DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Hey Doc, so I feel like I waste years basically doing useless crap. I went to college for essentially visual arts (the only “skill” I’ve had) and even then I doubt my skills aren’t that good compared to other fellow artists who entered more advanced sophisticated programs like animation and illustration, where I tried to enter and failed miserably by submitting the necessary portfolio. Said rejection hurts so much it just made me never want to pursue any career in the arts because deep down a part of me knows he’s not good enough and those two rejections are proof of that.

Now that I’ve essentially spent 4 years of my life getting stressed and depressed for essentially a worthless degree and debt. Now I’m working menial minimum wage jobs that frankly just souls sucking and tiresome (Line cook, waiter, bartender, cleaner, barista, etc.), jobs that require no talent and easily replaceable, essentially for high schoolers or high school graduates and only requires doing the bare minimum of skills and like you yourself said YOU DONT GET COOKIES FOR DOING THE BARE MINIMUM.

Now Essentially feeling the sting of regret not just because I got my worthless degree with worthless skills but because my friends and colleagues are pursuing actual careers that actual get good pay because they have useful skills. Mostly union jobs mostly tradesmen like welders, construction workers, plumbers, truck drivers, carpenters, nurses, firefighters, engineers etc.. Real jobs doing real work that’s actually valued by other people and society. It makes me turn both red and green knowing that I wasted so many years on something so worthless. There is a small part of that still thinks I can get a career doing art work IE Tattoo artists but it just feels like cope or delusions and I’m scared to pursue it because it’s gonna open of the scar of rejection.

What do I do? How I stop feeling so worthless and actually amount to something? Stop feeling like in beneath my colleagues and move forward without being delusional?

Sincerely,

Worthless Wagie

DEAR WORTHLESS WAGIE: Hoo kay, there’s a lot to unpack here my guy, but I think you’re probably gonna want to just throw the whole suitcase away.  

A lot of this is coming down to matters of perspective and how you choose to see the world. You’re choosing to see things in a very narrow, very limited way and in ways where you’re allowing your frustration to cloud your judgement.

I’ll start with an easy one: you’re misunderstanding the point of “you don’t get cookies for the bare minimum”. That’s not about so-called “unskilled jobs” (which is just a classist idea that’s more about what jobs are ‘important’; try running a fryolator with no training), it’s about people who think Not Being The Worst is something that makes them dateable. Being “a nice guy” isn’t a value add, it’s “yes, we expect that from someone we would want to date”, much as “doesn’t explode when you start the engine” or “doesn’t electrocute you if you touch the exterior” are baseline expectations for a car.

Unless you’re buying a Cybertruck, anyway.

So maybe you shouldn’t be using that to punch yourself in the nuts.

But speaking of nut punching, the real place to start, I suspect, is to tell you that you give up way too easily and way too quickly and I’m wondering how much research you’ve done in terms of careers in any creative medium.

I’m going to be painfully blunt here: if two rejections are enough to wreck your entire world, then you really aren’t ready for life in creative fields like writing, illustration, filmmaking etc. Anyone who’s made a go of it as a professional artist is both laughing and shaking their heads in rueful remembrance because, frankly, two rejections is, quite literally, nothing. One of the most common cliches when it comes to anyone trying to make it in a creative field is the comment about being able to wallpaper their house with rejection notices… and it’s a cliché because it’s true. Trying to get published, trying to get acting roles, get your screenplay out of the slush pile, get your film made, even getting into art programs means getting very comfortable with the idea of rejection and getting rejected constantly. I would say it’s part of paying your dues, except that implies that there’s a fixed number where, after you’ve passed it, you no longer risk getting rejected again and that’s not the case at all. It’s simply this: every field has it’s gatekeepers, and getting past them is often as much about luck as it is about talent.

And yes, I understand that this sounds elitist and exclusionary – and to a limited extent, it can be – but at its core, it’s simply about limited resources. No publisher, no agency, no production company or art program has unlimited resources, able to accept all and sundry who might want to take part. Every art program has a limited number of spaces for students; every publisher has a finite amount of money, personnel and room in the publishing schedule; every gallery only has so much room. Someone is going to be in charge of deciding who does or doesn’t get one of those openings, and they’re going to have criteria for what does or doesn’t make a good fit for them. That criteria is going to vary – whether they think it’ll make money (or enough money), whether they think that person is the right fit for the course and so on.

But here’s the thing: that acceptance or rejection doesn’t mean that they’re right, that what they accept is objectively good or what they reject is objectively bad. I mean, someone greenlit Gigli. Someone said yes to the Borderlands movie. Someone decided that it was a good idea to give Ben Shapiro a platform. Meanwhile, Stephen King was rejected by 30 publishers before Doubleday gave Carrie a shot, and Louisa May Alcott was told to stick to teaching because she sure as hell couldn’t write. Van Gough died in poverty and obscurity, an artist who was seen by the art world as being one of the most mediocre painters of all time. Hell, she may have descended into TERF madness, but nobody can deny the vice grip that JK Rowling’s books have had on pop culture… which is why her story of being rejected for years before anyone picked up Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone is the stuff of publishing legend.

This is why luck is as much of a part of success in creative fields as talent; someone has to be see your potential and be willing to take a chance on you. It just means that someone in the decision making process made a call based on their opinion and judgement… and that means that it’s all down to what one person or a small group of people think.

The fact that other people don’t see it or don’t want to take that chance doesn’t mean you’re The Worst. It’s just, like, someone’s opinion, man.

This is why part of success is simply not giving up in the face of obstacles and why knowing how to handle rejection or failure are critical to improving. OK, you got rejected… so now what are you going to do? You can give up, sure. Or you can decide to apply elsewhere. Or you can say “OK, so what about my work wasn’t to their liking and what can I do about it?” Then you can apply those lessons and try again. Or you might say “well, this didn’t, so I’ll put this one aside and try again with a different project.”

Sometimes the answer is “ok, I’m not ready yet, I’ll go work on my skills and try again”. Other times the answer is “well f--k you, I’ll find someone who does get it”. And still other times it’s “ah, I see what they had an issue with, let’s work on that…”

This is why it all comes down to how badly you want it, how much you’re willing to do to get it and how much you believe in your ability to succeed. If one or two rejections is enough to throw you out of the game entirely… well, as cold as it may sound, maybe this just wasn’t for you. And that’s ok! Not everyone wants or needs to get metaphorically punched in the face repeatedly. For some folks, that’s just a price they don’t want to pay and that is fine. Others are the sorts of mad bastards that’ll take the hit and say “thank you sir, may I have another?” And still others are of the school of “if God closes a door, blow a hole in the wall because f--k you for putting this wall in my way.”

But there’s a difference between saying “ok, this isn’t for me after all” and letting it wreck your entire life and worldview.

I mean, I’m going to get personal here: I spent more than two decades pursuing a career as an artist and illustrator. Over the course of that time, I was rejected more times than you’ve had hot dinners, even had people tell me to my face that I should give up. Hell, I had a teacher in college tell me that she’d rather see me cut my fingers off with tin-snips than call myself an artist.

I have thrown the equivalent of a down payment for a house into degree programs, courses, self-publishing efforts… and I never made it. I self-published a couple comics, worked very briefly as an animator and eventually just left the field entirely. And if I’m being honest? I don’t regret it; I never had the talent or the skill and I’m ok with that. I realized my talents and passions lay elsewhere.

And even then that didn’t mean that I was done with rejection; any author or professional writer who’s been on the Query-Go-Round with agents or who’s submitted proposals and pitches to editors is going to be getting rejected on a daily or weekly basis. Accepting it, rolling with it and working around it is part of the gig. As the song goes, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

The same thing applies to “wasting” time and money on your degree. Let’s leave aside questions about how over-inflated the cost of a college degree is (and the subsequent devaluation of anything that isn’t a post-doc) and instead focus on whether you “wasted” your time and money by pursuing a degree that hasn’t led to a career in that field. The idea that a degree only has value if it leads to a particular career in a particular field is a very late-stage capitalism belief, where the only point of education and learning is to make money… and probably for someone else. In reality, that time and money only “wasted” in as much as you think you’ve wasted it. If you want to define “wasted” as in “I’m not going to earn back the money I paid in by getting a career using this degree”, then yes, it was a waste. If you choose to see it as “I learned a lot about something I’m passionate about and it has enhanced my life in many ways”, it absolutely wasn’t a waste.

Again: I’ll point to my own experiences, with the amount of time and money I spent pursuing a dream that I eventually gave up on. Would I like that money back? Oh, sure. But I honestly don’t regret the time or effort I put into it. It didn’t pay out, but I also have no regrets. I learned a lot about myself and while I may not be an artist, all of my education and experiences gave me a deeper appreciation for the art I love, even when I’m not capable of creating it.

And an education’s applicability isn’t always going to be a one-to-one ratio in terms of one’s career. People in STEM fields love to s--t on liberal studies, but liberal studies are, in point, about learning how to learn, having a broader base to work from and how to collate disparate factors into a cohesive whole. It’s easier for a generalist to join a different field than it is for a specialist to become a generalist.

But none of that is going to matter because you’re mostly using all of this to, again, punch yourself in the nuts. That’s all this is: sweaty nut-punching because you had a set-back and you let it convince you that you have no agency and no control. The rejection hurts, sure, but it’s hurting in no small part because you’ve decided that they were 100% right and two people’s opinions have more apparent weight than your own. You’re letting other people’s opinions continue to shape your life by insisting that some jobs are for babies and the poors, not for “real” people. You’re buying into the belief that your job is supposed to be the same as your value and other people have decided that these jobs have little or no value…

…right up until the services that these jobs enable are unavailable. Let’s not forget the number of people who participated in violent uprisings because they were told they couldn’t to go to Applebee’s or get their mani-pedis. Suddenly those jobs were very important indeed, so important that they wanted people to risk death while performing them.

The other part of this that you’re missing is that you’re assuming that this is The End. You’re stuck like this FOREVER. And again: you’re not. Not unless you decide you are. The fact that you’re working minimum wage or tipped jobs doesn’t mean that this is all you will do for the rest of your life. There are many, many paths open to you if you choose to take them. Each of them will come with their own costs, both metaphorical and literal, but that’s true of everything in life. You could go back to college and pursue another degree – a BA or BS, an associate’s degree. You could even just audit classes in order to learn particular skills in career paths that don’t rely on degrees. Relatively few game developers, for example, got degrees in game development or even in STEM fields; many got their start by learning to code on their own or building mods for other games. Hell, there’s a very real pipeline between game journalist and game developer. You might start as a bartender before eventually becoming a bar owner. Or you might continue to pursue a career in the arts in one form or another. These are all choices you could make, right now if you want. So too is continuing exactly as you are. But you have to acknowledge that this is a choice you’re making. To quote the bards: if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

So if you want to stop feeling like a failure, you have to choose to stop being a failure and to stop seeing this as failing. You can see it as a false start, a dead end that you have to backtrack from or as one more step on the path that’s going to put you where you want to be. You can let all of this destroy you or you can let all of it energize you, motivate you and move you forward. You have agency, you have power and you have the ability to make choices. Those choices come with consequences, but all choices do. You just have to decide if those consequences and risks are ones you’re willing to accept. But again: deciding that you’re not willing to accept them is still a choice and you should acknowledge that.

Does it mean being “delusional”? Only in as much as “delusion” means “going against other people’s beliefs”; other people may think something, but that doesn’t make it true. People still believe Elon Musk’s a genius after all. 

Your life is in your hands. You can fail without being a failure, just as you can succeed in spite of yourself. You have the ability to decide how to shape it, how to direct it, what paths to follow and which to pass by. That’s all on you. Your future is your own, so if you want a good one, then it’s on you to make it.

Good luck.

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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 written in before and greatly appreciated your advice. I (25 M) have since met a lovely girl (22) and we’ve been together for about six months. She’s my first serious relationship and my first love. The problem is we have very different schedules, and our love life has diminished considerably over the past couple of months. I feel frustrated but I also feel ashamed for feeling frustrated.

I work a normal 9-5 and also attend grad school on the side. I have hobbies that I attend a few nights a week as well. She, on the other hand, recently started working nights in a very demanding position. She’s extremely passionate about her job —which I adore about her — but she’s been left totally exhausted from it. She’s also scheduled mainly weekends for the foreseeable future, which normally would be the best time for me to see her. The other week she admitted to me how strained she’s felt and how her libido completely disappeared. We had a month long draught in our love life because of this. It’s since picked up again but it’s infrequent.

I admittedly feel very selfish for feeling frustrated in this regard. At the beginning of our relationship we took our time in terms of intimacy, and mainly went at her pace (all of which I was fine and happy with). But we eventually came across some intimacy problems that made sex difficult. Some of these we have overcome and I feel great about reaching those milestones together, but others we have not. She has a lot of trouble reaching orgasm and she hasn’t once reached one with me. We’ll spend so much time on foreplay only for her to get extremely frustrated with herself because she can’t seem to get it. Her self-esteem has tanked recently because of this, and combined with how stressed and out of whack she is from her job it’s become a big problem. Sometimes sex is still an issue as well.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do other than continue to be supportive and not pressure her. I have recommended therapy as an avenue and relayed to her how speaking to a counselor helped me a ton. I even got some references from my counselor for her a while back. I think therapy would be best given her current situation and stresses but she doesn’t seem too keen on it. She does see a psychiatrist and is on medication (which probably affects her libido and hormones) but she also seems reluctant to speak to them about this issue. I feel I’m giving a lot in terms of our relationship but leaving our time together more and more frustrated. We’ve been together a relatively short time but are already having apparent issues (to me at least).

I realize I desperately want things to work out with her. And becoming single again seems like a nightmare. Any advice or criticism is welcome.

Thanks so much,

Wanna Be The Support Team

DEAR WANNA BE THE SUPPORT TEAM: Before we tackle the bulk of your question, I want to tackle something you said: you’re frustrated and you feel bad about being frustrated. This is the wrong view. It’s ok to be frustrated. It’s understandable that you feel frustrated. You’re in a frustrating situation! Being upset at yourself for feeling frustrated isn’t helpful. All this does is add an extra layer of unpleasantness over something that neither you nor your girlfriend really have any control over. You’re allowed to feel frustrated and you’re allowed to not be happy about a situation that is negatively affecting your relationship. Feelings are just that: feelings. They are neither inherently good nor bad, they just are. The key is what actions you take based on those feelings.

The time when they become a problem is when you are either taking your frustration out on your girlfriend or they’re leading you to do things that make someone’s situation worse. There is, for example, a point where complaining to your girlfriend is just going to increase her stress because it can feel like you’re blaming her or she feels like it’s her fault when the fact is that it’s just s--tty luck. So I hope you have some other folks you can grouse to in addition to her; sometimes it’s more helpful to vent to folks who aren’t directly involved and don’t feel like they have an obligation to try to resolve things. That way you can vent about your (very understandable, very reasonable) feelings without accidentally adding to your girlfriend’s stress load.

Now, that aside, I think part of what is going to be helpful is to recognize that sometimes the key to getting through a frustrating situation – one that, again, isn’t within either of your ability to change – is to find ways to mitigate the side-effects of that situation. Part of this is going to require being flexible and willing to adjust to the situation on the ground, where you can and how you can.

Under the circumstances, this is going to be a challenge. You’re working a 9-5 and going to grad school. That tends to cut your available time to ribbons while also taking most of your energy and mental bandwidth. She’s working nights and weekends in what apparently is a high-stress job. That means the overlap where you both have time and energy is going to be very, very narrow, and you are going to have to be willing to work within those restrictions. There might have to be some sacrifices in other areas to make this work. You may, for example, have to give less time to extracurriculars to make time to see her, or schedule hobby time for other nights.

Another thing you may have to do is change up your idea of what a date or getting together is going to look like for the immediate future. This may mean, for example, more low-key, low-energy hangouts, where you spend time together and enjoy each other’s presence rather than going out and burning the ol’ town down. Time cuddling on the couch watching movies or playing games together may be the dominant way you two share intimacy for a while until either things adjust or your schedules become a little more compatible. You might take walks in the park, catch matinees instead of midnight movies or get breakfast when she’s getting off work and you’re getting ready to head into work.

The more you can adapt your plans to the reality on the ground, the easier it’ll be to ride this particular wave. It’ll also help ease the level of stress your girlfriend is under by taking the feeling of “this is hurting my relationship” off her shoulders. Yeah, it’s less than ideal, but you’re finding ways that make it work.

Speaking of stress: yeah, I’m not surprised her libido tanked. Stress is notorious for driving people’s sex drives through the floor. It’s often one of the first things to go when your brain and body go into crisis mode. Think of it like a captain on a starship directing all available power to life-support and shields in a crisis; you shut down unnecessary systems in order to make sure you have enough for the things you need to do in order to survive the current emergency.

But here’s a hard truth: I don’t think you’re really helping with this right now.

Remember what I said about how it’s natural and ok to feel frustrated, as long as the way you act on that frustration doesn’t make things worse? Well, this is an area where you can inadvertently make things worse, and it’s one where I think both of you would benefit by dialing things back a bit, adjusting your expectations and change how you’re handling things. While I understand how you feel and you clearly want things to be better for the both of you, I suspect that you’re adding to things rather than easing them.

This is why, for example, I think she’s resisting talking to a therapist. While I don’t think this is your intent or what you’re thinking, there does come a point where it can feel like you’re pushing her for you, rather than for her. I think part of what would work a lot better is to take on a support role and say – literally say – “hey, how can I support you right now? What can I do that’ll help ease your stress and make things easier?” You might get more mileage, say, out of picking up groceries or watering her plants so she has one less thing on her plate than you would pushing her onto a therapist’s couch. 

At the same time, remember what I said about adjusting expectations? Well, I think that also applies to your sex life, too.

Let’s take her difficulty in reaching orgasm as an example. It’s generally pretty easy for cis men to reach orgasm; the shape of the penis, the location of the nerve-endings and so forth generally make the whole process simpler. Men are also usually much more in tune with what they need to get off. Again, the general shape and location of our genitals make it much easier, as do cultural expectations around male sexuality. Because masturbation is treated as not just natural but inevitable for young boys, men are far more likely to figure out what they like early on and become experts on what they need to get off.

Women, on the other hand, often come to masturbation and orgasm later in life than men do – it’s a lot harder to accidentally stumble on things that get them aroused or stimulated. Not to mention, even in this far flung libertine future of the Year of our Lady Beyonce 2024, women are actively discouraged from exploring their own bodies and sexuality and from pursuing their pleasure the same way men are. Call it a side-effect of a culture that still treats the act that elevates men as one that degrades women. So a young woman may have a different relationship to what gets her off and may not have fully processed what she needs to get there. It’s pretty common, for example, for women to require really intense, direct stimulation on the clitoris or the g-spot in order to get off. It may well be that your girlfriend is one of those people who needs a level of pressure or stimulation or contact in a very specific manner to really get there – ways that simply aren’t replicated by the human body. This is where, for example, incorporating sex toys like vibrators into sex play can be invaluable. Using a vibrator on her during foreplay or penetration, for example, can help provide the level of stimulus she would require to reach orgasm.

One thing that might help is to talk a little about what gets her off when it’s just her. If there’re things that she does while masturbating that get her there, those would be things you could incorporate into partnered sex. And if she has never used sex toys… well, that might be something she should look into – both in private and when you’re together.

The medication is another potential complicating factor. A lot of medications used for mental health issues – such as antidepressants, anti-psychotics and others – are notorious for killing people’s libidos. SSRIs in particular are famous for leaving people in a state where they couldn’t get off for love, money or really, really good drugs. In fact, one of the off-label uses for some SSRIs is the treatment of premature ejaculation. So it’s certainly possible that her meds are part of the problem. If that’s the case, and this is bothering her, then that’s a conversation she should have with her psychiatrist. She’s entirely within her rights to say “hey, the side-effects of this medication are negatively affecting my life and I’d like to find one that isn’t going to ruin my sex life.”

However, there’s another factor at play here. I think the importance that you are putting on getting her off is actually having the opposite effect than the one you want. Orgasm can be a fickle mistress, and sometimes the pressure to have one can be precisely what prevents her from getting off. If the foreplay is going on and on and on, to the point where you and she are starting to sing “Working in the Coal Mine” and wondering how long this can go, the odds are that getting her off has gone out the window and now you’re just in the realm of how much chafing a hoo-hah can take.

So while wanting to please your girlfriend is great, I think the way you’re going about it is actually counterproductive. I think the pressure to have an orgasm is part of what’s chasing it away and making her feel worse. That, in turn, makes it that much harder to get off, which then makes her feel worse and so the cycle continues to perpetuate herself. So, much as with penises experiencing stage fright, sometimes the answer is simply… stop trying. Not that you shouldn’t care about her pleasure, mind you, but that you want to make sex less about orgasm and more about intimacy and connection. It’s possible to enjoy sex without an orgasm capping things off, and not having the pressure to get there makes it much easier. So while doing things she likes and enjoys is still going to be important, you want to stop treating getting her off like you’re hunting for the Holy Grail and focus more on the intimacy and feeling of it all.

You might also want to expand what you both define as “sex” to be more than tab-A going into slot-B. The broader the definition of sex you have, the more opportunities you have for having sex – especially when she’s feeling tired and stressed and is worried that having sex is going to mean another hour of frustrating finger play that ends up going nowhere and making her feel inadequate. A make-out session followed by her giving you a sexy assist while you masturbate might be a lot easier (and more satisfying all around) to fit into your busy schedules and less stressful overall.

(Want to know how to make that some hot, hot sexy times? Look up “jerk off instruction” and let her take command. Just sayin’.)

Now here’s the part that I think you’re really not going to like: you both might be SOL right now. There are times when things just aren’t going to work, no matter what you do. I’m often saying that relationships are a mix of right time, right place and right person. If those things don’t line up properly, then it often doesn’t work. Someone can be right for you, but it may not be the right time or they (or you) may not be in the place where they’re ready or able to have a relationship. This may be one of those times; you can truly love someone to the point of madness but still not make it work because of circumstances outside of your control. As the sage said: it’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That’s not failure, that’s just life.

That can really suck and it can be incredibly disheartening. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t mean this can never work, just that it can’t work right now. If you two are right for each other, you’ll still be right for one another in six months down the line, a year or however long it might be before things settle down and you’re both in a better place in terms of schedules and responsibilities. So while you may have to let things go for now, you can promise to circle back around to one another when everything is less hellish and you both have more time and spoons to give to this.

It’s a rough situation and I’m sorry you’re stuck in it. Hopefully y’all will be able to make it work. But if not… well, like I said, sometimes it’s nobody’s fault but bad luck and the best thing you can do is give a little time. Six months to a year can feel like an eternity, but it’s not nearly as long as you think, especially when love is on the line.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Without diving too deep into the details, I had a really tough upbringing, marked by a lot of neglect from different sources. Naturally, this took a toll on my confidence and self-esteem. I used to walk with my head down, barely able to speak to anyone, and this lasted for quite some time. Over the years, I’ve managed to come out of my shell, but I often found myself gravitating towards, or attracting, toxic people. In my late twenties, I was stuck living with people I didn’t want to be around, unemployed for two years, dealing with some health issues, and barely in touch with anyone. This was compounded by the pandemic, and I was in therapy again — though the therapists I had at the time weren’t particularly helpful.��In the last couple of years, things have improved for me. I’ve done a lot of cool things, met tons of new people, got my career in order, and found a really good therapist. Overall, I’m feeling better about myself. I’m still a work in progress, but at least I’m functioning. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t going out and meeting people before, but it’s like things have clicked this time around.��That said, I still feel a significant disconnect in my relationships, and this is where things get confusing for me.��Starting with the negatives: Despite attending a lot of social events, I realize I’m really bad at making new connections. I don’t understand the dynamics of meeting people at bars, parties, concerts, conventions, etc., and more often than not, I leave these events without having spoken to anyone. I know this is just part of life, but it’s hard not to feel hurt when I see people chatting easily or when there’s someone attractive across the room. It feels like I’m watching a world I can’t access through a glass window.��I’m also aware that I can come across as arrogant or aloof when I first meet someone. This is made worse by my tone of voice and dry, sarcastic sense of humor. It doesn’t happen every time, as you’ll see later, but it’s frequent enough that I want to address it. For example, when I started a new job a few years ago, I thought the introductions went well. My work performance was praised, and I got along with my team. However, when I went out for drinks with a colleague a few months in, he mentioned that the entire team initially thought I was “a bit of a dick” when they first met me. I eventually left that job, and they seemed sad to see me go, but that one comment still makes me anxious, especially since I started a new job two weeks ago and worry that I might not have made the best first impression. It doesn’t help that I tend to “focus on my work” and “do my own thing” (though I do consider myself a team player and always offer help).��Since this is generally a dating advice blog, I’ll also mention that despite the improvements in my life, I haven’t been on any dates or had anyone show interest in me, although most people assume I’m taken.��Lastly, I struggle with small talk and don’t really open up to people. I can’t relate to family occasions, birthdays, and the like because they weren’t a big part of my life. I can’t relate to relationships either, as it’s been a long time since I’ve been in one, and I’m not even sure what “love” is supposed to feel like. While I can share experiences, like visiting new places, I have trouble conveying them in a way that shows enthusiasm or enjoyment.��This negativity could all be in my head, especially since it’s harder to make new connections as you get older, and I haven’t been in one place long enough to build better relationships at work. Still, I feel like there’s room for improvement.��On the other hand — and here’s the irony — I’m actually pretty good at making new connections. I’m an ambivert, comfortable talking to new people, making them laugh, and helping them feel at ease. I’m usually the one organizing social events, and I participate in two sports regularly and dance, which has helped me build friendships of varying closeness. I have a few people who regularly message me, send memes, etc., and I’ve been invited out to different events recently, including drinks with just one person, so clearly, there’s some level of interest in connecting with me. I’ve also been told I’m attractive and charming, so I must be doing something right!��So, I’m not entirely sure what my issue is. Do I excel in some situations but not others? Am I misinterpreting my actions? Am I taking other people’s disinterest too personally? Do I come across as too confident or self-assured, making people think I don’t have time for them? Could I be giving off negative energy and pushing people away, possibly as a consequence of my past experiences?��I talk to my therapist about this and trust his guidance, but I’d appreciate a second opinion.��Maybe you can help me figure out this enigma.

Two Step Forwards, Two Steps Back

DEAR TWO STEPS FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK: The first thing I think that needs to be acknowledged is that the pandemic has f--ked people up in a lot of ways that we haven’t even begun to fully wrap our heads around, never mind process. The sheer level of psychic damage that everyone took was immense – if unevenly distributed – and I think more people need to give themselves a break for how much it set folks back.

(There was a lot of jokey-jokes about how everyone went fully feral during lockdown and in the aftermath and I think people are still only starting to realize that those weren’t jokes.)

So I think you should have a measure of grace for yourself regarding the ways that the pandemic and its associated issues affected your social development and general mental health and well-being. I think you should also remember that the important part of being a work-in-progress is the progress. Slow progress is still progress and it’s important to recognize that. So I think you should give yourself credit for how far you’ve come and how much you’ve accomplished, despite the speedbumps you’ve run into.

Now I suspect that part of the problem you’re running into is a combination of your past trauma, defense mechanisms that’ve outlasted their usefulness, and inexperience. One of the things that happens to a lot of people who grow up with a high level of parental or social neglect is that they more or less become self-sufficient in an unhealthy way and that ends up hindering their social skills. It makes sense, in a perverse sort of way; if you learn that your needs are never going to be met by the people who are supposed to love and care for you, you often respond by trying to not have needs. So a lot of social neglect can often lead to someone trying to eliminate their need to be social at all beyond what’s absolutely necessary.

And therein lies the challenge, once you realize that this is unhealthy and it needs to change. It’s become less of a method of protection and more of a routine that you’ve become accustomed to, and you have to shift your relationship to it. It helps, I think, to think of it like going through physical therapy after a serious injury or trying to rehab a weakened or damaged limb. Social skills, like all skills, are like muscles. They get stronger through use. But if you don’t use them, they atrophy and you have to work harder to build them up. Much like an athlete who’s been forced into bedrest and inactivity because of an injury, first they have to rehabilitate themselves back to a baseline before they can start getting to where they were.

And if you’re not someone who really had that baseline to begin with? Well, then it feels even harder because you’re not entirely sure where that baseline is. Hence what I said about inexperience; you’re basically trying to learn the rules of the game while playing it and wondering why it feels so clunky and difficult. It also means that you tend to get way too lost in your own head and overthink things.

The metaphorical “glass window” at parties and social events is a great example. If you’ll forgive an awkward comparison, this is a little like watching a dog that’s convinced that the door is closed and it can’t go through, even as people and other pets walk through without issue. There’s no window, no barrier except the one in your mind. Because here’s the thing: the dynamics of talking to people at social events – bars, parties, concerts, cons, whatever – are honestly not different from meeting people anywhere else. You start conversations. That’s it.

You already know you can do this – you say yourself that you’re comfortable with talking to new people and making connections. You already have the skills, the knowledge and even the practice to do it. It just feels different because in your head, you’ve convinced yourself that the “rules” here are different… somehow. But honestly, the only real difference is the importance you’ve put on it. It’s easy to talk to people when there’re no stakes. It’s a lot harder when you feel like it’s something you’re supposed to do or “should” do, in part because in your head it’s become something you can fail at and your brain has convinced you that failure will come with consequences.

But this is also why the key is to force yourself to do it anyway, to risk failure and realize that no, there really aren’t any dangers to this. If we return to the awkward metaphor, it’s a little like pushing that dog through the open door and showing that there’s no barrier there. It can see other people doing it, but until it experiences this itself, it still perceives the barrier and is held back by it. Once it goes through, it can tell the difference and isn’t “stuck” any longer.

One of the ways that you can make this challenge easier on yourself is to lower what you’re asking of yourself in those moments. You don’t need to expect to go to these events hoping to meet the love of your life or your new best friend or the business partner who’s going to help you conquer your chosen industry; you should set your challenge as “I’m going to talk to three people.” The conversations don’t need to be long or in depth; it’s great if they are, but they don’t need to be. It just simply needs to be more than a “hi… well… bye!” Once you start getting acclimated to the idea that talking to people at parties or what-not isn’t different from talking to people on other occasions when the stakes don’t feel so high, the rest starts coming much easier.

The issue about making small talk or not knowing how to relate to people is, likewise, simply about experience and familiarity. Part of why people struggle with small talk is that they misunderstand the point of small talk. A lot of people, especially the “I find small talk tedious, let’s talk about the important, meaningful things” crowd, fail to understand why we make small talk in the first place. Small talk is, at its core, the art of finding initial commonalities. Even something seemingly as banal as talking about the weather is an attempt at establishing a sort of consensus – “ah, we both feel the same about this topic.” This person is a stranger or someone you haven’t seen in a while, so part of what you’re doing are finding the places where you’re similar and can relate to one another. After all, Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat aside, opposites don’t attract; we’re far more drawn to people who are similar to us. Those similarities may be immediate and obvious or they may be subtle, but the more we share, the easier it is to relax and open up around them. And that relaxation is precisely what makes it possible to start talking about those more meaningful, important topics. It’s the on-ramp to the social highway, if you will, allowing you to merge into traffic without causing a ten car pile-up.

One of the easiest ways to make small talk easier is simply to be curious about people and see what makes them tick. Talking to them, asking about their day… all of this is simply about getting to know them, getting a baseline for who they are and finding the areas where you overlap and where you differ and how that overlap looks. You may not, for example, be able to relate to the ins and outs of a high-powered trial lawyer’s job, but you’ve almost certainly had stressful meetings or dealt with the headaches of trying to organize around a project that just keeps throwing curveballs and unexpected obstacles in your way. You may not have the exact same experiences, but you have ones that are similar or even universal. Everyone’s had slacker co-workers or overly-involved middle-managers, ignorant bosses and clients and the like.

This is why I like the “think like a pirate” style of conversational volleyball: “ARR” or “ask, relate, return”. That is, you ask questions, find a way of relating to it and understanding it, then return the topic with a related question based on what they said. An example might be:

“How’s work been?”

“Oh, it’s been a nightmare, corporate just decided we all need to use this new ‘efficiency’ software and it’s thrown everything into chaos while we try to figure it out.”  

“Oh Christ, yeah, I remember when my last job switched our payroll service and we had to make sure we gleepfargled the 1090 or something. How are you all handling it?”

Now, one thing to realize is that sometimes you don’t need to relate to the exact same thing; some things are outside of your experience. But if it is, then the key is just to lean into that inexperience and focus on what it would be like for them. I’ve never been skydiving, so I can’t necessarily relate directly to someone throwing themselves out of a perfectly good airplane. But I can relate to some of the feelings I would expect from that and use that as a contrast: “wow, that’s incredible! I don’t think I could do that, they’d need to literally push me out of the door. Did you have a hard time making that first step or was it easy for you?”

Again, the key when it’s something you haven’t experienced yourself is just curiosity – what’s it like, what made them decide to do it, how did they feel afterwards, and so on. That curiosity and interest about them is also going to make them more likely to appreciate you. After all, most of the time, we encounter people who aren’t listening, so much as waiting for their turn to talk. Asking questions and actually listening to their replies is very much a gift that you’re giving them.

Now as for how you’re coming off to others… I suspect some of it is that “dryness” you talk about. A dry sense of humor is hard to pull off and a lot of folks who think they have one often don’t realize that they’re coming off like a dick rather than as a wit. Part of it is simply that if folks don’t know you well enough to be able to tell what’s a joke and what’s not, they’re going to rely on other clues like tonality. If you sound more or less the same as you would otherwise, they’re going to assume you’re serious, not joking. So even if you think what you’re saying is so self-evidently absurd, if you say it in the same tone of voice that you would discuss something serious, folks who don’t know you will have every reason to think you’re not joking. God knows the last ten years have left us in a place where people are willing to say screamingly absurd things that they take very seriously.

The other aspect of dry, sarcastic humor is that you have to be very good at it. Otherwise, it’s as John Scalzi famously said: the fail state of “clever” is “asshole”.

That, I suspect, combined with your tendency towards being as little stand-offish is part of why folks don’t think of you as a “team player”. Yeah, you offer to help, but I’m guessing you tend to be a “head down, do the work, go home” kind of guy most of the time and that can create a particular impression. Being a little more active and social – especially with a more expressiveness – would help ease that feeling.

The thing to keep in mind is that as daunting and overwhelming as I’m sure all this feels in the moment, the main reason it feels uncomfortable and strange to you is that it’s just unfamiliar. You already know you have the raw skills needed to connect with people. You are 90% of the way there already. The big thing you just need to do now is to put it into practice. If you lower the stakes in your mind and give yourself permission to take baby steps and make small changes and see what happens, it becomes far less intimidating and much easier to simply ease into it. As with any skill, the more you put your social skills into use, the more proficient you’ll be come and the less daunting or awkward those situations will feel.

Good luck.

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