Dear Doctor: I (28M) wonder how I can stop second guessing myself in dating. Everything seems to be going right. Yet, I wonder: is it? When do I know that I’ve become successful at dating? As background, I’ve only been dating for a year, when, after the pandemic, I started thinking, “maybe I should find…
Relationships
Does My Friend Want Me, Or Is She Just Playing Games?
Hi Doc, I am in great need of help to decipher a situation that I have going on with a friend of mine. It has been going on for a pretty long time and is kind of a big emotional trap that I have fallen into many times. I’ll try to keep the backstory short…
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These Mistakes Ruin Relationships (Before They Can Even Start)
Here’s a truth: relationships end. Sometimes they end because the relationship came to its natural conclusion; it was a relationship that was right for that particular place and time, and the people involved outgrew the relationship. Other times, however, relationships end because the relationship itself didn’t work. Someone wasn’t happy, someone found that their needs…
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This Is What Toxic Relationships Look Like (Or: The Love Con of Martin Shkreli)
There’s a joke on Twitter — in that “ha ha but no, seriously” sense — that goes “every day one person becomes the main character on the Internet. Your goal is to avoid being that person.” On December 20, 2020, when Elle published their long-form piece, “The Journalist and The Pharma Bro“, Christie Smythe became…
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What Men Need to Know About Attraction
One of the hardest parts of learning how to get better at dating is, ironically, learning how to get out of your own way. Men, especially men without much social experience, have a tendency to sabotage their own progress. The single biggest culprit that stands in the way between guys and romantic success? Buying into…
How To Unlearn What You Have Learned
One of the hardest things you can do — that anyone can do, really — is to try to unlearn something. Especially something that you aren’t even aware that you’ve learned. This sounds like an impossibility; how can you have learned something without being aware of having learned it? But in practice, it’s like the old David…