Ask Dr. Nerdlove

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I (39M) have been single and a virgin most of my life. Growing up I was always a shy kid (still am really). I never had trouble attracting girls, but they were never girls I was interested and seemed to struggle with the girls I WAS attracted to. I probably was a little too shallow for my own good (as I wasn’t entirely a popular kid) and did it in hopes of maybe finding a girl that would make me popular. As a kid it made sense or was worth a shot, but obviously looking back as an adult, it was rather foolish. So all that to say I had no dating experience at all in High school (no prom either).

In college I tried rushing into fraternities but never made it into one. My social skills weren’t always the best, and despised awkward parties, but I hung out with like-minded introverts. There were girls in our group, but they were either already spoken for, or ones I was not interested in. So I never really dated much in college at all either, except for maybe 1 time. I also did have a girl in a class that I hung out with a lot to study or grab food in between classes, that I thought was out of my league, but I just assumed she just wanted to be friends and thought she would laugh at me if I misread her kindness as interest. Turns out, she was interested, but by the time I realized it, it was too late. I really didn’t try too hard in college.

Post college is really when I started putting more effort into dating, but by then dating apps were starting to become a thing, so being an introvert that seemed perfect. I didn’t have to guess if someone was interested in me or not or feel embarrassed to find out the chatty girl I was talking too was just being friendly and is already spoken for. Anyways, so that was my dating experience for the next 12 years. Tinder, eharmony, Bumble, Match, Facebook dating, Hinge… you name it. 

I would maybe get an occasional match here and there and a handful of dates that never went past a second or third date. So, so far it has been rather dispiriting to say the least. I hold their interest very well over text and DM, but after a few dates it’s like the chemistry is all gone in their mind. It always threw me off because I would always leave a date thinking that person was promising, and I may finally have found a good match after a long 4 hour date, only for them to tell me later that I was “a super sweet guy, funny, and would make some girl lucky, but not feeling it”. They all seemed surprised I had never been in a relationship before when they always ask the dreaded “relationship experience” questions. 

I’m almost at a point of giving up on online dating. It seems like the women my age that ARE available to date online are there because they are a single mom going through a divorce, are a widow, or just not one bit attractive and in the same boat as me. So more likely to be open to dating a guy like me that doesn’t exactly look like a model. The older I get, the lonelier I get, and more easily “attached”.

I have been seeking therapy for social anxiety and depression, so I am actively working to improve myself and confidence, it just seems so hard to manufacture dating confidence when never given a chance, and my experiences seem to damage the self-esteem. I feel like I am a great person, and a lot to offer, but I guess I’m not selling myself very well

Long story short, my question really is, for someone who has been single all their life, struggled with anxiety, and reading social cues, and is ready to move on from online dating, what would you recommend for that person if they really don’t know how to navigate dating outside the online realm? I don’t know what I’ve been doing wrong. I’ve tried doing social groups of a common interest, but with no success. Help!

-Confused and Lonely

DEAR CONFUSED AND LONELY: ’m going to be blunt, C&L: your letter is one of the reasons why I keep banging the drum about how confidence isn’t built from success.

Your problem is pretty obvious, and I think you summed it up well, here – “I really didn’t try too hard in college.” But to be perfectly honest, I think you could leave off “in college”. It seems for most of your life, from high school on, you’ve been looking for the easiest option that required the least investment from you – from hoping to find a girlfriend that would make you popular, to putting very little effort into making friends or meeting people in college and afterwards.

Honestly, going by what you’ve written, you’ve spent most of your life doing your best to avoid having to interact with people or putting yourself out there and risking rejection. As a result, your social skills have atrophied and your social calibration is way, way off.

Now don’t get me wrong: I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for being a shy kid and not knowing what you were doing. Been there, done that, ended up spending amounts of money I don’t like thinking about to try to correct the problem in the most toxic ways possible. But there comes a point where you have to recognize that the avoidance and the shyness and the fact that you’ve always been trying to work around it instead of confronting it is the core of the problem.

Now, you talk about not having a lot of confidence and how your lack of success (and effort) hampered you in high school and college and how it’s continued from there. Well, that’s not a surprise because, as you said, you didn’t try very hard. The reason why I tell people that confidence isn’t born out of success is that confidence isn’t about knowing that you can succeed. Confidence is knowing that you can do the work that will help you succeed. Confidence is about survival and capability, not success. People, even confident people, fail all the time; sometimes through their own efforts, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with them. As the man famously said: it is possible to make no mistakes and still lose. But confidence isn’t about success or failure; it’s about getting back up after you failed and trying again. It’s about knowing that the challenge is going to be hard to overcome and knowing that you’re up to keep at it until you break through. It’s about knowing that failure isn’t going to kill you, that mistakes are there to be learned from, and that tenacity and effort will get you much, much further than innate talent. Confidence about being intimidated or nervous or even scared and doing it anyway, because you know that you may not succeed, but you’re going to give it your all, anyway. And if your all isn’t enough at that point, to know that you can dig down and improve so that it will be, the next time you’re in that position.

Success doesn’t bring confidence; confidence is what makes success possible.

So, in this case, it’s not that your lack of success hampered your confidence which hampered your social skills, it’s that your lack of confidence is part of what kept you from developing those social skills and increased your social anxiety. Avoidance doesn’t make anxiety go away; it just increases the things that make you anxious. Avoiding those just serves to make the world you’re able and willing to live in ever increasingly smaller, like the shrinking safe-zone in Fortnite or PUBG.

And because those skills get underutilized, you run into precisely the problems you have now – where you aren’t good at selling yourself, nor at reading signals nor at building and maintaining the connections with people that you need to build attraction and a relationship. You need those skills, regardless of where you’re meeting people – in person or on dating apps. There’s really no substitute.

To be fair, the dating apps as they exist now are increasingly awful by design. But even back in the day, when they worked as intended, the dating apps weren’t going to make up for poor social skills or an ability to connect with people. One of the mistakes people made back then – and still make – is to think that the app is anything other than a glorified introduction service. Nothing that any of the apps has ever offered or ever will – AI wingmen and Cyranos be damned – can replace the fact that you are still dealing with people and that means you need people skills. Yes, it means that you’re seeing people who are there because they’re single and looking for dates… but the same is true for speed-dating events and singles mixers. Messaging could be less anxiety-inducing than trying to talk to them in the flesh, but there was always going to be the point where you had to meet in person.

This is why success on dating apps has always been tied directly to your overall social skills and ability to connect with people. There simply is no skipping that step if you ever intend to actually, y’know, have a relationship with them.

(And then there’s the fact that there’s no way to tell whether you and someone else are gonna click the way you need to without actually meeting, no matter how good the messaging or even video calls were, so there would always be false positives. But that’s another issue entirely.)

You ask what someone who has struggled with anxiety and reading social cues should do if they’re ready to move on from online dating? Honestly, I’d suggest taking time to focus on the anxiety and social calibration. You’re coming to this late, but not too late (because there is no “too late”), so give yourself permission to build the confidence you want by doing the work. And its going to take work – a lot of work – to get where you want to be.

I don’t think you need to give up on trying to meet people entirely, but I do think your focus should be just on being more social, rather than trying to date. The skills you use to meet new people and make friends are the same skills you use to meet potential partners. But to do so, you’re going to have to be willing to deal with the friction that comes with meeting people. There’s going to be awkwardness. There’s going to be people who aren’t going to go out of their way to adopt their local introvert. You’re going to have to be more proactive, take the initiative more than you’ve shown thus far and be willing to make mistakes and maybe feel a little foolish. That’s part of how confidence is built – taking the hits and getting back up and trying again.

Put your focus there, and the rest will come in time.

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 28, male, and don’t need dating advice. I need life advice.

Since I was a child, I’ve felt perpetual depressive sadness for what seemed to be no apparent reason. I’ve been on my healing journey for a long time and had a breakthrough earlier in the month with a combo of meds and therapy. I really don’t feel sadness as my baseline feeling anymore, I feel neutral now. I’ve broken free from the lifelong prison in my mind, but now I don’t know what to do with this freedom. For the past few weeks, I’ve been feeling like a blank slate as my entire identity, which was centered around emotional pain avoidance, is dead.

I formerly drowned myself in video games replaying single-player campaigns ad nauseum for comfort, I daydreamed maladaptively, I binge rewatched TV and movies, all so I could escape the pain. I did cringey stuff like writing and trying to draw but they were hollow pursuits, I would just end up back online. The last 5 years have been work, distract, sleep, repeat on autopilot. But now, video games bore me senseless, I find no comfort in rewatching the same episodes of Always Sunny, and even my “creativity” is stifled since I’m not daydreaming. So, what now?

Now when I finish work, I don’t immediately boot up Steam when I get home, I do more home exercise, study for career certifications, and go to bed earlier. I thought that video games, TV/Film, and all that junk were my passions, but they weren’t, they were self-medications. I have no idea what my passions are. I have no clue what I actually want to do with my free time now. S--t, I don’t know what to do with my life now. Even the thought of having a family and kids (something I deeply wanted) is just kind of meh. I’ve browsed meetups and things happening in my area and none of them interest me in the slightest. Religion, volunteering, classes; no interest. It’s like I’m institutionalized from the prison within.

Maybe I need more time to process all of this and get used to not feeling sad all of the time. While I hope this newfound state of being lasts, I know things can change. My psychiatrist has discussed titration from my meds which could change how I feel (I still felt sad while on them just way less than usual). 

My therapist hasn’t offered any helpful advice other than “get out there” which seems odd to me; would I just be a happy wanderer drifting into whatever I happen onto? Should I make myself sample everything there is to offer and see what I like? Is my lack of interest a residual effect of my avoidant personality? I have no actual cogent strategy and was hoping you could help with that and just give your input overall into what’s happening. Perhaps I do need dating advice, but not for dating women, for effectively dating myself so I can get to know who I actually am.

Thanks,

-Lost Freeman

DEAR LOST FREEMAN: First of all, LF, I’m glad that your journey towards healing has been so helpful. That being said: I don’t think you actually cured your depression, the way you think you have. I think your psychiatrist is correct: you should look into adjusting your meds. The “meh” feeling you describe, where everything is gray, dull, lifeless and uninteresting is just as much of a symptom of depression as always being sad or feeling constant despair and doom. While your current course of meds may have eased the misery, that doesn’t mean that you’re not still dealing with depression.

I also think your therapist is right: you should put yourself out there and see what strikes your fancy. Part of the problem you’re having is that I think you aren’t seeing how the inherent nature of your condition is affecting you. You say that none of the choices you sought out interested you, but nothing is interesting you right now – including the things you used to be into. Of course everything is going to seem uninteresting. Which means that you shouldn’t be relying on inspiration to decide what to try; you’re just going to be stuck in the same cycle.

But if nothing is interesting, then everything has the potential to be interesting. You’re stuck in the loop from Groundhog’s Day… but I’d point out that nothing in Groundhog’s Day changed until Phil Conners starts making things change.

That is what you need to do: exert your will to make changes and see what happens because of it.

Here’s the thing: if we assume that your lack of interest isn’t a symptom of depression (it is, but work with me here), then the issue isn’t really one of a lack of interest so much as ignorance. You said it yourself: you’ve been living your life on repeat for decades now. The only difference has been whether you’ve been trying to distract yourself from your feelings or not. You hadn’t been living a life full of novelty and discovery or being exposed to new and different opportunities or paths to explore; you basically played the same games and watched the same shows. And since those don’t seem to be things you were actually enjoying, you don’t have much of a baseline to decide what to try next.

Functionally speaking, that short of finding someone who’s suffered complete retrograde amnesia, you’re as close to a blank slate as one can be. The world is your oyster, brimming with potential and options to try and experience and explore.

Of course, this has its drawbacks. The Paradox of Choice is a very real thing; when you have too many options, it can be harder to actually pick something or feel good with your choice. But the answer to that, in your case, anyway, is to take a more methodical approach to figuring out what you might like.

I would suggest using your previous distractions (I hesitate to use the word “interests”) as a starting point and work outwards from there. You mentioned writing and drawing; it may be worth your time to take a class or two and see if having a more structured approach sparks something in you. Don’t worry about not feeling inspired or not having your daydreams to work from; instead, focus on learning the technical aspects of creating. Learning the ins and outs of perspective and proportion, of pacing and narrative structure, color theory and anatomy and stylistic choices may help you reconnect with the expressive side of creating. I’ve often found that having walls to bounce off of inspires far more creativity than boundless possibility. In fact, there’re often few things quite as terrifying as a blank page or an empty canvas. Having to color within a particular set of lines often forces you to make choices that you wouldn’t otherwise, which then leads to other choices and other ideas.

Similarly, you might use gaming as another starting point. Before, you were playing games with a single-player narrative. Now it may be time to try one with multiple players… such as a tabletop RPG. It’d be easiest to find groups who play D&D, seeing as that’s the proverbial 500lb gorilla of the TTRPG scene, but you might find more interest in a system like Shadowrun, Starfinder, Blades in the Dark, Warhammer, MechWarrior or Cyberpunk. Or you might want to get even a little further afield and see if you can find a group who’s playing a system like Kids on Bikes/Brooms or even Never Stop Blowing Up.

But the other option really is: try literally anything and see what sticks. If you have no inherent interest or pre-existing preferences, you may as well try anything that has even the slightest potential to be diverting. But to keep yourself from getting caught up in the paradox of choice, what I would recommend is to add some structure to your exploration.

Here’s what I think you should try: next Friday, choose to devote your weekend to researching what’s coming up in the following week – classes, musical performances, shows, exhibitions, all of it. Divide it up by categories: movies and plays, bars and restaurants, classes and lectures, musical performances, etc. If you want to get extra fancy, mark which ones are recurring (bi-weekly cooking classes, weekly book clubs, etc.). Then, by Sunday, pick two options from the list, in two different categories. If you, say, choose a miniature painting class at your local game shop, then the other activity you pick might be seeing a band play. If you decide to go to a movie or a play, then your other activity might be a one-day volunteer opportunity. If you absolutely can’t decide, pick two options at random; assign numbers and roll a d20, throw darts, even just close your eyes and point.

The point is to give yourself as wide a range of experiences and possibilities and see what works and what doesn’t work. If nothing is inherently interesting, then all of them have potential to be something that sparks your passion, so you may as well give them a try.

Does this seem like a lot of work? Sure… but then again, you’re not exactly doing anything else, so it’s not like you don’t have the time. You certainly don’t have anything to lose by trying.

I will say that some of the options may require that you give it more than one opportunity to hook you. Sometimes it can take repeated exposure for the full spectrum of potential to really open up, like the way that a little water can open up the flavor profile of good whiskey.

But like I said: the lack of interest in anything is a symptom of depression and you and your psychiatrist should continue to talk about adjusting your medication. You may even need to look into options like ketamine infusion or ECT, which are incredibly effective for treatment-resistant depression. I think that should be a priority for you, even more than exploring potential options for new hobbies and passions. Get that under control, and I suspect that you’ll find that your interests and desires return… just in a much healthier and more fulfilling manner.

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: What I want to ask can be best summed up as “Why are men so easy?”

Alright, let me back up. First off, I should clarify that I am a man. A straight man, in particular. Second, I’m referring to the dating dynamic of men being a lot less particular with who they want to date or hook up with than women. Don’t worry, I’m not doing the incel thing of complaining about women being too picky. I don’t believe anyone’s standards are a problem. But I am interested in why those standards differ so sharply between the sexes.

Like, the obvious answer seems to be that women have to be more skeptical of men due to many of them being possible threats. Therefore, being easy is a male privilege, like walking outside alone at night or not putting effort into how you dress. But unlike other privileges, it’s not one that women are interested in. I’ve heard many women say they wish they could walk home alone at night, but none that wish they could let more guys hit (Also none that want to put less effort into dressing, but that’s a question for a different columnist, I think). Having a refined taste in men is a point of pride for women that the reverse just isn’t. It’s why the word “slut” doesn’t hurt men.

So being an easy lay isn’t just something men can do, it’s something we want to do. And that I think makes it suspect, right? Because behavior exclusive to men is understandably placed under scrutiny in my circles. There’s a famous tweet that once said that anything only men like isn’t cool. If only men like being an easy lay, does that not mean it isn’t cool? (Granted, that tweet was a joke about Joe Rogan and not a serious social analysis, but still…)

So I want to defend the dynamic a little. At least through one of the most prominent examples that is something that I participated in, which is swiping right a lot in dating apps. Back when I was on the apps, I would very rarely swipe left on anybody. If they didn’t either look like a bot or had a really concerning profile, it was a right for me. The reason I did this was mainly practical. More swipes right mean more chances for matches. I wanted to get matches because to me, any real and decent woman willing to match with me was worth a conversation. Maybe it’s egotistical, but I find being desired, well, desirable. And so, without knowing much else, being interested in me made me more interested in them. I could just be justifying my desperation since I didn’t have any luck and still haven’t, but I don’t think this was the worst approach to dating. After all, it’s about finding a connection, and someone who likes you is a pretty good indicator of a connection. And even if they were just doing the same to me (Which as we’ve established, is a rare event for women), well, that’s also a connection.

As for their appearance, well, I just find most women, at least the ones I saw on the apps, to be attractive. I think the perception of men is they would f--k any woman regardless of attraction just for the power trip. Maybe there are a lot of guys who are like that, but I personally just think most women look like someone I’d enjoy being with. I’m not saying I don’t care about appearances; I just rarely find women so unattractive that I don’t see myself at least giving them the time of day.

So that’s why I did that, and why I think a lot of men do as well. I know I spoke in a lot of generalities and assumptions, but anything I’m wrong about, I’d be glad to be corrected. What I want to know is: is this refined palette that women have something we men can acquire and if so, should we? And if not, how do we reconcile with this barrier of relatability that causes so much tension in hetero dating and makes it hard to understand each other’s problems?

I’m Not A Player, I Just Swipe A Lot

DEAR I’M NOT A PLAYER, I JUST SWIPE A LOT: A lot of the answer to your question comes from not necessarily getting the actual issues, INPIJSL.

Let’s start with the whole Earth Men Are Easy thing. To start with, women do talk about how they would like to get laid more. The issue here is one of privilege, but not necessarily the way that you think. They don’t often talk about it in public spaces or around a lot of men, but women are people and they like sex in the same proportions that men do.

In fact, until the early 19th century, women in Western and Middle Eastern societies tended to be seen as the lustier of the sexes. Maenads – hordes of wild women in service to the Greek god Dionysius, were said to work themselves into drunken frenzies and rampage through the woods and fields, chasing down men and forcing them into sex, tearing them to shreds if they refused (or often even if they didn’t). In The Metamorphosis, Ovid wrote about how Tiresias was transformed into a woman the gods in order to determine who got more pleasure from sex, men or women. After several years, Tiresias reported back that women’s pleasure from sex was nearly nine times more intense than men’s, thus laying the groundwork for both a famous 4chan meme and various force-femme kinks.

Medieval European writings about gender saw women as being far more interested in sex than men were, often to their own detriment. In fact, medical practice at the time placed great emphasis on how a woman’s orgasm was required for conception – a matter that was often brought up when trying to determine whether a woman was barren or not. Official Catholic lore of the Early Modern era held that witches not only held orgies in their sabbats, but would steal the semen (and often, the genitals) of sleeping men in order to satisfy themselves.

It wasn’t until the proto-feminist movement in the Victorian era that women were portrayed as the less lustful sex; instead, they were seen as being purer and less inclined to base or bestial desires and lusts, compared to men. In fact, the idea – eagerly adopted and spread by Protestant denominations – was that women’s role was to restrain men’s animalistic natures and encourage their more elevated pursuits instead. This was part of what played into things like the growing Temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th century, and it’s still felt today, even in this post-Sex in the City, post-Euphoria era we live in today.

Which brings me to the issue about whether women have more refined tastes in men or why the term “slut” doesn’t hurt men the way it hurts women, and the answer is: practicalities and sexism. On the practical side of things, women face a disproportionate amount of risk from sex compared to men. Not just the risk of sexual violence, but the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Cisgendered men can’t get pregnant, and the anatomy of the vagina means that cis women have a higher chance of contracting an STI from a man than a man does from a woman.

But on the social side of things, women who show too much interest in sex are still seen as damaged, defective, masculine or otherwise bad, especially when their sexuality isn’t in service to a man’s pleasure. There’s a reason why the vast majority of attempts to criminalize reproductive rights focus on abortion, IUDs and hormonal birth control; far less attention and vitriol is directed towards men who get vasectomies. You may also notice that women have to fight to get various forms of long-term or permanent fertility control from their doctors, while erectile dysfunction medication gets handed out like candy.  

Similarly, you may notice how often men will castigate women for being sluts, while also noting how a man’s worth and status is tied to how much sex he has. You may also have noticed the push of “tradwife” accounts on social media, “modest is hottest” messaging and yelling at women for posting sexy selfies on Instagram, while nobody gives a damn about the number of shirtless pics men share.

It’s also worth noting that women only got the right to their own bank accounts, credit cards and general control over their finances within our lifetimes. Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, women could be denied credit or bank accounts without the approval of their father or husband. Much as how Griswold V. Connecticut gave unmarried people access to birth control, the ECOA put the stake in the heart of needing women needing to marry for their own financial security, which changed the dynamic of who women were choosing to date and have relationships with and why… something that many men have not stopped complaining about ever since.

It’s not about having a more “refined” taste being a matter of pride, as much as men having far fewer consequences for f--king as much as they want. As I’ve said before: women are told that their worth is contingent on the sex they don’t have, while men are celebrated for the sex they do.    

Now, when we’re talking about dating apps… you’re hardly the only person who swipes right on most people. This is, in fact, something that many, many men do, for the same reason: to maximize the number of matches. However, this actually works against you – both with the women you hope to match with and within the app itself. Under the best of circumstances, this behavior means that women get an overwhelming number of matches, which actually makes them less likely to match with people or go on many dates. This is known as the Paradox of Choice: too many options makes it harder to make a choice or to be happy when you do make one. At the same time, most of the men who engage in this behavior attempt to match with as many women as possible and then decide who they actually want to try to see; as a result, you get a lot of women who are matching in good faith, only to find out that the guy they thought was interested in them really just wanted to have as many options as possible and didn’t actually like them at all. If the men do message them, it tends to be incredibly low-effort affairs, with the average message being less than twelve characters.��Not words. Characters. Including punctuation and spaces.

This tends to annoy and frustrate women, who abandon the apps, and it frustrates the owners of the apps because this behavior costs them subscribers. So, swiping right on everyone tends to get your account deprioritized in the algorithm, if it doesn’t get suspended or canceled for bot-like behavior.

Now another factor that you didn’t bring up in your letter, but is very present, is that men do have more “refined” palates, like women do. The difference is that they often reserve those for women who “count”, rather than when they just want to f--k. There’re are a lot of men who will happily have sex with a wide variety of women, but who get incredibly picky when they want someone to have a relationship with. You may notice how men will differentiate between people who’re good enough to f--k and who are good enough to date – a dichotomy involving the “pure” and the “debased”. A Madonna/whore complex, if you will, that affects how they behave with these women.

In fact, one of the biggest factors that affects why women don’t have as much sex as they might want is that, quite frankly, a lot of the sex on offer isn’t worth it. The guys who want those casual hook-ups are very pointedly not bringing their a-game because why should they? Men are all but guaranteed to enjoy sexual encounters they have, with 98% of them achieving orgasm during sex. Women, on the other hand, tend to only achieve orgasm around 60% of the time with hetero men. The men are more than happy to hit it and quit it, and don’t feel the need to give more than a token effort because why should they? They’re not planning on a repeat engagement. So, for many women, casual sex is a losing proposition; the sex isn’t enjoyable, they’re at risk of pregnancy and infection and the guys offering it are just as likely to turn around and call them sluts and whores before the afterglow’s started to dim. However, when presented with an option who’s discrete, safe and skilled? Women are far more likely to go for it.

Then there’s the Somebody, Anybody, Everybody issue: when you’re not that discriminating in your tastes, people that you’re showing interest in often don’t feel special or unique. While yes, folks like feeling desired, there’s being desired because you’re uniquely you and then there’s “well, you’re warm and available”, which tends to make people feel like ambulatory Fleshlights. When someone feels like they’re just a number instead of a person, even someone who’s down to clown is more likely to hope the Nope Train to F--k That S--tville.

Don’t get me wrong, the desire to feel desired or being turned on by reciprocal desire is all well and good. So is wanting to have a large number of partners; having a desire or need for variety or novelty isn’t a bad thing, whatever your gender. Nor, for that matter, does having a broad taste in partners mean something negative. Part of the appeal of a character like Jack Harkness is his omnisexuality; if they’re sentient, consenting and physically compatible, he’s willing to hit it. However, the important part of that equation is that he’s attracted to the individual person, specifically, not just “any hole is a goal”. His concept of “hotness” may encompass the known universe, and he may have put up numbers that Wolfram Alpha would be hard-pressed to calculate, but every time it was about that specific person and making sure they knew that.

Quantity does not have a quality of its own, and women tend to not appreciate feeling like one potential option in a batch of dozens.

So, it’s not a case of whether men can have more refined tastes, it’s just a matter of when those tastes come into play. Being more discerning is a good thing, because it increases the odds of not just finding someone you like, but someone you like also returning your interest. It’s a lot easier to win someone over when they know that you want them because they’re them and you’re willing to show it, rather than taking a shotgun approach and hoping that throwing enough lead in the air will net you something.  

Good luck.

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