DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: If you’re demisexual, how fast is too fast to propose? How do you know when the New Relationship Energy has worn off?

I (38F) have had three romantic relationships in my life: one lasted two months (we’d been friends for a couple of years before that), one lasted ten years, married for five (we were friends for a year before we started dating), and my current relationship has been going for six months (we were friends for a year and a half first).

In short, I have a lot of experience *being in* relationships, but I don’t have a lot of experience *getting into* relationships. I know myself well enough to know that I need to have a deep emotional/romantic connection with someone before I’ll even begin to start feeling sexually attracted to them, that I’m the one to initiate all of the new romance/dating/sex/marriage things because potential partners don’t know how to read that (which works for me!), and that I don’t find the initial “whee, we’re f--king now!!!” part of a relationship all that pleasant – I don’t like the giant rushes of feeling, and I really feel safest (and sexiest) within stable, familiar predictability.

I also know that the five years of dating before my first marriage was not actually a good sign. I really had everything I needed to know about the guy’s character and how we worked as a couple within the first three months of dating, and certainly by the time I met his parents. The whole experience was a sort-of-good-for-each-other-sort-of-not kind of thing that predictably crashed and burned into not. The five years of dating I spent hanging around was an attempt to convince myself that there was more in the “for” column than there was, and looking for evidence to write off what was in the “against” column. LOL, don’t do that.

Enter Mr. Current Guy. Everything is…great, actually? We’re there for each other even in our most idiosyncratic ways, we communicate well, we’ve been through a couple of disasters together, due to some interesting logistics we were living together for two months and during that time running a shared household was seamless, the sex is excellent, I love his family and friends and get along splendidly with them, they treat me well, and it’s like…what am I waiting for?

From my end, what issues do exist are largely (1) boneheaded communication problems we resolve within ten minutes of discussing them, (2) he has some time blindness issues, which, once I figured out that was what was going on, became just a logistics issue, and (3) he likes anal sex and I don’t. We’ve already discussed marriage, and we’re basically on the same page that commitment and relationships are one thing, paperwork for legal rights is another, and neither one of us likes big parties.

I could run the clock longer in case something new and unexpected comes up. But, in general, it’s been burning me inside that I haven’t straight-up told this man that I love him so much, that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and it’s fine with me whatever he’s feeling on that, but I just wanted him to know. I want to tell him that! I want to get him a nice gift and take him somewhere pretty.

On the other hand, we’ve been dating for SIX MONTHS. The only people I’ve known who got engaged after a relationship that short were my grandparents, modern drunk idiots, and a friends-with-benefits couple who made an oops baby and decided to roll with it.

What gives???

Sincerely,

OMG

DEAR OMG: I like to joke that if you read enough relationship advice columns, you would be amazed to find out that anyone manages to date without ripping each other’s heads off, never mind fall in love, get married and do more than put their couple’s counselor’s children through college. This is the nature of the beast; an advice column is mostly for people who are struggling in some way. Folks rarely write in to advice columns to say “hey, I don’t have any questions, I just wanted to say that while other people are married and will spend the next 80 years locked in stone, my partner and I are having AMAZING sex.”

There’s a reason why the movie isn’t called Blackhawk UP, after all.

Well, “rarely” isn’t the same as “never”, because this is what we in the relationship advice biz call “a good problem to have”, OMG. Finding a guy who’s sweet, caring and compatible, crazy good in bed and has a loving and open family… we should all be stuck with such problems.

So what’s going on here? Well… honestly, I think you’re finally experiencing that New Relationship Energy you just mentioned you don’t usually feel. The thing about NRE is that your brain is being flooded with oxytocin and dopamine and making everything feel amazing. The way it hits can vary, but the common denominator of the experience is feeling like everything’s amazing, and your partner may not be perfect but their flaws are more like endearing quirks and you’re often wondering why you never felt like this with other partners and so on.

And while some of that is unquestionably chemical, some of it is emotional and situational. With your ex, it was never really a happy or healthy match. You weren’t trying to make the relationship work so much as make it something you could endure. Lots of people have struggled through relationships like that, where they weren’t looking for reasons to stay so much as trying to tell themselves that the reasons to leave weren’t enough and they had to continue to tough things out because something something sanctity of marriage, something something ‘til death do us part.

So here you are, with a guy who you’ve known for a bit before you ever started dating and now you’re finding that things are going great. It may even be the first time that you’ve been in a relationship where you haven’t been having to convince yourself that if you weren’t happy, it was something close enough for government work. Small wonder you’re twitterpated with the guy.

And therein lies the issue, such as it is: you’re twitterpated. You’re finally getting that honeymoon period in a relationship that doesn’t have the same sort of “it’s fine as long as I cross my eyes and don’t look too closely” vibe that your previous marriage did. That alone has to be refreshing. 

After a s--tty marriage, a guy like that is going to be like a cool washcloth on a fevered brow, a delicious feeling of everything unclenching and finally relaxing after years of every muscle and nerve being on edge.

Now please notice very carefully that I don’t say that this is a bad thing. Far from it! You should luxuriate in this feeling! Dive into it like Scrooge McDuck diving into his money bin, swim around in it, toss it in the air and let it hit you on the head! Feel the f--k out of it because hey, it feels great, and you should enjoy it for as long as you possibly can!

But that doesn’t mean you need to do anything about it. Not anything that would require lawyers and paperwork to undo, anyway. Not yet, anyway.

If you’re a regular reader, I’m sure you’ve seen my advice to guys in relationships who’ve developed crushes on other people or who suddenly found themselves painfully attracted to friends: an erection isn’t a commandment. That is: just because you feel something doesn’t mean that you need to do something about it. Just as being attracted to someone doesn’t mean that you need to try to sleep with them, realizing that you’re in love and happy doesn’t mean you need to lock this down. As you said: it’s been six months. That’s really early in the relationship. And while you’ve known this guy for a year and a half already, you haven’t known him in a relationship context. There are still sides of yourselves that you two haven’t seen yet, not fully. Even when you’ve known someone for decades, you can still be surprised by what you didn’t know about them until you’ve tried to make a life together.

But again, I want you to notice very carefully that all I’ve said is that you probably don’t want to be proposing marriage yet. I don’t think it’s advisable at this stage, but I also don’t think it’s necessary just yet either. You’re living together, you’ve dealt with some crises, you’ve been introduced to his family… I think you and he should continue as you are currently while you ride this wave of happiness and exploring the sides of you that make you good partners for each other.

So, y’know, if you’re vibrating with wanting to tell him you love him, I say, go for it. You don’t need to hold that in. I just don’t think it’s the right time to talk marriage. It’s not as though putting a ring on it is necessary to keep the good times going, nor is it a prerequisite for spending the rest of your lives together. “The rest of your lives” starts when you decide, not when you’ve bought into DeBeers’ propaganda.

Think of it as laying the groundwork and building the habits for dealing with the inevitable slings and arrows that come with sharing space and a life with another person. You’re already doing some of this – recognizing his time-blindness, dealing with his communication blunders and so on – so you’re already on a good path. Keep at it for a bit and see how things go. In another six months, maybe a bit longer, it’ll be a good time to revisit the question of marriage. Its long been my opinion that marriages work best when the couple has more time to get into the swing of being a couple in the long term. I know folks have stories about how their parents or grandparents or whomever got married after a few weeks and made it work and good for them… but those, in my experience, tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule.

(And occasionally the result of marrying at a time when divorce either was very hard to get or unavailable entirely. There’s a reason why so many old country songs by women involve husbands who mysteriously disappear…)  

Now if you absolutely find you can’t wait or he jumps the gun with a surprise proposal you didn’t see coming… well, I mean, go ahead and get engaged, but make it a long engagement.

But otherwise? I don’t think there’s much need to question your good fortune here. Enjoy this glorious feeling. Everyone could use some unbridled happiness, especially now.

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: Flirting, showing attraction to others, and all dating skills are skills, right? And like all skills, require making mistakes and learning from them in order to get better, right? So HOW is any man who is not good at these supposed to get better at them if there’s no grace given whatsoever for any misstep? 

If I’m attracted to a few women in my social circle, I get one or two, MAYBE three chances at max before I start to get a reputation, thus poisoning the well when it comes to any further attempts. Is THAT enough practice to get good at this? 

Do I really have to be a guy with an extensive amount of non-intersecting social circles before I’m even allowed to try dating? Is online dating really the only option here?

How is it even possible to get better at flirting, dating, and attraction given all these hurdles?

Stuck On The Struggle Bus

DEAR STUCK ON THE STRUGGLE BUS: When I talk about responding to the problems in your head rather than the ones that happen in life, this is precisely the sort of thing that I’m talking about.

The issue here is that you’ve created a scenario in which you have to walk a perilously thin line and setting a foot wrong in any direction is going to have dire and lasting consequences. Which would be something to be concerned about if this situation actually exists outside of your own expectations.

Here is an important question for you to answer: is this nightmare scenario happening now? Has this actually, demonstrably and unquestionably happened, either to you or that you witnessed personally, or is it something that you’ve heard of third hand? Doubly or triply so if this is based on other people’s stories from social media (particularly TikTok, Instagram or YouTube).

Was this “reputation” issue something you experienced or have personally seen the results of, or is it a situation where the actual outcome was up to interpretation? If it has happened to someone else, are you sure you have the entire story and not just a highly and selectively edited version – especially one that just happens to coincide with what you already expect?

And more to the point: have you actually done anything that might trigger these results, or is this just what you’re afraid might happen if you actually did something?

Here’s the thing: these all sound like excuses to avoid actually putting yourself out there and talking to people, not things that you’ve actually experienced. It takes very little to go from “the thing I’m afraid will happen” to “the thing that absolutely will happen” and for folks to be 100% certain of the accuracy and inevitability. They can illustrate their reasoning for everything with charts and graphs that show how obvious it is that this would be the result and why they can’t do anything about it… and still be 100% wrong. It feels logical and obvious to them, not because they’re gimlet-eyed observers of reality who can see The Matrix, but because motivated reasoning is a motherf--ker. They’re starting from the point of being afraid of an outcome and working backwards from that outcome until they’ve convinced themselves that it’s as unbreakable as the laws of physics.

It also raises other questions, such as “what, exactly, would you be doing that would get that sort of reaction out of people?” Because, questionably-sourced nightmare stories aside, it takes a lot to go from “mild flirting” to “…and this is why none of my friends will talk to me anymore”. Asking someone on a date and then taking “no, thank you” with grace isn’t going to lead to “getting a reputation” unless you’re either completely out of pocket or else dealing with people so high-strung or so off their chain that they shouldn’t be allowed outside without supervision. When this has happened to people, if you dig in, you usually discover that it’s because somebody’s behavior was especially sustained and egregious, not just “said the wrong thing by accident”.

But even if we set aside the whole “you get one shot, no second chances” aspect, you seem to be working from limited definitions of “flirting” and artificial restrictions. Flirting isn’t acting like Pepe Le Pew, chasing someone down as they try to run away from you or holding them in place as they squirm while you ask them to run away with you to the Casbah, nor is it just hammering away at someone until you get a date. Flirting, at its core, is just talking with people. You’re expressing interest, but in a light and low-stakes way and ideally in a fun way.

Can you pay someone a compliment that they appreciate? Great, you can flirt. Can you joke back and forth with someone without offending them? Also flirting. Are you capable of telling someone that you think they’re really cool? Check it out: you’re flirting. It’s not even something limited to your social circle or people you already know. If you’re capable of talking to people you don’t know and making friends, you’re capable of flirting.

Similarly, you seem to miss the point about practice. Practice means doing the thing that you’re trying to get better at. That doesn’t mean that it needs to be an all-or-nothing event. If I want to get better at basketball, I don’t need to just be suiting up and playing tournament matches. If I spend several hours shooting baskets from different parts of the court, that’s practicing. Same with running drills, practicing my dribbling, passing or the other skills one needs to cultivate to play the game.

Since flirting is simply being social, you can practice flirting basically anywhere. It just requires going out and socializing.

You can smile at someone at the mall and tell them that they’ve got amazing fashion sense. You can strike up a casual conversation with the person standing behind you in line to get a latte and tell them how cool you think they are. You can banter and joke with friends or acquaintances. It doesn’t need to be serious, intense or leading to anything; people can and do frequently flirt without intent or just because flirting is fun. If you can compliment someone or banter with them or otherwise play around without an attendant desire to get into their pants, you’re fully capable of flirting without intent.

S--t, you want an example of what flirting without intent looks like, even intense flirting? Watch The Legend of Vox Machina and watch how Vax’ildan and Gilmore interact. They’re clearly flirting, but without an intent of anything happening (except on AO3), because it’s the nature of their friendship. It may have started because Vax wants a discount and Gilmore wants people to test his gear (and provide word of mouth marketing), but it’s become a game, something they both do just because it’s fun. Sure, Gilmore wouldn’t say no if Vax decided to make a move (and according to Liam O’Brian, Vax might be open to it) but the flirting is the point in and of itself.

The other issues you raise are the anxiety weasels in your brain jumping around and poking at things. These supposed missteps you’re worried about are avoidable by being able to read the room. If you can tell that maybe a joke wouldn’t go over well with a particular audience or that it may not be appropriate to make a certain type of comment to a specific person, then you’re well prepared to avoid the pitfalls you seem to think are everywhere. If you genuinely can’t tell… well, flirting shouldn’t be your focus so much as working on your social calibration.

(And if that’s the case, I wonder how you avoid getting fired from your job for offending your supervisors.)

Here’s the thing: what you’ve done here is create a series of nested obstacles and objections that primarily serve to create a permission structure to not try. You’re not any more restricted in practicing flirting than you are in going out and meeting new friends or even just fielding a pick-up game of basketball. You aren’t limited to friends you find attractive. You’re not pushing up against the limits in objective reality, you’re talking about the thing you’re afraid of. 

And look, it’s understandable. This is classic anxiety getting in the way of things. The point of anxiety is that it’s your brain trying to protect you from things that might happen in the future. But there comes a point where you can let your anxiety rage out of control and create so many convoluted and bizarre scenarios that you end up paralyzed. It just feels logical and reasonable because you’ve started from the outcome and invented all the steps that will lead there.

Instead of working from “well I have to try to get with someone I know in my social circle”, start with “I’m going to be more social” and work on being more confident in talking with people in general. The more people you can hold a conversation with, the more opportunities you have to practice your other social skills. And as you get more comfortable with that, the more prepared you’ll be to pull those skills out when they actually count.

Good luck.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m not sure if I’m venting or looking for advice, but I need to share what I’m feeling. I’m really struggling and it’s hard to see a way forward.

On the surface, my life seems pretty good. I’m healthy and doing well professionally, but my living situation is a major source of stress. Renting is incredibly expensive and finding an affordable home feels nearly impossible. I feel stuck living in my family home, which adds to a sense of stigma.

What’s weighing on me the most is my dating and social life. I’m generally well-liked and respected, but I struggle to connect with people on a deeper level. I often get people asking me about how many hearts I’ve broken this week, but the truth is I’ve never been on a date. It’s heartbreaking, and I find myself sulking during my free time or crying into my pillow.

I’ve been trying to change this for a while. I’ve put myself out there and engaged in therapy, but nothing seems to work. I’ve met plenty of people, only to end up feeling alone again. I know relationships ebb and flow, but I can’t seem to hold onto anyone. I am making the effort to invite people out and grow these relationships further, but people my age already have their established social groups, are in relationships or have children, so this can be difficult, and I’m surrounded by it both at work and wherever I go socially.

When it comes to dating, I feel completely lost. I’ve been told that I have qualities that should attract others — kindness, empathy, intelligence — but it hasn’t led to any romantic connections. I don’t want to go down a negative path like RedPill, but it feels like I’m missing something fundamental when it comes to forming romantic relationships.

I can’t shake the feeling that something is off, and it’s leaving me feeling hopeless.

Change My Mind

DEAR CHANGE MY MIND: This is one of those times when I wish you had included more detail, CMM, because details matter. There are issues that comes up fairly often for people who are having struggles similar to yours that can be illuminating and give an idea of where the sticking points are hiding and how you can start addressing them.

One of the common issues – one you’ve almost certainly seen examples of in this very column – are when you’re dealing with problems that seem intractable but are, in fact, about what’s going on in your head, not out in the real world. Often these are problems that people have picked up via cultural osmosis rather than actual lived experiences; it’s something they expect, rather than something they’ve experienced. But the belief that it’s going to happen is so strong that they treat it like it has already happened.

Part of this is just a function of how our brains work; our brains respond to the things we imagine as though we actually experienced them. So when you, say, imagine going out and talking to someone, only to get brutally rejected, you honestly feel the pain of that rejection… even though it never actually happened. The problem is that you – and others – treat that as reality, rather than recognizing that it’s just your anxiety kicking in.

In fact, you drop a very common example right from the jump in your letter. You start with a very real, very relatable and very common problem: rent is absurdly high and home ownership is out of the reach of a significant number of Americans. That’s real and something that pretty much anyone you’re likely to date is going to understand. Hell, most people you’re ever likely to date will have experienced some form of this.

The part where it goes off the rails is when you assume that your living with your parents in a multi-generational household is going to count against you. In the span of one paragraph, you start by noting something that’s damn near universal, and then end it with assuming that nobody else could possibly understand, relate or empathize with it, never mind be (or have been) in the same boat as you.

This is one of those issues that everyone assumes is only happening to them when the truth is that it’s actually far more common than they realize. Nearly 16% of millennials (and upwards of 30% in some areas) lived with their parents in 2022 according to the latest census data. Gen Z is even more likely to live in a multi-generational home, with upwards of 31% living with their parents and 45% reporting being financially dependent on parental support.

(And all that is before we get into how the stigma about multi-generational households is a uniquely American phenomenon and built around the economy that the Boomers grew up with and that cratered as Gen X came of age.)

Now this doesn’t mean that living with parents can’t create logistical issues with dating – trying to get some alone time with your sweetie can be a challenge, for example – but it’s hardly the mark of shame you’re assuming it would be. Even if someone you would want to date hasn’t experienced it themselves, the odds are good that they’ll understand. Someone would have to be especially uncaring or ignorant to take that as a personal flaw, and that’s someone who just told you that you shouldn’t date them. If they lack the level of empathy or understanding for your circumstances, that’s a flaw in them.

The rest of the things you talk about are so vague that it’s difficult to advise you on what you might need to do. You don’t mention, for example, how you’re unable to grow these relationships or how you “can’t seem to hold onto anyone”. You comment about “established social circles” or having children or partners, but this doesn’t actually tell us anything useful. Is it that you’re running into scheduling conflicts? Is it that they just don’t respond?

Those details can be important, because of what they tell us and what they can show us. It could well be, for example, that you’ve got expectations that are out of step with reality. One of the reasons why I tell people to “date slow” is because they have a belief that the only connections that count are ones that lead to dates or relationships immediately. This is part of why so many people get hung up on doing approaches and getting numbers; they feel like it only “counts” if you get someone you just met to agree to go on a date… even though that’s not how most people start relationships. Dating apps have exacerbated this, in part because people don’t separate a specialized environment (where people have signed on specifically to meet people they might want to date) from how people have meet new people overall. We understand, for example, that someone we just met at work or talked to at the bookstore isn’t going to be our newest, bestest friend right away. But by the same token, a lot of folks seem to think that if talking to someone doesn’t lead to a date that weekend, then they failed.

But people rarely date someone they literally just met. It’s uncommon to vanishingly rare to start a relationship with a person we’ve only talked to for twenty minutes. The vast majority of relationships are born from connections that are built up over time as we get to know them as individuals. It’s one of the many, many reasons why propinquity – the tendency to start relationships with people we spend the most time with – is the most underrated aspect of attraction and meeting people.

This is why, for example, your problem may be one of expectations and the answer is that you need to just slow your roll. Sometimes it really is a case that you’re expecting an unreasonable result and wondering why nothing you do is working.

Another likely issue is your overall attitude and how you feel about yourself. As I’ve said many, many times, what you feel is happening and what is actually happening can be two very different things. Your attitude and outlook is the filter through which you see the world. Your brain is primed to show you the world as you believe it exists and to discard evidence to the contrary. If you believe that the deck is already stacked against you, you’re going to be prone to assuming the worst. You’re going see things in the most negative possible light because that’s what you expect to see. Take your belief that living with your parents is a mark against you. Because you believe this, you’re primed to see anything that isn’t 110% over-the-top excitement as rejection or a sign that you’ll be rejected. So, anything that could be seen as a rejection will be taken as one, even if it’s just “I can’t this week, but I’ve got more time next week.”

And yes, sometimes it really is the case that people can be busy as hell, and you have to book things out further than you would prefer. As we get older, our responsibilities and obligations stack up and our available free time shrinks as demands on that time grow. It’s frustrating, to be sure, but that’s part of life and you have to learn to work with it.

Similarly, the belief that there’s something “missing” and nobody could like you means that you’re going in to these interactions expecting things to go badly. As a result, you won’t put the same level of effort into it as you would otherwise; why bother, if you’re just going to get shot down? But it’s that half-assing and expectation of rejection that can cause the rejection. You don’t put your best self out there, you take mild inconveniences as insurmountable obstacles and read rejection into every micro-expression. And since this just serves to reinforce the idea that you’re unloveable, you have a harder time picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and trying again.

So I would recommend that part of what you need to do is start putting your efforts in shifting how you feel about yourself. Much of this is going to depend on acknowledging and accepting your good points, paying yourself compliments and being willing to hype yourself up without false modesty or weird disqualifiers. If you aren’t willing to believe that you may be wrong about there being something “wrong” with you or that maybe things aren’t as bad as you want to believe, then you’re never going to convince yourself, never mind show those good points to others.

(Put a pin in that, we’ll come back to it).

You have to be your own best friend and biggest fan before anyone else. If you don’t believe in your own worth first, you’re going to have a much harder time conveying it to others. “I understand why you wouldn’t like me, I wouldn’t like me either” is not exactly a winning marketing slogan after all. And you can’t rely on other people to tell you that you have value; very few people are going to be so motivated that they’re going to fight to change your mind for you.

So, start with learning to appreciate your value, to know your worth and to recognize that you have more going for you than you want to believe. Learn to love yourself, openly, loudly and proudly, and others will see it too.

The same goes for trying to connect with people. If you’re going into an interaction with the idea that you have to convince someone to first tolerate you and then like you – in other words, to gain their approval and justify your attraction to them – then you’ve already failed. You’re going to be so hyper-focused on trying to convince them to give you a chance that you won’t be authentic or present in the moment. You’ll be too busy looking for signs that she doesn’t like you and focused on not making a mistake rather than actually connecting with them or – importantly – finding out if they’re worth your time.

But there’s one more thing you’ve said that I want to drill in on. You say that you have the qualities that people say they want – that kindness, empathy, etc. It’s great that you have them, but how are you showing those qualities to others? One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is that they assume that simply having the qualities is all they need… but nobody knows you have them unless you actually demonstrate them. It’s one thing to say you’re kind. It’s another to actually go out and, say, help your elderly neighbor with their housework or volunteer at the pet shelter or do charity work.

People make jokes about how music is God’s gift to ugly people, but part of why the “broke, couch-surfing musician boyfriend” is a cliché is because musicians do something. Playing music makes people feel good and those good feelings mean that people will prioritize a relationship with them over the people that don’t make them feel good. If you have things to bring to the table, the first thing you have to do is actually bring them to the table, not just hope that others will divine their existence. The people who do the best with women are people who demonstrate the qualities that people want in a partner, not just insist that they have them.

This is why you have to be an active participant in your own life. You can’t hope that people might see your good qualities, you have to find ways to show those qualities. And they work best when you’re showing them because they’re just things that you do, not because you’re just trying to win people over. This is why trying to find “attractive” hobbies that women are intrigued by doesn’t help if you don’t actually like those things. It doesn’t do any good to learn how to dance if you don’t actually like dancing, any more than it makes sense to go to clubs to meet women if you neither like clubs nor the people who hang out in them.

Start looking within and find the things that you think that make you awesome and bring them forward. Be proud of them and be willing to show them off. Accepting and acknowledging you’re a sexy badass is the first critical step of being able to show that to others. Once you start to believe it, you’ll start seeing it – after all, if you’re going to see the things that confirm what you already believe, you may as well believe the things that help you. Change your attitude and you start changing your results. The rest flows from there.

Good luck.

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