Archives for September 2013

Be Cool

September 30, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 20 Comments

Everyone has their role-models, someone who represents the epitome of “cool” – that ineffable mix of suave sophistication, laid back attitude and unflappable confidence that we all admire. Whether it’s George Clooney or Idris Elba, Ryan Gosling’s nameless Driver or James Bond, there’s always that one person who represents everything we wish we could be.

"My motherfucker's so cool, sheep count him." — “My motherfucker’s so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count *him*.”

These are the guys who seem to always have it together, who always seem to know exactly what they’re doing and never question themselves. They’ve got a drive and surety of purpose that we rarely see. They’re insanely charismatic and attractive individuals. They seem to flow through life effortlessly as a 70’s funk track plays in the background, leaving the rest of us mere mortals to stumble along, hoping that we don’t fuck things up too much.

Who wouldn’t want to be cool like that?

Because you could be just that cool… if you know how.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Ludicrous Speed!

September 25, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 54 Comments

Hi Doc,

I’m not very good at cutting to the chase, but I’ll make my best effort. I’m sailing some weird waters, making a connection with someone I met through a dating website. She’s trans. That’s not really the problem, but it complicates the problem.

I live with my parents. I dated a disaster a couple years ago, lost my virginity and a good deal of my sanity to what I now understand was a manipulative, abusive person. I met him online.

Since then, my mom has insisted I reach out through my microscopic circle of friends, or even various groups I belong to, to find someone to date. I have reached, and dredged, and come up with nothing but dashed hopes and some now awkward friendships. So, about a week and a half ago, I decided I’d mess with my profile again, sparked by a picture I took of myself that looked half decent, and the fact that two of my friends are getting married, so what the hell, who wants to be lonely forever.

The strangest, most suspicious thing happened. The first person I got a message from was not only decent, but pretty awesome (hot to boot), and we hit it off. I think the big red flag, though, is that the relationship has seemed to progress at ludicrous speed – akin to my last one. I honestly don’t know if that’s normal. I’ve dated two friends in my life, had sex with someone I met online on our third date, and don’t know what the heck normal is. I have no experience to work with, and if I keep waiting for someone to come into my life, I will continue to have no experience.

I’m wondering if I’m naive enough at 26 that my parents should be making my decisions for me, or if it’s okay to dive whole body into a relationship less than a week old. I’m sure the very fact that I’m wondering that really helps my case for me being mature.

I want to tell my parents I met someone, but I don’t know how to assert my maturity, or if I even should considering my behavior. To complicate things further, I don’t know how to come out as a lesbian who’s dating a trans girl.

So, I guess there’s a lot of talking that needs to happen somewhere. And probably some self-examination. But I don’t know where to start, and there’s only so long I can keep a part of this on pause before it blows up in my face.

Sincerely,

Pandora

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How To Get Better at Dating… Quickly

September 23, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 196 Comments

Improving my dating life was a long, hard slog. Like most of you, I had more than my share of issues to get over – I had to let go of my Nice Guy tendencies and some deep-seated problems with being willing to accept that women were sexual beings. I also had to toss out 90% of what I thought I knew about dating and start over from scratch. But as so many people had before me, I made a lot of mistakes. I dove head-first into the pick-up scene and immediately tried to be a master PUA, with a goal of getting laid – or at least a handie in the bathroom – every night.

As far as life-goals go, "Look like a Boris Vallejo painting" isn't too bad... — Yeah, pretty much what I was imagining.

Considering I was coming from “Barely able to look women in the eye,” with nothing but a handful of pre-scripted lines and a head full of half-baked attraction theory, calling it ambitious would be an understatement… and frankly, it was a disaster. I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go but no idea how to get there. As a result… well, there was a lot of unintentional comedy in the first few months. The only reason why I hung on as long as I did was through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness; I was going to master this or die trying.

It’s only in retrospect that I was able to realize that I was going about it all wrong. The will was there but my way of trying to learn was actually holding me back. And to be perfectly frank, I see people making the same mistakes I did.

So I want to help people learn from my hard-won experience. I want to show you how to get better at dating, quickly and efficiently, while avoiding all the mistakes I made.

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The 5 Most Common Self-Limiting Beliefs in Men (And What To Do About Them)

September 20, 2013 by Dr. NerdLove 395 Comments

You are your own worst enemy.

I realize that this is a cliche that’s passed around in self-help circles like a joint at a midnight screening of Dark Side of the Rainbow, but all too often we are the agents of our own misery… and we fight to stay that way. It’s a form of confirmation bias; we want to be right no matter what, even when being right causes us pain and holds us back from everything we wish we could be.

Case in point – your dating life. Odds are that if you’re reading this, you’re not happy with the way your dating life is going right now.1 So I’m going to let you in on a little secret that most dating coaches aren’t going to tell you: 99% of all sticking points in dating boil down to two causes. Of those two, the first is just a matter of skill; either you’re inexperienced or else you’re not as accomplished as you would like to be. These problems are easily fixable – it’s a matter of practice.

Everybody needs to work on their fingering... — Everybody needs to work on their fingering…

The other problem is self-limiting beliefs – that little voice in your head that tells you that you’re never going to measure up and gives you all of those plausible reasons why you’re going to fail. Like the elephant and the mahout, they’re the threads that we convince ourselves are a chain. Once these beliefs latch into our brain, we perversely hold onto them because… well, we want to be right. They become part of our worldview and we all want to believe we’re gimlet-eyed viewers of TRVTH, seeing the world as it really is. Questioning the rightness of our beliefs throws all of this into doubt, leaving us confused and uncertain… and we’d rather hold on to what we “know”.

There are at least a dozen of you who just said "Bullshit" to this, thus proving my point. — There are at least a dozen of you who just said “Bullshit” to this, thus proving my point.

We hold these self-limiting beliefs close because they reinforce the idea that we – as individuals – have been singled out by fate, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, what-have-you, to be fucked over and that we’re unique in our circumstances.

Except we’re not. In fact, over the years, I’ve seen the same ones come up over and over again. And the first step to finding more satisfaction in our love lives is to realize that we hold the ability to quit giving these beliefs power over us.

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