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5 Harsh Truths About Dating (And What You Can Do About It)

June 9, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I want to tell you some harsh truths about dating. Truths that, when you understand them, will explain why dating can be a nightmare. However, once you’re able to face those truths, you’ll find that dating will actually be simpler and more enjoyable.

And the key to understanding them starts with gambling and religious pigeons.

photo of asiatic rock dove pigeon looking angry — “I don’t see you doing the proper number of head bobs. Do I detect HERESY amongst our number?”

OK, I freely admit this sounds like I’ve had a stroke, but trust me, it will all make sense in a second.

So here’s your first harsh truth: dating isn’t nearly as difficult or as complicated as people think it is. The reason why it can be a shitstorm of Michael Bay proportions is because… well, because of people. The single biggest reason why folks would rather look into recreational dentistry than get back on the dating scene is because of the way people aren’t honest about dating. And this is a truth that crosses sexuality and gender lines; gay, pan or straight, cis or trans, guys, gals and non-binary pals… damn near everyone isn’t honest about dating. Not with others and — more often — not with themselves.

That’s not to say that people are maliciously lying. It’s more that folks don’t like admitting the truth to themselves. It’s easier to take comfort in the fictions we tell ourselves than to face the truth. Even when those lies are actually contributing to making dating a miserable experience.

Accepting these truths — and they’re not the ones you think — will change how you approach dating. And this will make dating that much easier, less stressful and more satisfying.

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How To Reset Your Love Life

May 26, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

It’s something of a truism that dating can be exhausting. A lot of times, you spend weeks, months, even years feeling like you’re beating your head into a brick wall. And to make matters worse, for a lot of people, it can feel like they’re stuck in the same routine. They want different results, but it may well feel like they can’t stop doing the same thing over and over again.

Troubled hipster leaning against wall — “Just… give me… a minute to… recover. Gonna… break through… this wall… eventually.”

This often leads to frustration, burnout, even anger. This, in turn, creates a self-reinforcing cycle; the frustration and burnout color your attitude and your interactions with others, you don’t put as much effort in and your results continue to suck. It can be maddening.

But this is why sometimes the best thing you can do to get better at dating… is to do nothing.

No. Seriously.

Dating can be rough, especially now as more and more people are getting vaccinated and coming out of lockdown. It’s even easier to be discouraged because of the pandemic. It often feels like you need to make up for lost time — a year and change that was stolen from you that you can never get back. This ends up creating a self-imposed sense of urgency that just feeds into that cycle of frustration. It’s a Red Queen’s Race, running as fast as you can and putting in all this effort just to stay in place.

What you need is a reset; an opportunity to create a state-break that wipes the slate clean and lets you start over fresh. And now is the perfect time to break out of the cycle and reset your love life… by stepping away from dating entirely.

Here’s how you can create a break in your dating struggles and make the changes that let you reboot your entire dating outlook.

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The 5 Steps To Upgrading Your Life

April 28, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of talk about how this was an opportunity to do things differently. Now that everyone was in lockdown, they had absolutely nothing else to do but work on themselves.

Screenshot of a tweet that reads: "If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either: 1.) a new skill 2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business 3.) more knowledge You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline" — Sure chief, nothing like trying to develop a side-hustle when you’re busy trying to, y’know, not die…

Sure they had to balance work, relationships, trying to meet basic needs without catching the plague of the 21st century, possibly dealing with child-care or elder care, home-schooling and the crippling stress that came with living through one of the most psychologically and emotionally taxing periods in living memory… but they were going to make it happen, damn it!

Needless to say: trying to maintain your sanity — with or without the help of your robot friends — during a global crisis is going to take up most of your emotional bandwidth. The fact that you survived to this point is a victory worth celebrating, no matter what else you did or didn’t do during lockdown.

Now that more and more people are getting vaccinated and the tide of the pandemic is slowly starting to recede, we’re all starting to take those first, tentative, trembling steps back out into the world. We’re all in the same boat of trying to dust off those unused social skills and remember how to act like people instead of the feral beasts we’ve all become.

Image of Gollum with a perplexed expression on his face — Wait, this is how people smile, right? It’s been so long…

For a lot of folks, that time in isolation means that they’ve had time to take stock, look at their lives and decide that it’s time to do things differently. Plenty of people, after a year in semi- or complete isolation are ready to make significant — even life-altering — changes to their lives.

But the question becomes: how do you radically transform yourself? How can you become a new, better person? Just as importantly: how do you make those changes stick? Following these 5 steps will help you build your best life ever.

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How To Build Emotional Strength

October 14, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Right now everything feels like chaos. We’re living through the worst pandemic the world has seen in more than 100 years. We are less than three weeks out from an election that feels like our choice is whether to pull America back from the brink of fascism or not. Our lives have been thrown into pandemonium like we’ve never known, even as people seem to insist that we’re fools for being concerned about a virulent disease. Violent extremists are attacking innocent protestors and activists and the people in charge are hosting giant gatherings all but guaranteed to spread the virus.

And yet life stubbornly insists on continuing like normal.

This is legitimately how it feels some days…

It’s enough to make you feel like you’re going mad. Like you want to give up and just scream.

But even under the best of circumstances — when the world doesn’t feel like it’s teetering on the verge of collapse — there are times when life feels like it’s too much. There are days when you feel like you’re hanging on by your fingernails and you just want to let go. There are days when you simply don’t feel like you have the strength to keep going. Whether it’s chasing your long-term goals and dreams, finding the desire to keep moving forward, or even summoning up the courage to make the hard decisions, you will face moments that will push you to your very limits.

Those are the times when you need to have the resources to keep going. You need to build your emotional strength. You need to have the will and the strength to not just persevere but to thrive.

Here’s how.

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What Men Need to Know About Attraction

September 16, 2020 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

One of the hardest parts of learning how to get better at dating is, ironically, learning how to get out of your own way.

Men, especially men without much social experience, have a tendency to sabotage their own progress. The single biggest culprit that stands in the way between guys and romantic success? Buying into myths about what women want — especially about what women find attractive in men. In fact, the most pernicious myths tend to be spread by other men… often with neither basis in reality nor a single woman backing it up.

To be fair: it’s easy to talk about these myths and why they’re not real. However, part of the reason why it’s so easy to buy into these self-limiting beliefs is because they play into men’s anxieties. When you worry that you’re “not good enough” or that you don’t measure up to what you think other guys have to offer, these beliefs act as confirmation of what you already believe. They’re hard to shake because of how well they line up with what you’re already afraid of. You may not want to think that you’re too short/nice/unattractive to date, but hearing someone else say “women only want X” is enough to trigger that part of your brain that wants to leap up and down and scream “I KNEW IT!”

(Especially if, for example, you’re already buying into ideas like “sexual market value”…)

But what can help is to have some concrete examples to look at — people who not only disprove these myths, but also provide a map towards what women actually do want. And since we’re all stuck at home during quarantine, it’s also the perfect time to watch some quality trash while you learn.

Enter Too Hot To Handle — a Netflix reality show about hornt-up hotties who’re duped into taking part in a show that isn’t about banging but learning how to love instead.

R to L from the top: Sharron, Matt (AKA Sexy Jesus), Haley, Harry, Francesca, David, Rhonda, Kels, Nichole, Chloe — “So we’re going to take a bunch of hot men and women, stick them in a gorgeous resort, ply them with liquor…and forbid them from having sex. With anyone. Including themselves.”

Now let’s be clear: this is a show with a lot of problems — something that I discuss in depth with my friend Dr. Liz in a series of Patron-exclusive videos. However, it is also a great example of how many myths there are surrounding attraction, why they’re wrong, and what actually matters instead.

(Obligatory spoiler warning: we’re going to discuss the entire series, including who gets together and who doesn’t)

Let’s get into it, shall we?

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