Don't Be A Creeper Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Bonus Episode: What Do You Do If She Gives You A Fake Number?

November 13, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I’m answering your most important dating questions! If you have a question about love, sex or dating, then be sure to leave a comment. Maybe next week the question I’ll answer will be yours!

This week: Why do so many women have empty online dating profiles? And what do you do when a woman’s given you a fake number?

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Is He Shy, or Is He A Creeper?

November 1, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

A guy from school that I barely know – we have one class together and don’t even sit beside each other – has been telling my friends and acquaintances about how ‘heartbroken’ he is that I “don’t like him the way he likes me”. Of course my concerned friends and acquaintances have approached me and told me about it – he corners them in line at the cafeteria, or while they’re waiting for the bus, or even when they’re in the library studying, so he can dump his FEELINGS all over them and ask for “advice” about “how to get me to like him”.

They’re freaked out, I’m freaked out, and I don’t know what to do.

Is this guy just trying to dig for information about me in order to gauge his chances? Or is he trying to coerce me into going out with him so he’ll stop harassing my friends and making everyone (including me!) SUPER uncomfortable? I get that, if you’re shy, you might want to test the waters first, but this feels more like a coordinated campaign than some innocent, awkward guy trying to figure out his feelings. Of course he knew that my friends/acquaintances would tell me about his actions and “feelings” so, now that the cat’s out of the bag, apparently I’m supposed to respond. Consequently, it feels manipulative and creepy and now I’m scared and don’t want to go to class. If I say, “Sorry, not interested. Stop hitting up my friends because you’re freaking them out”, I’m guessing that there’s a pretty good chance that it’ll go badly for me and he’ll try to retaliate somehow. If his current M.O. is any indication, he’ll probably spread malicious lies and rumours about me in order to get people in our program ‘on his side’ and make me out as some kind of psycho b*tch who was actually stalking him rather than the other way around.

I have no interest in dating him, though, and don’t respect the way he manipulated my friends into telling me about his feelings on his behalf rather than just nutting up and doing it himself. Should I just ignore him and hope he gets the hint?

(I know this sounds very high school-ish but we’re actually in university. I really didn’t see this coming.)

Thanks for your feedback.

Objection, Hearsay

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Stop Creeping Out Women?

July 8, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I knew this woman through Twitter last year, we share the same favorite TV show and I want to live in her part of the world, I’m studying her language. We communicated through Twitter throughout the year, liking each other’s tweets and learning about our lives from it.

Things started to change last month, when she’s started ignoring my comments and questions, even though we still had some chats and I still received her likes. Things got worse with every passing week, and tonight I couldn’t take it anymore, I DMed her, asking if I had done something wrong.

Yes, she said. She said we seemed to have different thoughts on our relationship, and she didn’t like it that I added her on other social media besides Twitter. Turns out we also have different cultures – in my culture acquaintances easily add each other on Facebook, in her culture it’s reserved for close friends.

The good news is she didn’t block me and we are still mutuals on Twitter. The bad news is she asked me to step back because I was being too intense.

Turns out I still repeat the same mistake I did in college. Two friends I liked literally running away from me and I didn’t understand what’s going on – no touch, no lewd talk, but it happened. We remained friends, but I had scared them away. Another love interest ghosted me, and when we had a chance meeting, I was so lucky she prevented the store assistant from calling the police as I was weeping inside the store.

Some people have asked me to dial it down when chasing a woman, and I thought I’ve got it, especially now I write column for a feminist website. Turns out I’ve made lives miserable for both me and another person because of my bad habit.

My question is, how does I control my intensity? How can I attract a woman better without scaring her? How can I win her trust gradually? How can I differentiate between being caring & supportive and being overbearing?

Thank you,
Too Intense

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Understanding the Hot/Creepy Matrix (Or: The Hot Celebrity Exception)

May 27, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Everyone has their guilty pleasures: things that they do that they would probably refuse to admit to in public. I mean, I don’t, but that’s mostly because I had my sense of guilt surgically removed in 2006, but, y’know. Everyone else does.

And that’s between you and your Google history, chief

One of the closest things I have to a guilty pleasure is the relationships.txt twitter feed. Having the best – or at least, most what-and-I-can’t-stress-this-enough-the-FUCK – parts of Reddit delivered to my Twitter timeline on a regular basis gives me my daily dose of both rage and reassurance that I will never be out of work. Plus on occasion, there’s a story that serves as a prime example of some of the things I warn people about.

And then there’re stories that in and of themselves are interesting… but it’s the reactions they provoke that are more interesting.

Such is the case of the Jailbait Birthday Creeper.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: What Do I Do About A “Missing Stair”?

April 3, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

I have a bit of an ongoing issue with someone who I think is a ‘missing stair’. About a year and a half ago, I met this guy through a sports team I’m in and we became acquainted but not close. He had a reputation as a ‘gutter-punk’ type who’d steal your cigarettes or crash on your couch, but he seemed to have outgrown it by this point.

I became aware of some gigs he was co-organising being cancelled as accusations of sexual assault came to light. By the end of the next day, multiple women had mentioned having similar experiences with the guy. A friend and I in the sports team contacted our management who recommended he step back, but felt they couldn’t expel him as the accusations were accusations only.

A few months later, I started dating a person who is friends with this guy’s girlfriend. My girlfriend doesn’t trust him either, but feels that if he is abusive that it would be unfair to abandon her friend who may need support should it transpire this guy is the liar and (frankly) rapist that he’s reported to be. And I agree. I think this guy’s girlfriend has (at best) bought into his sketchy excuses or (at worst) can’t leave due to some kind of duress and might need people in her corner.

As a result, I’ve encountered this guy socially a few times. He’s aware I reported him and I’ve made him fully aware that I can’t ever trust him again and not to read me being civil as friendship, but he continues to try and brute-force his way back into my good graces. Some friends have had the confidence to tell him exactly how unwelcome he is (which has ended in physical altercations in some cases) but with me he seems to engineer situations where if I blew up at him, or even enforced firm boundaries, I’d be the one turning a ‘civil chat’ into drama and ruining evenings. It feels awful every time.

Every time my partner and I acknowledge him, we both feel awful and feel like we’re betraying other people we know who end up in tears or fits of rage when this guy shows his face. I feel like I’m enabling the missing stair, but can’t think of what to do that wouldn’t turn into a screaming match or worse, especially as his girlfriend, who is an otherwise pleasant person, is very defensive about the situation.

We’re not in any other contact and I’ve blocked him on social media, but short of leaving town, I don’t know what to do about this guy and feel like scum for every time he’s wheedled me into tolerating him. This guy’s needled me into hugging him before and the thought makes me wretch. My heart sinks when I hear his voice. What do you think, Doc?

Cheers,
Carpenter In Training

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