Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 34, never had a girlfriend, don’t really work or even have a post secondary education. I have been on two dates with the same women in 2010 which was basically two free dinners for her and teasing me that was just cruel in hindsight. No friends and only family died in 07. I gave up on dating at 23. I still have illusions of 3 kids and a wife. Incel could be a correct term.

The last time I had sex was 2014 with a escort that turned out to be a sex worker with drug ravaged face and teeth. I believe I have antisocial personality disorder which combined with ADHD is my mental scapegoat excuse. I yearn for companionship yet haven’t spoken to a women in any form including: text, apps, social media, since 2019. I wonder if accepting perpetual solitude is just a hard reality.

With no experience, I have multi decade arrested development. How can I possibly be any sort of a draw to the fairer sex?

Alone For The Holidays

DEAR ALONE FOR THE HOLIDAYS: Well this is being shared after the holiday season, but I feel like it’s important to address this in the tone and season it was answered.��You know, I get a lot of questions like yours, AFTH; in fact, I’ve got several of them sitting in the question bucket as we speak. All of them – like you – focus on their lack of experience or dates or relationships, and dwell on their supposed faults.

And every single one of them are convinced that their past means they have no future, and treat being Forever Alone as being the price of their continued existence.

But since this went up a couple days before Christmas, I want to draw your attention to a particular story that’s popular right about now… someone who’s life is dull, lonely and empty, and has been for a very long time… even if they can’t quite bring themselves to admit it.

And yes, I’m talking about Ebeneezer Scrooge. Yes, I’m going to just lean into the cringe and use A Christmas Carol as a metaphor. Because the whole point of A Christmas Carol isn’t that Scrooge was a bad person who needed to be scared into rediscovering the meaning of Christmas. The point of the entire story, to my mind, comes down to this one line:

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven ‘t missed it.”

Scrooge spent a lifetime isolating himself, alienating himself from his family, from friends and lovers. He deliberately chose a life of solitude and loneliness for decades. But in the span of a night, he decides to turn everything around and change his life.

“I haven’t missed it”.

There’s nobody telling him that it’s too late, that he’s doomed himself to die alone and unloved. Nobody is telling him that he can’t change, that his past has determined his future for all time. Nobody is saying “you missed your chance and now nobody will ever care for you.” What he realizes is very simple:

“I haven’t missed it”.

The whole point is that change is possible, that redemption is possible and that even someone who spent their life trying to justify their own misery by externalizing it to others can change, even late in life. His joy and love and relationships aren’t lessened by the fact that he came to them so late in the game. Nobody is saying that since he missed out on so much, he can’t have anything good in the time he has left. They just say “We’re so glad you’re here.” “We’re so happy to see you.” “We’ve been waiting for you and we welcome you home.”

You’ve had a long, hard past. But none of that means that your future’s been carved in stone. You can turn things around and make things different, if that’s truly what you want.

Just as Scrooge had his chance to change his story, you are going to change the story you’re telling of your life.

Now where things differ is that it’s a lot easier when you’re fictional and you have supernatural forces interceding on your behalf. You’re not a character from a book, you’re a flesh and blood person, and that means that changing things won’t happen instantaneously. But again: the point isn’t to turn things around in one night and reap the rewards. The point is very simple:

“I haven’t missed it”.

So here’s how you can have your own holiday miracle: you declare your past to be just that: your past. It’s not the thing that dictates your future, it’s the challenge that you rise to meet and overcome. Today isn’t the beginning of the end of your story, it’s the peak of your second act, when the protagonist (you) is at his lowest. It’s the point where he rallies his strength and determination and finally rises to the occasion.

And if you know stories, then you know that this is never easy. You’ve got obstacles to overcome, trials to endure, tests to face. But part of what the protagonist needs to do is to focus his will and determination and do the things that need to be done. He learns. He trains. He improves. He endures.

This is where you are. You are now at the point of your own personal training montage; you’re going to start taking up the challenge of making things better.

The first step is to get to a therapist. You say that you think you have antisocial personality disorder and ADHD. That’s certainly a distinct possibility, so find out for sure. If you’re right, then getting diagnosed means that you can actually address them, get treatment and therapy that will help mitigate things and get it all under control. If you’re wrong, then at least you’ll know. Maybe you’re dealing with something else entirely, or maybe this really is just an excuse you’ve been using. Either way, having that knowledge will inform what you need to do next.

Similarly, talking to a therapist will help you process the shame and hopelessness you feel, help get your mind and emotions into good working order, and get yourself into emotional shape. That improvement will make it easier for you to work on your social skills, get you to a place where you can enforce your boundaries and build a better life for yourself. It’ll make it easier for you to build new connections, find new friends, even family. Family don’t end in blood after all, and sometimes the family you choose (and who chooses you) is stronger and more important than the family you had before.

Now, like Scrooge, this is going to require that you acknowledge that the past happened. A big reason why a lot of people in your situation feel stuck is that they ultimately want a redo of the past. They want the past to unhappen, so they can go back to who they could have been. That, unfortunately, is the province of fiction. Your past is your past, and there’s no “making up for lost time”. What there is, instead, is looking to the future and resolving to make the most of it, to not waste it by constantly looking backwards. You can acknowledge your past, and the choices and forces that shaped it, but you can’t erase it. But your past informs your future, it doesn’t dictate it. You can look at your past and acknowledge that you made mistakes or struggled against things you couldn’t overcome and forgive yourself for doing the best you could with what you knew and what you had. Now you know differently. You have resources and knowledge you didn’t have then. You have experience that tells you what you did that lead you to here and that experience means you can make new, better choices.

So while your past dreams may change with your present and your new future, that’s not a bad thing. That’s just acknowledging that things have changed. That you have changed. Our dreams should change with us; the dreams we had as younger men aren’t always the ones we truly want or need. Yes, the life you have in the future may not be the one you dreamed of back in your bad old days… but that doesn’t mean that your new life will be lesser for it. It will just be different, because you will no longer be the person you were. You will be the person you mean to become, and his needs and wants will be different. And that’s OK. That’s good. You’ll discover that there are other things that you long for and work towards, other dreams and other goals. That’s all to the good.

Because the most important thing that you need to remember is this:

It’s not too late. You haven’t missed it. You can still build an incredible, satisfying and fulfilling life, full of warmth, caring and companionship. You just have to start.

All will be well.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I know you mostly help people get into relationships, but how do you get out of one? I (M, 28) have been with my girlfriend (F, 27) for three years now and I think it’s time to end it.

If I’m being real, it’s been time to end it for a while. We’ve been drifting apart for a while now. We barely have sex, when we do it’s not that great, and most of the time we live like roommates who share a bed. And it’s not like things are bad or anything, just not there. It’s not even like the spark is gone, it’s like everything that made the relationship work is gone.

I feel like I have to say that we’ve been trying. We’ve tried counseling, together and separately, we’ve been talking and talking and putting in work to make things better, but everything is staying the same and I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe if I could, it’d be easier, but my girlfriend doesn’t see it that way. She just says that relationships take work and we need to keep at it and it’ll get better. I don’t know if she’s right, but I know at this point I’m not sure I care if she is. I just feel tired, you know? 

I think part of what makes this hard is I’ve never actually broken up with someone before. Both of my previous relationships ended with me being dumped, and the girls I would date casually would just either ghost me or be the ones to call it off.

But the other reason I’m writing is because I don’t know WHEN to do this. We’re going to stay with her parents for Christmas and New Year’s and I don’t know if I can be the guy who dumps his girlfriend before Christmas. So what do I do? Do I wait until after the holidays? How do I tell her I just can’t do this any more?

One Out of Three Is Bad

DEAR ONE OUT OF THREE IS BAD: Let’s address the initial problem first, OOTB: you can break up with someone for any reason at any time. Part of why you’re having a hard time with this is that, like a lot of folks, you seem to feel like you need a reason to break up with someone. ��Well, you have that reason: you don’t want to be in a relationship with her any more. I realize that this seems obvious, but a lot of people tend to feel as though that they “can’t” break up or end a relationship without some sort of causus belli. It’s easy to look at a relationship where one partner’s cheated or treats you badly or did something demonstrably wrong and say “ok, this needs to end”. It’s a lot harder when the relationship is generally just shambling along like a zombie. It’s going through the motions of life, but the animating spark just isn’t there any more.�And I get it. It feels like admitting failure, or saying that you didn’t try hard enough or that it was a functionally ok relationship so do you really want to let go? But if we get right down to it, all that is is a sort of sunk-cost fallacy. You’re staying in it because leaving would mean that all that effort and time was for nothing. And that’s really not the right way to look at it. You didn’t waste time in this relationship – certainly not if it was mostly good, and if you and your partner have a level of affection and respect for each other, even if the spark may be gone. It’s just that not every relationship is meant to last until death do you part. Relationships have lifespans; some are long, some are short, and yours just came to the end of its life. Not every love story is meant to be an epic poem. Some are short stories, and that’s fine. 

So let me give you the first stage of permission that you’re asking for: yes, break up with your girlfriend. You don’t want to be in a relationship with her any more. This relationship no longer meets your needs. You have my permission to end it, unilaterally.

Now, the next part is the part you may not want to hear. As a general rule of thumb, the worst time to break up with someone is “tomorrow”. There’s never a good time to end a relationship, even if that ending is totally amicable. It will always be the wrong time and there will always be a reason why ending it will be bad. If it’s not the holidays, it’s close to their birthday. Or some important milestone. Or something awful that happened and how can you be the person who ends their relationship when that awful thing just happened?

But here’s the other side of that equation: how much worse do you think it’s going to feel when you break up with someone after the holiday, or their birthday or whatever and they realize how long you’ve been waiting for this chance to break up with them? Yes, breaking up with your girlfriend before Christmas may be what makes someone the asshole in a Netflix Christmas special. But imagine how much it’s going to taint those memories for her when she realizes that the entire time you were celebrating with her family, you were quietly counting down the days until you could pull the trigger? That’s going to leave a much bigger stain on things than if you were to end things now, when she could use this trip as a chance to recover with the loving support of her family and friends and the hunky small-town bookshop owner/Christmas tree farmer who she has a weirdly antagonistic relationship with?

Yes, it sucks to have to be the one to end things, and it’s to your credit that you don’t want to make things worse than they have to be. But pain is inevitable; it’s suffering that’s optional. And prolonging this is only going to make things worse. Do yourself (and your girlfriend) a favor and break it off now. Make it quick and clean – acknowledge that you can’t keep doing this, that this relationship no longer works for you, that you care for her and respect her, but you’re breaking up with her. Don’t explain, don’t argue, don’t rationalize; that’s just going to prolong things and it won’t help her gain closure. It’ll just make everything more painful. The short, sharp pain fades the quickest, and a clean break heals the fastest. She can mourn the loss of her relationship with the loving support of her family. If you feel like you need to do some sort of penance for breaking up at Christmas, then hey, the guilt you’re feeling works.

But as much as it sucks for everybody, this really is the kindest thing you could do.

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: Long time reader and bona-fide straight woman here. Something struck me in your recent column, “What Makes A Man Attractive to Women?” The LW lists examples of “unattractive” men that masc-attracted women “claim” are hot to illustrate their question. This time, it was Pete Davidson (I only get the appeal in the academic sense there, so I sort of understand the LW’s  confusion) and “that guy from The Bear.” And it honestly took me a second to realize he meant Jeremy Allen White. Jeremy Allen White, Twitter embodiment of the sexually competent dirtbag line cook (also, if straight men want to further understand the appeal, perhaps they should go back and reread the first 2 words of the meme). Jeremy Allen White, who looks like a ripped Botticelli painting come to life. Taste and attraction are both very individual and subjective, so I get if a specific person isn’t particularly into the Italian High Renaissance, but I don’t understand how someone could look at him and not understand how lots of other people would be into it?

This is something that has struck me in almost every iteration of that question that you’ve answered over the years.  Nearly every time, the LW provides examples of “unattractive” men women are going nuts over to prove their thesis and those “unattractive” men are almost always men my straight and bi female friends consider very conventionally attractive.  I find it baffling every time.  I expressed my bafflement to the straight woman group chat and my friends and I quickly ended up with a list of straight men have, at some point or another, expressed confusion with regards to their appeal or have asked us to “explain” much to our confusion: Dev Patel, Oscar Issac, Ryan Gosling, Paul Rudd, Daniel Dae Kim, and Henry Golding. 

Doc. 

These are just hot people. Again, not all of the group chat are personally attracted to all of these men but they all fit comfortably into our collective conception of “handsome guy.”

Which leads to my question: what on earth is the standard straight men are using to judge other men as attractive to women? If Dev Patel and a dude who looks like he was commissioned by a Medici don’t qualify, who does? Is it like, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and no one else? If the men on my list are showing up in Google searches of “actors who aren’t conventionally attractive,” what the blistering hell is the convention?  (Clearly, whiteness is a factor in the list above, but it’s not the whole story).

Perhaps this is an unanswerable question, but I am honestly curious as to what the letter writers who are contacting you think we’re into.

Sincerely,�Fodder for the Group Chat

DEAR FODDER FOR THE GROUP CHAT: My God, it’s not even my birthday and you’re giving me a gift like this. Last week I got a chance to go on about the supposed mystifying appeal of Pete Davidson and this week you’re asking for me to talk about guys idea about whats attractive in other men.

OK, so as a long time reader, you’ve undoubtedly seen the recurring theme of “Am I too ugly to date“, and the usual comparisons to Chris Evans, Hemsworth and Pratt and occasional bonus Henry Cavill’s thrown in for good measure. And, of course, there’s the ever classic point of comparison, Brad Pitt – especially when Pitt was in his Tyler Durden shape for Fight Club.

These tend to be the touchstones for “guys who other guys think women find attractive” – or at least for the folks most prone to write in to advice columns and subreddits to complain about not being able to measure up. You know… extremely online guys. Which is part of the problem. A lot of the folks who are writing in to complain tend to also either be part of online communities – not just incels, but MRAs and redpillers, pick-up artists and various other gathering spots of mostly young men who are also either frustrated or isolated and frequently feel marginalized. There’s a lot of shared wisdom within those communities, the dating and attraction equivalent of “just-so stories” that purport to “explain” what women find desirable in men.

Needless to say, this… doesn’t lend itself well to diverse – or even accurate –  ideas about attractiveness. More often than not, folks tend to drift to a few specific ideals and the men who, in their mind, best represent those ideals. It’s not that surprising, then, that the most common touchstones tend to be men in movies or TV shows predominantly aimed at men. And this is where part of the disconnect happens.

Now, I’m going to seem like I’m going off on a tangent in a couple paragraphs, but trust me: this is all tie together like the end of Unusual Suspects. Just stick with me.

See, the men who are portrayed in these shows – not to mention comics and video games – are, for the most part, primarily power fantasies for other men. They’re the avatar that represents who the viewer, player or reader wishes they could be, someone who dominates, who beats the forces arrayed against them and who is ultimately vindicated in everything he does. It’s not surprising that their look is all about power – six foot tall behemoths, jacked up muscles with single digit body fat, lantern jaws, gimlet eyes, etc. There are minor differences in personality – check the notable difference between Steve Rogers, Geralt of Rivia and Peter Quill – but these are ultimately superficial differences. The idea is that these are folks who can impose their will upon the world and be rewarded for it. And part of that reward is the adoration of women, either in general or one woman in particular. The idea is that power, as Henry “Face Like a Bulldog Licking P--s off A Thistle” Kissinger said, is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

(Nevermind the fact that Kissinger’s reputation as a lady’s man was more self-mythologizing than reality and that his entire game was “listen to what women have to say”, rather than the inherent appeal of being Secretary of State or something…)

But the thing is, the supposed “you can’t get laid unless you look like…” logic isn’t that these men are Sex Gods made flesh, and more about toxic ideals of masculinity. Now don’t get me wrong: nobody’s gonna honestly say that Chris Evans isn’t a good looking man or that his Captain America bod isn’t impressive as hell. But the idea that guys need to look like this isn’t about attraction. Not really. It’s about feeling powerless. It’s about feeling like you don’t have the ability to influence the world or impose your will upon it and this makes you lesser. This is a bitter pill for a bunch of folks who missed the point of Fight Club: that they’ve been sold a bill of goods about  Being A Man, and the supposed rewards that they were promised will never actually be delivered.

But instead of confronting the ideals that make them miserable, that exclude them and clearly were never going to actually pay off the way they were taught, they instead focus on the idea that this means either they did something wrong… or that they’re being cheated of something.

Now, you may notice just how many of the supposed “masculinity” gurus – the ones who’ll teach you how to be a REAL MAN like your ancestors were and how you’re meant to be – put so much emphasis on muscling up. Andrew Tate and the weirdos with self-given nicknames like The Golden One or the dude who called himself Liver King or some s--t and dozens of TikTok randos all make a big deal out of trying to look like Ivan Drago all put huge emphasis on “I’m a real man, look at my abs, look like me and you’ll be a real man too unlike the pussified wimps who’re trying to hold you back”. They’re playing to the power aspect, and looking like a body builder is – theoretically an outward sign of being powerful. And the theory is, to quote yet another movie that dudes misunderstand, “you get the power, then you get the women.”

Never mind that they’re running Potemkin lives, fueled by grift, overextended credit, blatant lies and steroid abuse… they’re going to make you a “REAL man”, which means being powerful and in charge and dominant. And only dominant men can succeed. And since these dudes are (supposedly) successful, these are what DOMINANT REAL MEN look like.

But again: it relies on folks’ ignorance. Body builders aren’t actually strong. In fact, when you see someone in superhero shape taking their shirt off on screen, you’re seeing someone who’s actually at their weakest. The dehydration, starvation and overall poor health outcomes give you results that look great on camera – especially when enhanced with makeup and favorable lighting – but leave you feeling like ten pounds of s--t in a five pound sack. Cavill, in particular, has been outspoken at just how miserable it is to be in that shape and how they need to get those scenes done in one or two takes, because he’s about to collapse into a puddle.

There’s a reason why the literal strongest men in the world look like ambulatory beer kegs, not like Arnold at the height of his Mister Olympia days. Visible muscle isn’t the same as strong. It looks great, but it’s an illusion.

But since it represents power, and power makes you a “real” man and “real” men are the ones who get women… you get a bunch of guys who think that women reject them because they don’t have eight-pack abs. It’s why the idea of guys who know how to dress decently, trim their nails and don’t douse themselves in Axe was so weird to some folks that people started calling them “metrosexual” – hinting ever so subtly that yeah they’re straight but we can all agree it’s kinda gay, right? Right? Guys? Right?

Now, part of what solidifies this disconnect is the underlying belief that they’ve been lied to, but they’ve figured out the truth. Part of the reason, for example, that a lot of the same guys can’t understand the appeal of Henry Goulding or Dev Patel or Jungkook (besides, y’know, racism), or Pete Davidson or Paul Rudd for that matter, is because they refuse to believe that those guys – who don’t meet those supposed “bio truth” standards – could be attractive. The core of their belief – power, dominance, etc. – is predicated on looking powerful and thus being attractive. They’ll dress it up in language like “being able to provide” or “defend your family” but it’s about imposing their will on others.

Since nobody’s going to accuse Randall Park of being a dominant powerhouse, they feel like the women who “supposedly” find him attractive must be lying for… reasons. Call it virtue signaling, call it wanting to seem woke, but the guys who’ve most bought into the idea of the power fantasy being a sex fantasy will just come up with new, bizarre rationalizations as to why women be lying. Or they’ll complain that birth control makes women want feminine guys instead of REAL men or some other way of protecting their ego.

Meanwhile, girls are having their sexual awakening at David Bowie in Labyrinth and Disney’s animated Robin Hood, or getting squishy feels because of non-physical qualities. The specific way that Michael B. Jordan says “hi, auntie” in Black Panther or Keith David’s basso profundo as Goliath in Gargoyles, or the sometimes weird intensity and passion of Matt Smith as The Doctor… these have all been massive, massive turn-ons for folks, despite these characters NOT being power fantasies.

Once you see that, it’s everywhere – in movies, magazine covers and advertising. If you dig deep enough – though let’s be honest, it ain’t that deep – it’s easy to see how much incel phrenology conforms to the idea of power and dominance, not actual attractiveness. Between body frames, jaw shape, brow ridge, index fingers and testosterone levels… it’s not about being attractive, it’s about looking powerful, while they’re feeling powerless.

And of course, we can’t ignore the social aspect of it either. Men already have fewer friends – especially close friends – than women and even fewer sources of emotional intimacy or support. You’re not going to find a bunch of (straight) guys pumping each other up about how good they look or how sexy they are because it’s “gay” or “girly” or “weak”. Combine that with the belief that women are lying to them because F--k YOU, PENIS, THAT’S WHY, and it’s not hard to understand why a lot of guys have mistaken ideas about what makes them attractive to women.

And until guys stop confusing power with attractiveness or giving away their own power… well, that’s probably not going to change any time soon for a significant number of men.

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