Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I could use some advice. There is a guy that I was introduced to me about four months ago and I know he has been in a bad headspace, mentally. His ex-girlfriend was emotionally abusive towards him, and he is currently in therapy working on those issues. 

He has shown some interest in me romantically. He has told me about his attraction to me. We have hung out quite a few times, but he never initiates it. We have exchanged numbers, but he almost never texts me first I always have to text him and sometimes he doesn’t even reply or if he does it is days later. 

When we do hang out, he spends time flirting with me. I am all for him, wanting to make sure he is in a healthy headspace before pursuing a relationship. I am just trying to make sure I am not wasting my time and whether I should be patient and wait for him to be ready, or if I should move on.

Waiting In The Wings

DEAR WAITING IN THE WINGS: I think you’ve given yourself a false binary, WITW; I don’t think this is necessarily an either/or situation so much as a “yes, and” one.

Here’s the thing: your crush is dealing with some heavy s--t. An abusive relationship, regardless of the type of abuse, can do a lot of damage, and it can really f--k with a person’s head. Just admitting that you were in an abusive relationship in the first place can be rough. This is one reason of why a lot of people stay with, or go back to their abuser, even when they theoretically know better. It can be especially hard for men, simply because of the beliefs and attitudes about men and masculinity. A man admitting that he was being abused by his partner, especially a female partner, is often held as a strike against him as a man. If she was violent, then he must be weak. If she was emotionally abusive, he’s even weaker because “because his girlfriend hurt his feelings”. And admitting that you’re someone who could be abused, who would end up in an abusive relationship is hard to swallow, regardless of your gender and sexuality.

And that’s before we get into the scars that these relationships can leave. If you’ll forgive an awkward and inelegant metaphor, someone who’s been in an abusive relationship can be a bit like an abused or mistreated pet: they may want love and care and to be loved, but they’re afraid to let people get close and may flinch, snap or run away. It can be hard for a victim of partner abuse to lower their guard, to let someone in or to feel like they deserve to be loved.

Now, it’s great that he’s in therapy. Getting out takes a lot of courage and willpower and getting help takes just as much. That says a lot about him and his character. But unfortunately, while therapy is going to be important, another important part of his healing is simply going to be time. There’s really no way to speed up that process, nor is there a way to ensure that, when the healing process is winding down and he’s both ready for a relationship and in good working order, that he’s going to want a relationship with you or the kind of relationship that you might want.

Right now, you’re getting mixed messages from him. I don’t think this is necessarily intentional and I don’t think you can really read things into this one way or another – not with the context you’ve got. I think it’s entirely feasible that he appreciates the interest and flirting, but isn’t necessarily in a good place to do more than that. He may have a hard time reaching out first or making the first move because of what happened to him and how his previous partner treated him. It’s also possible that, even absent the abuse, he’s the sort of person who’s just bad at initiating. It’s impossible for me to say.

If I were to guess? I think he appreciates having a person who he feels safe to be attracted to and to flirt with, but isn’t ready to do more than that or take things further. I think he’s still wrestling with a lot of demons and still dealing with the fact that he’s been through the fires of hell, and he’s got the ashes to prove it. And to be perfectly honest: I don’t think it would be fair of either of you to be holding the prospect of a relationship over both of your heads. I think the feeling of expectations might be hard on him and I think the inability for him – or anyone – to tell you how long this will take and what the end results will look like is bad for you. On his side, there’s a distinct possibility that he might try to get back into dating before he’s ready; on yours, there’s every chance that you will be patient and wait and find out that this relationship simply wasn’t in the cards for either of you.

This is why I think this isn’t a binary be-patient-and-wait/give-up-and-move-on decision. I think the flirting and the connection is good, but I think it’d be better for both of you if you take the expectation of a relationship off the table for now. You two clearly vibe, but right now, things are unequal; the level of effort he’s putting in isn’t commensurate with yours, nor is what you’re getting back from him. If I’m honest, I don’t think he’s in a place where he can match it. So I think your waiting around for him is ultimately a bad idea. I think you’d be better off to stay in contact, but without the expectation that there’s going to be more. I think you should let yourself go out and meet other people, while he focuses on his healing. I think that’ll mean that you aren’t gambling on an uncertain future, and he’s not going to be distracted or feel rushed.

If you two are right for each other and you have this powerful connection, you’ll still be right and still have that connection down the line, when he’s in a better place and able to reciprocate. If you’re still single or not seeing someone seriously, if he’s still interested and ready to date, you can return to the question and figure things out together. But until then? I think staying in contact is good… but let yourself be single and see other people.

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: For the past two years, I’ve had two girls who liked me. Yet I barely found them sexually attractive. I enjoyed their company as a friend and set that boundary with them. However, they fell for me. 

I, on the other hand, have a history of falling for girls who sexually attracted me but were unavailable. I really wonder if this is a pattern I should break. 

Could you help, please?

Don’t Want What I Got, Don’t Got What I Want

DEAR DON’T WANT WHAT I GOT, DON’T GOT WHAT I WANT: This is a pattern, DWWIGDGWIW, and it’s a fairly common one.

The reason for this is pretty simple, and it comes down to confidence and behavior. Part of the reason why the women you weren’t interested in responded to you the way that they did is in how you behaved with them. You were their genuine friend and treated them with the respect and care that you would treat a friend. You were your genuine and authentic self with them, shared mutual interests and spent time with them without an agenda. And most importantly: you were comfortable with them – comfortable enough to be genuine and authentic and to spend time with them without an agenda.

But the inverse is true with the women you were attracted to: you may have been attracted to them, but you sure as s--t weren’t comfortable around them… and almost certainly because you weren’t comfortable with yourself.  

The clue here is in the unavailability. It’s one thing if you’re into a person who you think is somehow “out of your reach” – whether that “unavailability” is a matter of social class, relationship status, a lack of opportunity to meet and connect and so on. But when it’s a pattern of behavior – when you’re regularly or possibly exclusively interested in people who are unavailable – then that tends to be about how you feel about yourself.

A lot of people across the gender and sexuality spectrums will find themselves drawn to people they know at some level are unavailable or unsuited to them precisely because their crush is unlikely to return their feelings. It’s a perverse form of self-preservation; they don’t believe that they’re worthy or deserving of love or they don’t trust or believe in their ability to make the relationship work.

As a result, their brains subconsciously steer themselves towards people who they know won’t return their feelings so as to avoid the potential pain of rejection or failure. It’s self-protection by self-sabotage; the pain of unrequited attraction is less (and thus less “dangerous”) than what might happen if they succeeded. After all, a love that can never be is, by its nature, perfect. It remains in potentia, which means that the relationship can never be subject to the mundanities of life. There’s never going to be an argument about cleaning the toilets or a time when you both have the flu or food poisoning and you’re both expelling everything you’ve ever eaten from every orifice you have. You’re never going to come to verbal blows over what to watch on Netflix, what to have for dinner or whose family they’re going to visit for the holidays this year.

And, importantly, it means that they’re never going to suffer the moment when their dream partner leaves them because of some deficiency or some mistake. Nor will their dream partner decide that they could do better or reveal that they were never really that into them and that the entire relationship has been about inertia rather than desire.

On the other hand, when you aren’t afraid of not “measuring up” to some weird, arbitrary or imagined standard, not worried that some flaw will drive people away, you’re able to interact with people from a place of confidence and security. And for as much as “confidence is sexy” is a cliché, it’s a cliché because it’s true. Being confident affects how you interact with people, but also in the way you see the world and interpret their behavior. If you believe people like you, then you’re going to respond accordingly – you’ll be warmer, friendlier and more open. This is more appealing to people and they’re going to respond in kind.

Similarly, because you’re not worried about the outcome of the interaction, you’re not as worried about impressing them or winning them over. Instead, you’re able to be yourself, be in the moment and focus on connecting with them instead. This, not surprisingly, leads to better relationships and makes you far more interesting and appealing.

To break the cycle… well, you’re going to have to learn to stop being so afraid of the possibility of success. It’s good to pay attention to what those “unavailable” women have in common, because this will often tell you what you’re being drawn to. But the more assured you become in yourself, the less you’ll be led by your subconscious to relationships that can never be.

That’s gonna take some time, and it may take outside help for some of it. But learning how to not be afraid of success and to believe in your own worth makes it that much easier to stop being afraid or intimidated by the women you’re attracted to. That, in turn, makes it much easier to relate to them the same way you relate to the women you aren’t attracted to… which will improve the results you get in the process.

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: So gonna be very upfront. I’m beneath perhaps a of women in a lot of terms and women don’t date down. 

I’m beneath them economically because I’m working two minimum wage jobs and living with my parents while the vast majority of women are college educated (same college educated elite who look down on minimum wage or blue-collar workers or tradesmen as stupid uneducated hillbillies) who are earning more and already home owning at higher rates than men. I’m beneath them in terms of my looks I’m quite schlubby to chubby which I guess is a thing for weirdos and chubby chasers (I’m thoroughly convinced Dad bod thirst is a massive psy-op) because in real life, in my job I see lots of chubby women with very good looking guys but almost never reverse unless the guy has money (I can tell with how big tips he gives) and I’m not very picky, I just find people who find my body type uncomfortably weird. 

I’m beneath them in terms of well experience since maybe I’ve had one partner and the sex wasn’t particularly good at least for me and I only lost it since I didn’t want to be lower than I already am (a virgin) something once again women do look down upon when choosing a man, and much like chubby chasers, women who supposedly don’t have an issue with men being virgins/under experienced men are uncomfortably weird because they’re not really doing it because they like him or genuinely care about him but rather it’s all about asserting her superiority. 

A woman with experience is simply superior to a man with little to no experience.

So that’s the conundrum how does one get to their level to being a quality partner. Especially now a days where women don’t really need men (they got vibrators and smut and well there is no women complaining about being lonely or struggling to find partners or even getting laid because there is no virgin stigma affecting them) and thus leaving me in a position where I desire partnership and intimacy where that isn’t really reciprocated.

So what do I do so I don’t feel like I’m beneath them?

Singed, 

Climbing with Bloody Fingers

DEAR CLIMBING WITH BLOODY FINGERS: I’m going to say this as kindly and gently as I can: that was a lot of words to describe your low self-esteem and what is frankly an ugly mix of ignorance and a s--tty attitude about women. In the span of 400 words, you’ve declared that women are snobbish, mercenary and manipulative and really have no incentive to date men unless they can either control them or get something from them.

This is why it’s often hard to take complaints like this on their face: based on the way you describe women, if you honestly and sincerely believe this, then I’m kind of astounded that you want to interact with them at all. I mean, talk about how sexual orientation isn’t a choice…

But more seriously, this is another case of “the problem you’re asking about isn’t the problem that you have”. I’m going to be blunt here: it’s pretty clear just how much of this is self-loathing and what Nietzsche referred to as ressentiment – a state of suppressed envy and anger due on what you see as a personal affront. That is: you actively dislike yourself and see yourself as being inherently undesirable, yet also are angry at women for… apparently agreeing with you that you’re undesirable, thus denying you something that you desperately crave while also feeling undeserving of receiving in the first place. You’re right that the desire for partnership and intimacy isn’t reciprocated, but you have completely reversed who’s not reciprocating that desire. You want to feel desired, but you yourself say that you actively mistrust women who find you attractive. You treat people who think you’re attractive like their interest is an insult.

Honestly, I would think that the act of writing that sentence out would be something of a clue.

What leaps out at me is the level of learned helplessness that’s deeply embedded in your letter; you describe your situation as though it were both an inevitability but also something that is imposed upon you – by nature, by a cruel and capricious God, or by the vast and uncaring universe itself because f--k you, that’s why. And since lashing out at the universe does about as much as pissing into a bonfire and you don’t blame yourself, that ressentiment gets directed at the object of your desire for things that, according to your worldview would be entirely reasonable. I mean, if women are as mercenary and stuck up as you believe and you’re as much of a gloppy mess as you describe, then this would just be the natural order of things. God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.

And of course, it doesn’t exactly take a deep forensic investigation to figure out how much time you’re spending in the same dank corners of the Internet, seeing how many of the usual talking points and tropes got trotted out. In an era where women are talking all the time about their struggles with dating, with loneliness, with finding quality partners or even just a modicum of respect from the people who want to date them, insisting that no woman is lonely or that there is no virgin shame almost requires deliberate and willful ignorance.

Hell, it demands an inability to read or even see, because it’s pretty damn hard to miss all the “how to get and keep a man” magazine cover stories, blog posts, articles, podcasts, TikToks, Instagram reels, YouTube videos and, y’know, friends complaining about it.

What “evidence” you do have isn’t evidence. “Well, this guy is a generous tipper, so he must be rich; that must be the only reason this attractive woman is with him” isn’t even motivated reasoning, it’s an observation that got tied up in a basement by Jack Bauer and beat with a telephone book until it gave up and told you what you wanted to hear.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying “the call is coming from inside your head”, my guy. Nothing is going to change until you can accept that all of this – everything you’ve written about – is coming from self-loathing and learned helplessness, not from women “not dating down”. If you want to stop feeling like you’re “beneath” women, then stop telling me about how much you suck, tell me what you’re going to do about it. What are the steps that you’re willing to take to stop feeling so bad about yourself?

And an important follow up to that question is: how many of those steps are going to be about learning to let go of your self-hate and instead learning to love yourself instead of trying to focus on shallow and far less important material concerns? Because here is a truth: there are no leagues. There are simply women who either want to date you or who don’t.

Are there issues that can affect compatibility? Of course, because people are people. Does class (not income, social class) play a role, for example? Well… yeah. The sainted Billy Joel didn’t write “Uptown Girl” for people to pretend like this was never a thing. But at the end of the day, people either like each other or they don’t; they want to date and try to make the relationship work or they don’t. If someone likes you and wants to date you? Then hey: you’re in their league.

But you’re not going to be in anybody’s league if you are going to insist that anyone who seems to like you is either “uncomfortably weird” (your words) or “asserting her superiority” (still your words). Why should they like you or express even the vaguest interest if your response is to recoil and brandish a crucifix at them like you’re trying to ward off a vampire?

(And this is before we even get into questions like “how are women supposed to know that you’re a virgin or only had one sex partner?” By smell? By telepathic radio? By the RFID chip implanted in your vas deferens that keeps track of how many body parts it’s been inside?)

The hell of it is that many, if not most of these issues are by choice. Being “schlubby”, for example, is easily fixable; you just need clothes that fit properly and to actually put some thought into your presentation. A decent haircut, some shampoo and conditioner (NOT an all-in-one product), a daily routine involving a gentle facial cleanser and moisturizer and deodorant solve 75% of most presentation issues. The rest tends to be a matter of personal style.

Similarly, some of these aren’t the problem you think they are. You live with your parents? Ok… and? Turns out, so do around 45% – 50% of young people. Congratulations, you’re not nearly as much of the outlier that you thought. Shockingly, the housing shortage and skyrocketing rents give no consideration to gender; they hit men, women and non-binary folks alike.

(Also, incidentally, the reason why single women slightly edge out single men in home ownership is due to simple demographics; there’re more single women than single men. That’s it. And I hate to tell you this, but women’s average income is still 88% of men’s.)

The rest? Well, I’ll be fair: some of it is out of your control. Jobs that pay living wages can be hard to come by as more companies try to find new and inventive ways of minimizing pay or even the need to have employees at all; welcome to end-stage capitalism, hope you survive the experience. Maybe you should go unionize your workplace about it.

But the remainder of your complaints aren’t about any innate superiority of women or anything else; they’re a matter of choice. More women are college educated than men or getting more advanced degrees partly because they need those degrees to reach something closer to economic earning parity with men (even ones who don’t have advanced degrees), but also because fewer men are applying to college. Men aren’t being rejected or failing out, they’re not going in the first place.

But most importantly – and I can’t hammer this home enough – your single biggest problem and the reason why you are “beneath” women is that you don’t believe women when they say they like you. That’s a you problem, my guy, not a them problem. Until you actually deal with the way you feel about yourself, nothing is going to change. You’ll never be loved, simply because you’ll never trust that someone actually loves you. You’ll never have companionship because you don’t believe that you could have it. And you won’t be a better option than a vibrator simply because you think the vibrator brings more to the table than you do.

If you want to start feeling equal to the women you want to date? Well, you’re gonna need to change how you feel about yourself. Some of that may mean therapy. Some of it is going to involve treating yourself like you actually give a damn and deserve good things instead of punching yourself in the dick over and over. A lot of that is going to require being honest with yourself and where this ressentiment is directed and why. And a metric f--kton of it is going to require stepping the f--k away from every incel and redpill adjacent forum you’ve been soaking in for Zod knows how long. And considering how many forays the grievance-peddling slapdicks have made into male-centric online spaces, that may mean a very thorough social media audit and detox. But that’s ok, because then maybe this will inspire you to get the f--k off the Internet, go outside, touch grass and get to know people in the flesh instead of gulping down other people’s pre-chewed anger-paste.

Nothing is going to change until you change. Nothing is going to improve until you improve yourself. And that improvement isn’t about your material condition, it’s going to be about believing that maybe people might actually give a damn about you instead of assuming that women are just out in these streets looking for excuses to “demonstrate” their superiority by… doing something that men then turn around and denigrate them for doing and insist makes them inferior.

The call’s coming from inside, my guy and that’s where the change is going to have to come from as well. You can’t hate yourself into being a better person. Loathing isn’t going to make your life better. Until you’re a bad enough dude to love yourself, this is the best you’re gonna do. The choice is ultimately yours: loving yourself and being able to accept love from others, or more bitterness, more anger and more loneliness.

Good luck.

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