flirting Archives

How Do I Know if I Even WANT a Relationship?

January 18, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Doctor’s Note: Hey NerdLovers! It’s a new year and I want to help start 2021 off on a positive note. So I want to hear from you: what are some of your relationship wins? How have you improved your personal life, your friendships or your romantic relationships? What are some of the ways you’ve made your life better recently? Let’s share some hope, some positivity and success to help inspire folks to achieve their own victories.

Send your success stories to doc@doctornerdlove.com with the subject header “relationship wins”; maybe you’ll see your success story in a future column.

Hi, Doc.

Lately, I’ve had these recurring thoughts, that maybe the only reasons I want to seek romantic relationships with women is a combination of curiosity, fear of missing out and a sort of jealousy towards happy couples I’ve known.

Some background: I’m in my late 30s, and have basically zero experience when it comes to relationships. Never kissed, been on an actual date or had sex. The reasons as I’ve seen them are ones you’ve probably heard a bunch of times: Low confidence, social anxiety, difficulty expressing myself, a general lack of assertivity, the works.

Over the years, I’ve become aware of these shortcomings. As you might imagine, they’ve had an impact on my life beyond my (lack of) dating life. Up until relatively recently, I couldn’t hold a job beyond a few months. I got into this awful cycle of starting out optimistically, but my lack of communication and reluctance to ask for help were seen as apathy and incompetence, and I’d inevitably reach a point where I just didn’t make the cut and lost my job. This happened at least 3 or 4 times, before I resolved to look for help on my issues.

Now, with a combination of some rounds of therapy, reading self-help books and blogs, and support from close friends and family, I’ve managed to regain a bit of control over my life. I’m in a pretty good position in my current job, and I’ve had some victories in dealing with my anxiety (Phone calls no longer terrify me the way they used to). Obviously, I’ve still faced some situations that make me freeze in panic and indecision, but progress has been visible at least.

However, one aspect where I have not been able to see progress is in interpersonal relationships. I have some small groups of friends, some pretty close, but pretty much all of them revolving around my hobbies. Most of the time I have to interact one on one with someone (and specially with women), I’ll either blank out on what to talk about or do the nerd-ranting thing when a familiar topic pops up. Not to say that all I’ve had is bad experiences, but here’s the thing: Even in the occasions where I’ve had positive social experiences, I can’t seem to enjoy myself, and that brings me to the original premise.

I’m not sure if it’s the more avoidant parts of my personality that cause a lack of trying in regards to dating because it’s “not worth the hassle”, but I can’t help but think it might be something else. I mean, I do feel attracted to women and as far as I can tell I’m not asexual. However, I just can’t see myself in a relationship and find it hard to find motivation to pursue one.

Any thoughts?

Owner of An Indecisive Heart

Hey man, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice here. You’ve made a lot of progress, in what seems like a relatively short amount of time. I mean, look at what you’ve accomplished. You’ve gotten help, you’ve been proactive in making your life better, building your social skills, working on your communication and building up your confidence and emotional resilience. That’s pretty damn huge. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved! You’ve come a long, long damn way, and that’s incredible. I’m really proud of you for that.

I think part of the problem that you’re running into is that you’re pushing yourself pretty hard and it’s making you stall out a little. One of the things that people often don’t think about as they’re working on themselves is that self-improvement, especially when it comes to things like overcoming social anxiety, takes time and energy. The problem is that sometimes you can get caught up in the excitement of your progress and push yourself a little too hard. Much like when you’re starting an exercise program or beginning to train for a sport, you can overtrain and overexert yourself and end up hitting a wall. It’s not that you aren’t ready or that you haven’t progressed to this point, but that you’ve basically exhausted yourself and drained your reserves. As a result, you actually end up running the risk of injuring yourself or losing a little ground because you have nothing left in the tank.

… ok, this metaphor may have gotten away from me a little.

The point is that you’ve made a lot of progress, and that’s taken time and energy. And while I totally get the desire to keep pushing forward and get to that next level in your development, I think you may need to take a moment to breath and recoup your energy. It’s hard to enjoy yourself when it feels like you have to give everything you’ve got to being present and social AND focus on all the other things you’ve learned.

Small wonder that you don’t have much motivation to try to pursue a relationship; you’re still working on not exhausting yourself while you practice your newfound social skills.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you should want a relationship. It may well be that it’s just not your thing. There’s such a thing as being aromantic; you can be attracted to people and interested in sex, but not interested in romantic relationships. But I think it’s just as likely that you don’t have the bandwidth for pursuing one yet. What I think you should do right now is focus on what you’ve already accomplished. There’re four stages to developing a skill set:

Unconscious incompetence (you don’t know anything about it at all, including how unskilled you are)
Conscious incompetence (you’re aware of what you don’t know)
Conscious competence (you can do it, but you have to think about it as you do it)
Unconscious competence (you can do it without thinking)

Right now, you’re at stage 3; you’re aware of what you’re doing, you know how to do it, but it requires that you pay attention. That takes up a fair amount of mental RAM, so it’s not surprising there’re other areas where you still go blank or feel like you’re struggling. Taking a little time to develop those skills you’ve already learned into metaphorical muscle memory so that you reach stage 4 will go a long way towards freeing up that RAM so that you’re ready to start applying it to talking to people and enjoying social situations. When you don’t feel like you’re struggling, you’ll be in a better position to enjoy things. When you get to that point, it’ll be a lot easier for you to gauge just what it is you want when it comes to companionship and relationships.

And hey, you may well realize that while you like sex and friendship… you just aren’t looking for romance. And that’s fine. That’s a perfectly valid option if that’s where you decide you fall on that spectrum.

But for now: take a victory lap and a victory nap, my dude. You’ve earned both. Take some time practicing your newfound skills and then move on to the next stage. Despite what you may be feeling, there really is no rush. You aren’t on anyone’s schedule but your own and there is no deadline that you have to meet. Love and relationships — if that’s what you want — will be waiting for you when you’re ready.

Good luck.

Hello Doctor,

I am a big fan of yours. You have helped me get through my feelings of inadequacy of being a virgin in my late 20s (By the way, where are all my virgins at? *laughs*), and my feelings of being morally bankrupt for watching porn and masturbating. For that you will alway have my gratitude.

My question is probably a little different from what is usually sent in for Ask Dr. NerdLove, because it is based on creating a social media account. Let me give you some context before I give you my question. I am a 27M who has never really had social media (I do have a YouTube account, but from everyone I have talked to about social media they don’t really consider it to be, especially because I “don’t upload my own videos”). I mean, I didn’t even have a MySpace when that was cool.

To be completely honest this didn’t start as a “fuck you” to Mark Zuckerberg, because I was trying to transcend the need for social media, or thinking I’m better than people who use social media to communicate. I just wasn’t that interested when I was younger.

As I got older, however, I did start to catch backlash for not having social media, whether it was from girls that I would ask out feeling really uncomfortable that I don’t have it (when they would try to give me their Facebook or Instagram instead of their number or asked for my social media), or the really weird question I would inevitably get asked from someone who finds out I don’t have any: “Do you believe in social media?” Like it’s a religion or something.

Only after talking to my close guy friends (a lot), and getting rejected by a girl that is in my bubble and a new friend, did I come to realize it was because I decided to make my life harder and my dating pool smaller on purpose. I realized for some reason I decided that I wanted to prove to myself and (I guess) others, that I could have a successful love life and social life without it, because of my feelings of being worthy of sex and love. I know it is still possible, but as each year goes by and I get older, I become more serious about getting a relationship (whether sexual or romantic), and more miserable I don’t have one.

So my question is: What is the most well rounded social media application to stay in contact with people I’m close with, and meet the largest amount of girls out of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (I’m only really planning to get one)? And, while we’re at it, what are their distinctive differences and audiences they attract? As I said before, I literally have no fucking idea, I know they exist, but I have really never even seen my friends use them.

I know starting social media is not a cure all for, admittedly, unwanted celibacy, and I have a steep learning curve. But, and this is a big but, I really don’t want to limit myself anymore. Any advice you have will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Social Media Saved My Life

So there’re a couple things here, SMSML. First of all: yes, you can date and meet people without social media. I mean, I realize as a Gen X-er I’m officially one of the Olds but hey, we successfully got by without Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok or what-have-you. Having an Instagram account isn’t going to be the thing that tilts “do I want to bang him (y/n)?” to the “y” side of things, in and of itself. Plenty of folks get by without it.

The thing is: the younger you are, the more you’re going to stand out for not having a social media presence. This isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s just unusual, because social media use is pretty ubiquitous, especially when you start getting to the digital natives in the Millennial and Zoomer generations. Social media has, in many ways, become the place where folks interact with their social circles. It’s how folks stay in contact with each other, it’s where we share our lives and it’s become part of the overall fabric of society. This is especially true during the pandemic; since we can’t be with our friends in person, social media has been a critical part of how people have stayed connected with friends, colleagues and loved ones, especially those who may be spread all over the country or planet. Social media sites and apps have become central to the lives of millions.

(Now whether this is a good thing is a hotly debated subject… especially after the spread of QAnon, anti-vaxx communities, the radicalization effects of Facebook and YouTube and events of January 6th. Not to mention basic issues of privacy.)

So the fact that you don’t have a social media presence will, in fact, make you stand out as being unusual. How people respond to that is going to vary from individual to individual. To some, it’s going to seem like you’re trying to position yourself as a type of snob, hipster or holier-than-thou type; the 2021 version of “I don’t even have a TV”. To others it’s going to seem suspect. After all, when more and more people live their lives online, not having an online presence can seem to some as though you have something to hide. And on a practical level, it can be inconvenient; plenty of folks plan events and get togethers via social media, and that makes it easier to keep everyone in the loop and updated in the event of any changes. When someone isn’t on social media, that makes it harder to keep them connected and involved. Past a point, that difficulty can lead to the outliner not being included — not out of malice or dislike, but simply because it’s easy to forget that you need to take those extra steps.

Now all of that doesn’t mean that you need to develop a social media presence. Those are inconveniences, yes, but not necessarily deal-breakers. If that’s something you’re ok with putting up with, then hey, there you go. But it sounds like you’re looking to actually break this particular seal and get on… somewhere.

So if you were to choose just one… I’d say choose the one that most of your friends use. That will give you an immediate network of people to follow and interact with and who can help you get a quicker grasp of various customs, memes and the unspoken rules that so often crop up like mushrooms after a rain. That being said, you should familiarize yourself with the options that are out there. Facebook is ubiquitous and has the much larger overall user base, but it also tends to trend older. Instagram is a little more unidirectional; you’re broadcasting more than conversing. There’re plenty of conversations that happen in the comments, but it wasn’t designed with an eye towards communities the way that Facebook was. Twitter is closer to being somewhere between the town square or a large restaurant; some folks are speaking to the crowd, others are having conversations with their friends that you’re just able to overhear. And of course there’re always apps like Snapchat, Tumblr, TikTok… all of them are going to be different, and all of them are going to have their different user bases. Figuring out which is best for you will be a matter of trial and error, ultimately.

Now that being said: while you can meet and date folks from Facebook, Instagram and so on, it’s important to remember that for most folks on there, those aren’t dating apps. That doesn’t mean that dates, hook-ups and relationships don’t start there — hell, I can’t count the number of real-life relationships that started on Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft — that’s not what they’re intended for and that’s not what most folks are looking for or expecting.

(Well… kinda. Facebook did add Facebook Dating, but that’s another discussion entirely.)

When you start off, think of your social media presence as being an insight into who you are as a person. You’re sharing part of your life — what you’re into, what you do, etc. The key to meeting people on social media is that you treat it like meeting people through your social circles. You don’t want to cruise through Facebook pages like a horny shark, hitting on everyone who catches your eye; you simply get to know people. Sometimes you and another person will catch a vibe; you can take the conversation to DMs and see where things go. But if you go through Facebook or Insta or what-have-you like it’s a singles bar, you’re gonna be seen as just another free-floating offer of dick, like so many others. You don’t want that. And frankly, neither do the folks you’re going to be talking to.

To be sure: the pandemic means that social media and dating apps are how we’re connecting with folks right now, simply because it’s not safe to do so otherwise. But overall, my recommendation is that you see social media as an accessory to how you meet folks you want to date. It’s a way of staying in contact, expanding your network and giving folks some insight into who you are as a person. The more you focus on your in-person social skills, the easier it is to meet people on social media… and turn those connections into in-person dates.

Good luck.

How Do I Tell The Difference Between Flirting and Professional “Niceness”?

January 4, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

I’m a single female in her mid-20s and I went to a new dentist, who might be in his late-20s/early-30s, for an appointment the other day. He was extremely nice and very conversational. At first I thought he was just being nice (or indirectly flirting with his assistant – who is also young looking and beautiful).

But then he started asking me about food and restaurants, things I like, how long I plan to live in our state.

Then I saw he didn’t have a ring (which I know isn’t always a clue, but I used it) and so I started wondering, “is there more to his nice-ness?”

What are your thoughts? Was he being professional and nice to his new patient? Was he flirting with me and I have to make the move since it is his place of employment? Was he doing it to be nice around his assistant? Or something else I’m not seeing?

Thank you!

– Completely Confused

So this is an easy one, CC: he’s being nice.

Know how I know? Because he’s your dentist. You’re his patient. That means you are legally, ethically and professionally off-limits. It is literally against the rules for him to date or have sexual contact with his patients. Breaking that rule gets his medical license suspended, sanctioned by the ethics board and possibly thrown in jail. There was, in fact, a dentist in Ontario who was put on the sex-offender registry because of a sexual relationship he had with his patient.

His patient, for the record, was his wife.

So no. For many reasons, he was not flirting with you. And if he was flirting with you? Well… then he’s not likely to be your dentist for long. Or anyone’s, really.

(Oddly, this isn’t even the first is “is my dentist flirting with me” letter I’ve received. Did Shonda Rhimes create a show about sexy dentists that I missed?)

Now with that out of the way, let’s talk about the difference between flirting and being nice. This can be a tricky thing to suss out because… well, sometimes the answer to “are they flirting or are they being nice” is “yes”. There are a lot of reasons why somebody will flirt with customers and clients. Most of them come down to money.

Lots of folks in the service industry — especially people who work for tips or commissions — have a financial incentive to flirt. Most people in service industry jobs, especially ones like bartending, waiting tables, the shot girls at bars, even dancers at strip clubs, live and die by their tips. Anything that ups the likelihood of getting a decent tip — which can range from giving a mint with the check or putting a smiley-face and “thank you!” in the bill — can make the difference between being able to pay the rent that month or having to decide which meals they can skip so they don’t get evicted.

It’s also true that people — mostly, but not exclusively men — will spend more money if somebody flirts with them. Men are especially prone to this; it appeals to their ego and encourages them to act out. There are always guys who will want to impress women with how much money they can afford to throw around. This can result in them buying more — which increases the total tab and, theoretically, the tip — so they can show that they’re a big-shot.

There’s also the guy who thinks that tipping well will make him stand out and endear him to the server.

(It will, but not necessarily in the way that he hopes.)

And of course, there’s the gross variant of this who thinks that tipping more will create a sense of obligation; he’s “owed” something because he’s just dropped so much money on her. While you’re more likely to find dudes like this at strip clubs, they’re also known to frequent high-end bars and cocktail lounges.

This isn’t exclusively something women do, by the by. Male servers will also flirt for tips, especially male bartenders. In fact, there’re bars and clubs that’re notorious for hiring flirty male bartenders.

You can also find a variation on professional flirting at stores; a little light flirting keeps the customer entertained and can also encourage them to buy that item that the salesperson told them made them look so hot.

However, more often than not, what we tend to think of as flirting — especially in a professional setting — tends to just be professional niceness. Showing interest in someone is a quick and easy way to build a connection and make them feel good. Making them feel good means they’re more likely to associate that feeling with the brand, the restaurant, the store or the service. It’s one of the intangibles that can make the difference between somebody choosing to go to your practice or the doc-in-the-box down the street.

Of course, not all professional politeness and interest is strategic; some folks are just friendly like that. And of course, there are folks who will flirt because flirting is fun. They don’t mean anything by it, nor do they want anything out of it other than just enjoying flirting with someone.

It can be easy to mistake for flirting in part because, well, someone gives us attention — especially someone we find attractive — it feels great and we want it to mean more. We’re more likely to round it up to flirting because motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug and who doesn’t want to believe that Dr. McHotlips, DDS isn’t into us?

How can you tell if someone is actually interested? Well, to start with, you need a baseline to work from. Are they acting different with you than they do with other customers or other clients? If they aren’t singling you, specifically out for special and sustained attention, then probably not. The bartender who keeps coming back to talk with you, even when the bar is busy, is giving you more of an indication that they like you more than the typical customer… but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily interested in more than conversation.

Similarly, does their job require them to flirt? Are their wages enhanced by being perceived as being more than professionally interested? Again: the odds are better that this is professional flirting, not genuine interest.

Also: what kinds of questions are they asking? Are they asking typical getting to know you questions, or are they asking questions that might give some idea of your relationship status? Are they acting in a way that you would expect from a person who’s interested in you exclusively platonically, or are they being a little more teasing, a little more tempting? Flirting is, in a lot of ways, the dance of getting someone interested in doing something. It can help to think of flirting as trying to get somebody to jump into the pool that they’re worried may be too cold; flirting is the process of inviting them to dip their toe in and doesn’t the water look inviting? Now to be fair: asking the usual getting to know you questions can be the start of flirting. After all, much as with making small talk, you have to build up to flirting; it’s rarely a good idea to dive right in. However, someone who’s flirting will usually move past those standard questions and towards asking more personal things that might tell them if you’re single, or gauge your interest in them. Asking you your feelings about, say, Perkins, generally doesn’t rise to the level of flirting.

Asking a new client about their life, especially basic “oh, you’re new in town!” questions are all fairly standard. Hell, every dentist and hygienist I’ve ever been to has been chatty like that… made slightly more ironic by them asking those questions when wrist deep in your mouth with sharp objects. Though that is, admittedly, better than the dentist I had who thought it was the height of comedy to ask me “Is it safe? Is it safe?” during check-ups and cleanings.

But over all, the best way to determine flirting vs. professional niceness is ultimately about time. Individual signals don’t mean much on their own and they’re easy to miss. If someone is continuing to send indications of interest over a period of time — let’s say more than 10 minutes, for convenience’s sake — then that’s a better sign that they’re flirting than trying to read the tea-leaves in the questions they ask.

But, again: if flirting would get them into a metric fuck-ton of hot water, professionally and legally? Then it’s best to assume that they’re not flirting after all.

Good luck.

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

I got married at 20, separated at 29 and divorced at 31. It was amicable, I decided I wanted kids, he didn’t and he lost his faith. It took me a while to get back to dating; in my religion, divorce is looked down on and finding a man who didn’t find that a dealbreaker was hard. We are dating with the intentions of marriage, and hopefully children, because I am almost 36 and will be high risk. Due to our religion, we haven’t had sex yet, until marriage. The pandemic happened, I live with my parents since my divorce and they are high risk. I have not seen my boyfriend in 6 months because he is a first responder.

My friends had a zoom night recently, and my ex was present (I was informed and made the decision to go along). In the background, his new partner said hi and then left the Zoom, and it was obvious she was pregnant. And that hurts. I made an excuse to leave the Zoom and cried all night, and then looked her up on social media. I’ve met her before, at a few mutual friend’s functions over the years-she’s been with my ex for the past four years and she’s been lovely. But she’s also beautiful, thin and small while I’ve always been bigger and taller (an inch shorter than my ex), we don’t look anything alike, I’m white and she’s Asian, she’s smarter than me (she’s got her PhD and I only got a college degree when I was in my mid twenties) and she’s younger than me. And from our friends say the perfect match for my ex.

My friends mentioned that my ex was interested in coming into more Zoom calls (before they have been alternating us) and if that would be fine. I want to be the better person and say yes, because I don’t want my ex, I am happy he is happy, I love my boyfriend, these are his friends too. But because his partner will obviously be in the background (they live together, something I can’t do with my boyfriend), and she’s obviously pregnant, I don’t want to see it. Because she got everything, I wanted in my life — even if I don’t want it with that man anymore. She still got it, and I don’t know how I can deal with that without being upset that my ex didn’t want kids with me — but with this younger, beautiful woman who isn’t married and just got everything I wanted, and what I might never be able to have.

I don’t want to never zoom with my friends, and I know that alternating zooms was annoying to all of them but what do I do?

Zoom Regrets

There’re a couple things you can do, ZR.

The first is that you could start hosting your own Zoom nights. In fact, you could hold several, with different groups of friends at each one. This nicely avoids the issues of asking for alternating Zoom schedules, but also means that you don’t have to give up hanging with your friends.

Plus, this can help you have a better time with your friends overall. You don’t necessarily need to have a Zoom with all of your friends at once; in fact, those can get out of hand pretty quickly. Even when folks are all in the same physical space, we only have the capacity to follow so many conversations at once. More often than not, we can only really have about 4 people in the same conversation; once you add a fifth person in, the conversation tends to split in a 3:2 ratio. Three people keep participating in the “main” conversation, while two break off in a side conversation, often having little to do with the conversation that brought the fifth person over in the first place. A smaller, more intimate virtual gathering may make it easier to stay connected with folks and really catch up, instead of being one voice in a large group trying to be heard.

The second thing you can do is to work on finding ways of connecting with your partner. That separation, I suspect, is at the heart of a lot of this. I think you’re feeling lost and abandoned, even though it’s circumstance keeping you apart, not him. But because you’re feeling deprived and isolated, and especially because you struggled meeting someone new, it’s causing things to hit you harder than they might otherwise.

That includes your ex and his girlfriend. Because to be perfectly honest: your ex’s girlfriend has nothing to do with you, and you’re making it about you.

So this is going to be hard to hear but honestly: his relationship with his girlfriend isn’t a commentary on you or your time together. This is a thing people get hung up on all the time: we tend to look at our exes new partners in comparison to ourselves. If we can see them as being lesser, somehow then we either get to gloat a little (“Ha ha, you’ll never do as good as me”) or be mystified (“Wait, that’s what you went for after you broke up with me?”). But if we see them as being a step up from us somehow — could be looks, could be education, whatever — we take that shit personally. We assume that it’s a way of rubbing our faces in the dirt by not just ignoring the contract they didn’t know they signed which states that they’re condemned to be sexless and single for the rest of their lives upon ending their relationship with us, but by choosing a partner specifically to slight us in some fashion. And the more sensitive we are to some quality in ourselves — height, build, career, whatever — the more likely we are to assume that a new partner having those qualities is a swipe at us, specifically.

But it’s not.

While nobody dates in a vacuum and we’re all influenced by the people we’ve spent time with, we don’t go around picking partners to make a statement about (or to) our exes. More importantly: we all change and grow in the interim, and things that may have been true or in effect at one point may no longer be true down the line. Those changes are almost never about the partner, former or current, but about the person. The fact that he didn’t want kids back then doesn’t mean that his deciding he wants them now means that you were the issue. It means that he, his life and his circumstances have all changed. And a lot can change after 7 years. Hell a lot can change in a single year; just look at how 2020 has affected people, changed their minds, shifted their priorities and changed their relationships.

The man you were married to way back when was a different person. So where you. He’s changed. So have you. What you want and need from a partner and from life is different, even if it’s only in small ways. So it is with him. He didn’t slot somebody else into your relationship with him and gave her all the things you wanted. He built a new relationship, which was different from the one he had with you, with a new person. Just as you are building a new one with your current beau.

So right now, I think the bigger issue is finding ways to feel more connected with him. That can be frustrating, I get it, and circumstances make it even harder to see each other. After all, his being a front-line responder means that he can still potentially spread the virus, even after he gets the vaccine. But a thing to hold onto is this: this is all coming to an end. The vaccine is being distributed. People are getting their shots. It’s not going as fast as any of us would like, but it is ending. Realizing that the end is in sight can make it easier to grit your teeth and white-knuckle your way through this, at least until your folks can get the vaccine.

Let your relationship with your ex stay in the past, where it belongs; right now it’s just interfering with your present and casting doubt on your future. Focus on what you do have and making the most of it. You may not have a lot, but you can turn it into more than it seems. That can help you hold on and ride out this rough patch.

And in the meantime: host your own Zoom nights with different groups of friends. It’ll be easier all around; they won’t have to deal with alternating schedules and you won’t be sandpapering your soul every time you join in.

Good luck.

Are Looks REALLY All That Matter In Dating?

December 28, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello, I’m a 17-year-old boy in Korea and my life’s been great, I have many friends, my grades are super good, and I have passion and confidence.
But nowadays I’ve been thinking about love and I have some questions.

You see, I had a crush whom is my close friend. Our personality matched so much and I thought we would be good for partners but it turns out she only thinks of me as a ‘friend’, and am not interested in dating before turning 20. Sooo I was down but now I got over it, but because of crushing and failing questions about love started to linger in me, and then I started Googling about the subject, and I found some articles.

And they were like “Looks are the 80% that determines romance, you only say personality is more important because you want some excuses to lower your look standards, because you can’t date hot buds. Looks make up for flaws and people who says inner self is important are lying to themselves. People date someone who has the same level look with them.”

And I was kinda shocked when I read the article and people saying “That’s the reality, the truth.” I always thought personality is much more important and if the personality is really truly matching I could even date an ugly girl. Sure, a cute face is cool but it isn’t everything.

And I also thought love was something like wanting the partner beyond anyone else, not being attracted to any other more than the partner, and feeling something another level with each other… In other words, your partner becomes the most beautiful person in the world in your eyes.

But what those guys are saying and agreeing with was that you love someone based on superficial attributes mostly, and if you date with an average/ugly girl or guy it only means that you compromised to reality. And that also means you just settled, the partner isn’t the most beautiful in the world in your eyes, you just settled because she’s the best looker in the pool of girls you are able to date. So there are much more attractive girls but they are out of bounds so you choose her. A lot of people were agreeing with this, and the community was a major one, not a small one which only certain types(usually losers) of people gather.

Man, if love is like that in reality it sucks. I found my crush the most attractive girl in the universe even if she isn’t in the eyes of the public. She’s quite cute, but to tell the truth there are some girls who are objectively more good-looking than her. But I didn’t feel anything to them. And if someone whom I have been crushing on has feelings to me too, I thought we could have love like I described earlier.

But if the things they said are reality: Love really seems hollow. It’s not romantic: it’s shallow and strategic. I’m about 6~8/10 when it comes to looks (My opinion) so I wouldn’t have serious damage in my relationship chances even if that was true but the problem is the concept just seems HOLLOW if adult love is really like that.

So Is love really like that? What is it like? Are the things that I said/experienced about love only because I’m teen, and real life and love are just look-based calculations? Am I secretly compromising when I say ‘looks don’t matter’?

And am I look-based too? come to think of it I had 2 crushes, and both of them were at least average looking objectively. So if an below-average girl has wonderful personality and really clicks with me could I love her too? Or I’d just kick her out even if I know right now that I shouldn’t do that? Would I have liked my crush in the first place if she was ugly?? Yes we became BF the day we met and I’ve never found anyone that has personality so similar and matching with me(She agreed on that too). But what if she was ugly? Would I still have been attracted to her? I feel I would’ve, but what if I just think like that because I have been crushing on her? If the answer is no I just feel guilty and such.

My message is kinda messed up, but the main question is about looks and love, and about true love. I hope you could give me wise advice about those topics. Thank you for reading.

Worried About Romance

[Read more…]

Why Won’t My Husband Treat His Mental Illness?

December 21, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Dr. Nerdlove,

I first want to express my appreciation for the work you do in helping people become their best versions of themselves. I saw one of your YouTube videos explaining your journey with diagnosis and treatment of ADHD, so I’m hoping you can give me some insight into what my husband is going through.

Ok, some backstory. I’m a 34 year old woman married to Buck (not his real name), a 35 year old man. We’ve been married for 10 years, together for 14. We’ve spent pretty much all of our adult lives together. We have a three and a half year old and a five month old baby together. Buck is an awesome guy. His hobbies are playing guitar, brewing beer, and weight lifting. He cooks meals often, does the shopping, has a good job that allows me to be a stay at home mom, plays with our son, buys me thoughtful gifts, and more. He makes me laugh and is a good lover too. He is also into some of the same nerdy things I am, so we have fun watching sci-fi stuff and playing board games (well, before we had babe #2 anyway!). He’s also down for outdoor adventures like camping, hiking, etc. like I said, he’s just a great guy.

My/our problem is that ever since he started working full-time at a professional job and becoming a father, he’s been struggling big time with emotional regulation, reactivity that seems to stem from anxiety, and what I have recently discovered is probably rejection-sensitive dysphoria. I tried for literally years to figure out what is going on with him because his behaviors towards me and our son have been challenging to deal with to say the least, and unintentionally abusive at times. I know he is a good guy with a good heart, and that there was something causing him to not be in control of his emotions. After exploring lots of possibilities I asked him one day if he had ever been evaluated for ADHD, and he said that he had been diagnosed with it as a kid and medicated for it for a while. I was pretty shocked that he never told me this! He apparently didn’t think it was a real thing. I joined a support group for wives with partners with ADHD, and have been learning an incredible amount about adult ADHD. The knowledge I have gained from that group and my own research has been hugely helpful in understanding Buck and his struggles, and has given me more appreciation for everything he has accomplished and all that he does for our family. I’ve also learned strategies that I can use to avoid RSD reactions, and about the importance of setting boundaries for myself.

It’s been seven months since I found out about Buck’s diagnosis as a child, and while I’ve learned so, so much about ADHD…he hasn’t. He isn’t convinced that it’s a problem for him even though I’ve explained over and over again that his behaviors and over-the-top reactions to things are not only inappropriate, but sometimes feel abusive. Growing up his family was pretty dysfunctional when it came to discipline, communication, and expressing emotions, so I understand that he may not feel like he’s doing anything wrong by having angry outbursts or being majorly disrespectful towards me since that’s what he saw as normal growing up. I told him the other day that if he didn’t start treatment of some kind — he’s not interested in medication, but has (kind of?) agreed to therapy, supplements, and a mindfulness practice specifically for ADHD — I was going to leave him. I’m looking at it as a boundary that I need to have to protect myself and our kids, but I obviously really want him to follow through on this.

So at long last my questions: Is it fair for me to demand he treat his ADHD? If so, is it also fair for me to put a time limit on seeking treatment? Like, if he doesn’t start seeing a therapist and practicing mindfulness in the next month then I’m out type of time limit. I’m having trouble with his complete avoidance of this, but want to support him in this journey since he’s totally worth it in my opinion. Any insights you have on this would be so appreciated!

Kindest regards,
Tired To Come Up With Clever Sign-Off

I’m sorry you and your husband are going through this TTCUWCSO. One of the things that doesn’t get brought up much when talking about ADHD — especially if it’s gone undiagnosed for a while — is the effect it can have on relationships. This is something that actually goes both ways. If you’re the person with ADHD, it can feel like you’re struggling constantly and your partner’s just always on your back. This, of course, leads to a dynamic where you are more likely to say or do whatever you think it takes to get them to back off and leave you alone for a while. Meanwhile, if you’re in a relationship with someone with ADHD, it can feel like you’re being neglected or constantly made a lower priority. You can’t rely on them to actually follow through with what they said they’d do. Words seem to go in one ear and out the other and, worse, they seem to pay attention to just about anything except you.

And that’s before we get into the issues of emotional dysregulation, morbid fear of rejection in almost any form and just the general sense of feeling frustrated and overwhelmed with… just about everything, really. And part of what’s the most frustrating — and what makes folks with ADHD the most irritable and upset — is that our brains will simply not do something. It’s not that you don’t know you need to write that report or file that paperwork, it’s that you literally can’t. You can’t get started on it, and your brain will often end up hyperfocusing on something else… which again, you can’t break away from. It’s not a matter of will, it’s about neurochemical deficiencies and it’s the most frustratingly maddening thing ever.

Plus there’s the ever present out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue, where even things that are important, that you are determined to remember and take care of, simply fade into the background and disappear.

So yeah from the jump: your husband really does need to work on getting treatment. I can speak from experience about just how much of a difference treatment can make when you have ADHD.

Which is why his reticence is understandably frustrating.

You would think that with all the drawbacks and all the problems that ADHD can cause, you’d think that getting treated would be a no-brainer. It’s understandable that you’d be frustrated with your husband; it seems like it should be a simple decision to go back for treatment. Why wouldn’t you, especially when it seems like it’s all upside, no downside?

To answer that question, you have to look at it from his perspective. To start with, even as mental health care has been increasingly destigmatized, there’s still that sense of shame of having a mental illness. For men, especially adult men, having ADHD can feel especially shameful because it feels like we should just be able to muscle through it. Even when you know better, it still feels like weakness or failure on your part. You just aren’t disciplined enough, not tough enough, don’t have enough grit. For someone who grew up in a household that really bought into toxic ideas of masculinity, it can be hard to shake the feeling that you’re taking a shortcut for something that you should be able to overcome on your own.

Another possibility is that Buck had a bad experience with his medication. ADHD meds, like a lot of psychiatric medication, are often more art than science, and different treatments can affect people differently. A lot of the earlier medications for ADHD had some gnarly side-effects; a loss of appetite and insomnia are common, but a lot of folks had issues like blinding migraines or nausea. If the medication didn’t feel like it helped and the side-effects were particularly unpleasant, it’s understandable that he wouldn’t want to give it another go-round, even with new and more effective meds.

But it’s also entirely possible that part of why Buck is digging his heels in is because he feels like you’re attacking him.

Don’t get me wrong: you are well within your rights to draw boundaries and tell him that you need him to get treatment. His behavior’s gone past the point of being able to just let things be, and it’s damaging both his relationship with you and your own emotional health.

But at the same time, the way the two of you go about those conversations can end up being counterproductive. For example, it can be really difficult, for both parties, to separate the symptoms from the person. You — and presumably he — know intellectually how much of this is due to his having ADHD, but emotionally it can be hard to distinguish between them. Even when you know somebody’s inattention or absent-mindedness is the result of their condition, it’s still hard to not take it as a judgement on their feelings for you. Similarly, even when you know you have a condition that makes it harder for you to accomplish or remember things, it’s easy to feel like you’re being treated like a child or an inferior. In both cases, it’s very, very easy to let things get personal when those conversations get heated, even when you don’t intend to. That has the net effect of turning it less into a discussion about how to make things better and more of a fight about who has the right to be angry. Or worse, it becomes an opportunity to air all the grievances that’ve been piling up.

The way you’re phrasing things to him, especially talking about how what he does can feel abusive, may well sound like you’re attacking him as a person. From his perspective, with not just his RSD but also his feelings of frustration and being unable to get a break, this may feel like just one more way that you don’t understand him or appreciate how hard he works and so on. That feeling of “I try so goddamn hard, why can’t anyone acknowledge that instead of telling me how I’m fucking up” can cause people to push back in part because they feel like the other person just doesn’t GET them. As such, they may reject solutions out of hand because they don’t believe the other person is correct; if their partner doesn’t understand, why should they try the solution their partner suggested.

And if he’s feeling like you’re acting more like a parent or supervisor than a spouse… well, that’s going to feel especially shitty, possibly even emasculating.

To add to that: one of the effects of ADHD, as I’m sure you’ve learned, is emotional dysregulation. Even setting RSD aside, folks with ADHD have a hard time controlling their emotions. In some ways, it’s almost like having two settings: slightly below normal and over-the-top, and the level of pressure it takes to flip the switch is variable at best. When you’re feeling especially attacked, pressured or otherwise treated unfairly, things tend to go off… messily and all over the place. And unfortunately, one of the side-effects of this is that it’s very easy to hear what they THINK you’re saying instead of what you’re ACTUALLY saying.

That’s why I think one of the things that may help is to look into couple’s therapy, especially with a counselor who’s familiar with ADHD in adults. Having someone facilitate the conversation may make it easier for you two to actually understand each other, instead of throwing up walls instinctively. It can also help to change the way you describe his behavior when you talk with him. Separating the symptoms from the man, especially when dealing with conflicts, can go a long way towards defusing things. It can also help to talk about just what triggers these outbursts; not with a mind towards preventing them, but simply to understand how he’s feeling and why he’s feeling that way. Not only will it help you understand his triggers, but for him, feeling like someone is actually listening to him and making an effort to understand is going to be huge.

At the same time, having a third party involved, especially someone who understands ADHD symptoms, can help him realize just how much the untreated symptoms are affecting his relationship with you and the kids. That outsider’s perspective could help him realize why his behavior has been so harmful and why it’s pushed you to the point of needing to make an ultimatum.

I would also talk with him about his experiences with treatment in the past. It may well be that the treatment he received didn’t help. He may never have gotten the right dosage, or the medication just didn’t work for him. And if that was the case, then it’s understandable why he might think that ADHD is just not a thing. Talking about his past experiences may help him change his stance and help him be willing to try different therapies, even if those didn’t work for him last time.

However, I would also caution you that all of this takes time. While medications like Vyvanse don’t have a ramp-up period the way SSRIs and MAOIs do, therapy and treatment is still a marathon, not a sprint. For a lot of folks, it’s not just about treating the symptoms of the disorder, it’s dealing with the emotions and coping mechanisms that get wrapped up in there with them. Just because the symptoms go away or ease up, that doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly operating at peak efficiency and all of your previous issues are gone. And if he’s taking the route of therapy and mindfulness meditation but not medication… well, that’s definitely going to take time. I can tell you from experience: mindfulness meditation is something you have to practice, and it takes time to not just make it a successful habit but to get results.

In the meantime, there’s an excellent article from HelpGuide that talks about managing relationships with ADHD. Reading through it with Buck may help open up avenues of conversation and help foster some productive changes. It can help the two of you have a better grasp of what the other is feeling and experiencing and — with luck — foster a little more peace and understanding so that Buck will be willing to get the help he needs.

I’m sorry that the two of you are going through this, but it is something that can be fixed. It will just take time, patience, love and clear, effective communication for both of you, as well as treatment for him.

Good luck

Hey Doc,

I currently browse through your articles a little bit and I find your advice very good, especially when I compare it to other self-help sites which I find even toxic. Now, I don’t even know if I am the type of person for this community (the so called nerds), but I will post this anyway so I can write things off.

A bit about me, I am an engineering student in his early 20s. I don’t want to say that I am struggling with dating, since I have never been on a date, but I want to get better at it. First, I can tell you that my self-worth was very low and that I was a bit awkward around people, but I changed it completely. In short, I decided that, you know, a lot of people are unsure of themselves and so they don’t even look at you. Furthermore, if they are trying to put you down, then you know that they are not even happy with themselves. I am now capable of making new friends, just by showing genuine interest. I can even tell you that, around men, I am very popular. Both at school and in the gym as well as in everyday life. They like to invite me and come to me, probably because they can be themselves and I don’t judge them and we laugh. It’s not that I only attract weirdos, but also other popular men.

Yet, still I don’t really know how I can attract women. I do talk to some of them, but I don’t know what to say that makes them attracted to me other than being friends. Furthermore, I find it difficult to develop the so called abundance mindset. I can tell you that at the engineering department there are just very few women. My hobbies are also typically things men do, like electronics. I am also very sportive, but again this is all with men. I am not active on Facebook or Instagram. I don’t know if this is better or worse, since I know some men who are attracting women by those platforms. To me it looks like everyone is texting each other constantly and if you don’t do that than you’re a loner when it comes to dating. I really don’t see how going after your purpose leads to attracting women naturally.

Now there is a woman I see at the gym who I find attractive, but as I said earlier I think I lack flirting skills. It’s not that I am not attractive enough, I worked on that as well. Coming from a low place of abundance I may act needy, which I can understand is not attractive. I don’t know how our conversation can lead to exchanging numbers.

My questions: “How can I talk to women, so that it doesn’t bore them out?” , “Do I need to get out more, to other places (after Coronavirus)?”, “Should I become active on social media too?”, “What else can be the problem?”

Kind regards,

Just Another Nerd

Can I be honest, JAN? You sound exhausted. It feels to me like you’ve been running around with a lot of these worries and feelings, and you’re kind of getting to a point where you’re not just worn out but feeling more than a little hopeless. I mean, you even say “I will post this anyway, so I can write things off.”

And man, I can sympathize. I know exactly how tired you can get when it feels like you’re struggling to swim upstream while everybody else seems to have these sweet boats and jet-skis and shit. But here’s the thing: a lot of this seems to be because you’re struggling with a lot of internal ideas about what dating and attracting women is like, rather than the reality. And — again, I speak from experience — it’s hard to succeed when you’re mostly wrestling with ideas that you came up with, rather than actual people and experiences.

Here’s the thing: those skills that help you bond with guys and make new friends? Those are the exact same skills that help you meet women and start relationships. The way you connect with guys is, at the end of the day, really no different from how you connect with women; the only difference is the direction you take things.

I suspect part of the problem is that you’re looking at friendship as the fail-state of attraction, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, making friends with women — platonic friends, not putting yourself in The Friend Zone1 — is a huge bonus towards meeting women you would want to date. One of the things that most men never realize is how huge of a resource female friends can be when it comes to dating. A woman who likes you and thinks you’re cool but may not be into you romantically is far, far more likely to want to help you meet someone awesome. This could range from introducing you to her single friends, to inviting you to social events where you could meet other women to even being your wingwoman while you’re out and about. Plus, their presence in your life is like a testimonial: they’re letting other people know that you’re an awesome guy. If you weren’t, they wouldn’t want to hang around with you.

Making that shift in your headspace will go a long, long way towards helping you develop that abundance mindset. Once you realize that having awesome women in your life is good overall, you’ll become far less worried about each individual interaction. If you get a number or something comes of it, great! If they’re just interested in being friends, also great! And if ultimately nothing happens… well, that blows, but it’s just one person in a world filled with people who are just as awesome and hot, if not more so.

That having been said, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t work on connecting with women, flirting or trying to get dates. It’s just about learning not to treat it as an all-or-nothing issue. And part of is is going to come with changing your outlook on how you go from having a conversation to getting her number.

I realize that people think that flirting is this arcane skill that generates attraction, but ultimately all it is is just connecting with people. It’s a way of telling someone you’re into them and inviting them to explore things with you. Flirting, especially early on, as being about playing with uncertainty and interest. Think of someone who’s interested in going down a waterslide, but they’re not entirely sure, or they’re curious to check out a particular book or movie but they don’t know. The process of flirting is gently encouraging them to give it a try, being the facilitator of fun and playing with that sense of uncertainty so that it’s exciting, not scary. And there are a lot of ways of flirting, each as valid as the next. Part of learning to be successful with women comes down to finding out the ways that are most congruent with who you are. It may be silly, it may be banter-y, it may even come down to just being open and direct: telling someone “hey, I’m doing X thing on Y day and time and I’d love to take you” or “I’m really enjoying talking/hanging out with you; I’d love to take you out on a proper date.”

So yes, I think you definitely should go out and do more things (when it’s safe). Not only because it helps you be a more well-rounded person, but it helps you expand your social circle. Finding ways to enjoy the things you’re passionate about that bring you in contact with other people who also love it is a great way to make new friends. Plus, as a bonus, it can meet folks who may not be the woman of your dreams, but will help introduce you to her.

Now as for social media? Yeah, I think it’s helpful. These days, people who aren’t on social media are a rarity, and it can make some folks feel like maybe you’re a little suss. But just as importantly, it can be a way of celebrating and sharing the things that make you happy or the cool shit you’re doing with your life. At the very least, it can be a way of showing them what life with you is life and serve, in its own way, as an advertisement for you as a person. Plus, social media can be a great way to make new contacts, find new friends or even plan events that’ll help you bring awesome folks together and into your life.

Plus, being active on social media makes it easier for your friends who’re already more active on there to introduce you to folks or invite you to things.

You’re actually doing really well, JAN. You’ve made a lot of progress and you should be proud of yourself for that. And the progress that you’ve made with making friends and connecting with guys is also what’s going to help you meet women. It isn’t going to be nearly as hard or exhausting as you think; it just feels that way because you’re not used to it yet. Keep up the work, apply it towards just talking to women and connecting with them and I think you’re going to be amazed at how well things will go for you.

Good luck.

Standard disclaimer: there is no such thing as The Friend Zone; there are just people who don’t want to fuck you or date you [↩]

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 19^th 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.