Greetings Doctor,
I have been reading the material on your blog for a while now. I really appreciate finding someone who knows so much about how it is like to be me.
I am a 41 year old man who has a bad case of oneitis (co-dependent obsession) since I was still a teen. I realized this along with finding that I have Avoidant Personality Disorder 6 months ago. I am a geek who does not socialize with other geeks unless I am escorted by the object of my obsession. I can not do that right now because of the current status of my relationship with her.
I found with the help of my semi-professional counselor that a sex first approach will be an easier way for me to start with other women. I have been doing heavy reading on sexual techniques and would like to have someone to try them on.
So, my question is where can a find women who want NSA sex. I have looked at Adult Friend Finder, but have been discouraged by what I have heard about it being filled with scamers and prostitutes. The people in the local Poly community that I know I can not ask for help right now because of envy issues. They are her partners. I have a friend in the kink community, but that is not what I am really interested in right now.
Do you have any suggestions on how I can find women to have sex with without doing conventional dating? I do not have high standards for women if it is just about sex.
Depressed as Fuck
Under normal circumstances, I’d say that if you were looking for no-strings attached sex, I’d start by posting a profile on OKCupid looking for short-term dating partners, rather than “casual sex”. The “Looking for: Casual Sex” has become so associated with creeps and assholes that it’s often an instant turn-off even for women who would be interested in a casual relationship. There’s also the bar scene; it’s not for everybody, but you’re more likely to find someone looking for a one-night stand than trying to chat up the cute girl at the Barnes and Noble.
Your local alt-weekly likely will have personal ads in the back for people looking for relationships and casual encounters. Similarly, there’s always Adult Friend Finder and Craigslist. You are going to have to do a certain amount of actual “dating”, if you want to call it that; at the very least, you want to meet up with them in a public place first and get to know them a little. They’re going to want to check you out and make sure that you’re not the Green River Killer or going to bundle them into the back of your windowless van and take them to your rape dungeon out past the county line. You’re almost certainly not going to find many women who will want to go straight to a hotel room (or to your place) with you right after a couple e-mails and the ones who do are likely scammers or worse.
Failing all of that, there’s always doing some searching online and finding a well-reviewed escort.
But that’s under normal circumstances. And DaF, your circumstances ain’t normal.
You’ve got a whole host of problems going on here. First of all: semi-professional counselor? Are we talking about Dr. Google, somebody who’s studying psychology in class or somebody like me1 who hung out the advice shingle one day? Because from the sounds of things you really need to be talking to an actual psychologist. If you really have Avoidant Personality Disorder – which is to say, diagnosed by a medical professional, not self-diagnosed after running down a checklist online or talking to Dr. Google – then you’d do better to try therapy rather than diving headfirst into no-strings attached sex. I’m all in favor of some good ol’ fashioned sexual healing, but if you’re really in as bad a state as it sounds, casual sex could be the wrong answer. Going into any relationship, whether it’s for a lifetime or for 20 minutes when you’re having profound emotional issues is a bad idea; doing it when you’re incredibly vulnerable to criticism and negativity and trying to overcome Oneitis and dealing with some serious self-esteem issues?
This sounds like a recipe for serious bad news. I’ve dealt with chronic depression and have had friends with similar emotional issues try to self-medicate with sex… and it didn’t go so well. In fact, most of the time it made things worse; in a couple of cases, they had a full on break-downs. Sex wasn’t the answer; sex was the wallpaper that they were trying to cover the hole with.
I don’t mean to make it sound like you’re just one bad encounter away from getting 5150’d, but I think you might want to take a break and work on getting your head on straight before you worry too much about getting laid. Find a therapist – a professional one, not a semi-pro, look into doing some cognative behavioral therapy – possibly alongside some anti-depressants -and get back into mental shape before trying to dive into casual sex.
And just a side note: the polyamorous community isn’t someplace I’d recommend for anyone to go trawling for no-strings attached sex. Polyamory is about multiple emotionally engaged relationships, not just sex, and a lot of poly folks get offended by the implication that they’re somehow “easy” because they’re not monogamous.
Good luck DaF. Check back in and let us know how you’re doing.
Dear Dr NerdLove,
I‘m writing to you in case you could offer some piece of advice. I am a young woman whose self-esteem and a dating life are quite healthy, but I seem to have a little problem when it comes to dating nerds. Don’t get me wrong: the quiet, shy and smart nerds are by far my favorite type of guys, but I seem to be unsuccessful when it comes to getting a first date. After much though, I’ve realized that there are two main problems I just can’t overcome.
The first one is that I basically suck at reading people. That may not be a problem with the more outgoing type of guys, but the usually shy nerd makes it a nightmare for me to figure out whether he likes me or not. I have given up on innumerable guys thinking they didn’t give a damn about me –or worse, that they positively disliked me- only to find out later that they had feelings for me but were too afraid of rejection to let me know. And it sucks. So I was wondering if you could offer some advice on how to properly know what’s going on inside a shy guy’s head.
Problem number two is that I’m the kind strong woman who every now and then comes off as an aggressive HBIC (although I’m working on softening my manners). Even in those times when I’ve managed to figure out that a nerdy guy actually liked me and built my courage to ask him out, they have gotten afraid and said no. In a couple of cases, I positively knew that they actually liked me, thanks to some mutual friends spilling the beans.
So I’d really appreciate it if you could offer some advice on how to improve my shy-people reading skills and how to approach a nerd without scaring the heck out him.
Thanks lots,
Miss Nerdlover
I want to restate part of your letter really quickly, Miss Nerdlover: “the quiet, shy and smart nerds are by far my favorite type of guys“.
See that, nerds? There are women out there who are into you. Quit worrying about all that women-only-like-alpha-males bullshit and realize that there’re women who are seriously into your type.
Now, MNL, I’ve talked about how to catch a nerdboy before, but in general, the guys you like tend to make it a nightmare to read because, like you said, they’re too afraid of being rejected. They’ve gotten too used to the idea that if they give any clue about how they feel, they’re going to get laughed at if they’re lucky. If they’re not – and I promise you, every shy nerd has had this scenario run through their head – it starts with laughter, moves to having their crush absolutely shred their ego, stomp it into the ground, set it on fire, piss on the ashes and then go and tell all of their friends afterwards. So they tend to perfect their poker faces as much as possible… all the while lamenting the fact that you don’t know how they feel.
A lot of times with the super-shy folks, it’s a case of actions speaking louder than words. If they’re spending all of their time with you or going above and beyond the call of friendship – assuming that they’re not Nice Guys trying to backdoor their way in – then you can safely assume that they like you. If they flush and stammer a lot when certain topics come up – sex and dating especially – then there’s the strong possibility that they’ve been thinking about you that way. If they make a point of knowing your favorite movie/book/food/color/poem/band and somehow incorporate those into incredibly thoughtful and touching gifts for you at birthdays or holidays… again, they’re probably harboring a not-so-secret crush.
What’s a girl to do?
Well, sometimes it’s a case of telling them you like them. They’re so caught up in trying to read the tea-leaves – “She let her hand linger on my shoulder for 4.5 seconds! That has to mean something!” – they lose sight of the big picture. Never mind the damned forest, they’re barely able to tell they’re looking at a fucking tree because they’re examining the bark. You can give off as many glaringly obvious – to you – signs as you want but they’re so stuck in the narrative that you couldn’t possibly be interested in them that they write those signs off as wishful thinking.
Similarly, if you ask them out – as many guys say they wish women would do – you run the risk of intimidating the hell out of them and sending them screaming for the hills. You say you have a strong personality (verging on HBIC, according to you)… well, nerds – anime fans especially – may love the idea of a tsundere, but facing it in reality can scare the living shit out of ’em.
So you may need to set things up so that they know – without any room for doubt – how you feel, but then put the ball in their court to make the move. Instead of giving off signals, you may just need to tell them that you’ve got some serious pantsfeelings for them and you’re waiting for them to do something about it. Telling them that you want them to ask you out may finally be the kick in the ass that it takes to get them to man up and say something.
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