Archives for July 2013

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Somewhere, Beyond The Sea

July 31, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 38 Comments

I never paid much attention to the love-related side of your internet work, but now that I’ve found myself in a bit of a situation you were the first one that came to mind when I thought of where to get help.

I met this girl a little over a year ago through a forum that we were both a part of. It wasn’t an online dating site or anything, just a casual forum. We got to know each other through the group that we were both a part of and on a whim I started sending her messages several months ago. Eventually we realized we had the same tastes, personality and sense of humor, and I started having long conversations with her almost every day. At first we just talked about anime and music, but after a while we started talking about our personal lives, and we would vent to each other about stuff that was bothering us whenever we could. We’d frequently do Skype video calls with our longest conversation lasting four hours, and consider each other good friends and speak to each other as such, with a majority of our conversations consisting of us throwing joking insults at each other. As far as I know, I’m the only one she does this with as well.

As you probably guessed, I’ve fallen for this girl, though it embarrasses me horribly to admit it. While I have had some female friends in real life, I never felt like I could connect with them or talk at length with them the same way I could with this girl. I really do feel like we can say whatever’s on our minds to each other with zero consequences, and I want to talk to her 24 hours a day if I could. It’s gotten to a point where I’ve felt the need to force myself into the conversation whenever she shows up or is even mentioned, and whenever I go out my mind sometimes drifts to what she might be doing right now or whether or not she’s talking to someone else. I realize it’s incredibly pathetic to think that way about someone you don’t even really know but I just can’t help myself.

The problem is that we live in entirely different continents with any chance of meeting each other in real life being incredibly slim, making a relationship a pipe dream to say the least. Plus, we frequently make fun of another internet guy who creeps on her and she makes it clear that she thinks the concept of having feelings for someone through the internet is ridiculous. I’m worried that if I tell her how I feel, she’ll come to view me the same way as the internet creepers and passive-aggressive friends who have confessed to her for stupid reasons in the past that she frequently complains to me about. However, ever since I’ve fallen for her, I’ve started “jokingly” flirting with her as a way to express myself, which never seems to bother her at all. When I insinuated I was being serious at one point, she told me that the reason she was okay with those jokes was because she knew there was no way I would ever like her, since she’s too “shit-tier”. This makes me feel really uncertain on what her reaction would be if I told her the truth.

Doc, I’m fairly thick-skinned when it comes to criticisms, so I’d like you to be honest. Am I creepy or pathetic for falling for a girl this way? Should I tell her how I feel? I don’t want a relationship or anything like that since I know it’s pretty much impossible, but I just can’t stop thinking about her. Is there any way to move past this while still being able to talk to her like normal? I’m a 17 year-old with pretty much no experience in this kind of thing, so I’d really appreciate some help.

– Only An Ocean Away

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The Top 5 Dating Mistakes – And How To Solve Them

July 29, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove

The course of getting better at dating never runs smoothly. It’s inevitable that you’re going to run into mistakes, problems, plateaus and roadblocks as you progress; it’s a part of the learning progress that everybody has to go through. Sometimes it’s just a brain-fart that screws you up for an evening. Sometimes it’s something that leaves you hung up for weeks or even months while you try to work your way through it.

"Sorry, you're not going any further until you process your shit, nerdboy." — “Sorry, you’re not going any further until you process your shit, nerdboy.”

But just because it’s a part of the process doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly frustrating. When you’re pounding your head against the same damn wall over and over again, it’s easy to start feeling as though you’re never going to do any better and there’s no point in trying any more.

Fortunately, you’re not alone in this. I’ve had to work through my own sticking points when it came to getting better at dating, and I’ve helped many, many people through theirs as well. In fact, over the years, I’ve found certain issues come up over and over again. So rather than letting a plateau cause you to backslide to the person you were before, let’s examine some of the most common sticking points in dating.

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The Art of Cold Approach Pt 2 – Daytime Approaches

July 26, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 543 Comments

On Monday, we broke down the basics of a cold approach – the opening, building rapport, qualifying and making the move. This is going to be the outline of most of your attempts at meeting people, whether you’re looking for a potential date, a potential sex partner, a new friend or a networking possibility.

The next step is to learn how to tailor your approach to fit the circumstances. After all: most of us don’t meet people exclusively at bars and clubs. The basic cold approach is good for large, active social settings – parties, bars, nightclubs, gallery openings, street fairs, concerts, etc. – but less so when you’re dealing with day to day interactions. If you approach someone in the grocery store the way you’d approach them at a party, the odds of getting weird looks, uncomfortable silence and the occasional rutabaga upside the head are fairly high. Similarly, a long indirect opener that might work at the bar is going to seem weird as hell at the bookstore. If you’re hoping to get a phone number, you don’t want to roll up on somebody at a coffee shop like the Big Bad Wolf.

"Hello little girl, what's your rush? You're missing all the flowers..." — “Hello little girl, what’s your rush? You’re missing all the flowers…”

So if you want to meet someone during your daily routine or outside of the traditional meat markets, then you have to change how you go about your business.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: All those Fake Geek Girlfriends…

July 24, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 292 Comments

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I have a recurring problem with men in fandom, and even a few pros I’ve met over the years. That is, their tendency to make up relationships with women.

Every Geek Girl I know has had this problem, often with multiple men. At first I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was giving off some kind of bad signals, but now I realize it happens to almost every Geek Girl. If I have lunch or coffee with a guy, even only once, I have problems with this guy telling everyone he knew we are dating.

I had a comic book shop owner tell his customer he was banging me, as well as other women who came into his shop. I had a male friend some years older than me and married spend years tell people he was having a secret affair with me, even though I’d never even touched him. I thought we were friends and had him over to my house to visit and mingle with my other friends. He used the opportunity to sneak into my bedroom and go through my belongings.

I am really curious why so many men in Geekdom seem to pretend they have girlfriends. The minute you confront them with their behavior, they angrily deny everything, and can be really abusive. They even tell you you are crazy, or stuck up, or conceited, even though they are always men you would never date. If it weren’t for the fact they sent other friends of mine emails writing about their pretend relationship with me, I might have kept thinking I was seeing things. I would really appreciate some insight into this behavior. It makes me reluctant to have male geek friends. Or at least it makes me very suspicious of most of them.

– NOT Your Fantasy Lover

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The Art of Cold Approach Pt 1 – The Basics

July 22, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 529 Comments

Now that Nerdi Gras is over and we’re all coming back down from the sensory overload and What-The-Fuckery of all of the panels (Age of Ultron? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?), it’s time to get back to the business of improving your social life and meeting new people.

While there are many, many ways of doing this – online dating, joining an amateur sports team, taking continuing education classes or finding like-minded groups on meetup.com – there’s a truth that they all have in common: you’re going to have to learn the art of the cold approach. Cold approaches are when you’re meeting someone you have no social connection with; unlike with a warm approach, you’re meeting a complete and total stranger without even the “friend-of-a-friend” buffer to ease your way.

It can be intimidating. It can be ball-shrinkingly terrifying at times. You’re going to feel like you’re putting your entire self-worth into somebody else’s hands.