Starting off the new year with two questions for Dr. NerdLove full of angst, drama and hitting the bottom in the worst way. The new age of Ask Dr. NerdLove starts…
NOW!
Hi Dr Nerdlove!
Can you please help? I’m a nerd, 16, and a lesbian. So as well as having a huge issue with social awkwardness (how the heck do I start a conversation with a girl?! And what’s a god [non creepy] way to flirt?) I have practically no way to meet other girls my age and orientation – my school is incredibly conservation and I’m the only openly gay female, so that isn’t an option, and I’m not old enough to go to bars to meet women. What do I do??
Forever Alone Amy
Hey, FAA, can I just highlight over something you said here…
You’re 16.
You’re going through the same drama that damn near everybody goes through at 16, gay or straight, male or female. Nobody has any idea what the hell they’re doing, everybody’s convinced that they’re doomed to be the punchline to a Forever Alone meme and the ones who aren’t tend to peak early anyway. The hormones surging through you and everyone else your age drive you crazy and you don’t know if you’re coming or going1 and you’re absolutely convinced that everybody else is having more sex than you are or ever will.
So hey. You’re in good company on that score. Now chill out a little. Dating in high-school, especially when you’re on the nerdy end of the spectrum is way overemphasized. Trust me when I say it’s not nearly as important as everyone (especially pop culture) makes it out to be and most of us expend far more energy and drama on it than it’s worth.
‘Course, its’ easy for me to say that when you don’t have too many options in the first place. And to be sure, it kinda sucks that you’re stuck in a conservative school… hey, but it could be worse. I don’t know about the school system in the UK but there’re far too many schools in the US where being gay and out is an engraved invitation to school-sanctioned bullying – if you’re not expelled in the first place.
Regardless, my advice is: calm down. Don’t stress out so much about getting a girlfriend right now. Get everything you can out of school and focus more on getting comfortable with social situations, especially with the girls you like. Invest a little time now in sanding the edges of that social awkwardness, study your ass off, ace your GCSE’s so you can have your pick of universities and find a place that’s more accepting to gay and lesbian students. Then by the time you get there, you’ll have a head start on being able to find a girlfriend.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. Greenth …Nerlove,
Here is my dilema, It is not quite on getting the girl. I am in the process of being dumped after a 4 year relationship. I am 28 year old and got laid off from a design agency a little while back and to add injury to insult busted a knee playing paintball. Lets just say the holidays have been rough and will get a bit rougher now, Now I have to find a job, a place, leave my life, pets and everything I used to call a home behind. Needless to say this is some of the hardest things I ever had to deal with.
I need some help to know how to deal with this mess. How do you get back into the single life after 4 years. Rebuild everything I had with her for my own. It would be a different story if I wanted to leave, but we drifted apart and it’s now obvious that it is over.
– In The Gutter
Woof. That is an ugly way to start the year. At least it’s a relatively amicable parting as far as such things go… I mean, maybe this way you’ll at least be able to work out a shared custody agreement about the pets. Or visitation rights.
But all joking aside, I feel you. It wasn’t nearly as bad as your situation, but there was a point a several years ago where I had a similar meltdown. Had an obscenely well-paying job that I thought was my dream, a girlfriend I thought was damn near perfect, a bunch of co-workers I liked and admired and a tight group of friends. Then… well, it basically all went away. I lost the job, I lost my girlfriend and I lost the social net that I’d had.
And in a lot of ways, that ended up being one of the formative moments of my life as it currently stands. Because I’d been knocked down and had everything taken away (Metroided, even…), I had to build things back up from nothing. And sometimes that can be a blessing in disguise.
Your situation is way worse than what I dealt with. You’ve been dealt a really shitty hand and it’s going to be an uphill struggle for you. But it can be done.
Hopefully this is already obvious to you, but you need to start with the basics: your health, a job and a place to live. Get those sorted out before you worry about getting back into the dating scene. Sex and dating are the last of your concerns right now.
After – and only after – you get the basics taken care of, then it’s time to focus on healing your broken heart and getting start rebuilding that social network.
Now, it’s going to be a while before you’re ready to really date again. Probably a damned long time, really; a lot of people theorize that the time it takes to get over someone is roughly half the duration of the relationship. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind. You’re going to hurt for while, and there’re going to be a lot of times when you will be wanting to castigate yourself for not getting over her by now. Don’t. A long-term relationship will leave deep wounds when it ends.
While you’re focusing on healing mentally and physically, it’s time to realize that there actually is a silver lining to that dark cloud.
You’re still young, but you’re old enough to have genuine experience under your belt… four years worth, actually. Y’see, as much as everything about that relationship is aching like an abscessed tooth, all of that time spent with her is going to be the foundation of your next relationship. As you are building yourself back up, you have those experiences to draw upon. Take some time to really examine what happened; the bad and the good. With time and perspective, you should start trying to identify where things that went wrong or the things you wish you had worked on. It’ll be hard. You’re going to want to wallow in the pain and blame yourself for not seeing things earlier. You need to fight through it and try to view it with a clinical eye, like a mortician at an autopsy. And when you do narrow things down, well…
Congratulations: you now know exactly what issues you need to spend time on. And you’re in a position to build yourself back up stronger than ever.
Think of Lance Armstrong; when he developed testicular cancer, people were convinced that he would never race again. Chemo therapy ravages the body even when the cancer goes into remission. Lance had to build himself back up from nothing and was – in a very real way – able to rebuild himself into the exact shape he needed to be in to start winning Tour De France title after title.
You also have to realize: after four years in a relationship, you will have learned that you shouldn’t be intimidated by women. You will have had just about every conversation and seen every variation of behavior with your ex; after you’ve muscled your way through the initial anxiety that comes from approaching a stranger, those old instincts will start to kick in and you’ll be surprised just how easy it can be if you relax. Think of it as the emotional equivalent of muscle memory. You’ve been down this road before. You know it better than many people do. You’ll be ready for it.
To quote a particular meme: you’re playing life in Expert Mode now.
But hey, that’s in the future. So for right now, let me leave you with some important words of wisdom:
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