Archives for November 2015

Overcoming Your Dating Inexperience

November 30, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 625 Comments

When you write a dating advice column, one of the inevitable questions that comes up is the idea of inexperience.

For many men, especially as they get older, dating inexperience is a vicious catch-22. Women – supposedly – won’t date a man with little or no dating experience. Of course that then leads to the question of just how is he’s supposed to get that experience…

And for my next trick, I will ask an AI to divide by zero.

For a lot of men, the anxiety surrounding their dating inexperience can be overwhelming. They become intimidated by women whom they fear have more experience than they do. They become too afraid to approach anyone, never mind people they’re attracted to. They set themselves up for failure by looking for reasons why others couldn’t possibly like them or why they couldn’t improve, and wait for the Universe to deliver instead.

But your inexperience doesn’t have to be the handicap you think it is. Here’s how to overcome your dating inexperience and find the success you want.

[Read more…]

Your Guide To New Relationship Gift Giving

November 27, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 89 Comments

(Doctor’s Note: It’s Black Friday and I’m on vacation. In the spirit of the season – and the shopping tradition – I’m re-running this article from 2013….)

I’m going to be honest with you: I’m not a huge Christmas guy. Halloween’s more my holiday these days. It’s not a Grinch thing; I don’t have anything against the holiday in theory. I genuinely loved certain family traditions like the annual gathering of as many friends as possible to take over a local Tex-Mex restaurant for Christmas Eve lunch – before we all got older and had responsibilities that made it impossible to keep it going. No, my biggest issue is the way it gets shoved down one’s throat earlier and earlier every year. Hell, stores in Austin were putting up Christmas displays in October. And to be perfectly honest, if I never hear another Christmas carol1 ever again, I will be a happy, happy man.

But the other issue is the sheer level of stress the holiday induces in my friends and family… and it doubles the amount of anxiety-induced emails I get. Every year, once we get past Thanksgiving and Black-Eye Friday and the Christmas Shopping Season officially begins, young men around the world start to panic as they wonder: “What the hell do I get my girlfriend for Christmas this year?”

It’s a trickier question than you’d think. Gift giving, whether at Christmas, Valentine’s Day or a birthday, can be fraught with insecurity and peril, especially when you’re at the beginning of a new relationship – or worse, are still in the “are we/aren’t we” stage of dating. It’s a delicate balancing act: if you spend too much, too early in the relationship, you risk coming off as though you’re starting to get clingy and desperate. On the other hand, spend too little and you look like you don’t care at all.

And then there’s the eternal question of “what do you get”? Do you go with the practical or the romantic? The sentimental or the sexual? How do you thread the needle when it feels like every gift is practically soaked in unspoken messages about commitment, intent and expectations?

The longer you’re together, the easier some questions get, but then you still have to walk a tightrope of sweet vs. sappy, traditional vs. original… it can be maddening.

Fortunately, I’m here to help you through all of this. So I give you Dr. NerdLove’s guide to gift giving…

[Read more…]

That isn’t Christmas in Hollis, The Season’s Upon Us or The Fairytale of New York [↩]

Wednesday Open Thread: Thanksgiving Edition

November 25, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 30 Comments

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for the Doc to start heating the oven and preparing his top-secret turkey recipe. Meanwhile, the NerdLove interns and residents take over the comments section for their own nefarious purposes!

This week’s suggested topic: it’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in the U.S. and the glorious tradition of overeating while surrounding ourselves with people who annoy us. So it’s time to talk food.

Here's to hoping the tryptophan makes your racist uncle pass out earlier than usual. — Here’s to hoping the tryptophan makes your racist uncle pass out earlier than usual.

So let’s talk food. What’re your holiday favorites? Is it Carbsgiving for you, or do you focus on the side-dishes? Is your holiday meal not complete without one signature dish?

You know the rules. No hate, no spam, no trolling and no politics at the dinner table. Have fun and happy Turkey Day!

5 Ways To Improve Your Communication Skills

November 23, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 306 Comments

Effective and clear communication is an absurdly important skill to develop. After all, we live in an age of unprecedented mass-communication, one where everybody’s talking. Like, all the fucking time; you can’t open Facebook or Twittergrams or Yik-Yak ((Ok, now you’re just making shit up)) and not be deluged by 40,000 of your closest friends, all of whom think that it’s utterly important that you hear their carefully considered opinion on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Although you can cut down on the cruft by pre-emptively blocking users of certain key phrases like "I agree with Donald Trump" — Although you can cut down on the induced vomiting by pre-emptively blocking users of certain key phrases like “I agree with Donald Trump”

But while we’re all clamoring to be heard, is anyone being understood? Now that the holiday season is upon us and we’re spending time with loved ones and can-barely-stand-ones, it’s a great time to work on improving how we communicate. Here’s how you make sure people are hearing what you’re actually saying.

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Looking For Something Different

November 20, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 15 Comments

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

I have re-written this letter a thousand times in my head and am still not sure it is one of the things that registers in the NerdLove realm, yet I feel you might be the only one who can help me with this… well, I hesitate to call it a problem as much as an unyielding curiosity.

Let me just begin by saying for my entire life I have dated in the hetero-realms. I got off to a slow start and hit a bullet train in the vis-a-vis dating world around late high school, with another acceleration happening in college. There are tons of stories there that I’d love to flesh out, but I’ll leave them for the sake of getting right to the point.

I am in a new city and am rediscovering myself as it pertains to finding friends, enjoying the hobbies I am into, etc. I hesitate to say it is going super well but it is going which I am perfectly happy with. My question is simple, and yet kind of touch and go and crazy and god knows what else: I have recently discovered that I have a very real desire to date and or sleep with trans women.

To be frank and clear, I am not attracted to dudes at all. That said, I am however finding that I could be VERY interested in being with a woman who… well, had a significant dude-part (as it were). Now, all of this is quite speculative. I have never been penetrated (pegging, etc whatever you want to call it) but I am very interested in the concept. I should also probably add that I have been single for quite some time and am by no means just swimming in dates that I could potentially attempt to vet with aggressively invasive questions a la “do you have a penis and, if no, do you own a strap on?”

My initial thought is that one would assert the sex positive aspect of this. While I don’t find this desire odd or weird at all, I am just not certain how to approach it. Where do you go or hangout to meet people? In what way do you express your lack of experience in combination with wanting to desperately give things a shot?

I must say that for all my social skills I am not sure how to approach this one. I have an easy enough time talking to women (though I do have to work on the whole “she is sending signals and you should get her number/ask her out” thing) but I feel like this is a multi-tiered dilemma. Any and all love of the nerd persuasion to this situation would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Seeking the Whole ‘Package’

[Read more…]