Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
I’m sure this is a familiar take on an age-old situation, but here’s hoping you can provide some insight to help me to move past this. There’s a lot of ground to cover.
I was never popular in my youth, particularly with the ladies. When I went to college, this didn’t improve by much, and I remember being the only one in my group of friends that never seemed to have any dating prospects, or at least I never noticed if someone had got their eye on me. I vividly remember all of my twenties, going out three times a week or scrolling endlessly through a dating app, in the vague hope that I’d find a connection. Instead, I spent many nights alone, which at times was emotionally crippling. Despite it all, I’ve still found the strength to pursue my goals and grow as a person. I’m not where I want to be…yet…particularly as I only have a very small group of friends, but I’m in a far better space than I was many years ago. I’m still working on things in therapy. However, in general, I am a confident, successful, happy-go-lucky guy.
Now being in my thirties, the last couple of years I’ve received a degree of attention that I never thought I’d experience, However, I find it leaves me completely confused rather than satisfied, and I can feel myself tense up the moment that any of these events occur. For instance, everyone…and I mean *everyone*…asks me about my romantic life. “Have you met someone yet?”, “Are you single? You’re a good-looking guy.”, “Any girl would be lucky to have you.”. I can’t go a literal week without someone asking me such, and so clearly, I must be giving off an impression or vibe that I should be doing well for myself, romantically. Furthermore, while I don’t go out a ton, the last few times I have been out on the town there’s been moments, granted few and far between, that I think a woman may have shown me interest, such as a glance my way, or by positioning themselves near me. You’d think all of this would sound promising, but my own reality is far from the expectations from others. Whereas people seem to think I have women blowing up my phone, I’m not in contact with anyone who isn’t a friend, and no woman tries to connect with me. What’s it like to have a woman hit you up? I wouldn’t know. When those other “moments” do occur, such as the glance, I convince myself that it’s not possible, that they were just in my vicinity, that I’m seeing things, and that if a woman really wanted me, she’d behaved in such a manner as you’d see in the movies, or how my friends would describe women chasing after them.
So when, for example, a friend of a friend keeps touching my arm during conversation, I just say to myself that she is comfortable around me…end of. One could argue I’m desirable enough to be wanted, but not enough for it to be obvious. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the process. I don’t know, because I’m catching up for lost time.
Now, I can’t sit here and say all of this without being truthful about my relationship with women, because overall it’s been a very mixed bag. To start with the positives, I find that women who get to know me are extremely comfortable in my presence. They trust me, completely. I also experience no anxiety having conversations with women, and I find that I make them laugh, there’s always some good banter, there’s plenty of eye contact, and everyone has a great time. However, on the flip side, I don’t approach women unless I have a very explicit reason to do so. As someone who goes to meetup events, I’m fine with initiating a conversation with women during an activity, but if it were a bar environment then there’s no chance in hell that I’d go up to a stranger. I’ve also found that women who don’t know me can be very inconsistent or non-reciprocal towards me, as there’s been more times than not when I’ve got the impression that someone doesn’t want to speak to me, such as by avoiding eye contact (although a friend did once try to explain that this was likely because I am “intimidating”). Lastly, I tend to find that I subconsciously avoid women that I am attracted to, or who possess a level of beauty that I consider “out of my league” which, as much as it pains me to say this, is basically any average-looking woman.
I also can’t claim that I haven’t been successful with women to a certain extent, because I’ve slept with over twenty. It’s not something I’m proud of. All of these have been friends, or friends of. This took place during a time in my life when I was really down in the dumps, with each one of these “relationships” fizzling out immediately, usually involving a bit of alcohol, and I found the common theme was that these were women that I did not have much chemistry with, wasn’t very attracted to, and were usually people experiencing emotional difficulty (go figure). There was never much enthusiasm from them either, which I’m guessing, subconsciously, is what I’ve grown accustomed to, and have “accepted” as how I should be treated.
All of this to say, I’m not completely useless. I’m just missing a few pieces to the puzzle, but I don’t know what they are or where to fit them. I know it’s a “me” problem, I just don’t know how to fix it.
The Missing Piece
Have you ever heard the hackneyed saying “you teach people how to treat you?” This is a phrase that often makes me grit my teeth because of how often people use it to blame folks stuck in toxic or abusive relationships… but it applies here. Specifically: it applies to you and how you treat yourself. This is your missing piece. Through your actions and behaviors, you’ve functionally taught yourself how to treat you – to assume the worst, to dismiss the possibility of someone caring for you or finding you attractive and instead to actively pursue brief, unsatisfying connections that you know on some level either can’t work or are actively bad for you.
This is very much something you’ve done to yourself, and that means you’re the only person who can undo it.
Now, let’s start with an obvious example of the problem and one that comes up shockingly often: the classic “I will never talk to women in a social situation because nobody ever shows interest in me.” This almost always comes up in the context of bars and clubs (which I will get to in a moment) but ends up being applied to pretty much all aspects of life, and it all comes from the same place: a fear of rejection. Folks dress it up in all kinds of ways, but at the end of the day, it’s a fear of being willing to put yourself out there and risk the possibility of being told “not interested”.
However, the people who talk about it the most don’t see it or won’t acknowledge this as a fear of rejection. Instead, they hold it up as a sign that they’re unattractive or undesirable. They never see any approach invitations or signs of interest and so clearly they can never talk to anyone and thus this is proof that they are the love child of Deadpool and The Toxic Avenger, little better than a cancerous tumor with eyes and a mouth.
But if you dig in even slightly, it becomes clear that the signs of interest or approach invitations that they’re looking for are so over the top that you would only see them in fiction. You even say it yourself: “if a woman really wanted me, she’d behaved in such a manner as you’d see in the movies”.
Ah yes, the movies, famously exact mirrors of social behavior, reflecting reality so perfectly that one might be forgiven for thinking “She’s All That” is a documentary or that “Anyone But You” was cobbled together from archival footage of someone’s vacation videos.
The problem here is spectacularly obvious: you’ve set a standard for yourself that’s so ludicrously over the top that it’s all but impossible for those those standards to be met. It’s not just that you’re expecting behavior or reactions that’re hyped up for the audience and to be easily read on screen and that would be off-putting if you saw in real life. It’s that you’ve set a standard for yourself that says “I will not risk interacting with someone unless they show all the signs of love at first sight.” Which – spoiler alert – rarely happens at all and certainly isn’t love.
What we think of as “love at first sight” is almost always limerence – obsessive interest mixed with intrusive thoughts about the other person and a desire for the person almost as an object rather than an individual. Limerence is inherently shallow, based almost exclusively on someone’s imagined being rather than the reality and – importantly – is rarely actually acted upon. And just as importantly: even if it were love at first sight (it’s not), that’s not how the vast majority of people meet or date. It’s very, very rare for someone to go on a date with someone they just met at random, never mind start a relationship with them and holding yourself to a standard of instant attraction or nothing is ultimately an excuse to never actually take a risk.
I would also point out that chaotic environments like bars or clubs aren’t great for getting anything but the shallowest, most surface-level impression of someone, affected as much by the light, noise, smoke and crowd of bodies as their basic presentation. And that’s if someone sees you at all. This makes it a very bad place to use as a baseline for measuring your attractiveness. Honestly, if you’re not already a club guy or someone who likes the singles bar environment, then bars and clubs are a poor place to try to meet people. If you’re not comfortable there, it’s going to show in your behavior and your body language – which can certainly contribute to the “very intimidating” vibe. You’re almost certainly not going to be meeting people you would be compatible with. And in that case, why should you care if they find you attractive or not in the first place?
It would make far more sense for you to actually focus on meeting people at meetups and activities – places where you are more likely to find people who share your interests and where you already feel comfortable and in your element. You would have a much higher level of success of meeting someone who you would click with, especially if you were focused on a slower progression rather than an instant connection.
But getting back to the fear of rejection and an unwillingness to take risks: this is also why your sexual experiences have primarily been the result of – and forgive a problematic phrasing – going for the lowest of low-hanging fruit. You pursued people you weren’t attracted to and thus had no real fear of consequences for failure, at a time in your life when you were feeling especially low and thus anything with them was doomed to fail, and who had issues of their own and were less likely to turn you down. This lack of enthusiasm on their part’s unsurprising – it was almost certainly mirroring your own. But the fact that you kept going back to that well – twenty times, in fact – is part of the problem. You, quite literally, taught yourself that the only people you’re “allowed” to approach or pursue are people who you don’t like, and who don’t care that much about you. You made the decision to chase after relationships that you knew had no real chance of success. And you’ve done it repeatedly, carving the groove in your brain that says “this is all you can have”.
This is why I’m a little surprised you’re asking what the missing piece is. The missing piece is pretty glaringly obvious. You don’t believe in the possibility that people could find you attractive or desirable, you’ve set standards that are impossible to meet in order to ensure that you don’t risk getting rejected and you reinforce your own self-limiting beliefs by sabotaging yourself with short-lived connections with the folks you feel the least risk of rejection from. If you want things to be different, then those are the things you’re going to have to change.
And unfortunately, this is very much a case of “change has to come from within”. This isn’t a case of needing people to confirm your attractiveness. You already have people doing that. You just refuse to believe them. You need to let yourself believe it. Part of this comes from treating yourself better – dressing stylishly, taking care of yourself and so on. Our brains take their cues from our bodies and the way you treat yourself changes how you think about yourself. If you’re behaving in ways that say that you are hot and confident, your brain starts to behave as though you were. But it also requires actively carving a new groove – taking the time to deliberately change how you think about yourself.
You’re also going to have to be willing to take risks. There is no world in which there’s 0% chance of rejection; nobody, no celebrity, Instagram influencer, YouTube personality, mode, whatever, is immune to getting rejected. You have to be willing to take the chance that sometimes people you like aren’t going to like you back the way you wish they did. Not everyone is going to like you or want to date or fuck you and that’s ok. Being turned down can sting at first, but it’s neither fatal, nor is it the end of the world. It’s just one moment in time with one person and their lack of interest often has nothing to do with you. A lot of disinterest isn’t because you’re unworthy or unappealing, it’s because of shit that you could never account for, never correct for and wouldn’t matter even if you did because you can’t control how other people feel. If someone is just sick of dating, period, you could be the God of Abs And Cheekbones and the most you’re going to get back is “…so?”
You have to be willing to doubt your doubts, to challenge your refusal to believe someone might like you and to celebrate yourself rather than make assumptions about whether someone is “on your level” or not.
You may find self-directed CBT exercises helpful in this, or you may need to actually talk to a therapist to untangle the reasons why you won’t let yourself believe in your own worth. But it’s going to take work and deliberate effort.
Oh, and one more thing: stop trying to make up for lost time. This mindset is part of the problem. You’re treating this as though you were on some schedule or that you have a window that’s been closing since puberty and it’s not true. All this mindset does is reinforce the idea that you’re “behind” or flawed or otherwise unworthy. There is no window, there is no time limit. Those protests you’re about to make are just there to reinforce those self-limiting beliefs. They’re not facts, they’re just a perverse form of emotional self-defense that are there to justify your previous beliefs. They only serve to hinder your growth and improvement by making you panic and trying to rush like you’ve heard the “time’s running out” music in Super Mario Bros.
Slow your roll and take your time to work on yourself and your self-worth. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll have much better luck meeting people you actually want to date instead of wasting your time with people you don’t actually like.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove:
I had previous written to you and you responded to my letter a few weeks ago (Back In The Saddle). A little brief backstory to this post, I have been travelling around on holiday for the past week and I met someone. Yes that stupid corny phrase “It’ll happen when you least expect it” actually worked.
Now here is where the problem comes in. She currently lives in Germany as she is studying for her masters and I live in the States. However, she has a portable career path and is looking at moving to the States at some point.
As you can see between the timeline of my previous posts, I think this is way too early to start thinking that far ahead. But I do really like this girl and want to put in some effort and she wants to give it a try. I had done the LDR thing before, and like most people it didn’t really work out. I do know a couple though where she was from the UK and he was from Nigeria and now they are happily married in the US so I know it is possible.
My question is, how do you long distance relationship? I know not to over expect these things to work out, but how do I at least put forth the honest effort.
Still On The Horse
I’m not going to lie: long distance relationships are tough. Long distance relationships with an international component can be tougher – especially when there’s an ocean between you and your sweetie as well as international borders.
Part of what makes long-distance relationships harder than more standard relationships is that you quite simply can’t rely on the same sorts of expectations and relationship models that you would expect to have with an in-person connection. You won’t, for example, have access to simple physical intimacy with them. Not sex but things like casual touching, the hand tracing over your back or squeezing your shoulder as they walk by, the weight of their legs on your lap as you both sprawl on the couch. You won’t have the same domestic moments as you both decide to order a pizza and marathon Delicious In Dungeon after a long day at work when you’re both exhausted but still want to see each other. You won’t even have dates the way you would with a partner who lives in the same city or zipcode as you.
You also need more of what you would need to make an in-person relationship work, often applied in ways that you might not think about otherwise.
Communication skills make or break a relationship, but this is doubly true in a long-distance relationship when often all you have are your words. Phone calls, texts, DMs and video chats are going to be the primary means of connection for the two of you, and they’re going to be the tool through which you share the majority of your intimate moments. A sexual connection can be maintained, but it’s going to require that the two of you do a lot of talking, a lot of fantasizing and a lot of sharing.
You’re going to need to put a lot of effort and imagination into planning dates and events together because you can’t simply decide to go see a movie or plan a spontaneous dinner out. You’ll have to think so far outside the box that your “dates” may not look like dates to other people. A date for the two of you might need to be things like time together in MMOs, tabletop games via the Internet or movie watch parties via Discord.
You’re also going to need a lot of trust and likely a lot of flexibility in your relationship. It can be particularly hard to maintain an exclusive relationship long-distance, especially one that’s likely to be years-long. Not because someone is inevitably going to cheat, but because your lives are going to be so separated and involving so many people that crushes are going to happen, jealousy is going to happen, longing is going to happen… and you’re not going to have those in-person moments to reassure yourselves or remind yourselves of your connection to one another. The stress and the fear and the anxiety around the expectations of a monogamous commitment and What It* Means is often what kills a long-distance relationship, rather an any actual infidelity. Sometimes simply not having the expectations of a monogamous commitment until you’re in person again can be helpful. When you aren’t worried about being cheated on or your partner leaving, you’re far less likely to round innocent or innocuous behavior up to “danger”, simply because you’re not hypervigilant for “threats” to the relationship.
(*It, in this case, being anything from “she mentioned her cute lab partner a lot this week” to “I haven’t heard from him since I texted last night”)
So if you want this LDR to work, you need to put the effort into communication and connection, to building trust with one another and to not take aspects of this relationship for granted. That time difference and separation, the lack of intersection between your life and hers… these are all going to require that you put a lot of thought into how you conduct this relationship.
One thing that will help is seeing each other as frequently as you can. This does become more complicated seeing as you’re in the US and she’s in Germany. If you haven’t already, I’d start saving up money for trips, getting very familiar with flight price tracking services and getting Global Entry. Now, one benefit of her being German is that she has an easier time traveling through the EU, so it’s possible that the two of you could meet in the middle (as it were) and have romantic trips to Paris or Florence or Vienna if the flights are cheaper than to Berlin. But the more you can see each other in person, the easier it will be to maintain this relationship.
But the most important factor in an LDR – the one thing that can dictate whether a long-distance relationship will last or not – is an end-point. There needs to be a time when this will no longer be long-distance. Having an end date is huge; it’s much easier to white-knuckle through the hard parts when you know you just have to hang on a little longer and you can count down the days. When the entire relationship hangs in limbo? It becomes a lot harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel – and it doesn’t take much before you start to question whether there even is another side to reach. So once this relationship becomes serious – when you know this has long-term legs and you want to take it to the next level – you’re going to want to start talking about when, how and where the two of you are going to reunite for good.
A LDR is high-risk, with a higher than average chance of breaking up. But with the right person? It’s absolutely worth it. You have to decide if you’re willing to roll those dice and if you can do the hard work of keeping this relationship alive and viable.
Good luck.
