Estimated reading time: 14 minutes
Hi Dr. NerdLove,
I wrote to you previously about dealing with a breakup a few months ago, as Second and Third Thoughts, so thanks for the response then. Since then I’ve been doing alright and made some positive changes. I went through a period after I graduated from university and returned home where I felt pretty lonely due to most of my friends being from university and not living in my area, and a lot of the friends I usually hung out with in my hometown weren’t there and we’d been growing more distant.
Since I had the tendency during the summer to avoid being social and feel lonely, I had decided to start trying to join new meetups and social circles to try finding new friends and maybe dates. At first it was pretty mediocre; I had joined a few groups based on sports that I decided weren’t exactly social enough for me for a couple of months, and got a job at what I later discovered was a scam company (not working there anymore). This kind of led me to miss my ex a lot and think about her a ton. However, I did end up finding a couple of board game groups where I made some friends, one being a meetup group and one being a tabletop gaming club at the university in the big city near mine. I also found a volleyball meetup at my community centre which is a bit better for me than the last one. With the meetup group I actually did start using a whatsapp group there to start organizing these meetups with some of the people who had went before, and I’ve had success in making friends, even if not particularly close ones, and having fun with some people who’d come more regularly there, which I’m proud of; before this last year I had always been a bit passive socially, and I only really started taking more control and putting myself out there to join clubs and meet people around a year ago, which was how I met my ex in the first place. With the university group, I’ve started making friends with the regulars, and board games make it really easy to have fun and connect with people who are also kind of geeky, which I really like.
The “issue” here, is that I’ve been looking to start dating again and while I’ve had success in making friends, I haven’t actually dated anyone since I broke up with my ex close to 6 months ago now. There have been people I’ve flirted with and asked out, either from my social circle in university prior to graduating or in the job I had and even someone I had met from the meetup group. However, none of these actually went anywhere, and while I definitely feel a big improvement from the start of the summer, where I feel a lot less lonely and I’ve found more of a community, I still haven’t made that leap into actually dating again, which I want to do. It feels like I’ve been taking ‘too long’ to start dating again after my ex, which I don’t really want to happen, and while I respect that I’ve come far from creating my own social circle within the city, it still feels like I’m behind and that I should’ve started dating someone sooner.
In addition, I’m moving to a new university for a graduate program come the fall, and while it’s not that far from the metropolis I live in it still feels like I’m under limited time pressure to start dating again before I have to make new friends and find new people from scratch. As much as I recognize that these are artificial expectations I’m putting on myself, it’s hard knowing there are others who have taking less time to get back on their feet after a breakup and start dating again, even though they’ve come from different circumstances and it says nothing about the quality of relationships they get into. So really, I just want advice here. What am I doing right and wrong here, is there something I should also be doing, et cetera.
SATT Redux
Alright, SATTR, first and foremost, I’m glad to see you’re making these improvements. One of the most important things you can be doing, especially in the wake of your break up is to focus on yourself for a while and address some of the patterns in your life that’re making you unhappy or contributing to your general feeling of malaise and hopelessness.
As a general rule, one of the greatest loves of your life should be the love of your life – that is, being generally happy and satisfied with the life you live, the person you are and feeling like things are pretty good overall.
I realize this seems reductive or counterproductive to your goals – that is, figuring out this whole dating thing – but your longest and arguably most important relationship is going to be with yourself. If your life is focused around a relationship and you fall apart without one, then you’re going to be making yourself miserable and making it that much harder to find or maintain relationships. You will, after all, have times when you’ll be single for longer than you’d prefer or find yourself single unexpectedly. You may even have times where, even when you’re in a relationship, when you’ll be on your own for extended periods of time – whether because of work, health, family issues, who knows. If you don’t have a life of your own, independent of dating or romance, then you’re creating a situation where you’re not looking for a partner so much as a life raft.
That’s not great – both from a “are you in good working order” sense, but also because you’re going to be prioritizing A Relationship (person to be added later) rather than finding someone who’s a good fit for you and who you’re a good fit for. At best, you’ll be finding a lot of poor matches and a series of short term relationships when you’re looking for a long-term one. At worst… well, that’s one way you end up in relationships that should’ve ended a long time ago, but the concept of being single is so horrible that you’d rather stay in a bad relationship than risk leaving it and being alone again.
Having a good life on your own is the foundation that everything else is built on. When you have that, you not only take the pressure off yourself to find A Relationship, but you feel more empowered to take your time, explore things a bit more and really zero in on what you want, instead of hoping to land the next thing that comes down the pike.
Now with that in mind, I want to give you the most deceptively simple, yet powerful advice possible: I want you to take “should” out of your vocabulary. “Should” is telling you that there are rules to this. “Should” is saying that You’re Doing It Wrong. When you say “Should” you’re saying that there’s a ticking clock and if you don’t achieve A Relationship before it reaches zero then you have failed… somehow.
And it’s bullshit. It’s entirely in your head. These are self-limiting beliefs that do nothing but make you feel bad for no reason. “Should” is the language that convinces you that you’re “falling behind” or that you’re not working hard enough or succeeding fast enough instead of acknowledging that you are on your own path, with your own story, and nobody else’s story will fit you properly.
I understand that, on some level, you feel like you have something to prove. Your last relationship was a disaster and you still have mixed feelings about it. But a new relationship isn’t going to make that past one go away. A new relationship isn’t going to change anything for you that you can’t change on your own. And a new relationship isn’t going to prove anything –not to you, not to your ex or to the universe.
You’ve “taken too long” to start dating after your break up? Says who? Where is that written? What is the exact time limit between when you’ve broken up and when you should get back into dating again?
You’re “falling behind”? Falling behind who, exactly? Why is it bad to “fall behind”? Do you think that love is a Battle Royale, where the people in last place are systematically eliminated? Is there a prize for being “ahead” of other people?
(Well, besides divorce and therapy if you’re lucky; trying to play off sexual abuse as being just that goddamn sexy if you’re not a la Chris Brown and others).
Who measures these things and why should you care what they think? Strangers on the Internet who tell you that you need X number of relationships within Y years in order to be dateable? Random TikToks from people you’ve never met, who know nothing about you or your circumstances, making declarations that have nothing to do with you? Is there a prize for out pacing everyone else?
Other people have gotten back on their feet in shorter time than you, sure. But so what? They have nothing to do with you. They are not the yard stick against which your life is measured. Other people have taken much longer than you. That doesn’t make them worse or sadder. It’s just their story, not yours.
To mangle a line from Seanan McGuire: if a crow spends too much time staring at a frog, it will think it’s bad at jumping instead of remembering it can fly.
You say that you recognize that this is all self-imposed… well, if it’s self-imposed, then you can unimpose it. You can stop telling yourself that you “should” do this and just choose to live your life. If you meet someone awesome while you’re out living your life, then that’s great! If you don’t… well, you’re living a good life and you’ll meet someone later and that’s fine.
And that’s before we even get into the fact that you’re about to up stakes and go back to school for your graduate degree. So you’ve given yourself an artificial deadline where you “should” be focusing on getting a girlfriend. But not only is that self-imposed, but you may not realize you’ve also given yourself a relationship cut-off point.
While it varies from program to program and discipline to discipline, grad school tends to be a nightmare when it comes to work/life balance. A lot of long-term marriages feel the strain that comes from getting an advance degree.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t (there’s that word again) date now or in grad school, but you want to understand exactly what it is that you would be signing up for if you were to make the day you leave to start your grad program the end date for finding a new girlfriend.
Any relationship you start now is going to be like a Japanese game show – running as fast as you can at a series of doors and hoping you pick the one that actually opens, instead of slamming into a wall. And to be honest the odds that you will have found something between now and then and have had the time to solidify your relationship, build that mix of connection, intimacy, affection, respect, trust and commitment that will make it through the buzzsaw of grad school is… low. It’s not impossible, but I wouldn’t necessarily be betting money on it lasting.
And while there’s a lot to appreciate about short term relationships, I suspect another short-term one right now will do you far more harm than good.
Hence: take “should” out of your vocabulary. If something comes along, then that’s awesome, and you should enjoy it for what it is, not for what you think it’s going to mean. But focusing on having a good life instead will mean that you enjoy the time you have far more. It means that you’ll be more relaxed, more confident and happier overall. And that means that, should serendipity happen and you do meet somebody incredible, you’ll not only feel more at ease and unpressured, you’ll be in a much better position to take full advantage of the opportunity.
And because you’ll have that solid foundation of friends, passions, hobbies and general satisfaction with your life, you’ll have improved the likelihood of making this relationship a success… instead of another complicated knot of messy feelings and regrets.
Good luck.
I’m 32 at the end of July and I’ve never even kissed, still got the v-card. Had social anxiety my whole life so far (Asperger’s Syndrome side effect) and it has made it nearly impossible to get a job. So-called “zoomers” talk as if I’m middle-aged already. I’ve been trying to fix myself this whole time, been on medication, therapy, exercise. I still don’t like myself very much.
Are women out of my reach?
I read your article about how not to be creepy but if I could just decide to be charming or worth talking to I wouldn’t be so anxious around people.
It feels hopeless. What do I do?
Logan’s Runner-Up
Here’s a suggestion: quit listening to Zoomers.
Ok, granted, as a man who’s just stepped into the far side of his mid-40s, that’s a little “get off my lawn”. I freely admit that. However I keep seeing people who have literally convinced themselves that life functionally ends at 25 because… well, because. Mostly because they keep hearing Zoomers and Gen-Alphas swearing up and down that everything ends after that and nothing you do later in life matters.
And while it’s the prerogative of every new generation to be convinced that they’ve figured out the answer to Life, The Universe and Everything, it’s the prerogative of the ones before – the ones who have actual experience and perspective under their belts – to either nod wryly or roll their eyes at people who’ve barely even started their lives making grand declarations about How It All Works. It’s enthusiasm without the benefit of experience or perspective.
So, as I’m often saying: do yourself a favor and go outside and touch grass. Quit paying attention to the Zoomers telling you that life has passed you by if you haven’t achieved everything by your mid-20s. They know nothing about you, your life or your struggles. Most of them affect this attitude because they see their own futures looming and are terrified of it – same as every previous generation.
This is precisely the reason why I tell people to pay attention to what they pay attention to, especially when it comes to social media. Most of the time, you’re taking on noise, not signal, and most of it is designed to get a rise out of you, not to help.
Just as it’s important to eliminate “should” from your vocabulary, cutting out the shit that tells you “it’s too late” – particularly when there’s no actual basis in fact – will go a long way to making you feel better. And that’s going to be important because if you still don’t like yourself very much, other people are going to follow your lead.
Here’s the thing: self-talk is important. If you’re looking in the mirror and saying “ugh, god, why are you even allowed to exist”, then you’re setting up a filter by which you will live your life. You are not just putting that energy out into the universe (as it were), you’re emitting that energy like a passive-aggressive Chernobyl. When you tell people how to feel about you – because you feel that way about yourself – they’ll behave accordingly. People respond to your vibe and react to it; the folks who are most in tune with you will take it onboard, themselves. This is why one of the secrets of being charming and delightful is warmth and friendliness; people pick up on it, feel good in your presence and want to spend more time with you.
It’s also why someone who thinks of themselves as hot as fuck and acts accordingly – even if they’re unconventional-looking – and have people respond to their attitude. Those people are picking up on that person’s vibe and attitude and it carries them along. It’s not being delusional – they’re not looking in the mirror and seeing Idris Elba staring back at them. They just see what they like in themselves, bring that forward and make it their strength. The strength and sincerity of their belief and actions carry over to others and encourage them to see it too.
But here’s the other thing I think you’re missing: being charming is a choice, but not the way you think. Deciding to be charming doesn’t flip a switch and suddenly you are. Deciding to be charming or charismatic or just likeable is deciding to work at it. It’s deciding “OK, I’m going to be more charismatic, so I’m going to start doing the things that improve my charisma.” That would include finding the type of charisma that vibes with your personality, working on things like warmth and approachability, cultivating an interest in other people, learning how to best connect with them.
I mean, call it woo woo all you want, but it’s not a binary where either you have it your you don’t. It’s a skill – something you develop through deliberate practice. All you have to do is look to Hollywood, where people quite literally learn how to make someone feel like the most important person in the room.
And here’s the secret: nobody is born charismatic or popular. Everyone has had to work at it. It feels like there’s a binary because you have a 24-7 feed of your own life and thoughts, but only a very limited highlight reel of other people’s lives. Some folks may have started earlier or have personalities or circumstances that make it easier for them to get good at it, but everyone started from the same place. It just doesn’t seem that way because you weren’t there for the learning phase, nor were you tapped into their thoughtstream.
Women are out of your reach only in as much as you limit your reach by defining yourself by your perceived limitations.
Work on liking yourself. As you do, you’ll make it much easier to learn the skills that make you a more attractive, more desirable partner. It’s work, sure, but it’s work that’s well worth doing.
Good luck.