DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve seem to have a very toxic relationship with my own virginity especially my mid 20s. I hate it, I despise it and I distain and frankly honestly want to get rid of this burden that’s crushing me like a ton of bricks.

Let’s be honest it’s 2024 and well it’s trendy, sex positive (thank you Bumble) and feminist shame, degrade and mock men for being virgins (and their penis size) and kinda understandably so because frankly lotta of male virgins (or incels) are f--kin dangerous people and women and queer people have every right to fear and be disgusted by male virgins. Unfortunately that fear catches people who are virgins and a not incels (very radical concept I know) to get caught in the crossfire. I do live in a very promiscuous very sex having very sex positive and slutty society/generation to the point I seriously doubt there are any women virgins that aren’t by choice or unironic femcels(maybe a handful of Ace women) and well I wanna join in this slutty and sexy by dumping this disgusting burden I’m carrying of being a virgin loser in my mid 20s. Cause let’s be honest lotta women see if a mans a virgin in mid 20s as a massive red flag cause what does that say about him? His character? His personality? Is he dangerous? It’s like slut shaming but the inverse.

But I have so much internal disgust and hatred towards myself (and other virgin men) it’s pretty much driving me insane in my day to day life. At work I look at smiling beautiful couples (my age or younger) lovingly stare into each other’s eyes and I thinking to myself “what in the actual f--k is wrong with me? How could they do so effortlessly and I can’t? What’s my excuse?”.

I am in therapy and well it’s more or less working because well my therapists clients is overwhelmingly women or queer people an well…she’s kinda treating me like I’m a defective woman and I’m starting to think Lotta therapists simply suck with men so that’s another point.

So what do I do? How do I dump this anger and hatred and disgust I have towards something that should be completely neutral and not a big deal?

Sincerely, 

Hauling Burden Bricks

DEAR HAULING BURDEN BRICKS: So I’m going to start with something obvious: the problem isn’t your virginity. If your being a virgin was the root cause of so many problems and you hate it soooo much… well hey good news! This is a money-soluble problem! Hire an independent escort, make it clear that you want to lose your virginity, tip her well, boom. Problem solved. If you’re worried about the legality issues of it, there’re legal brothels and places where sex work is legal in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Do your research, read reviews, find someone who you find attractive and offers the services you want, pay well, enjoy the experience and congratulate yourself on not being a virgin any longer. 

But let’s be honest: there would be reasons why this “didn’t count” or why this method of losing your virginity would be worse. Because it’s not about being a virgin, it’s what you think being a virgin says about you. It’s not that you want to lose your virginity so much as that you want to feel like you’re special enough, man enough to have had sex, to have been “chosen” by the Gatekeepers of Masculinity. But as I’ve said many, many times before: women aren’t Mjolnir. They’re not wearing panties that say “Whosoever should remove this underwear, should they be worthy, shall possess the power of Score”. Sex isn’t something that’s only given to The Worthy. People have sex all the time with partners whose main qualification was “least objectionable option” or “you’re here, you’re alive, you’ll do”, because people have sex for reasons that have nothing to do with the person they’re having sex with.

If you were to lose your virginity to a sex worker, you would almost certainly have a much better time than if you had a fumbling hook-up with a woman who picked you at closing time because she was drunk and pissed at her ex-boyfriend and trying to make a point. But one would be “legitimate” and the other wouldn’t be, because of how you feel about yourself and what having sex supposedly would mean. Even though, in both cases, neither of the person who you would theoretically be having sex with is interested in you as a person.

All of which to say is that the call is coming from inside the house. And that’s why I’m going to give you the same advice I have given a lot of similar young men in your situation, HBB: get the f--k off Reddit. I’d add that you should delete your TikTok, your YouTube, Snapchat, unfollow everything but close friends and family on Instagram too.

But before you do, I would recommend taking a moment to go through your FYP and recommendations.

You want to know why you’re having these thoughts and feelings? Look at what’s showing up on FYP. I’d be willing to put down five bucks cash American there’s a whole lot of Red Pill and incel bulls--t, a whole lot of complaints about sex and women and a whole lot of screaming about how unfair and bulls--t dating is and why women have all the power and advantages on top of virgin shaming.

Now why am I telling you to take a look and note what you’re getting served up in your social media? Simple: this is a look into your soul. What you’re seeing on your FYP, on YouTube’s front page, on your main Instagram feed etc. are all algorithmically selected, and it’s going to recommend things that are related to the things you’re already interreacting with. So if you’re getting fed a lot of Andrew Tate fans talking about how keeping your stable under control or dudes talking s--t about tiny-d--ked virgin manlets or rabidly misunderstanding what sex positivity is, it’s almost certainly because you’ve been vibing on similar videos and posts.

No matter how iconoclastic believe yourself to be, no matter how strong-willed you may think you are, no how much of a free-thinker you claim to be, you are not immune to propaganda and marketing. Every time someone says that they’re not influenced by marketing or the opinions of others, Don Draper smiles and pours himself another double bourbon and failed marriage. It’s one of those areas that people think they’re the exception and that the rest of the world are sheep and that’s precisely why advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry.

One of the fun quirks of the human brain is that if we hear things repeated over and over again, confidently enough, we start to assume it’s true and respond to it. You can see this happen all the time on Twitter and BlueSky – a few people start doomposting repeatedly about whatever – the 2024 election, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the state of the economy, the march of AI into other businesses, Apple making Patreon charges go up, anything – and the Emotional Contagion Machine goes to work and the mood starts to shift and sour, regardless of the actual facts on the ground. We see it over and over again – especially in networks where engagement is prioritized over quality of content – and our brains start responding to it as though it were true.

So if you’re neck deep in people telling you that virgins are awful and never leaving or actively pursuing other views and voices? Yeah, you’re going to start believing it. And the more you interact with it, even to just yell in the comments, the more of it you’re going to see.

So the first step is simple: you turn off The Emotional Contagion Machine and start paying attention to what you feed your brain. Feed it garbage, you’re going to produce garbage thoughts. Feed the garbage back to yourself and then you just get more garbage, and often worse. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle.

Case in point: misunderstanding what sex positivity is. Sex positivity is very simple: people should be having the kind of sex they want to have, including not having it, if they so choose. That sex should be mutually consensual, as safe as is reasonably possible and enjoyable. People shouldn’t be shamed for having sex, nor should they be shamed for not having sex.

That’s it. People misunderstand or misuse the concept of sex positivity – sometimes by mistake, sometimes deliberately – in negative ways, such as trying to use the label to pressure people into having sex they don’t want or perform acts they don’t enjoy, but that’s not the point behind sex positivity. But if you get told over and over again that X is what it means to be sex-positive or if you don’t do Y you’re not being sex-positive and you don’t actively push back against it, you’re going to end up buying into it by osmosis.

(I’m still scratching my head about what Bumble has to do with any of this, outside of an epically bad ad campaign, but that is neither here nor there).

Another case in point: the undercurrent of misogyny in your own letter. There’re multiple points, especially as you get to the end, where you’ve made it clear that you’ve got less than stellar ideas about women, what women think and what life is like for them. You’re running with a whole lot of ideas about women that are, to be blunt, rather obviously based on what other men have told you, rather than actual experiences about or from women. The fact that you complain that your therapist – a woman, who also has female and queer clients – is treating you “like a defective woman” and that “lotta therapists just suck with men” is another telling point. It’s telling me that a lot of this is coming off some very rigid ideas about masculinity, virginity, sex and what it all means and just who your sources are.

And well, to quote one Savage: “Well, there’s your problem!”

It’s one thing if you and your therapist aren’t clicking or they aren’t the right therapist for you. This is a thing that happens; therapists are people too and not everyone’s going to be the right match. But running with the idea that therapists just don’t understand men… that tells me that you’re resisting and not actually listening because you don’t like what she’s saying, not because it’s wrong.  

Incidentally, this is also another benefit of stepping away from social media. It means that you’re going to stop getting weird ideas about how many women haven’t had sex or why, or what women “must” think when they find out a man’s a virgin. That is entirely down to “my source is I made it the f--k up”, “Dude, trust me” and “well, it makes sense to me so it clearly must be true”, not reality.

And while I’m on the topic, I hate to tell you this but it’s not women who are the primary vector of the idea that there’s something wrong with a male virgin. It’s not that there aren’t women who haven’t heard or adopted similar beliefs, but they are neither the primary source, nor even the biggest spreaders of the idea that there’s something wrong with being a virgin. Those would other men, because policing masculinity and punishing people for being insufficiently in line with toxic masculine tropes is part of how men establish themselves in the pecking order of restrictive, hegemonic ideas of manhood.

After all, the best way to shore up your own credentials as a manly man is to take away someone else’s man card and shanking someone over how much sex they haven’t had is easy. It’s been shorthand for “loser” for years, not because of women, but because of other men spreading that message. This message is one that’s transmitted over and over again, from person to person, through advertising, songs, pop culture… even in pop-culture that’s theoretically supportive and compassionate to older virgins.

I mean, it wasn’t a woman who wrote, directed, produced or distributed Revenge of the Nerds, The Big Bang Theory, Sex Drive, The Sure Thing, She’s Out Of Control, American Pie, Meatballs, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Super Bad… I could go on.

I would also point out that you’re part of the problem here. In the same breath that you complain about how you hate your relationship to your virginity, you also go on about how people are right to hate virgins, spreading the same sort of beliefs about incels and the rest, as though virginity was either definitional to being an incel or the root of incel beliefs. It’s not as though being a virgin is what makes a person an incel, or is it as though that the Royal Fraternity of Regular Sex Havers is free from hate, rage, abuse or misogyny. The problem with incels isn’t the celibacy, it’s the hatred, resentment, despair and desire for vengeance. They hate women and they hate themselves almost as much, and they want to lash out.

But here’s the important part about their hate: the reason why they feel such hate is because of the same bulls--t you’re talking about here. It’s the idea that women can mystically “tell” a virgin and will immediately assume the worst about him and thus doom his chances of ever getting laid. And since sex is part of how men determine their supposed value and status in society, these women are “denying” rank and status to these men and dooming them to being some sort of permanent gender underclass. They believe they are literally incapable of becoming “real men” because women ‘won’t let them’.

So if you want to start unlearning these beliefs and letting go of this anger and hatred you’re feeling towards yourself – and is clearly leaking out to other areas? That mental and emotional detox is the first step. If you know you’re getting poisoned every time you drink a milkshake, then you don’t want to take an antidote every time you go to In-And-Out, you need to stop drinking the damn milkshakes. 

The next step is to start recognizing that maybe you’re wrong about a whole lot of things. Instead of steadfastly insisting that the world is the problem not you, you need to start actually listening to what your therapist is telling you. If you feel like you’re not being understood, then you can work to clarify things. But your letter strongly suggests to me that this isn’t about being misunderstood, it’s about not liking what you hear and not actually doing the work to shake these beliefs.

And look, it’s hard to do, especially when accepting maybe your beliefs are wrong would mean accepting that you’re the author of much of your own misery. It’s hard to let go of beliefs that you’ve made into part of your identity. But it’s also clear that those beliefs are making your life worse and you don’t like it. You’re trying to behave as though you can hold onto the underlying beliefs while also giving up the self-hatred and I hate to tell you this but you can’t. They’re one and the same. Accepting that much of your circumstance is the result of your own actions is f--king hard. But that’s when self-acceptance and self-forgivingness comes into play. You look back at your past choices and say “Ok, I made these choices based on information that I had at the time and there was information I didn’t have that would’ve lead to my making different choices. Now that I know differently, I’ll make different choices.”

And while you’re doing that, you should ask yourself: in the circumstances you were in at the time, was there a chance for you to find that information? Would you have been in a place where you were willing to accept it as legitimate and take it on board? The answer is probably “no”. So it’s not that you could have done things differently. It’s that circumstances at the time made it that much harder. So you should cut your past self some slack even as you realize that you can change things now.

As you’re doing this, ask yourself what, precisely, losing your virginity would change. What would be different in the microsecond before tab A goes into slot B and afterwards? Because as someone who had a fairly positive – if oddly dramatic – first sexual experience, I can tell you the answer is: absolutely nothing. You will not be magically suave and sophisticated, you won’t have suddenly grown a beard to make the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok cry with envy, you won’t have unlocked the secrets of the universe. You will be the exact same person you were beforehand, just with one more new experience behind you.

I’d also recommend finding better, more positive and supportive places to spend time in – preferably in person. It doesn’t have to be woo-woo, virgins are sacred! or treating every form of sexuality as perfect and unquestionable, but you definitely want more people who will actually want what’s best for you and who aren’t going to tell you all sorts of obnoxious bulls--t about sex or women or about yourself because of their own hangups. It doesn’t do any good to do this detox then go right back to the poison.

So to TL;DR it: what you feed your brain affects how you feel and what you think. You’ve been feeding it garbage from a system designed to shovel garbage into you, so it’s time to disconnect from the garbage system. Do a digital detox, cut back on just about every social media account you have if not deleting them outright and start questioning why you believe these things. As you do so, stop resisting your therapist because she’s telling you things that you don’t like hearing and start accepting that maybe you’re wrong and should take in other people’s advice. And then find a better class of friends and peers who actually have your back and support you.

The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll find how your feelings about yourself are changing.

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: Many years ago I met someone on one occasion and we became very close over text. I let him down and never met up with him one time like I said I would. But still we kept in touch. We live a couple of hours away from each other. I couldn’t commit to him and met someone else here. At that point we cut ties and said we’d always love one another.

Months later he got in touch when I was with a different boyfriend and I panicked and ghosted him. It sounds awful and it was a horrible thing to do but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time, panicked.

So I wound up in an abusive relationship for almost a decade and it’s been over for a couple of months. I found him and reached out to him expecting him to block me, apologising for my immaturity and saying basically I screwed up. His response was quick and really very kind about me. He also just wanted to make sure I was alright. After all those years of no contact and a loveless relationship it made my heart pound.

Here’s where I screwed it up: in my first message and subsequent messages I was acting as if I was bidding him farewell. But when he was so lovely and considerate, I realised how much I wanted him in my life. So I send around 2 or 3 cringey messages thanking him for his kindness and telling him I’d always be there for him like he was for me. I didn’t want to cut contact but it felt inappropriate after ending my recent relationship. The messages were weird, looking back I was in a really vulnerable place. Eventually after him reading my messages and not responding I apologised for the strange behaviour and told him about my bad relationship situation. Which made it look like I’d messaged him for all of the wrong reasons.

So he read about 4 messages, all of the ones I’d sent, and hasn’t replied. I asked him how he was and said look if you don’t want to reply that’s cool, my feelings for you never changed. I said that because I was never upfront to this guy when we were chatting in text or on the phone. Life is short and I thought if someone is lovely, tell them! I also think I got over excited as my previous partner was nowhere near as considerate.

What I’m wondering is, have I completely blown my chances of even a friendship with this person? I’ve weirded him out somehow and now he doesn’t want to talk to me. I don’t think he’s in a relationship as he gallantly responded to me quickly when I first reached out. I will move on, I’d just like to get a hint of what he could possibly be thinking at this point?

Thanks so much.

Red Freak Flag

DEAR RED FREAK FLAG: So right off the bat, I’m not sure if you’ve actually met this guy in person, which is its own issue. I’m pretty firmly on the record that while it’s certainly possible to have long-lasting connections and relationships – even important and meaningful ones – with people you’ve only ever known virtually, it’s a bad idea to round things up to “romantic love” when you’ve never actually met. Love isn’t just an emotion, it’s also chemical – it’s, as the saying goes, blood screaming at you to work its will. Less poetically: there’s a whole host of things that affect how attracted we are to a person that can only be determined in their physical presence. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen passionate ‘relationships’ that were exclusively online fall apart when the star-crossed lovers finally meet in person and discover that there’s just no spark in person.

That alone is enough for me to say that maybe you’ve invested a bit too much into this guy. But I’m going to be honest, RFF: I think the biggest problem here is that you come off like an emotional roller-coaster. Going just from your letter, we have multiple occasions where you get emotional and lovey-dovey with him then immediately eject and vanish for months or even years at a time. Then you come back, reconnect, then have yet another freak out and ghost again.

So I don’t think you’ve screwed things up recently. I think you more or less screwed this particular pooch a long time ago. The fact that it keeps happening suggests to me that maybe there’re other issues at play here that need to be dealt with.

One of the things I talk about when it comes to dating and relationships is that you want to be in good emotional shape. Think of it like a car: a car that has its little quirks – needing to hit the ignition a certain way to start it up, tendencies to make knocking sounds at certain speeds or burning through oil like Elon Musk burning through advertisers – but still runs and gets you where you need to go safely is in good working order. A car that, say, chugs to a stop at random and won’t start up again or that can’t make it up hills or has mushy, unresponsive breaks, on the other hand, is one that shouldn’t be on the road.

To be blunt, I think you’re a lot closer to the latter than the former, and I think that’s something you need to work on. Some of this is entirely understandable; coming out of an abusive relationship, especially a decade-long one, is going to leave a lot of scars and a lot of wounds that need healing. But this has been an ongoing issue with you, and I think it may be worth asking why you have this pattern of seeking to get close then immediately darting away like a feral cat that doesn’t trust the people trying to feed it.

That knee-jerk response is especially evident in how you’ve handled the most recent attempt to reestablish contact. You don’t say how long it was from your first text to the next four or five where you went progressively off the rails, but it certainly seems like there wasn’t much space between them. That is going to throw a lot of people for a loop, especially if it comes in rapid-fire progression like Jon Favreau leaving voicemails in Swingers.

I would also suggest that there’s a certain amount of wishful thinking going on here, based on the way you’re describing things. The fact that he responded quickly doesn’t say to me that he’s single, it tells me that a friend he’d been worried about resurfaced and he was relieved to know they were still alive and relatively well. Unless someone’s in a really toxic relationship, that’s not exclusively “single man” behavior.

But whether he’s single or not, it certainly seems clear that the idea of his interest in you freaks you out and causes you to flinch, and I think you should dig into that with the help of a therapist. From an outsiders perspective, you seem to go hot and cold at the drop of a hat and that’s going to make people less interested in trying to pursue something – especially if you’re just going to up and say “whoop, never mind, see you in ten years” again.

But while you’re dealing with that… honestly the only thing you should do now is just go on and live your life. Throwing more texts and messages after the last few aren’t going to make things better. It’s just going to increase the likelihood that history is going to repeat itself again. You’ve said your piece. Many times, in fact. The ball’s in his court and he has your number. If he’s going to reply, he’ll reply in his own time and when he’s ready. Your poking at things will only make it worse. So just move on as though you already have your answer. If it’s meant to be, he’ll reach out. If not, then you’ll be on the way towards getting yourself in better working order anyway and you won’t have time to dwell on the past anyway.

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’ve been reading one of your more recent columns about if you need to be perfect to get a date. The short answer is “No” (obviously), and I know you’ve covered the topic in detail over the years. I wanted to bounce off that blog post and ask about one specific thing that troubles me, which I also believe is a major contributing factor as to why the “average man” can feel so downtrodden when it comes to their love lives. I know I certainly feel that way at times.

Just like the LW, I’m also not perfect. I am, however, in a good place and consider myself to be a great potential partner for someone and good-looking to boot. These sentiments are shared by those around me. However, despite being “a catch” I can categorically state that women have shown me very little attention in my life and that I have never been approached (and yes, I am factoring in the more subtle ways in which women do this). There have been many years in-between the handful of dates that I have had in my life, with the most recent streak coming up to eight years, even though during that time my social circle has increased and I have hung out with a lot more women. Incidentally, it’s also during this time that I have observed women who have initiated contact and openly flirted with other men. Coincidentally, it’s this disconnect between being a “great guy” and (seemingly) “undesirable” that I find to be disconcerting. I think it’s an experience that many men would share with me.

I wanted to share two specific experiences with you, which may help illustrate why I feel this way.

The first was an experience I had at university. At one point in time I met a guy who was antithetic to the Incel rhetoric, by which I mean short, overweight, unkept, not conventionally attractive, and had an obnoxious personality. He also wasn’t very confident in himself, having gleaned this over time through conversations I had with him, and I knew very few people who found him likable. Nevertheless, this man had no issues with finding women who were interested in dating or sex – he got matches on the apps, he was talking to several women on social media, he was always meeting new women when out on the town (some of whom approached), and sure enough, he had slept with a handful of them. It would later turn out he was a colossal prick that abused a couple of these women, but that didn’t seem to matter because, despite this knowledge being known, he was still getting some action. Obviously this man was nothing to aspire to, but the complete contrast in what he possessed, and what is typically thought of as “attractive”, was something that always perplexed me. The last I heard, he was getting married.

Ironically, it was around this point in my life that I made substantial improvements to myself and started getting a lot of positive reinforcement from others. I also had no romantic or sexual experiences during this period, nor can I recall a time where a woman may have shown even a hint of interest.

A couple of years later, I had another experience with a friend of mine. We had known each other for a few months and, on this occasion, was on a night out with a group of friends. Early into that evening, a man unknown to any of us entered the bar. He was attractive, but by no means a model, nor did he stand out in any particular way from what I could observe. My friend approached this man within moments and asked for his number. She was rejected, but the enthusiasm and speed in which she took that opportunity left no doubt in my mind that she had a strong interest in that individual. It was almost like what you would see in the movies. The most baffling thing for me, however, was later on in the evening when we slept together. It was not until the moment we were alone in my hotel room that I had any idea she was attracted to me, and even then there had been absolutely no build-up to that moment. We hooked up again a couple of times after that night, but there was still no chemistry or flirting between us. It was very…robotic.

A year or so later we met up for an event and ended up having a discussion about what women find attractive in men, as we had been talking about a friend of hers who had been instantly attracted to a guy she met at a cafe. I explained to my friend the confusion I felt over the many years when I have received comments like “I’m surprised you’re single” and “I bet lots of girls fancy you”, with nothing to show for it. My friend responded by saying that I have very good charisma, am very handsome, and that it was clear as day that I am great with women. The discussion didn’t go any further, so I’m not really sure what she had observed about me that led her to this conclusion.

None of this post is to suggest for one second that it’s common place for a guy to have countless women want to get close to him, but it does seem to me that you can have all the positive characteristics and material possessions in the world, and still not have “it”. To try and summarize my points, it would seem that A) There are men out there, many of which do not meet the 6-6-6 criteria, who have a more instant appeal to them, and B) Women seem very capable of approaching these men directly, but are more subtle or even neutral towards other guys they may find attractive. These points are, of course, based on my anecdotes; but I’ve had other similar experiences, and I’m sure this is relatable for a lot of guys.

I am completely bewildered by this. I’ve been out a lot in more recent months and have actively tried to look out for women who may be interested in me, but there’s nothing there. I clearly don’t have “it”, but I don’t even know what “it” is, or how to obtain this mythical status.

So, why is it that some men receive more obvious signs of attraction? What can other men do to put themselves into a position where they may experience that?

Some Guys Have All The Luck

DEAR SOME GUYS HAVE ALL THE LUCK: You’re right, I do talk about this a lot. And one of the ongoing reasons I talk about this a lot is because a lot of guys focus on the wrong things and draw the wrong conclusions.

Let’s start with the obvious one – and one that comes up a lot: the metric you’re using to measure success and attractiveness. Specifically: women initiating a conversation with a guy instead of the guy having to make the first move. This is, hands down, something I hear the most often from guys who talk about never getting any interest from women, and it’s honestly kind of telling.

Here’s the first problem with this metric: how many women are actually doing this. I would point out that your examples are about one woman approaching a dude seemingly unprompted, not “every woman in the bar came up to him”. That alone should tell you something from the jump: that this is about those women, specifically. These were women who a) found that particular person attractive and b) are the sort of person who has no problem making the first move when they’re suitably interested.

The issue here is that you’re drawing a whole lot of universal conclusions about women, rather than recognizing that these are the result of specific circumstances, including a whole lot of things that you’re not aware of. To start with: even in the far-flung future of 2024, a lot of women are uncomfortable making the first move, and with good reason.

Social conditioning is a motherf--ker and even today, women are still socialized that making the first move is too forward or too aggressive. A lot of guys – especially guys who feel very strongly about “traditional” gender roles – will respond badly to women approaching. This can range from assuming far more interest than is actually there and becoming obnoxious and aggressive to thinking that she’s a slut, a sex worker or that this is a trap or a con of some kind.

For another: women are frequently just as shy and just as afraid of rejection as men are. They don’t want to have the experience of trying to talk to a guy only to get frozen out or going over to someone they thought was making eye-contact with them only to realize they were trying to connect with someone else. It isn’t that they don’t find those guys hotter than World War III and wouldn’t love to throw them up against a flat surface and climb them like a tree. It’s that they’re having the same approach anxieties that men do, just with an extra helping of society telling them that it’s a bad move.

There’s also the fact that part of why this approach has been successful for these men is, again, it’s not a universal appeal; it’s not that every woman is falling for them, it’s that these particular women are. Part of why these guys get approached by these women in those venues is because of a little phenomenon us dating coaches call “right person, right place, right time”: that is, they’re those women’s favorite flavor, and they know enough to go where the women they’re most likely to appeal to hang out.

If you’ll forgive an awkward metaphor: if you want to bag an elk, you don’t want to go on a hunting trip in Dubai. If you are into freaky little goth chicks that smell like Fritos bags, you gotta haunt the Hot Topic. If you click best with club kids, you have to go to the clubs. Going where your people are is part of how you make the whole process easier.  

Then there’s the classic “assholes get all the women” trope which requires missing something very important: the sort of asshole who’s successful with meeting women is also very successful at hiding the fact that they’re assholes. As we have seen over and over again, just because someone has a reputation in some circles doesn’t mean that everyone knows that they’re assholes or predatory creeps. Quite a few of them are extremely skilled at keeping their reputation contained or finding people who haven’t heard about them yet, convincing their latest target that they’re different than the rest, and there will always be folks who’ll think that this reputation is overblown. It’s hardly as though they go up and say “Hi, I’m six red flags in a trench coat masquerading as a sexy, cultured and erudite man, want to have a disastrous hook up where I’ll leave you feeling cheap and used and wondering why I won’t take your calls any more?”

Then there’s the fact that these guys aren’t just standing there, minding their own business and women are throwing themselves at them. If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve seen me talk about “approach invitations” and the ways that people use various signals to others that they should come over and say hello. While I talk a lot about the signals that women send, it’s worth remembering that men send those signals as well. Most people who seem to have folks “just coming up to them” out of the clear blue sky have, in fact, been doing a decent amount of eye-f--king, smiling and gesturing at the women first… just as women do with men.

And that’s before we get into the fact that at least some of what you thought of being flirting… likely wasn’t. As it turns out, people across the gender spectrum are just bad at recognizing flirting in general. Sometimes what looks like flirting is just… conversation. And sometimes what starts as conversation turns into flirting.

But honestly, the most important thing here is, again, that this isn’t “dude just stands around, does nothing and women fly into his arms like they were pulled by a giant cartoon magnet with ‘Acme’ branded on the side”. Even in your own anecdotes, that colossal prick was an active participant – using dating apps, talking to women on social media and going out and approaching women himself. You’ve latched on to women approaching him as though that was all he did, rather than something that occasionally happens. You find it more significant because it taps into your own feelings about yourself. You’d do a lot better if you were to ask yourself why you’re comparing yourself against a metric that is uncommon and – by most standards – very, very high. It’s not exactly saying that playing basketball only matters if you get picked for Team USA at the Olympics, but it is pretty close to saying that it doesn’t count unless you go varsity.

I would also point out that you have been chosen by someone whose interest seems to have come out of nowhere. In your own anecdote, you mention that you had no idea your friend was considering sleeping with you until she made the move, and then you hooked up again later on. However, you immediately discount that as being valid because it doesn’t look or feel the way you imagine it would if you were the other guy. You have no real reason to believe this outside of how you feel about yourself. The sex being so-so doesn’t mean that someone’s not necessarily attracted to you; some people just aren’t great lays. Just because a person is aesthetically pleasing doesn’t mean that they’re great in bed; those are two different skill-sets with very little overlap.

So, to sum up: it’s not all women making unprompted approaches, it’s not like these guys do absolutely nothing and when it does happen to you, you disregard it as not being valid.

What I would suggest is that you spend a little time on yourself and your self-image. As you said: part of why your unappealing acquaintance does well is his own rock-solid confidence and self-assurance despite not being classically handsome. I would also suggest that maybe you’re expecting a level of attention that’s unreasonable as a meaningful metric and is causing you to miss out on people’s interest simply because you don’t see it or believe it when you do. I strongly suspect that a lot of the problem you’re having is that you’re looking for the highest possible signs of interest because you don’t want to risk making a move and getting shot down. The problem is: you end up missing out on 95% of opportunities because you’re holding out for that 5% as the only one that “really counts”.

Which leads me to my next and final point: success comes most often to those who put themselves in success’ path. The people who are the best at meeting and dating women are the ones who are actively looking and talking to folks, frequently in many different ways, and are open to many different definitions of success. Knowing where your people are and spending time in those spaces, going out and talking to people yourself while also making a point of being more approachable and inviting are all going to be key to finding folks who’re going to be just as excited to talk to you as you would be to talk to them.

Otherwise, you’re going to just be sitting around, wondering why doing nothing doesn’t seem to increase your odds while the people who do the work are finding results.

Good luck.

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