online dating Archives

Do Women REALLY Only Like One Kind of Guy?

September 10, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Ah, I see it’s that time of year again.

Normally on Fridays, I run questions for Ask Dr. NerdLove and help you — and folks like you — solve your dating dilemmas. But occasionally… well, occasionally I get a letter that requires a much deeper dive than most.

And then occasionally I get ones like today’s, which happen so regularly that you can actually measure the intervals between them and count down to when I’ll get the next.

Like the monarch butterflies traveling to Mexico and swallows returning to Capistrano, there’re some things you can always count on. For me, it’s the seasonal “but WHY DON’T YOU ADMIT WOMEN ONLY DATE ONE KIND OF MAN” letter. Usually this is brought on because an incel forum somewhere rediscovers the old OKCupid “here’s how women rate men and men rate women” poll I mentioned in “This Is Why You Think You’re Ugly”. Other times it comes about because someone has found some “exposé” — usually dubiously sourced, even more dubiously interpreted and reported — on YouTube or something that threatens to blow the doors off online dating or something.

And then these emails show up in my inbox, regular as clockwork. Normally, I just delete them because, well… what’s the point. You can’t get a dead plant to grow no matter how much you water it, and you can’t reason someone out of a position that they didn’t use reason to get into in the first place.

But then again: sometimes it’s worth breaking down the “logic” — and I use the term very loosely — to dig into the underlying issues. Not so much for the letter-writer themselves, but for everyone else, if only to talk about just how ugly some of this can get if you let it go unchecked in yourself.

So we’re gonna dig into a letter that, under normal circumstances, would go straight into the trash bin.

Hell, this time I didn’t even bother cleaning up the grammar, spelling or punctuation mistakes. It’s a hoot.

Hello Doc !

I read your article “Men, This Is Why You THINK You’re Ugly” and i can’t disagree more. First because you are talking about personality and all that but .. how do you explain Tinder for example or Bumble , or any dating apps? men there don’t have any success unless they are fit , tall and handsome. women only like that type of men , no woman will have casual sex with a fat guy or a chubby guy for example , hell not even a skinny dude , as a dude YOU HAVE TO BE MUSCULAR to have success with women. it’s kinda sad that as a man you are undesirable by default to the opposite gender , hetero women don’t face any difficulty in the dating world. Being a man (average , hell even above average) is a bad deal in the west , no woman will approach you unless you have money status or you are the clone of Henry Cavill. So Doc , you are spreading false hope to your customers

How Do I Get Me Alone?

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How Do I Stop Putting “Hopeless” In Hopeless Romantic?

August 9, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

An almost 28-year old man here with a lot on his mind he’s trying to get sorted out.

I have always been a hopeless romantic with a tendency to fall head-over-heels for women, especially those I feel compatible with and it really feels like it’s something I can’t control. It gets very frustrating thinking like this and then realizing I may never find the right woman for me. It’s a habit I’d really like to break because it’s very painful to want romantic love so bad and realize nobody may ever love you as much as you love them, if they even love you at all.

I am still a virgin who has never been in a mature, adult relationship for a variety of reasons. I never felt like it was the right time after I graduated college and did a series of temp jobs, and I had a serious mental illness that went undiagnosed for over a decade and led to a couple stays in the psychiatric ward before we could get me onto proper medication and treatment that has significantly reduced my symptoms. Even still I had to resign from my last two jobs because my illness interfered with my ability to work as part of a team or meet workplace standards.

As I write this, I am currently unemployed, having just resigned from my last job 5 days prior. I’m taking some time off to try and understand myself better so I’m not in a situation like this again where the symptoms of my illness are aggravated to such a point where I fly off the handle and hurt, scare, or offend my coworkers, even unintentionally. I’m trying to find a therapist to work through a lot of these issues with, but it’s so frustrating because they all seem to have no openings for new clients.

In the meantime, all I can think about is how I’m getting older, how women older than me (who I am open to dating) want someone more mature who is making money and is in a stable place in his life and how women younger than me probably want a man with more experience than I have to offer and may not want to date someone even a couple years older than they are .

I have tried to reframe my situation but I always seem to fall back in the same rut – “no woman I have feelings for will ever have feelings for me”, “I am past my prime/expired goods”, and “if a woman stays in a relationship with me, she will leave at the first sign of trouble/when she realizes how much baggage and trauma I carry”.

When I think about dating someone, thoughts like these fill my mind, and I know that having those thoughts could very well end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy because I might be more likely to date women who do act in those ways, leading to a vicious cycle.

And then, there’s another “issue”. I do not ever want to have children, and I would rather be single for the rest of my life than with a woman who wants kids. But I feel like childfree women are few and far between and likely have a more independent streak and no desire for a relationship. I don’t know very many childfree women, but that’s just the stereotype in my head.

All these things come together to create a lot of mental trouble for me. “You’re too needy”, “Why can’t you quit daydreaming of the perfect woman for you?”, “You’re damaged goods”, “You have too much against you and not enough for you”. And so it goes.

It’s not like I don’t have a good life. I have an amazing and supportive family and close friends. I travel and I am a photographer. I love animals, music (I am an avid vinyl collector and singer), road trips, and sampling as much food & drink as I can get my hands on. I consider myself an intelligent, kind, generous, thoughtful, and relatively mature person who does his best to treat others with dignity, respect, and love.

I have personal and professional goals and ambitions – chief among them to start my Master’s degree next year and eventually get my doctorate and become a college professor and mental health advocate & researcher. Personally, I want to get married, buy a house, build a man cave, and potentially foster and adopt cats and dogs.

It just feels like I’m starting out very late and with the fact I don’t want kids my dating pool is pretty low already, so I am also feeling a lot of pressure to pick the “right one” as quickly as I can.

So, If I had to sum up the main question of my piece that I’d like you to answer, it’s this: How can I reframe my situation and what actions can I take to make things better?

Very Respectfully,

The Virgin Murray

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Will Moving Save Our Marriage… or Ruin It?

July 30, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dr. NerdLove:

My husband suggested recently we move to a cheaper city so we could by a house in cash, free and clear. He also detests this area for a number of reasons, homelessness, high cost of living, etc. But the way I look at it, it would disrupt a pretty good situation we have right now, and there are other options that he refuses to consider.

We rent in a major west coast city with our adolescent daughter and two dogs. Cost of living is exorbitant and since I started my own firm it’s been a struggle to survive financially, but we have a very large reserve to tap for a few years. Also my firm is starting to show success and I’m seeing life at the end of the tunnel.

My husband has a decent contract with local government, loves his manager and has a good opportunity to get a full time job with excellent benefits. Finding a job he likes has been a major struggle the 14 years we’ve been married so the fact he loves management is huge.

Our daughter is thriving at her middle school where she’s one of the top students and beloved by many there. The school navigated the pandemic very well and our daughter made some very close friends.

So I was stunned when my husband became committed to leaving this area ASAP because he “hates what this area represents”, seeing how many people struggle with housing (he works with the homeless). I’ve tried my best to come up with alternatives:

Move later, once my firm is stable enough to make a decent monthly income. He says that may never happen and he doesn’t trust that I’ll move if it is successful.
He moves first, buys a house, either a) with our daughter or b) without our daughter and we’ll move later. That would require my finding a cheap apartment. Again he says we should stay together and he doesn’t trust I’ll move and/or having two homes defeats the purpose of saving money.
I move first to establish my firm and he stay with our daughter here. Again we’re split up and two locations.
Find a cheaper place here but it would not be as nice as we could get in another city. But this doesn’t work because he hates the area.

My husband says I’m unwilling to compromise because his true dream is to move to Europe where he’s from but will stay in the US since I can’t run my firm from there for regulatory reasons (otherwise I’d explore it). Since I don’t want to close my firm, his compromise is staying in the US. He’s furious with me for not making a definitive answer quickly and I admit I’m all over the place, saying maybe it would work and then changing my mind when I think about how:

He’d have to quit and get a new job which he’s not good at doing.
We have limited health insurance due to his contract situation but we’d have no health insurance if we move.
He only has a network in our current home city and that took him ages to cultivate since he’s introverted
His distrusting me, saying I’m not working with him and that I won’t “prove my love to risk” a move.
That he has sacrificed too much by moving here to be with me and now it’s my turn.

My issue is not the moving part, it’s the timing and his attitude—all or nothing but seems to be characterizing me as the selfish one.

Do I risk it? Am I being too fearful? The ironic point of it is that he’s recommending towns where I have lots of relationships and could possibly build a client base (although premature). I’m likely to be the best off after a move but adding an unemployed, angry husband who doesn’t trust me and a teen who is totally against moving makes it less interesting.

He’s flipped out since our discussion that went really wrong since he won’t believe I’m willing to compromise and because I throw out different options he sees that as stalling. It ended with some really awful things said.

What do I do? I don’t want to split and we are in the best financial shape now so moving out for either of us would make things even worse. I said let’s make a decision next year and he said no it has to be in 3 months.

Torn to Pieces

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Why Am I Struggling With Online Dating?

July 28, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Dear Dr. NerdLove,

So, I’m a 34 year old lesbian in a somewhat unusual situation. I’ve been happily married to my wife for the last five years; however, she’s asexual. Fortunately, we’re poly, and so she’s encouraged me to find sexual fulfillment outside of our relationship. Unfortunately, it turns out this is much easier said than done.

In the past few months, I have swiped through every profile in my area on no less than three major dating apps (Tinder, OKC, and HER, if you’re wondering) with no luck. I don’t frequently get matches, and on the occasion that someone does match with me, the conversation goes dead pretty quickly, no matter how hard I try. I should also note that I live in one of the top five most populous cities in the US, so it’s not for having a small dating pool! At this point, I’m more perplexed about why this might be happening, and if there’s anything to do be done about it.

In my opinion, I’m pretty average looking, but I make up for it by doing my best to be really interesting (professionally, I’m a researcher trying to figure out better ways of detecting life on other planets, and in my spare time I’m a burlesque dancer, singer and a professionally published science fiction author). I’m trans, but I don’t explicitly reveal that on my dating profiles (my theory being you should at least take me on a first date before being privy to that information; plus, in any case, I’m post-op anyway).

Is my situation just that convoluted that most queer women aren’t going to be interested? Am I more visibly trans than I realized, and that’s what’s turning people off? Do I need to lower my standards even lower? Or is this the sort of thing that sapphic women on dating apps just kind of experience in general, and it has nothing to do with me personally?

Any and all advice is appreciated!

Thanks!

Just Trying To Get Laid

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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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