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Fixing The Missing Stair — With Cliff Jerrison

July 10, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

DOCTOR’S NOTE: Today’s column is by Cliff Jerrison of The Pervocracy.

In 2012, I wrote a blog post about the missing stair – a person who is widely known within a community to be dangerous, but is allowed to stay while everyone else works around them. Welcome to the club, we meet Thursdays, the bathroom’s down the hall, call Alice if you’re locked out, and if Bob invites you to his house you should say no because he’s kind of our resident date rapist.

It’s like living in a house with a missing stair, where the inhabitants have become so used to taking that one extra big step, they’ve forgotten it’s a problem at all.

But it is a problem, and sooner or later someone’s going to break an ankle. Not everyone gets the whisper warning, sometimes being forewarned isn’t enough to protect you, and even if Bob never touches you, it’s not exactly a welcoming vibe. A lot of women quietly withdraw from the community. A visible dividing line emerges between Bob apologists and the Bob-wary. Because of this one person, and the well-intentioned actions of the people who work around him rather than against him, the whole community is poisoned.

My experience with missing stairs has mostly been with men who sexually harass and abuse women, and that’s the context I’m writing this post in, but similar dynamics can emerge with other genders, with people who have explosive tempers, racists, financial scamsters, and so forth. The details are different but the pattern of a community silently reshaping itself around a half-open secret is the same.

So that’s the problem. Harris has asked me to write about the solution. This is where things get messy and uncertain. There’s no single formula for fixing communities stuck in this pattern, I haven’t always had success with it, and a lot depends on how much the people with the most influence in the community are willing to help.  But here’s some things you can do besides entrust lives to the whisper network.

[Read more…]

Episode ##146 — How To Transform Your Life (With Arden Leigh)

July 8, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

What does it take to turn your life around? How can you learn to recognize negative patterns in your life that are sabotaging your progress? And what does it take to break those patterns and make positive lasting changes?

This week, I’ve invited my friend and coach Arden Leigh of The Repatterning Project to talk about how to recognize the patterns in your life that are holding you back and what it takes to transform yourself so that you can find stronger, healthier and more positive relationships.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

  • How we create and reinforce patterns in our lives
  • Why certain patterns and behaviors keep you from meeting your needs
  • What your moods and mindfulness can tell you about the patterns in your life
  • How your social circle can help transform your life
  • Why “Is this working for me?” is the most important question you can ask

…and so much more.

——————————————
About Arden Leigh:
Arden Leigh is the creator and facilitator of The Re-Patterning Project, a course in understanding the human operating system and repatterning trauma imprints and social conditioning in order to achieve creative freedom. Her certifications are in neuro-linguistic programming and TimeLine Therapy. She is also the creator and frontwoman of indie pop rock project Arden and the Wolves, as well as the creator and host of web series Peace Talks. She is currently at work on her next book.

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ItsMeArdenLeigh
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/ItsMeArdenLeigh
The Repatterning Project — therepatterningproject.com
Arden and the Wolves — facebook.com/ardenandthewolves
——————————————

Listen Here
Download Here


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Like the podcast? Become a Dr. NerdLove patron at Patreon.com/DrNerdLove

Want more dating advice? Check out my books at www.www.doctornerdlove.com/books

GUEST POST — Flirting and Forgiveness

July 6, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: today’s column is by Dr. Timaree Schmitt, host of Sex With Timaree and co-host of DTF: Darryl and Timaree Fun Hour. Also updated to add commentary on apologies and making amends.

There have been precious few upsides to the pandemic for me. But one highlight was discovering the You’re Wrong About podcast.

It’s hosted by a pair of journalists obsessed with exposing the way we collectively misremember history- or failed to understand it at the time. They have covered the Kitty Genovese murder (origin of the myth of “bystander apathy”), inner city gangs in the 90s (more a media narrative than a real phenomenon), and even the life of Marie Antoinette (she never said that thing we all think she said).

There is no shortage of topics for the You’re Wrong About podcast to explore, because, let’s be frank: we’ve been wrong about nearly everything, at least initially. As a species we’ve struggled to understand the world, making best guesses and learning bits and pieces over time, through a horrible process of trial and error.

Take the idea of germ theory of disease. It’s the concept that microorganisms and bacteria are responsible for many human illnesses. It was proposed a thousand years ago, but it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that researchers came to accept that objects too tiny to be perceived by our eyes could be causing so much trouble.

Nowadays we can read about physicians of the 1850s going from performing an autopsy straight to delivering a baby without washing their hands and laugh riotously at the stupidity. How silly of them! How could they not know?

But we’re not smarter for having been born later. We simply don’t know what we don’t know. And until someone discovers something and effectively shares that knowledge, we will continue to not know.

And that’s how I feel about the way I learned about gender, consent and flirting. As a kid, I didn’t find it particularly confusing, because the narratives were actually very simple.

The idea was that women don’t really want to have sex; they just seek love and a partner who can take care of them. Men, on the other hand, want sex and validation and use love as a way to get that from women. Women are responsible for saying no to sex or providing it to those who are entitled to it. A man’s goal is to get access to women’s bodies. If he does, he is revered as capable and masculine, and it kind of didn’t matter so much whether he got that access through seduction, emotional manipulation, wealth, or even force.

This narrative was presented to me from every angle: romantic movies, jokes, the sexuality education I received. It was implicit in the articles in Cosmo and Maxim, song lyrics, and even the academic writings of evolutionary psychologists.

I don’t believe the sources of that narrative meant to harm. I don’t think the writers at FHM were actively thinking, “let’s completely remove all sexual agency from women and actively contribute to a culture that normalizes and excuses sexual assault.” I don’t think that a bunch of ad execs were sitting around a table saying, “I want women to feel preoccupied with being assessed as sexual objects and for men to be completely disengaged from their own emotions and unable to have healthy, intimate relationships.”

I think they were, like all of us, steeped in a culture that is ignorant. We had not yet realized that we need to wash the metaphorical germs off our metaphorical hands.

I was mad about all of this for a very, very long time. But that anger didn’t actually make me feel better and sometimes it was a barrier in being able to educate others. To move forward in my own life, I now embrace forgiveness: for all my favorite movies that told me it was ok to ignore boundaries and be emotionally manipulative for the sake of “love.” I forgive popular songs for normalizing treating people as objects. I forgive my school for assuming we were all straight, cisgender and wanted to get married and work in finance or whatever.

And I try to forgive myself for the ways I was a real douchebag too, hurting people’s feelings and making choices that today fill me with disgust. As a bisexual girl, I internalized both the messages about what to expect of men but also how to treat the women I dated. There weren’t many models of how I, a femme, should approach and romance another femme. So I took a page from the book of the straight dudes whom I thought -at the time- were cool. I was aloof, played games, was inconsiderate of boundaries, and ghosted on perfectly lovely humans. I’m filled with embarrassment at the thought of it now.

Forgiveness doesn’t make any of those actions OK. It’s just saying that no one benefits from carrying around icky anger and shame forever, hauling around baggage like it’s a trove of treasures.  We have all been harmed and we’ve all harmed, but we have to keep going. This requires acknowledging that we were wrong and committing to doing better.

A lot of Men’s Rights Activists (and conservatives in general) have a hard time with this. We may have been reared in a similar environment: same country, maybe the same religion or time frame. But instead of grasping that perhaps the culture’s framework around gender was wrong, they double down. Effectively it’s like saying: “if I start being concerned about germs getting me sick now, all the times I didn’t wash my hands: I was being stupid. And it means the sources of information I’ve trusted all my life might be wrong, which makes me feel uncertain and anxious. And we can’t have that.”

When we realize we’ve messed up, the next stop on the train is owning up and making amends. This is critical if we are going to continue to be connected to the person harmed, but a good idea regardless. Apologizing isn’t just about clearing the slate, but about rebuilding trust and establishing myself as a person who is worthy of their time and capable of learning and growing. Doing the work of being vulnerable in this way and attempting to repair damage not only demonstrates to others that we’re serious, but the act is a commitment to our future metaphorically hand-washing selves.

So what should my apology look like?

  • It requires a display remorse for having harmed the other person- which is categorically different than being regretful that they’re upset with me.
  • Admit responsibility- acknowledging that harm came from my action, regardless of what I intended or why I didn’t think it would be harmful at the time. Explain that I understand what was wrong about the action from their perspective, validating their experience. Skip excuses, minimizing or derailments about how I too have been harmed.
  • Attempt to make amends, thinking carefully about what I can do to set the situation right. Let them offer a solution to fixing what was damaged.
  • Offer assurance that it won’t happen again and then make an actual plan to avoid a recurrence. 

All of this should be offered directly and privately to the harmed person and we have to be ready to hear that they don’t accept the apology. And then we go from there, rededicated to the gameplan.

So what does this mean for flirting, seduction, and managing boundaries now?

First, we can make sure we are clear on the basics of consent, regardless of gender. Most of us get the idea that “no” means “no,” but we’re still working on affirming a “yes,” even in the small ways: offering touch before doing it, even ensuring that people feel free to leave a conversation.

Planned Parenthood has a great acronym for explaining consent: the FRIES model. They explain consent is:

  • Freely given
  • Reversible
  • Informed
  • Enthusiastic
  • Specific

All our choices must be made freely: without fear of repercussions for saying no, without coercion or the influence of drugs or alcohol. We can revoke consent at any time, even if we have said yes already or engaged in an act before. We communicate and agree on things like condom usage or how we’re going to navigate a risky act and ensure everyone is genuinely on board with what’s happening, not just going along.

This requires that we be truly attentive to the other person, staying present and looking for signs of their enjoyment or annoyance, anxiety, even zoning out. Basically: stay engaged in the conversation (or sexual act) and adjust according to their feedback.

It sounds like a lot of thinking and work. And to be real: it is. But rather than making sexuality more serious or stressful, this model of ongoing communication can make flirting and sex a lot more pleasurable: treating it as a creative, exploratory act, not a competition with a goal. We can derive pleasure from our partners’ pleasure, and collaborate together on flirting or sexual acts, approaching it less like a hunter and prey and more like musicians in a jam session.

And we’re not alone in this endeavor. Not only are there plenty of workshops available (shout out to my friend Vonka who teaches femme flirting), but lots of websites (including this one!) and articles and people you can hire to talk you through this process! 

And yes, we’re going to mess up and make awkward missteps. Knowing that it’s part of the process: we’ll apologize, try to set things right and do better going forward. We will also be rejected at some points. But when we approach with a different framework: the idea that sexuality and flirting are ways in which adults can have fun -not as inescapable fates of biology or the source of our validation- we’re liberated. And when we acknowledge that we have much more to learn -and always will- we’re preparing ourselves to adapt more easily.

Going forward, I’m going to be less interested in being “good at flirting” and more interested in being good at listening and showing interest in others. It seems like a good start.

 

Dr Timaree Schmit has been a sex educator for more of her life than not and is on this planet to bring rational, sex-positive, empirically-based knowledge about sexuality to audiences everywhere. She works as an adjunct professor, guest lecturer, writer, consultant, and host of the Sex with Timaree podcast and co host of DTF: Darryl and Timaree Fun Hour podcast. She is the LGBTQ and Sexuality affairs contributing writer for Philly Weekly and a long-time community organizer in the queer performance scene, and advocate for sex workers rights.

Guest Post: I Was A 26-Year Old Virgin

July 20, 2015 by Dr. NerdLove 1,357 Comments

Hey folks, Doc here. This week, we’re doing something a little different. Instead of the usual dating advice, we’re having two guests stopping by to share their experiences and advice. One of the things I’m always saying is that one of the most important things when it comes to relationships is simply taking the time to understand people instead of just buying into these pre-packaged ideas about who they are and what their lives must be like.  Today, we have Hope Nicholson – producer, author, archivist, publisher and all around geek – generously sharing some of her experiences with a subject that I know many of my readers can relate to: the anxiety, confusion, stress and frustration that comes with coming to sex and dating later in life. 

Take it away, Hope!


When I was a kid I loved choose your own adventure books, but I’d keep my finger in the pages before choosing the next step. Invariably, I’d end up with each finger stuck at a different path marker, so I could make sure that I picked the ending I wanted before I put the book down.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The birth of save-scumming.

When I read regular books, I would flip to the back and read the last three pages to make sure that I’d want to get to the end before beginning the book.

I also cheated at every video game I ever played, just so I could get to the final end-scene (which made playing Chrono Trigger with a dozen different endings, very frustrating!).

I don’t do any of that anymore, but I still felt that way about love for the longest time. In life though, you can’t look up the solutions to your problems. In regards to dating, I felt alone. Torn between the desire to date (“It looks like so much fun on TV!”) and undefined fear and anxiety about it. If you asked me at 24, why I hadn’t dated yet, I would have bolted out of the room. I had no idea why. There was no way to flip to the back of the book to find out. There was no walkthrough, no Game Genie, and the frustration of not knowing why I didn’t date gave me intense anxiety so I pushed it far out of my mind.

I suspected that the only way I would know these answers would be after I felt comfortable in dating. And it didn’t help me one bit at the time knowing that in retrospect I would have the answers! When I hung out with women, the talk would often turn to dating and I would scramble to relate the very few experiences I had to their own actual love lives and conflicts. I had a brief boyfriend at 17 where we mostly watched Family Guy and I let him lick my mouth while I tried not to show I was grossed out1, a few unwelcome but unresisted physical advances by male friends that I had panic attacks over at 19 and 21, and a few chaste, unfulfilling dates here and there. That was pretty much it.

I ended up hanging out with gay men, and women who didn’t date either (surprisingly, many of them chose gay men as their companions too). I avoided heterosexual men altogether for years. It left me feeling like a fraud. I didn’t like any of the very few and far between romantic or sexual experiences I had, and I didn’t know what to do.

Somehow, the glamor of being a unique and special snowflake isn't the heart-warming after-school special that we were promised.
Somehow, the glamor of being a unique and special snowflake isn’t the heart-warming after-school special that we were promised.

Was I queer? I had a lot of crushes on men both real and fictional, but I never felt any similar type of obsession for women, so that seemed unlikely.

Was it body issues? I’m a plump girl for sure, but I’m pretty happy with the way I look. So I didn’t think that was a reason, or at least not most of it.

Was I asexual? I read so much slash fan-fiction, my laptop was likely to burn out, so that seemed unlikely.

So… I desired men. Yet, the thought of them being in the same room as me made my skin crawl. The thought of sitting across the room from a stranger no matter how attractive or likable made my stomach sink. What the hell? That’s not what Sweet Valley High told me romance would be like.

This is the female equivalent of every geek boy who's felt betrayed by the end of Pretty In Pink.
This is the female equivalent of every geek boy who’s felt betrayed by the end of Pretty In Pink.

Where was the man I would swoon over, who would occupy my every waking thoughts? Where’s the brooding-but-sensitive Romeo who would reciprocate my feelings and bring me tokens of his affection (flowers, or really comic books are just fine too, thank-you-very-much)?

At 24, without the distraction of school and working three part-time jobs keeping my brain occupied, I started to force myself to deal with it. I made myself go on dates with strangers, talk about comic books and video-games, and wish desperately that the whole thing was over with. Then I’d go home and beat myself up for not being attracted to them, because I should be.

I told a few close friends who accepted my virginity as an unusual quirk, but could give me no advice.

Finally, after moving out on my own, I decided that there was no way I could figure this out and at 24, it was getting pretty clear that waiting around wasn’t working. So I went to a therapist. Who didn’t help.

"Yeah, I got nothin'. Womp womp."
“Yeah, I got nothin’. Womp womp.”

I kept forcing myself to date. At one point, a remarkable thing happened: I had a date I liked! Who I was attracted to! Who I wanted to kiss my face! Who promised to call…

…and never contacted me again.

That stopped me dating for another year.

I tried another therapist. This one was a better fit, but there was still no solution. These visits were useful though. They helped me verbalize my vague fears and anxieties into actual words. Things are always scarier when they’re giant formless clouds above your head.

One of my greatest fears was that if I found a date I really liked, I would have to tell them I was a virgin. I imagined them treating me with pity, or feeling fetishistic about being the first one in. Both were awful scenarios. Both eventually happened.

So I talked. I talked to everyone. I started telling friends. I started telling strangers. Eventually I even started telling dates. The more I talked, the more comfortable I felt. The more I saw that people weren’t reacting with shock, the more I felt like it wasn’t that overwhelming. My anxiety became smaller, more manageable. I became then, more confident. It became an oddball story instead of a deeply seated fear. “Hello I’m Hope, I’m a 25 year old virgin. No, I like boys, and no I was never assaulted. No, I don’t want to hire a prostitute to take care of it.”

Over time, it became easier just to hand people a FAQ.
Over time, it became easier just to hand people a FAQ.

I became confident and open, and we all know that confidence, in men and women, regardless of sexuality, is a compelling quality!

I talked to more and more people, most of whom seemed to think my directness was strange but fun. Eventually, I kissed a boy, a friend of a friend, and it was like electric sparks! 

Attraction happened.
Obsession happened.
Heartbreak happened.
Ouch.

Was I right to be scared of this initially?

abso-fucking-lutely

 But I jumped in and tried again. Every time it hurt very badly. But it became less unusual. I stopped fearing that after every breakup, I would never find a boy I liked again. It would have been nice if I could have learned that without, y’know, being smashed up that many times or to deal with scoundrels, but that’s what happened.

I found ways to increase the odds of finding that attraction. Men I already knew, who shared the same friends, confident but quiet, practical but creative, all were much more likely to spark attraction than any other type. Once I stopped going out with randos just because they were nice and looked fine, I started enjoying the process more.

I eventually found someone who didn’t care one way or another if I was a virgin; he liked me in all the ways I wanted to be liked. In retrospect, I know that for me to feel at ease in dating, I need to also feel respected as a friend, which is what he gave me. I need to feel that I’m not needed, that they are a complete human being with or without me. When I had my experience with him, it didn’t feel scary at all, because he was close to me.

Can I get a "hell yeah"?
Can I get a “hell yeah”?

I continue to be very open about my late past. And about my own attraction when I feel it, because I’m still surprised when it happens!

And yes, as I suspected before as a virgin, it is a lot easier to talk about it after you no longer are.

The amazing thing I discovered is that I’m not alone. When I talk about being a late bloomer in a group, there’s always at least one person who’ll tell me “I was/am one too.”

I’ve been told this by dates who tell me that I’m the second woman they’ve ever been with. I hear this from dates who tell me that a woman has never told them they’re good-looking before or that they didn’t know how to approach women they desired. I’ve been told this by women who fear their boyfriends will pressure them into sex, and they don’t know if they want it or not. I hear this from women who dated dozens of men for years with great anxiety before finding someone who felt right. I hear this from women who fall in love with their partner many months into dating. I hear this from women who finally feel a connection to someone of the same sex after years of feeling nothing towards anyone.

There’s no cheat-sheet. My reasons and my path to feeling comfortable with dating wasn’t their path and it might not be yours either.

I’ve met so many virgins, male and female, who are in their late twenties. Or those who aren’t but regretted their first experience and stayed away from sex and dating afterwards. Ones who’ve went years and years without having sex. More than I ever expected. They were relieved to hear my story; like me, they thought they were the only ones. They thought they’d have to have sex with someone they wanted to like but didn’t feel comfortable with. They didn’t know if they ever would like someone ‘that way’. And I was relieved to hear I wasn’t alone, that I wasn’t weird, that all of this is really normal variation, with no one set answer/reason to fit all of us. You might be queer, or asexual, or have to resolve past painful experiences. Or it might be that old adage of ‘not having found the right fit’. Or for whatever social or biological reason, you are finally ready to date and be intimate at a much later age than society tells you is average.

It’s awful that healing sometimes can happen only retroactively. I think if I had talked to any of these fellow virgins and late bloomers back when I was struggling so much, the pressure I felt to ‘figure it out’ would have eased substantially.

You’re not alone. I’m hoping that by telling my story, and telling you how I found out I wasn’t the only one, it will help some of you feel less anxious and more confident about yourselves.

And really, regardless of whether you have sex or not, that’s the most important thing.


 

Hope Nicholson

 Hope Nicholson is a Toronto-based, Winnipeg raised comic book publisher of Bedside Press. She has previously championed the awareness of 1940s Canadian comic book history with her projects “Nelvana of the Northern Lights” & “Brok Windsor”. Recently, she was the editor of the aboriginal comic book anthology “Moonshot”. She is also a film producer and researcher, previously a producer on the film “Lost Heroes” and currently a researcher for the film “Africville”. In 2015 she was named one of Flare Magazine’s Top 30 Under 30 Female Entrepreneurs in Canada.

Hope Nicholson is also the creator of The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, a Kickstarter-funded collection of comic strips and prose stories about the true dating lives of geek girls, featuring the talents of Margaret Atwood, Roberta Gregory, Gisèle Lagacé, Kate Leth, Sam Maggs, JM Frey, Danielle Corsetto, Cara Ellison, Trina Robbins, Mariko Tamaki/Fiona Smyth and many, many more. The Kickstarter is running until July 24, 2015, so donate today!

  1. Don’t let this happen to you! – Doc [↩]

Guest Post: An Introvert’s Guide to Navigating Parties

October 17, 2014 by Dr. NerdLove 68 Comments

(Doctor’s Note: On occasion, I’ll have an idea for an excellent topic that I am completely unsuited to write about. Fortunately for me, I have some excellent friends who are. This week, we have a guest post from Beth Campbell – event planner, professional social butterfly and secret introvert – to talk about the skill of navigating social events as an introvert without losing your mind. 

Beth, the stage is yours.)

Most of my friends probably don’t realize this, but I’m an introvert. I look for excuses not to leave the house, even to go to the grocery store or post office. (And when I do have to go out, I try to go to all the places I need to in one trip, so I don’t need to leave the house multiple times. What? It’s efficient!) Once, when I was working from home, I didn’t leave my apartment for twelve days. My neighbor said she was starting to worry, but she could hear me moving around in there, so she at least knew I hadn’t slipped on the stairs and broken my neck or something.

"Hello? Um... anyone dead in there?"
“Hello? Um… anyone dead in there?”

So, how is it then, that my friends might not realize that I’m introverted? Because I’m really good at negotiating social gatherings. Just because you’re an introvert doesn’t mean that you’re not sociable or good at socializing. And just because you’re an extrovert doesn’t mean that you automatically are.

NB: In order to use these navigation techniques, you do need to have some good-to-advanced social skills and a strong sense of social calibration. This isn’t a beginner’s guide. You need to feel comfortable and at ease talking to strangers, know how to make conversation or small talk, and how to read social cues as to when it’s appropriate to enter or leave a conversation. You will need to be able to think on your feet. If this isn’t you, then please feel free to read on, but know that you’ve got to develop those foundational skills before you will be able to use these techniques.

Social events tend to break down along an x/y axis of sorts: large/small, and knowing everyone/knowing no-one. (Note: I’m not discussing professional gatherings in this article, just social gatherings. How to negotiate a professional gathering is dependent upon the type of profession you are in.) Let’s look at four types of gatherings, starting with the one that seems the most intimidating to navigate:

[Read more…]

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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Recent Comments

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