What Not To Do Archives

5 Mistakes That Keep You From Finding A Relationship

April 20, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

We talk a lot about what it takes to become someone that women want to date – working from the internal to the external, from attitude to presentation. But there’re times when it feels like you’re in a classic Red Queen’s Race: running as fast as you can and getting nowhere.

Man in sportswear walking on a treadmill and looking at his smartwatch at home — “I don’t get it, I’ve been on this for an hour and I haven’t gotten anywhere…”

Sure, you’re putting in a lot of effort to get your presentation down and you’re trying to put yourself out there… so why isn’t it working?

Well the answer is that while you’ve made great strides in some areas, you’ve been neglecting others. In fact, many times, the problem is that you’ve been making mistakes that have actively hindered your ability to meet and date amazing women. What often confuses folks is that these aren’t mistakes that drive women away. Instead, these are mistakes that have hindered your personal development or your ability to connect with people in the way you need to forge a connection. These are foundational problems, ones that undermine both your self-image and your ability to meet and connect with people. You can tweak your style and grooming all you want, hit the gym until your joints give out or chat up as many sexy singles as you can… but if you haven’t fixed these common foundational mistakes, whatever you build is going to come tumbling down around you.

Let’s talk about how to fix some of the most common mistakes that are keeping you from meeting that special someone or someones.

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Kanye West Is No Laughing Matter

February 21, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

It started – as it so often does – with a DM.

“I’m assuming you’re already 15 paragraphs deep on an article Kanye’s behavior…” wrote my good friend Squirrel. Squirrel has long been a sounding board, supplier of memes, Reddit links for column material, and choice, sweet yet devastating dunks delivered in the way that only East Texans can.

So of course, I had to start digging into the latest mess.

Caucasian man in a suit gets angry and smashes the keyboard on the monitor. — Are they *really* your friend if they think you have enough rage in your life?

I’ll be honest: I hadn’t paid that much attention to Kanye’s latest antics. While I was a passing fan of Kanye West’s music – more individual tracks than entire albums – I’d grown tired of the constant “LOL, ‘ye’s off his meds again” tone from social media whenever it was clear he was having a manic episode. It’s hard to feel good giving any oxygen to the latest point-and-laugh controversy when that person is clearly having a mental health crisis. And when Kanye had rolled a truck filled to the brim with roses to his estranged wife’s house… well, ok, it was an incredibly ill-advised Grand Romantic Gesture in an attempt to get his soon-to-be-ex back, but not really something I felt like diving into.

And honestly, after years of incidents like this, it’s been really easy to just roll your eyes at it all. After all, it’s not as though we haven’t seen West do similar over-the-top and ill-advised stunts, from upstaging Taylor Swift to his bizarre, last-minute presidential bid; you could be forgiven for thinking this is just Kanye being Kanye again.

Except it wasn’t. Those roses were part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against Kim Kardashian, one that’s been ongoing since Kardashian filed for divorce over a year ago… and one, it seems, distressingly few folks have been taking seriously. “He’s fighting for his family!” many have said. “He’s just being a provocateur,” others have said. Many have even speculated whether this was a bid for publicity for the release of Donda 2.

But if we’re all honest, it’s glaringly obvious what this is; the only reason we don’t take it seriously is because of his fame, his money and his fans.

Your ex posts about you to their hundreds of followers in ways that make them look like a great parent and make you look like a negligent, terrible parent, but they have to lie or misrepresent the truth to do it

— Jennifer Drake (@drakejenn) February 17, 2022

Let’s talk about why Kanye West’s behavior is no laughing matter, and why we should be paying attention.

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5 Mistakes That Men Make Approaching Women

December 15, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

So, I have a confession to make: I have a perverse love of weird, dumb or just plain batshit dating advice that gets passed around like golden nuggets of wisdom. This means that Twitter is a bonanza of bullshit to comb through for laughs that range from “wait, this has to be fake” to “oh God you’re serious.”

Now, occasionally this means that you get things like the Green Arrows dude who goes on and on about where people’s junk is pointing.

screenshot of a Twitter post. Image features two African American celebrities in front of a backdrop for a Nike event.Michael Jordan is standing with green text printed over him and an arrow pointing down. Text reads "cock confidence". LeBron is standing with his hands folded, with text and an x superimposed. Text reads "cock shame" — You will never find people more obsessed with dicks than straight dudes.

Other times, however, you get the “How Do You Open” meme. The format is incredibly simple: a would-be nu-PUA guru posts a picture of an attractive woman (usually yanked from Instagram models’ Twitter feeds) with some weird backstory to set the scene. Each ends with the same question: “How do you open?”

screenshot of a Twitter post with an image of a busty young white oman with her hand on her hip. Text reads: You're at your friend's house party and decide to chill in the backyard. You're about to take a seat, but you notice this attractive young woman. How do you open? — This is a prime example of why you aren’t allowed to pick your own nickname…

These are a series of thought experiments that are intended to get you to apply the poster’s lessons on talking to women, while also goosing the algorithm via cheap engagement. And while their chief value is in the parody posts that are so absurd that you can’t be sure if they’re jokes, I find them kind of fascinating on an anthropological level.

However, the thing that makes these interesting to me is how much they contrast with the number of folks who are terrified of approaching women.

That’s not a joke; I hear from guys all the time who’ve mainlined hundreds of Reddit posts and TikTok videos from women complaining about guys hitting on them. This often gets paired with dudes who go trawling for more “proof” of the “It’s Not Creepy When Brad Pitt Does It” argument.

What makes this interesting to me is that both of these groups have a large stumbling block in common: they get the concept of “approaching” wrong. And to be fair: I’ve made that mistake too. Hell, I’ve promoted many of those mistaken ideas myself. But what’s significant is that these shared misconceptions make it harder to meet women, particularly in person. The issue isn’t that approaching women you find attractive is inherently bad, it’s that their technique, their mindset, even their very conception of “doing approaches”, “opening” or what-have-you is wrong.

So let’s talk about the mistakes men make when approaching women, and how to fix them.

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These Mistakes Are Costing You Dates

July 7, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I have a serious question for you: are you someone who plays to win, or who plays to avoid losing?

Most folks would say that, yes, they absolutely play to win. Even if they’re not the sort of min/maxing, loophole-finding, cutthroat gamesman who makes board game night a flaming hellscape, people will generally say that when they play, their goal is to make a sincere effort at winning.

Group of friends sitting at wooden table, having fun while playing board game. — Except for Abbott: the ONE guy who plays Pandemic by being on the side of the disease, WHAT THE FUCK, ABBOTT?

However, if you look at people’s dating life, you’d be forgiven for thinking that not only are they not playing to win, they’re playing in a way that’s designed to ensure they won’t find a long-term partner. To be blunt, a lot of the ways that people approach dating actively works against them. They are, for all intents and purposes, focused on not losing. That is: they’re focused more on avoiding rejection than they are on finding a potential partner. And to be fair: this is understandable. If you don’t have a lot of social experience, you’re just starting to date or you’re finding yourself back on the market again, rejection can be scary. It feels like the worst thing that could happen to you. It’s natural to want to try to avoid it at all costs.

But the problem is that trying to avoid “losing” isn’t the same as winning; in fact, taking this outlook will actually cost you dates.

It’s time to stop handicapping your own love life. Here’s how to recognize and avoid these common dating mistakes.

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This Is What Toxic Relationships Look Like (Or: The Love Con of Martin Shkreli)

December 23, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

There’s a joke on Twitter — in that “ha ha but no, seriously” sense — that goes “every day one person becomes the main character on the Internet. Your goal is to avoid being that person.” On December 20, 2020, when Elle published their long-form piece, “The Journalist and The Pharma Bro“, Christie Smythe became The Main Character of the Internet. The article detailed how Smythe, a respected and experienced reporter for Bloomberg News tossed aside her entire life — her husband, her career, her credibility — for notorious securities fraudster and Big Pharma price-gouger Martin Shkreli.

Dr. Harleen Quinzell flirting with the Joker in Arkham Asylum. — And, in the process, inspired an insufferable number of “Joker/Harley Quinn” comparisons.

It’s the sort of story designed to set segments of Twitter on fire; a professional woman throwing away her entire life for someone who stalked and harassed numerous other journalists, raised the price of life-saving anti-parasitic medicine by 5000% and famously disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan. People wanted to know how the hell someone who actually had a brain in her head would be willing to not just give up everything in her life, but freeze her eggs… all for a guy who she was never intimate with and who — plot twist — ghosted her from prison and dumped her via a statement to the press.

It seems almost comically absurd; how could anyone fall for this bullshit? It was hardly as though Shkreli’s trolling, stalking and harassment were going under the radar — especially considering how frequently he targeted other female journalists. And it was hardly as though Smythe were some naive thing, some babe lost in the woods who was just too pure, innocent or oblivious to recognize Shkreli for the posturing, entitled, faux-alpha-male-fronting, wannabe edgelord he is.

But anyone — men, women and non-binary folks alike — who’ve experienced toxic or abusive relationships can tell you exactly how easy it can be to get sucked in by people like this.

That’s why it’s important to recognize what a toxic relationship looks like… and how smart people get caught up in them.

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