my lack of sexual experience. She was worried that I wasn’t interested or sex or would object to her more taboo sexual interests, so she asked me what the dirtiest sex act I’ve ever wanted to do was.

Now, here was where I made a mistake. On one hand, it was pretty obvious to me at this point that, based on this question and other things she had said while we were messaging, that she wanted to be sexual with me sooner than I’m comfortable. I want to get to know someone and be comfortable with them before I have sex, when I’ve gotten sexual in the past with girls I had just met I left the experience feeling deeply uncomfortable and guilty. I feel I need at least three dates before I’m ready to do sexual acts with a woman. On the other hand, as a virgin with a high sex drive, I’m getting pretty impatient about losing my virginity and sometimes when I feel like a girl might be willing to have sex with me I throw out my doubts, previous experiences, and rationality and immediately try to pursue sex. Unfortunately, my rising sense of discomfort that things were going way too fast, my lust won out and I decided to answer her question.

After telling her all my sexual fantasies, I asked her what hers was. She mentioned that one of her sexual fantasies was “breeding” (being full of cum, as she put it) and this again set off some alarm bells since she mentioned wanting a child so much. I told her I was fine with her fantasy so long as she used birth control when we were having sex until we married and were ready to have a child. She replied that she didn’t use birth control, and finally I realized what was happening: she didn’t want to get married and have a child in a few years, she wanted to do that now. This was not something I wanted: I wanted a date a girl, see if we were compatible, be boyfriend and girlfriend for a few years and THEN get married and have children. Ultimately I decided to end things there, saying that it was nice to talk to her and that, while she was a cool person, I didn’t feel we were compatible. I then proceeded to block her on Snapchat & OKCupid, feeling guilty that I had led her on and then rejected her so suddenly and feeling dirty since I had was stupid and shared my sexual fantasies way before I had even met a girl physically.

This was a deeply uncomfortable experience and unfortunately its emblematic of several similar experiences I’ve had since I started dating four years ago. Many of the women who’ve been attracted to me over the years have wanted to move way too fast, wanting me to have sex with them and become their boyfriend or husband before we’ve had more than one date (or, in some cases, before we’ve even met in-person). Most of them a similar to C, having had rough childhoods and trauma. I seem to attract these kinds of people and I don’t know why. Is it because I get too personal in messages? Is it because I have a babyface and am not experienced, so people see me as innocent? Are these just the kinds of people that use OkCupid and other OLD sites?

So that’s my first question: How do I stop attracting people like this? How do I identify these types of people so I can avoid this in the future? What do I need to change about my behavior so I don’t lead on people and make the desire a relationship too quickly?

My second question is about what C said about it being obvious that I was a virgin since I was reluctant to flirt. This is not the first time I’ve been told this from people I’ve messaged on OLD sites. Now, I try to be playful and fun in my messages, and I try to compliment the people I message so that they know I’m attracted to them. Is this not flirting? I try to avoid sexual compliments and discussion when messaging on OkCupid to avoid being creepy, is this wrong? How do I message women without sounding like a virgin?

Thank you,

Mr.Slow-and-Steady

DEAR MR. SLOW-AND-STEADY: Hoo boy.

Alright, MS&S, I’m going to get to your questions in a minute but before I do… well, I hate to say this, but you’re asking the wrong questions. This is a very significant case of “the problem you’re asking about isn’t the problem you have” because, frankly, I’m pretty sure you got catfished.

There’re a few key points here that set my Spidey-sense tingling. First is her origin story, for lack of a better term. While God knows plenty of people have really s--tty upbringings and deal with abuse, family trauma and living in dire circumstances, a lot of catfishers will give a long detailed list of all their trauma and horrible background both to engender sympathy in dudes — especially ones who have White Knight Syndrome — and to provide convenient reasons for why they “can’t” or won’t do certain things that would confirm their identity. The second was waving off your wanting to communicate via text for Snapchat instead. While God knows there’re plenty of ways to avoid giving a real number, services like Snapchat make it very easy to create and throw away accounts with relative ease. The third sign was the very weird ways that the conversation would go — from asking about your health to insisting on talking about your dirtiest fantasies with virtually no preamble, to going on about having a breeding fetish.

Any one of these, in and of itself would be explainable. Some of it — insisting on talking about your health and/or dirtiest fantasies, for example — would raise a few eyebrows but it wouldn’t be that far out of the norm; God knows I’ve had some conversations with folks I’d met on dating apps that would set your hair on fire, long before we met. But it’s the combination of all three that makes me suspect you were dealing with someone who was getting their jollies by screwing around with you and seeing how far they could take this.

The thing about catfishing is that it’s not always a Monte Te’o situation, where someone is creating an entire relationship for s--ts and giggles or pretending to be someone else because they don’t feel like they could be themselves with someone they’re attracted to. Nor, for that matter, is it always about scamming people who love not too wisely but too well. Sometimes you’ll get folks who get bored and want to see how far they can push things and some who get their rocks off by having dirty chats with strangers.

I strongly suspect that you were dealing someone (or a few someones) who were somewhere around the latter. Whether it was just to see how hard you’d bite, or if they got a thrill from sexting under false pretenses, I think that in this case, it’s not an issue of attracting the wrong people so much as falling for someone’s bulls--t profile. And to be clear: I don’t think you’re gullible, naive or stupid. I think that someone took advantage of your eagerness and frustration and your inexperience.

Now, I’ve written about best practices when it comes to spotting catfish and fake profiles before — check their social media presence, use Google to confirm particularly outlandish claims, reverse image-search their pics, and meet up in person as soon as feasible. Failing that, Skype, Facetime, Zoom and other video chats are your friend. But it’s also important to refine and trust your instincts, especially if something seems too good to be true or it’s coming at a time when you’re particularly hornt up. Horniness makes even the smartest of people make poor decisions; a little dickful thinking can override a lot of warning bells.

(Seriously, asking about health issues should’ve been the first clue that this was about to go south, regardless of whether this was a catfish or not…)

So on the one hand, I don’t think you need to really worry about why you attract folks like C, here, because I think C isn’t actually C. But on the other, you also mention that you’ve run into similar issues before, with people who were on a different timeline than you, sexually or relationship-wise. How do you deal with this?

This one is simple: boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

It’s less about “what can you do to make sure that only the right people are drawn to you” and more about “why are you letting the wrong people stay?” If someone is pushing for a relationship before you’re ready — especially before you’ve even met — then that’s a sign that they’re not someone you want to date and to look elsewhere. Making it clear that you take things slow and want to get to know someone before you get serious or physically intimate is drawing a line in the sand; people who push against that or want you to let go of your boundaries are making it clear that they’re not right for you. Maintaining those boundaries means that the wrong people won’t stay in your life. Having strong boundaries, even in the messaging stages, helps keep the drama llamas and line-steppers out of your life before they ever get any sort of traction.

There’re a number of points where you should’ve paid more attention to your boundaries and to those warning bells. The health question alone should’ve been enough to make you say “I’m not sure this is relevant to anything”. However, her asking you out of the clear blue sky about being a virgin and pushing the conversation towards sex, fetishes and sex acts are another area where you should’ve been ready to push back or say that you didn’t want to talk about this with someone you hadn’t even met yet. I get that being horny and turned on can make folks overlook big honkin’ red flags, but there really is a point where you’re better off to rub one out and tell her that it’s a little too soon than to let the conversation go in directions it doesn’t seem you were comfortable with.

Now with all that having been said, there’re a few areas where it seems like you’re contributing to your own issues. You drop the occasional clue that there’re things you need to work on, such as a tendency to get too personal, too quickly in the messaging stages. That’s definitely a thing to dial back; if you’re giving a lot of personal s--t right off  the bat, that tends to be an indicator of poor emotional and social intelligence; while being open and vulnerable is good, getting really personal really quickly tends to be a red flag for folks on the receiving end. And if someone is cool with that… well, that’s often a red flag in and of itself.

But without more details, it’s really hard to say. As a general rule, boundaries and being choosy about who you match with and message is going to be more important than worrying about leading people on. While there’re things that could be sending the wrong message in your profile — especially if you’re mentioning wanting kids or a family — you also can’t control who does or doesn’t respond to you. Even if you avoid every possible hint or clue that would make people think you want something that you don’t, there are still people who will be looking for things you aren’t. I mean, ask women about the guys who message them for same night hook-ups, even if they explicitly say that’s not what they want.

But that having been said, you mention that not only is this a recurring issue, but you tend to connect with people who’ve had trauma or rough childhoods and that they’re the ones who tend to push the line past what you’re comfortable with. I think that you need to take a step back and examine just why you seem to zero in on women who have — or claim to have — troubled backgrounds. I think part of the reason why this keeps happening is because you keep going for the same type of women and, frankly, that can be an issue.

Yes, it’s certainly possible that people who’ve got trauma or rough personal histories have their own issues going on that may influence their relationship patterns. Some may have an anxious attachment style and may rush into relationships or sex; others may sense an opportunity of one sort or another and want to lock that down. But there’re plenty of folks who have a history of trauma or went through awful s--t growing up and aren’t clingy, needy or jump the gun on relationships or sex. The fact that this keeps happening is an indication that it may be an issue on your end, rather than your dating app profile.

As the saying goes, sometimes the most important common denominator in your relationships is you. If you’re consistently having these issues and they seem to coincide with women with this particular background or history, then that makes it much more likely about what’s drawing you to them.

Remember what I said about having White Knight Syndrome? One of the reasons why some men will be drawn to women who they think they need to “save” is because they don’t believe in their own value or desirability. They feel that by “saving” someone or “healing” them or otherwise “fixing” them, they will have “earned” the right to be in a relationship. This is problematic for a lot of reasons. To start with: women aren’t your project; they aren’t there waiting to be fixed by someone, they’re out there trying to live their lives. Having Studly Goodnight swoop in to “save” them tends to mean that they end up with a dude — even a well-meaning one — who has ZERO understanding of what they’re going through trying to save the day and generally making a mess of things. Dudes with White Knight Syndrome tend to not see the women they want to “save” as people with wants and desires and agency, so much as both the puzzle to solve AND the reward for solving it.

Worse, guys who do get involved with women who have severe issues — emotional, health, financial or physical — often have no idea what they’re in for or what a relationship with them would mean. They end up in over their heads very, very quickly and tend to either burn out or split.  And of course, there’re the ones who are happy to let those White Knights into their lives. A lot of those types tend to be bad news — frequently because they’re deeply co-dependent, incredibly toxic or occasionally both.

So, while you work on your boundaries, I think it’s going to be a good idea for you to take a step back and do some deep exploration into just what it is about these women that draws you to them. There seems to be some unexplored issue that is making these women especially appealing to you, even though they almost always prove to be wrong for you. It sounds to me like you should sort that side of the equation out first. Once you’re able to address whatever aspect means that you respond to that particular commonality, you’ll be in a better position to choose women who are right for you, instead of having to constantly fend off all the wrong ones… and the ones who likely aren’t who they say they are.

Good luck.

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