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How To Stay Positive (Even When Everything Is Awful)

March 23, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

One of the keys to any sort of self-improvement, emotional resilience, even just making progress in your own development is also one of the least appreciated: knowing how to perservere, even when the world seems to be falling apart. In fairness, trying to stay positive and how to keep your head up, even when it feels pointless and hopeless, can feel like being told “just keep going, just keep grinding” or toxic positivity. And honestly, it’s hard to feel like there’s hope in the world right now.  Just look at… well, everything.

Figure in ragged hoodie, gas-mask and hazmat gear wanders in an orange-colored post-apocalyptic wasteland
🎶 I don’t want to set the world on fiiiiiiiire… I just want to start a flame in your heart… 🎶

Every day, we read more about assaults on people’s right to choose, politicians using trans kids and LGBTQ people as punching bags to stir up their base and survive primary challenges, we’re entering the third year of a global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has heralded the return of the looming threat of global thermonuclear war. Oh also the Nazis are back.

animated gif from Rise of Skywalker. Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron speaking to a crowd. Text reads: "Somehow, Palpatine returned"
OH COME ON…

Of course, the world doesn’t have to be on the brink of WWIII to feel as though there’s no hope. You can have enough heartbreak, struggle and setbacks in your own life to feel as though all hope is lost, regardless of the rest of the world. But whether you’re living through a global crisis, local upheaval or even your own personal long dark teatime of the soul, it’s easy to surrender to despair. It can feel like there’s no point to anything.

But it doesn’t have to. Sometimes the bravest and strongest thing you can do is simply refuse to give up hope. Here’s how to keep hope alive… even when your world is falling apart.

[Read more…]

How To Protect Yourself From a Broken Heart

February 2, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove 231 Comments

Doctor’s Note: this column was originally published on 9/18/17

It’s not a stretch to say that dating is something of a contact sport. Signing up for it means that you’re accepting that you might get hurt. Opening yourself up to people means being willing to risk a broken heart. No matter how carefully you plan or how much you try to protect yourself, eventually you’re going to have to learn to deal with pain and rejection. Sometimes you see it bearing down on you like a freight train. Other times it sneaks up on you and hits you square in the ghoulies.

Y’know. Kinda like that.

 

But while pain may be inevitable, suffering is optional. You may not be able to avoid getting hurt, but you can avoid unnecessary pain. . And the cold truth is: a lot of suffering in the dating process is self-inflicted. One of the keys to dating without getting a broken heart is to understand how to protect yourself, emotionally.

[Read more…]

How Men Can Stop Feeling Unwanted

March 4, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Being a man, particularly a straight, cisgendered man, can be a perverse paradox at times. Society caters to us in almost every way imaginable. Even in 2021, as we strive towards greater social and sexual equity for people of different genders and sexualities, straight cis men are very much at the top of the social heap. And yet, men are lonelier and more isolated than ever, feeling not just lost but ignored or cast aside. 

It seems laughable; society caters to straight men to an absurd degree. The world is nothing if not considerate of men’s wants and interests. Straight men’s desires, anxieties and — especially — their boners aren’t just the Rosetta stone of modern advertising, but much of pop culture over all. The entire literary fiction genre, for example, is an almost constant paean to navel gazing dudes who want to muse about roads not taken and drown their ennui in the desire to bone much younger women.

bearded young man in glasses, wearing a tweed jacket and tan waistcoat rubbing his chin
“Yes, I’m a published author and well respected, tenured professor of literature at a prestigious university… but somehow I’m still unfulfilled. Maybe another affair with an undergrad will help.”

But like I said my column on men’s fear of being “invisible”, the issue isn’t so much the way the world celebrates and validates male sexuality or interests. It’s the feeling that while the world continues to validate men’s desire for sex and power, the men themselves are excluded from it. They’re continually shown their hearts’ desires, but the fulfilment of them is kept just out of reach. They’re told that this is what they’re supposed to want, that this is what makes them a “real man”, but they’re unable to partake of it. It’s the frustration — even despair — of realizing that the rewards they were told to expect for being men and following the rules laid out for them are never going to be delivered, and certainly not in the way they were promised.

Animated gif from Fight Club: Tyler Durden saying "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't."
Of course it all comes back to Fight Club; it’s like you’ve never been read my column before…

It comes up in many, many different ways. Because we still celebrate and lionize toxic and restrictive forms of masculinity, even in media that purports to deconstruct them, men who don’t meet (often self-imposed)  hypermasculine ideals feel as though they aren’t “real” men.

Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, shirtless and smoking a cigarette
Still looking at you, Fight Club.

Others feel excluded from the rewards of manhood and masculinity because of factors outside of their control — a lack of social experience or fluency, their body types, their height, or due to stereotypes based around race, culture or gender presentation.

This feeling — of being excluded, cast aside and discarded — is something I hear from men all the time. It comes up in letters, it gets mixed in with discussions about online harassment, street harassment and cat-calling, even in discussions about character design in comics, video games and movies. And while it’s the sort of thing that seems like it’s easily laughed off — oh no, dudes aren’t getting all the attention — it’s a real and legitimate issue.

After all, those feelings of being unwanted, loneliness, rejection and isolation can be hard to break out of. It’s all too easy for that feeling to curdle into despair.. or worse.

But, despite what many will tell you, it isn’t a matter of the lucky and the ones who got fucked by the fickle finger of fate. Nor is it about hitting the gym or getting plastic surgery or other quick fixes.

Here’s how you learn to stop feeling unwanted and undesired.

[Read more…]

What Does It Mean To Be Strong?

February 10, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be strong, lately. Not in the physical sense, but what it means to be emotionally and mentally strong. The idea that people today — men especially — are “weaker” or “can’t handle it” is tossed around with gleeful abandon. In fact, the underlying conflict of Cobra Kai is, at its core, about the nature of strength and what it takes to become strong. In fact, much of it is rooted in the idea of “the world is an awful place and I will make you strong so you can survive”.

You can see this outlook all over the place if you make even a cursory glance on Twitter or Facebook, but especially media on the right. Folks rage about people “being pussies” for telling people what their pronouns are and, of course, the neverending outrage over “political correctness”.

Or, as most of us call it, “not being an asshole”.

 

You see this in sports, when football players are lauded for playing with injuries or in  the pushback against trying to reign in CTE. You see it with folks — mostly men — who get called “weak” or told they’re a pussy for saying “this is too much, I need to step away or go to therapy“. People complain about how hazing has been restricted or banned and what this means for social organizations like fraternities. And of course, you can find it all over the place online, from in-game chat, on forums, Twitter, Facebook and so on. It gets cast as “trolling” or “trash talk”, while people who object are told to “suck it up,” “grow a thicker skin,” and that “trash talking and harassment is a vital part of the culture“. And of course, there’s the ever-popular “facts don’t care about your feelings”, “soy boy” and the classic “snowflake”.

People will insist that this is a good thing. That people today just aren’t as tough as those who came before. That we’re creating a world of weak, privileged, pampered infants.

In reality, it’s an excuse. It becomes a way to justify abuse and having been abused.

[Read more…]

What Nobody Tells You About Grieving

January 27, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove 43 Comments

(Doctor’s Note: This was originally published on March 13, 2017)

You’d be surprised how bored you can get waiting for someone to die.

If you’ve been lucky, this sounds either horrific or a pretty good way to start a book. On the other hand, if you’ve dealt with an impending death in the family, it may seem almost distressingly familiar. You may even be horrified by the fact that you thought it. And yet, you absolutely meant it. Welcome to the grieving process, where your own brain finds new ways to shock you on an hourly basis.

“What the FUCK, Doc?!”

Grief and grieving are a process that we all will have to go through at one point or another, and yet none of us are ever adequately prepared for. We think we understand what’s going to happen – we cry, we mourn, we move on eventually – but nothing quite gets you ready for the reality of it. And because the human brain has all sorts of ways to surprise you, some of the grieving process will absolutely fuck you up if you don’t realize it’s coming.

[Read more…]

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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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