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Archives for April 2016

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Help, My Lifestyle Is Hindering My Dating Life

April 29, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 175 Comments

Hey Dr. NerdLove,

I am 26 years old and have been hard on myself for being (mostly) single for the past few years. Many aspects of my life are great. I have a great job in Los Angeles programming video games, above-average physical fitness, a good group of friends, and interesting hobbies. I perform well on online dating websites, and with effort, get about one online date a month. 

That said, I feel that my diet restrictions are holding me back from performing better in both online and real life dating pools. I have celiac disease, which requires a strict gluten-free diet, and I also have a number of other mild food allergies. Restaurant outings are stressful, so I have organized my life around mostly avoiding them. I spend my weeknights cooking a particular rotation of food, and then pack the leftovers for day trips throughout the weekend.

This lifestyle is manageable, but it has some hard limitations. I spend 7-10 hours per week cooking, giving me less time for social outings or dates. It also kills my ability to do anything impulsive. If I click with an online dating match on Monday, I can only offer to go out with them on Friday at earliest. My friends tell me that most women lose interest within a couple of days, so I am potentially missing out on an unknown number of dates. I fear that my scheduling restrictions, combined with the limited number of restaurants I am willing to eat at, gets interpreted by women as a lack of enthusiasm for dating them. 

In the real world, my lifestyle limits my random social encounters. My friends are great, but they never eat at gluten free restaurants, so they never invite me to grab dinner with them. By far, the worst events are the paid social dinners catered for 20-somethings. I get the double insult of paying for food that I can’t eat, and conspicuously bringing my own food with me. The last thing I want to talk about with people I have just met are my diet restrictions. I skip these entirely.

Most of my social life involves hosting or attending house parties. In my experience, these have been great for strengthening existing friendships, but a slow way to meet new people.

What can I do to take my dating life to the next level?

Diet Destroys Dates 

[Read more…]

Wednesday Open Thread: Alien Day Edition

April 27, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 73 Comments

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for the Doc to take off and nuke the infestation site from orbit.1 Meanwhile back home, the NerdLove interns and residents take over the comments section for their own nefarious purposes!

This week’s suggested topic:

Yesterday was officially Alien Day, because 20th Century Fox decided to get in on the fun that was Back to the Future Day. So 4/26 was chosen in honor of LV-426 from the movie with various attendant celebrations and notable fuckups.

Sure, take the shoes worn by a feminist scifi icon and only offer them in men's sizes, that makes perfect sense!
Sure, take the shoes worn by a feminist scifi icon and only offer them in men’s sizes, that makes perfect sense!

So in honor of Alien Day… let’s talk scifi and horror. What are some of your favorite scary sci-fi moments? Is it the xenomorph? The Predator? That moment where a woman is turned into a robot in Superman III that haunts your dreams and leaves you feeling vaguely ill at ease in other Eddie Pryor movies?

Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

You know the rules: no hate, no spam, no trolling. Have fun!

  1. It’s the only way to be sure. [↩]

How To Handle Your Inconvenient Emotions

April 25, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 160 Comments

No matter how much it may feel like our rational side is pure and in control, our emotions find ways of making things even harder than they need to be. We all have moments when it seems like our brain betrays us and our emotions undercut us.

"So, how'm I gonna fuck up your life today?"
“So, how’m I gonna fuck up your life today?”

You’re having a very serious, intense and necessary conversation with someone and you can feel the tears coming on and you know that if you start crying it’s going to undercut your position. You know you’re being irrational, but your girlfriend’s friendship with that guy makes you want to climb the walls with possessive jealousy. You’re trying to go to sleep and suddenly you get to relive every anxiety-provoking moment of your life. You know you should be over your anger at your co-worker but just looking at him makes you want to strangle him.

But as much as you may want to, you can’t just cut your emotions out. One of the hardest – yet most necessary – things to do is learn how to control those inconvenient emotions and make them work for us instead of against us.

[Read more…]

Ask Dr. NerdLove: Why Can’t I Get Off?

April 22, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 114 Comments

Doctor’s Note: I’m at PAX East this year! If you’re coming to PAX, make sure to come to my panel: Video Game Romance – The Stories We Love, The Lessons They Teach at 8 PM EST in Arachnid Theater!

And now, your letters. 

Hi, Doc:

I am in a nearly perfect relationship with the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known. That “nearly” though, is kind of a big deal.

Background: I’m in my early 40s, she (call her “D”) is in her mid 30s, and both of us have been married to awful people in the past. We’ve been together more than two years and we’ve lived together for nearly a year. We communicate openly and honestly (about “nearly” everything; damn that word), treat each other with great respect and care, and can disagree without fighting.

The issue is sex. I was almost totally impotent for some time after my divorce, especially when another human was present. The issue cost me one promising relationship and led to a lot of embarrassment. I got over it by the time I started dating D, and things were very hot between us for the first nine months or so. Unfortunately, as we came out of the honeymoon phase, I started to have some issues again. D is very sexual, and she is particularly turned on by my arousal. When that became an issue, she started to feel badly about herself and worried that I was unsatisfied and not attracted to her anymore. I felt perfectly OK with taking care of her in other ways when I couldn’t get hard (in fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit), but she started to feel embarrassed by that, like she was using me. My reassurances and explanations did little to help, since her perception is that I will place her happiness above my own (correct) and say things that aren’t entirely true to make her feel better (not correct).

We went through a few more hot and cold phases, I talked to both my psychiatrist and a therapist (who offered no advice that I had not already considered and tried), then I got tired of feeling like a disappointment and got myself a Cialis prescription. This fixed the erection problem completely, and, for a while induced another hot phase. Unfortunately, while I still get hard readily (often when I haven’t even taken the meds), I have a lot of difficulty getting off when with her. I have no difficulty at all getting off alone while watching porn or whatever. This makes her feel bad (which she tries to hide), which makes me feel guilty and self-conscious, which makes it harder for me to get off, and so on.

After hedging around the issue a lot, we finally talked about it openly. Her feeling is that I am a lot more turned on by sexy things like porn (we both watch it, and there’s no judgement there either way) than I am by actual sex. I feel like I am turned on by actual sex, but my concern for her needs (her need to get off, her need for me to get off) makes it difficult to relax enough to get to an orgasm. I told her that I love having sex with her, even if I don’t get off (which is entirely true), but she feels like sex has become a chore for me, and that I only really enjoy the closeness and contact, not the act itself (not entirely correct).

In short, D is sexually unsatisfied because she feels selfish and awkward when I don’t get off, I can’t get off because I’m too worried about getting off, and we both feel bad for each other and for ourselves.

So, what do I do? I’ve tried the “No porn, no masturbation” plan, and it mostly just increased my feeling of frustration and urgency. We’ve tried experimenting in the bedroom, but I don’t have some fetish that’s not being satisfied. (My porn preferences go no further from the mainstream that lesbians and bondage, and the latter has proven more fun in fantasy than reality.) While we don’t think negatively of poly-type people, we aren’t comfortable with non-monogamy for ourselves, and I don’t feel any longing to be with anyone else. Any other ideas?

—

A Brave New World of Sexual Frustration

[Read more…]

Wednesday Open Thread: Doc’s Con Schedule Edition

April 20, 2016 by Dr. NerdLove 75 Comments

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for the Doc to lock up the office and get ready to ship up to Boston. Meanwhile the NerdLove interns and residents are taking over the comments section for their own nefarious purposeses!

This week’s suggested topic:

Con season is in full swing and this year, I’ll be out and about promoting New Game + and my other books at cons across the country, starting this weekend1. If you’re going to be at PAX East, come see my panel: Video Game Romance – The Stories We Love, The Lessons We Learn on Friday, April 22 at 8 PM in the Arachnid theater! My co-panelist HanPan (senior advisor for the geek dating site DragonFruit) and I will talk about relationships in video games, what they get right, what they get wrong, how they’ve developed and what we can learn from them. It’s gonna be an awesome time, we’re gonna go deep nerd and someone’s almost certainly gonna ask me about MattPatt’s Dating Sim episodes of Game Theory.

Here’s the rest of my con schedule as it currently stands:

June 17-19: HeroesCon – Charlotte, NC

September 2 – 4: Baltimore ComicCon – Baltimore MD

October 28 – 30: Alamo City ComicCon – San Antonio, TX

I’ll post updates if/when other conventions or speaking gigs are added to the list. Hope to see some of you there!

Meanwhile… let’s talk about some of your con experiences.

You know the rules: no hate, to spam, no trolling. Have fun!

  1. actually, two weeks ago at AggieCon, strictly speaking but hey, technicalities [↩]
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About Dr. NerdLove:

Harris O'Malley (AKA Dr. NerdLove) is an internationally recognized blogger and dating coach who gives dating advice to geeks of all stripes. Making nerds sexier since 20011

Remember: Dr. NerdLove is not really a doctor. [Read More …]

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