DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Years ago after both I and several gal friends failed to find me a senior prom date, I confided to a close friend and mentor about being pretty down over not being able to date at all before graduating high school. He told me that I was “the type of person to find someone in college” and that I shouldn’t worry. About 5 years later, many rejections, and zero approaches towards me, it’s looking like that won’t be the case.

I’m studying abroad and halfway through my last semester of college and still find myself with no dating experience to speak of. I’ve tried my best so far, unsuccessfully asking out 4 people this semester I met through friend groups and a service-oriented club I joined. I always used something along the old “Hey X, I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you and I was wondering if you’d like to go to Y as a date?”- trying to thread the needle between politeness and directness while making sure they can feel safe saying no. Now, I fear that I’ve missed the cuffing period for this last semester and that I’ll be graduating yet again with nothing to show. It’d be one thing if romance just wasn’t my priority for these years, but it’s something I never gave up on and always tried to take steps towards. It feels like a massive failure to get past this stage of my life with my efforts never having borne fruit.

Despite these troubles I’ve made a lot of friends so far abroad and people always seem genuinely happy to have me around.

I’ve done a few check-ins with close guy and gal friends back home to get an outside perspective and they always seem to think I’d make a great partner. From the feedback they say that I have a good deal of emotional intelligence, kindness, and non-judgmental understanding towards others, and that the genuine interest I take in other people should be a boon for me in getting to know a date. To me, though, it feels like the positive qualities I do have are just the bare minimum of how people deserve to be treated.

As for the things that I can see limiting my options, I’m pretty subby and wholly disinterested in playing the standard male role- protector, provider, dominant, assertive, “”””alpha””””, etc. I’d much more prefer to be approached, especially in a romantic context, but as a guy I guess it’s still my boulder to roll up the hill. And it also takes me a bit to open up with my sense of humor and more strong opinions and values.

There’s also the obesity. At the start of the year, I was just shy of the medical cutoff for morbid obesity and realized I needed to make some changes- I have no one to blame for it but myself. After getting back into my more active hobbies and making sustainable food habits, I’m getting close to halfway from where I want to be. However, I still am obese and realize it severely limits my chances. I’ve even heard back through mutual friends that several of the people I’ve asked out rejected me mainly on the grounds of my weight. It’s pretty clear to me that even though I’ve been improving, I’m still not good enough yet.

The dating frustration has intruded a little bit into other areas of my life, as I sometimes just get extremely horny out of nowhere, making it hard to pay attention to classes and studying. I’d wanted to save myself for someone I’d dated for at least a little bit, but I’ve been considering just trying for hookups with the time I have left to try and stave my sex drive off – though even that just feels like wishful thinking at the moment.

So getting to the point of the letter, with the context and history above is there hope for me in these last couple of months or should I just give up for now and try to bury all of this inside? It’s just really hard at this point to weigh the pain of constant rejection against the dejection of giving up. As it is, I can be proud in the moment for putting myself out there when I’m rejected, but by the time I arrive back at my empty dorm room at night it still becomes a weight of disappointment on my chest. I just don’t know if it would make me feel better or worse to attempt to “focus on friends” and treat dating as a closed off door for now.

Time Out

DEAR TIME OUT: OK, TO, let’s start with the surface question and then we’ll dig a little into your specific circumstances.

First: you can take a break from dating whenever you want. If it’s becoming a headache or causing you more stress than joy right now? Take some time off. If dating or trying to meet people to date is making you feel worse about yourself, then by all means, take a break from it and let yourself focus on something else.

Not only is this better for your mental health, but it makes things less difficult.

Think of it this way: you’ve undoubtedly played games where you just get stuck. Maybe that particular Elden Ring boss just keeps bodying you no matter what you do. Or that giant fight in the goblin temple in Baldur’s Gate 3 just keeps raging out of control and you get smoked every time. Or maybe you’re an old head like me and remember the controller-tossing rage that the OG Ninja Gaiden games would inspire. You reload, you try again, you fail, reload, try again and then fail even harder.

The problem is that the frustration is getting to you – you’re so upset, tense and just pissed at a collection of 1s and 0s (and every dev who touched the game) that everything else is suffering. The combination of stress, frustration and laser-like focus means that you’re burning through all your available resources and bandwidth to the point that you’re tapping into reserves that were dedicated to other important tasks. So now your coordination, your ability to think clearly or even just anticipate and recognize patterns are all hindered… which then means you fail again and get more pissed and then fail again… it becomes a self-reinforcing system.

But if you put the controller down, step away from the console from the day and then come back the next day you just blaze through like it was nothing. Why? Because you gave yourself a break, you cleared your bandwidth, replenished your resources and were relaxed and ready to try again. This time, you were coming to it from a place of, if not serenity, at least of readiness.

So it is with dating. Sometimes if it feels like you’re doing nothing but beating your head against a wall, the best thing you can do is stop hitting the wall. Take a step back, let things fade a bit and then take another swing at things. You may discover that you’re trying to go through when you need to go around. Or that you actually don’t want to get to what’s on the other side of that particular wall but you got tunnel vision and lost your focus.

So, yes, if you feel like you need some time off, then by all means, take some time off and give yourself permission not to worry about it until you’re feeling rested, refreshed and ready again.

But in the process, you may want to consider making a few changes… especially to your mindset with regards to dating.

Part of the problem you’re having is that you keep giving yourself artificial deadlines. This is a bad idea in general; the fake pressure of an arbitrary end date means that you’re putting yourself in situations that are going to stress you out. The idea of doing X by Y time seems like it’d be great motivation, but it also puts an absurd amount of pressure on yourself – especially when it’s not something you actually have enough experience to gauge whether it’s a reasonable timeline or goal.

If you were to, say, set a “I’m going to run a marathon by October” you might feel like this is a reasonable amount of time and a way of keeping yourself motivated. But if you’re not someone who’s already training for a marathon, you’re putting yourself in a position of trying to push yourself harder than your body is ready for or capable of. Going from couch to a marathoner would mean doing such intense training that you’re likely to hurt yourself in the process.

Similarly, this approach assumes that you have far more control over the world than you actually do. This is especially true about dating, where you’re dealing with a whole lot of forces that you have no control over. First, there’s just the matter of finding the right people – folks who are compatible with you, who are in a place where they’re ready, willing and able to date and who are even in the same physical area as you. It doesn’t do you much good to declare that you will find a girlfriend by X date if you’re in an area where the demographics work against you, after all.

But there’s also the fact that you’re dealing with other people – people with agency and choices and their own hang-ups, preferences and goals. As a wise man once said: you it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. Everything you list about yourself as being a hindrance could have vanished in a puff of smoke and wish-fulfillment and yet you still could fail to get a partner just because sometimes things just don’t line up the way you’d need them to.

To use a D&D metaphor: you can roll with advantage and still roll natural 1s.

Giving yourself these artificial deadlines just gives you one more thing to be stressed about and – as they approach – they incentivize taking wilder swings just to try to beat the buzzer. It’s the sort of stress that’s perfectly designed to ensure you aren’t playing at your best; you’ll be trying to speed run things, take shortcuts and just find someone to fill that particular hole labeled “girlfriend” so that you don’t feel like you’ve “failed”.

And then on top of all of this, you’re already giving yourself a disadvantage by talking about being “good enough”. Let’s take your weight, for example. You treat not being at your goal weight as a measure of your worth and people rejecting you for your weight as proof that you’re not “good enough” yet. Well ask yourself: do you want to date someone who’s going to treat your weight as a mark of shame or views it with disgust? Or would you rather find someone for whom it’s not a problem or – better yet – is into big dudes? If you want to keep working on getting your weight down, more power to you, that’s absolutely valid… but if you are seeing it as a marker of your worth, then all you’re doing is talking yourself down for no reason. You’re validating that the people who weren’t attracted to you as being correct, instead of recognizing that they’re not right for you.

If you’re going to take time off from dating for a bit – and it sounds like you might benefit from it – then I’d recommend focusing on doing the things that make you feel better about being you. Not things that you think would make you a more desirable partner, but the things that make you feel awesome about being yourself. Because here’s the thing when it comes to dating and meeting people – you want to be coming to this from a position of “what makes you worth my time?” You don’t want to be thinking that you have to appeal to someone in order to “earn” their approval but rather find someone who meets your standards and then see if the two of you are a decent match.

As it stands, you’re coming to this from a place where you feel like you have to “justify” your attraction or that you are at a lower level than the people you’re attracted to and have to “prove” yourself. You need to start from the position that you’re awesome and live an awesome life and you want to find someone who matches your awesome. If they can’t see your awesome or can’t appreciate it? Then that’s their loss. If they’re physically attractive but they don’t have other things that would make them a good match for you? Roll on and don’t worry about them; focus on finding the people who are a good match.

But that’s not something that can be done on a strict timeline.

So find the things that make you feel like a sexy badass for your own sake. Then live your life in a way that you meet awesome people who might be a good match, rather than flailing about and hoping that a shotgun approach would work better.

This may take a very short amount of time, or it might take longer… and that’s ok. You’re better off taking a bit more time so that you’re ready and you meet someone who’s right for you than to find anyone that you can squeeze into that role. Because that approach? That’s a great way to end up realizing that you’ve wasted time with someone you shouldn’t have dated, and missed out on people who would have been worth your time.

Trust me: I have been there, done that and have the emotional scars to show for it.

So take a break… but use your break to be your best self. And just as importantly: live your best life without the self-imposed deadlines. To quote the song, you can’t hurry love. This isn’t a sprint. It’s not even a race. Love happens most efficiently when you’re not desperate to make it appear.

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 have been in this relationship for almost 5 years and it has been great. It’s actually been wonderful. There are alignment issues though…

I’ve always felt the love he’s had for me to be raw; its undeniable. Even those around me confirm this when they gush about how he looks at me or treats me. We have intimate strong connections and a lot of fun together. The problems that arise in our relationship are always communication, perception and honesty issues. Let me explain:

For context, we are 21. I am an INFJ and he is an ISFP which means when it comes to certain topics we simply do not see it the same way (not a big deal until it is) which causes perceived problems to look different for each of us. We also communicate differently and can misunderstand each other even if we agree on something (doesn’t happen often but does happen). Not to mention I tend to be straight up and he has a hard time expressing how he feels (big problem for me since I come from divorced parents & wanna talk about everything [he’s a child of parents who aren’t divorced but definitely should be so avoidant]). This is all leading to our problem right now.

He is my best friend and someone I see myself spending the rest of my life with. We value the same things where it counts and differ where it works and yet here I am dealing with infidelity.

I have always been the girl where cheating is not only a deal breaker but an absolute huge RED FLAG about the persons character in general. The problem is, I always viewed that as having sex with someone else. There are obviously sub categories but that’s mainly what I categorized cheating as. I also am a strong believer that cheating is not a reasonable “up and DOWN” in a relationship. It’s completely disrespectful and he’s always agreed with me so to my point…

Basically, he watches porn. I’m not big on porn but I understand the general need for it. I did read smut growing up and masturbating is not uncommon for me. Even though him watching porn didn’t bother me it was still like hmm… however I found out that he stopped watching traditional porn and moved onto live webcams and sex chats which to me is more real and intimate. Its sharing sexual thoughts or desires with a REAL life person, not an actor who is un-interactable. So naturally I felt completely betrayed. “You’re basically cheating… just online.” His justification is its just porn, my argument is it’s not only about the porn, it’s about the hiding & lying about it (charges on his card) and the fact that it’s not really porn in the traditional sense (premade videos).

Yes, we live at home and yes we both feel like we’d like to have a more exciting sex life daily but would hate to be disrespectful to his family (being loud and obnoxious) sex is great though and honestly has evolved beautifully over the past 5 years and we make time to spice it up so again I’m feeling betrayed as to why he needs to fulfill himself with webcam girls or whatnot… he says he only wants me, would only ever f--k me and love me, and that this is simply masturbation (has also expressed this is not something he wants to do lifelong) and I’m having a hard time accepting this as truth. What if this is a lie? What if he’s just fallen out of love and doesn’t know how to tell me? What if he’s not attracted to me anymore? What if I’m stupid for staying? What if we break up? I’m just feeling so uncertain and I don’t know what to do. I feel like cheating is about underlying problems but considering this cheating would be me admitting to staying with a cheater. I can’t justify cheating when other people describe it so what if justifying this makes me naive?

The biggest thing I tell myself is I’d never do this to him. The biggest thing he says is he wouldn’t care if I was doing the same. My relationship with masturbation has nothing to do with external stimuli so while I can get off to videos, smut and so on, I can simply masturbate and that be enough so it’s hard for me to “do the same”. I have no problem with masturbation and not too much of a problem with porn; it’s the secrecy I have a problem with, it’s the intimacy I have a problem with. He’s been calling me his wife for forever and always talks about our future and getting married. Am I entitled for feeling like I should know every time he watches porn? Am I in the wrong for questioning my relationship as a whole? Am I wrong for questioning his character as a whole? Am I wrong for considering this form of “porn” & masturbation as intimate as cheating?

My INFJ brain just wants to throw everything into categories even if it’s in the grey and right now I don’t know where to put this and Its making me anxious. I just want to be doing the right thing, for the both of us.

Thank you.

– Feeling Romantically Hopeless

DEAR FEELING ROMANTICALLY HELPLESS: Oh God, you and your boyfriend are so very, very young, FRH. This is very much the sort of problem folks tend to have when they’re very young and have little relationship experience and even less life experience.

Alright, so. Cards on the table time, RH: my overall feelings on cheating, porn use and hell, even Briggs-Meyers tests are pretty much diametrically opposed to yours. I say this because I’m going to try to be as fair as I can here, but I’m inclined to disagree with the premise of your question from the jump. Just keep that in mind as you read this.

Now I do want to say that, my opinions on what constitutes cheating etc. aside, your feelings are your feelings. How you feel is how you feel; there’s no right or wrong to the way things are making you feel. But I think it is worth exploring the why you feel a particular way and – importantly – how what you feel affects how you choose to act.

There’re a few things here that leap out at me. The first is that you and he have very different communication styles and communication needs. That’s something you need to keep in mind, because poor communication is going to be a much bigger issue than almost anything else. It doesn’t do any good to relentlessly talk things out if you’re not being understood. But by the same token, it also doesn’t work well if you can’t work with the way other person communicates. You say you’re very straight up and he has a hard time expressing himself. That’s fine… but if he has a hard time expressing himself, it’s possible that your communication style makes it harder. If you’re wanting to talk everything out right then and there, that can put pressure on him to say something when he may need more time to sort out how he feels and how to express it.

I’ve seen a lot of couples with issues like this, and this disconnect in communication styles often gets treated as the less-expressive person trying to dodge the discussion when, in reality, they need a little more time and a lot less pressure to put what they feel into words.

Understanding your communication style also means recognizing that what works for you doesn’t work for other people. Not everyone wants to discuss everything, nor do they feel it’s always necessary. Trying to get a person to take on your communication style or vice versa rarely works well when it’s just not how they are wired. It works much better to find a way that works for both of you, or to find ways to accommodate the other’s communication style. For you, it may mean giving him more room to work on how to express himself. For him, it may mean “figure out what you want to say and how to express it then start the conversation.”

This is one of the reasons why I recommend the Awkward Conversation structure – agree to a time to talk, explain what you’re feeling, what your ideal result would be and how it would make things better, speak your peace without interruption, then allow them to say their side of things the same way. This gives more leeway for people who may not communicate the same way, while also giving more room to let someone who needs more time to sort things in their head, first.

I bring this up because it sounds like the conflict you’re having around his porn use is being exacerbated by communication issues as much as different outlooks on porn itself. It sounds like there’s a lot of talking at, but not a lot of hearing.

I also think that being wed to the idea that cheating is a black and white issue and an automatic relationship extinction event is causing issues. Now, again: I’m on record that I don’t think cheating is the worst thing that can happen in a relationship, that not all infidelity is equal and that it doesn’t always merit a break up. In my experience, this means a lot of relationships end when they didn’t need to. I think, for example, there’s a significant difference between “had too much to drink, failed my Wisdom saving throw while out of town” affair and “don’t give a f--k about commitment, I do what I want”. I think breaking up over a one-time, not-to-be-repeated mistake is a poor choice. But I also think that in many cases, cheating is a symptom more than a cause; by not treating it as a one-strike-you’re-out situation, the couple has an opportunity to figure out what is or isn’t working in their relationship and repair it. To quote Esther Perel: the victim of the affair isn’t always the victim of the relationship.

But more than that, I think if you’re going to declare that cheating is a relationship-ender, full stop and you define cheating broadly… you’re going to end up blowing up an otherwise perfectly good relationship. You, specifically, talk about being prone to black and white thinking. Well, look at what’s happening in your letter. You start off by talking about how your boyfriend unquestionably loves you and you have no doubt about that. But since you define cheating broadly and a black-and-white issue, you end the letter talking about all the questions and doubts you now have. This is an unnecessary conflict within yourself, in part because you want to define this as a black-and-white issue and it’s steadfastly refusing to be.

Put a pin in that. We’re going to come back to it.

It also isn’t helping that you’ve broadened what you’re angry about over the course of your argument with him. It’s not the interactivity or just the interaction, it’s the lying (incidentally, you don’t mention how he lied) or the secrecy.

Now, I’m going to be honest: I don’t think the cam shows count as cheating. I don’t think it’s cheating any more than going to a strip club and getting a lap dance is cheating. I don’t think that being aroused by another person is cheating and if you’re going to define it that way, you’re going to end up dating a lot of cheaters. But that part’s strictly my opinion. You obviously disagree. But so does your boyfriend, and therein lies part of the disconnect.

I think what “counts” as cheating is something that people should discuss with each other and a definition should be mutually agreed upon before they make a commitment to each other – especially a monogamous one. Otherwise you end up precisely in this situation, where you think cheating means one thing and he thinks cheating is another entirely, and made more complicated because it clearly wouldn’t be an issue for him if you were also getting your rocks off watching a hot cam show of your own.

Now, I am going to say that getting mad at him about the secrecy is unfair – especially considering this is how you responded. And yes, I think you’re being entitled if you feel like you should know about when and how he jerks off and to what. Quite frankly, unless he’s breaking laws or hurting people, that’s none of your business. Relationships aren’t depositions, you’re not owed every detail of your partner’s life and quite frankly everyone has a right to erotic autonomy and privacy. The idea that you should know what he’s doing and what he’s thinking when he does it is both invasive and controlling.

But for argument’s sake, let’s break down the “keeping secrets” part. If he told you he was watching cam sessions, would this make a difference? Would it be less of a betrayal? Would it be ok if he said that he was going to go subscribe to someone’s OnlyFans or buy one of their PPVs and told you how much of his own money he was spending on it? Would that make it better? Or would you still feel just as bad over it?

I ask because it sounds like you’re still processing how you feel about this and why. If I’m being honest, it sounds more like you started off being hurt but then had to go back and create reasons for it while you were arguing about it. That suggests to me that this is less about the act itself and more about how this made you feel.

I think that your black-and-white thinking is a big part of what’s causing issues here. You’re quickly discovering that such binary thinking is lovely in theory or when it happens to other people, but falls apart when put into practice and especially if it involves you and your relationship. Now that it’s personal, it gets very grey indeed.

If this is cheating and cheating is always bad, then you should just break up with him because this means he’s a bad person. But if the only thing that makes him bad is he masturbates to cam shows, does that undo everything else about him that’s good? If you don’t break up with him, then you’re condoning staying with a cheater. But clearly you don’t want to break up with him. But if you don’t, does that make you a hypocrite for having said that about others?

This is one of the reasons why binary, black and white thinking is incredibly limiting and unhelpful. It creates situations and scenarios where you treat things as being equal or equivalent when they’re inherently not. It’s why the “I can’t do this to him” isn’t working for you – because it’s not about the act, it’s about the feeling. And feelings – as you’re discovering – are neither rational, nor are they binary.

So now you’re in a position where either you have to work yourself to a place where you can justify breaking up with him… or accept that maybe this isn’t as black and white as you think.

That, to me, is precisely why I would say that this isn’t an area where a break up is necessary. I think that you have talked yourself into a position where you feel like you’re supposed to break up, but don’t want to. I think part of the conflict you’re feeling is that, having judged so many others for what you saw as a clear-cut, binary good/bad situation, you’re now in a place where you can see that maybe it wasn’t like that. And so either you have to admit to having been wrong about something that’s been a core of your identity, or break up with him.

However, I don’t think that’s the only thing hitting you though. Clearly it’s touched some areas that you’re worried about. This is why I also think that it would be helpful to ask yourself why you would consider this cheating and why it’s hitting you in this way.

It’s important to explore this further than just “because another person is actively involved”, and ask his why watching a cam session specifically is affecting you in this way. I think this is tapping into fears or worries you have – either about yourself, him or the relationship – more than the act itself. There are hints in the latter third of your letter: worries that he’s not satisfied or needing to go elsewhere and what this means about how he feels about you.

Well, I can tell you that being in love and being turned on by someone else, even wanting to f--k them, is not mutually exclusive. The fact that he has desires that go beyond just you doesn’t say anything about you, your relationship or his feelings for you. It just means he’s a primate with a sex drive. Humanity is a novelty-seeking species, especially when it comes to sexual novelty. You’ve undoubtedly experienced this yourself. You don’t masturbate to just one fantasy or to just blank thoughts. You’ve masturbated to all kinds of smut… that in and of itself is an example of novelty. I rather expect that you’ve fantasized about more than one person. Again, that’s an example of needing novelty and variety; it’s variety that’s entirely in your head instead of in the flesh, but it’s still variety.

So to answer your questions: yeah, I think you’re wrong for questioning his entire character over this. I think that questioning your entire relationship over this is naïve. I think that this is equal parts anxiety over the relationship mixed with the sort of exuberance and desire for moral certainty that only comes with a lack of experience and the realization that the way you were thinking of others who may have been in situations similar to yours was uncharitable at best.

If this is literally the only thing making you question both your boyfriend’s character and his feelings for you, then I think you’re choosing a belief structure over reality. If nothing else about his behavior has made you feel like he doesn’t love you or isn’t attracted to you, then I think you’d be much better off letting this go and taking a deep examination into your feelings and anxieties and how to address those. If this is going to be a situation where the idea that he’s attracted to other people – as everybody is – gnaws at you so much, then your options are either break up with him now or make your peace with it, one way or another.

And yes, he deserves his erotic privacy, just as you do. If you’d be fine with telling him every time you masturbate and what you were thinking of… well, that’s great. But that doesn’t obligate him to be fine with it or to tell you. If that’s going to be an issue for you, then you’re better off finding someone else who feels the same way.

I know this sounds harsh. I’m saying all of this because I think you’ve ended up in a place where you’re causing unnecessary hurt – to yourself and to your boyfriend. Recognizing that this isn’t cut and dry or as easily divided into “good guy/bad guy” as you’d prefer is going to be important, now and going forward. And not only will recognizing that but learning how to roll with it and grow with it is going to be what makes the difference between ending a relationship that doesn’t need to end and letting this one continue for its natural lifespan.

You’re not going to be the last person he ever gets turned on by, or the last person he wants to have sex with. I feel fairly comfortable saying that this is true of you as well. That doesn’t mean he’s going to. But the desire isn’t going to go away just because you’re both in love. That’s not how humans are wired. While there will always be exceptions on the individual level, we don’t stop being attracted to other people just because we’re in love or in a relationship. Monogamy is a promise to not sleep with other people; it doesn’t say anything about not wanting to.

I think if you can talk about that with your boyfriend – talk about your worries about how he feels about you, about your relationship and so on – you’ll find more ways to resolve things and work this out. Even if it’s just asking him to be a little more expressive about how he feels about you or to cover his tracks a little better so it’s easier for you to ignore things when he’s off rubbing one out.

Oh, and one more thing: one thing you’re going to discover over time is that what people think or feel on certain topics will change over time. What makes sense or what is true for you at one point will evolve with time, experience and perspective. That’s not hypocrisy or moral weakness, that’s growth. If you find that you’re no longer as opposed or bothered by something you were vehemently against, what that means is that your feelings and opinions have changed as you’ve learned more, experienced more and gained more perspective. So those times when you feel bad about choices you made in the past? Recognize that you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time. Now that you have different information, you make different choices.

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 can I stop getting overwhelmed by dating apps?

I’m a late 20s bi ?woman? ?Non-binary? person, who wants to go on dates and do things that folks in romantic (or more casual) relationships do. I’m doing what I can to meet people in person, I’m a part of a couple social groups, and I’m having a great time with that– but the events don’t have a lot of single-and-ready-to-mingle people, and I don’t really give off fun’n’flirty vibes as a default either.

The only two dates I’ve been on in the last year have been through Bumble and each time I was just overwhelmed and burnt out by it within a week. Even just swiping on people who have good profiles, similar interests, and no immediate incompatibilities, I end up getting into more conversations than I can really handle. Some of the conversations felt like rolling a boulder up a hill, with only me asking questions or bringing up topics. Sometimes, it was clear that we had similar fun interests– but that a mutual interest in tea and tabletop games didn’t translate to any romantic or sexual chemistry. Sometimes, people took hours to respond to anything– and sometimes, I was just annoyed by their spelling. Either way, after about 4 not-so-great text conversations (usually over the course of two days) I’m ready to chuck my phone in a river, and though I did get a date out of it each time, and the first dates went pretty well– the wanting to chuck my phone in a river impulse kinda killed a lot of excitement, and I pretty quickly shut down the romantic-ish communications that were stressing me out so much.

Is there a way to use dating apps that isn’t exhausting? Am I missing some magic energy conservation strategy, or are apps just not worth it?

Thanks,�No More Notifications

DEAR NO MORE NOTIFICATIONS: One of the important parts of using a dating app successfully is to minimize the amount of time you waste on it, NMN. Now, what “wasting time” means is going to be different for everyone, but in my experience, making the most efficient use of your time on the apps is making sure that you’re spending time on folks who are worth your time.

One way this crops up – especially for women and people who grew up with the socialization that women receive – is giving people more time than they actually deserve. On dating apps, this often means engaging with people because one feels obligated to do so. After all, they reached out to you; doesn’t that mean that you at least owe them a quick convo?

Well… not really. That’s not part of the terms of service you agreed to when you created your account… even if there’re folks (mostly but not exclusively men) who think it should be. You are under no obligation to give anyone your time if you don’t want to, and frankly, most people would have a better experience if they didn’t.

What you – and pretty much everyone on the apps, regardless of gender or sexuality – should do is focus on the quality of your matches, rather than the quantity. One of the mistakes that people regularly make is that they get hung up on the matching end of the equation. Well, funny thing about that: matches are fundamentally useless. The number of matches you get doesn’t mean a damn thing if they’re not the right people. There’s a reason why it’s called “online dating” not “OKCupid Go” or whatever; you’re on there presumably to meet people, not to collect em all. So the more you narrow down who you match with in the first place, the better your time will be spent and the less time you’ll be wasting.

This means that you can and should be discerning about who you match with and which matches you interact with. Case in point: you have a lot of conversations that are either exhausting or that point to a fundamental incompatibility. Just because their profile seemed ok doesn’t mean that you need to give them chance after chance; you’re allowed to say “whoops, my bad” when it turns out that they’re just not your particular flavor of yum or they demonstrate that they’re not right for you. The conversations where you had to do all the heavy lifting, for example, are ones where should feel free to just cut the line and go. That behavior tends to be a sign that either the person you’re talking to is uninterested in you romantically or is more focused on themselves. Either way: you don’t owe them more of your time and you can feel free to just call it then and there. You aren’t obligated to keep things going when the other person clearly isn’t carrying their end.

In fact, you’re welcome to just decide “nah, clearly not worth it” and end things for pretty much any reason you feel is relevant at the time. Turns out they like double IPAs? Ok cool, have fun chewing on those pinecones, bye! You don’t even need to say anything if you don’t feel the need. While it’s nice to say “hey, I don’t think we’re a match, best of luck”, it’s not required. Especially if someone seems like they’re the type to demand to know why.

When you create your profile, it’s worth keeping this in mind: you don’t want to be everyone’s cup of tea; you want to be a few people’s shot of whiskey. That is: you want people who crave you and that you crave. Writing your profile with this in mind – filtering out people who aren’t right for you and attracting the people who are – helps immensely. Whether it’s adopting a “show-don’t-tell” philosophy of writing (i.e. don’t say you want someone with a good sense of humor, write something that someone who shared your sense of humor would find funny), having a specific call-to-action for folks who would be a good match for you (“Message Me If: you can recommend a great cocktail bar” or “I’m looking for someone who can beat my high score at Medieval Madness”) goes a long way towards helping filter out folks who aren’t your type. If they can’t be bothered to play along or their reply doesn’t vibe with you, then you’ve successfully filtered them out and you can feel free to just not reply.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to be at the app’s beck and call. Yeah, it’s nice when you and that special someone get a good back-and-forth going, but you’re not Pavlov’s dog; you don’t need to react just because the notification dinged in. If you, say, carve out specific times to check the app and stick to that instead of letting it decide, you’ll be able to work on your terms and schedule, instead of exhausting yourself. To that end, feel free to turn off the notifications that appear instantly; having a badge that lets you know you have messages or matches waiting is more than enough and less stressful than having your down time interrupted because CaliSurfer92 liked your picture.

This will also cut down on the stress and frustration of waiting for them to reply. Treat chatting on the app as email, not instant messaging; fire off your missive and trust that they’ll get it and reply. Doing the 21st century equivalent of sitting with sandwiches by the phone hoping they’ll call is a waste of your time and energy. Not everyone’s going to be on the same schedule as you and that’s ok.

The other thing I would suggest is, in addition to being choosy about who you interact with, is to get off the app as quickly as possible. As you’ve found, the longer you chat on the app, the quicker you lose interest if only out of sheer frustration. If the other person seems interesting enough that you’re curious about them, then move the conversation off the app – ideally, in person. As I keep saying: we’re built for face-to-face communication, and it’s very difficult to gauge compatibility through text or even video chats. One of the things I highly recommend is a pre-date date – meeting up with people for 15 minutes or so for a coffee or ice cream or something. What you want, ideally, is to meet up some place neutral and see if they’re as interesting in person as they were on the app. If they are, great, you can make plans for a proper date later on. If they’re not… well, all you’re out is 15 minutes of your time and the cost of a cup of coffee or a cone.

Just remember: this is your time. The less of it you spend when you don’t have to, on people you don’t want to spend it on, the better you’ll do. Maximize the quality of the people you match with over the quantity and cut down on the amount of time you spend on folks who aren’t a good match. If they seem like a strong potential, give them a chance in person and see if that connection is as strong or interesting then, rather than trying to guess in a medium that’s poorly suited for gauging compatibility.

Good luck.

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