self-esteem Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do You Talk to Strangers

June 3, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc,

I know you probably get this question of how to talk to people in a romantic since every other day so i’ll try to help you see it from my perspective. So, you’re out in about and you see a cute girl. The location and what she’s doing doesn’t really matter in this case, because this is what goes through my head:

“This is the most busy, most important moment of her life and if you go up to her and interrupt, one of the following things will happen: a) she’ll yell at you and be mad. b) she’ll laugh and make fun of you. c) she’ll gut you like a fish. or d) all three.”

Now I can already hear you and everyone I’ve ever known say that will never happen, and the worst thing she can do is say no. But that’s doesn’t help. I’ve gotten all the dating advice: just be confident, they’re just as nervous as you are (side note, telling a nervous person that the other person is nervous doesn’t help, it makes it worse), etc.

I’ve even tried your breathing and 3 second rule. Doesn’t help. The being confident thing would be easier if i had any success when it came to dating; I’ve approached friends who I developed feelings for and have been rejected every time.

There is one outlier. One time I did approach a girl, it was 10 years ago at a comic shop. My best friend and I were just joking around. One of my jokes made this girl laugh, so after about 30 minutes of my friend practically begging me to talk to her, we approached her. We did a little small talk and we exchanged numbers. She was only in town visiting a friend for a few day,s so we never saw each other again, but she did text me that it was nice meeting me.

(In hindsight, 2 guys approaching a random girl isn’t really a good look)

But I see that as the exception, not the rule. I think it’s pretty easy to guess that my self esteem isn’t the greatest, but to be honest, it’s way better now than it was back then. I see myself so much better now I many ways, but I still can’t bring myself to approach women. Is there anything else I can try to get past this?

Stranger Danger

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Become Someone Women Want To Date?

January 21, 2019 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc,

I’m a 22 years old student and I’m currently facing difficulties in my social life. Until the past 1 or 2 years, I was living a very asocial life. Even though I’m an introvert, I managed to get back on my feet quickly and I’m pretty happy with my progress. The problem is, living a big part of my life as an asocial person (Especially the teenage years) has almost permanent effects on my personality. Trying to change them for good becomes a frustrating struggle. Let me elaborate.

Nowadays I’m very good at networking and communication in general. In fact, I’m a talkative person. But when it comes to dating, since I don’t have much experience, I face with lots of problems.

After one or two dates, I struggle too much with trying to find things to talk about and things to do together. But I think I know the reason. A person with a background of active social life has lots of things to talk about because he/she have been to lots of events, met many people, gone to many places etc. But someone like me with asocial hobbies realize that you don’t have any interesting things to talk about, you don’t know much good places to take your date to. You realize how boring you became over the past couple of years.

I’m a guy and I really don’t have this problem in my normal day-to-day conversations, especially with guys since we usually have common interests. I mostly struggle during a date with a girl. I don’t have much experience with dating and I think I became too boring for a girl to spend time with. Maybe I’m too focused on my approaching career and working too hard. I need to take a break and become a more fun person to spend time with. But the process of trying to change my personality is hard. I’m getting tired, but learning a lot at the same time.

Physically, I’m not a bad looking guy but I can be considered as a shy “good guy”, which girls, especially the ones at my age, are not really into. Even worse, I’m very emotional and tend to overthink everything to an extend where it puts me in deep stress and depression. I get attached to a girl very quickly. But girls on the other hand are usually the exact opposite. Since there is always a guy trying to date with them, they don’t really care and go with the flow. This kills me because I care about every little detail and overthink everything just to realize the girl does not even remember my age (or any other basic information about me). The reason is, she knows there are plenty fish in the sea. But there aren’t plenty for me.

There are other side effects of my introvert personality such as not being able to make eye contact. But in short, I don’t know how to date. I want a girl to have fun spending time with me. And I want to be able to transition from casual coffee dates to an actual relationship. I don’t really care about casual hookups, I’m looking for a serious relationship. I know I’m young but I’ll graduate soon and I’m afraid I won’t be able to find the right person.

I fail a lot but keep trying. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
First Time Unlucky

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Why Do Guys Only Want Me For Sex?

November 9, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hello Dr. NerdLove,

I am at my wits end trying to suss out why men only see me as worthy for sex, and not a relationship. I see you advise many men on being awkward and asperger-y, but if there’s a woman one related to my issues well I’ve missed it. I’d kill for some advice.

Grew up in rural hell, overweight since age of 8, relentless teasing followed and a spate of boys asking me out as a ‘joke’. My sisters say “toxic masculinity”, but the day it started to feel more personal was when I changed schools hours apart, lost weight, AND IT HAPPENED AGAIN. So no dating for me as a teen despite wanting is ever so badly.

Hit 18, move far away to the city, get down to a respectable 140lbs and feel it’s time to come into my own. Only skeevy men (like 60 year old bar flys and 50 year old tow truck drivers) ask me out, usually hinting it’s less out than in, and I become disillusioned. After hitting clubs, becoming more confident, and even asking a guy out I liked (only to have him lick my face like a dog) I decided this wasn’t the time.

I end up in NYC, gain the weight back to about 200, and a weird version of my prior problems begins again. Men asking me out, not as a joke, but only for sex and lying about actually wanting more than pussy (I mean, yeah I know it’s not uncommon). I’m young, naive, fall for it all, finally have sex, and get into two 1.5 month relationships. The final one ends when I find out he actually had never broken up with his prior girlfriend.

My life… gets worse. An unrelated GamerGate-like situation happens and my life is ruined, I gain PTSD and an anxiety disorder, also jump to about 220lbs higher than ever before. I try counseling, first guy is great…the rest are awful.

I end up back in NYC last year, met a man I swore I was going to marry. I finally felt good about myself and my prospects for the first time in years. It had been about 4 years between the prior 1.5 and this man. We have similar interests, I find him wildly attractive, he challenges me without putting me down, and he doesn’t do anything wildly inappropriate when we meet.

We date but once again, it’s a secret. I set a boundary: okay fine cuz I’m crazy about you, but at the 3 month mark its either real or done. First month I swear by that BS about ‘something good comes after the rain’ but then it slowly becomes my worst nightmare. Turns out in retrospect I truly believe for various reasons he is a sociopath, and he was mimicking my emotions with no sincere care or feelings of his own.

It becomes emotionally abusive and I’m stunned in my 30s with all the work I’d done on myself that I’d fall for this shit. I no longer feel good about myself, he’s constantly mocking my weight, ptsd, and fact I’m just plain not good enough. He even went to meet my family, then claimed it was never serious and I shouldn’t have read into it!!! Shockingly I ended it after watching Archer and seeing him be that way to Pam, who my asshole ex was sure Archer would never sleep with.

We unfortunately are around each other, not by choice, despite the end, and I lose all my sanity within months. He gets a new gf and tells me how she’s thin and better than me. He continues mocking the fact I was alone, so sets me up with a friend of his thats only a friends with benefit thing. That ends not badly but because that’s just not my scene man.

I have a nervous breakdown. I move away again. I see a new therapist. She seems great until one day she declares I should have just kept my legs shut then abuser wouldn’t have been a problem! I swear off therapy forever as this is not the first bad incident I’ve had (the prior good guy was like 1 in 5 attempts). I go for the weed and prozac. And now I’m alone, 32, and in rural hell again.

When I was a kid they mocked me because I wasn’t good enough. Now I’m too good at what I shouldn’t be (have traveled, have done things out in the world when they haven’t left the state line), and still bad at what I should be (weight). I seriously pursued bariatric surgery after the breakdown, but I have a hard time believing I should seriously curtail my ability to eat and drink in life so maybe a few more bar flys will find me worthy.

Online dating sucks in the city and in rural hell. I am succinct and put no hookups, all I get is hookups despite the app, the area, the pictures chosen. And frankly not having kids and not loving Trump already made the replies low in this place.

All I can conclude now is that through a decade, through thin and fat, confident and not confident, good and sane and now broken, city and rural, the only constant is me. And it must be something wrong with me. I have literally never been asked out in a manner that didn’t imply it was going right to the bedroom (or just out and out said it). The only time in my life I could get interest is when I was looking for hookups to fuck the pain away over my abuser. I can go to bars, concerts, lectures, book stores, whatev and nobody ever engages me. The last guy to engage me in a thrift store told me I should wear the thin shawl I was looking at for Halloween, and only it. When I quipped that would be mighty cold he laughed and told me to tell ‘him’ (bf/husband I assume?) he tried. He had to be over 55 and looked like the old barflys.

Dr. NerdLove I am seriously at my wits end. I’m lonely, bad at reading social cues anyway (the conclusion is I’m probably on the spectrum; but no one has ever done a full test), and absolutely baffled as to why I am so unworthy of genuine love. And I’d like to stress I find older men (of good taste, not barflys of course) handsome, fat and thin I’ve been with, white and black and latino. Most of my dates I end up paying my share (the last one the guy tried to sneak his beers on my tab… I just let it slide because it was so awful and I wanted it to end). I can’t imagine wanting a clean (hygiene and appearance) guy between 25 and 60 is such a high standard. The last tinder convo I had asked me if *I* was clean STD wise…after agreeing they weren’t looking for sex. I deleted it. I’ve done POF, Match and OkCupid too.

I’m lonely as hell and about to resign to it. Please help.

Fantastic Frustrated Female

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: How Do I Friend Zone My Wife?

October 5, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hey Doc:

Long story short: we’ve been married 17 years, dated for about ten before that. Sex and kissing and everything else was, frankly, amazing in the first decade or so and, if I’m being honest, it was a strong motivator – but not exclusively – for getting married (I kind of think it always helps if you can make your partner come and they seem to enjoy being with you in bed).

Now, we hit a rough patch – mostly down to me being an asshole with money – but we fixed things up, we had kids (and yes, I did my bit with through the night feeds and looking after them so my wife could rest), we got on with life and over time, sex dried up and became, at best, a monthly thing. Now, for a while, that didn’t bother me – we were busy, I always assumed we’d get back to where we were – but for the last few years it has really started to bother me.

I’ve brought it up and I’ve been told that she’s just not feeling that much into sex over the last number of years, which while annoying as hell, I can appreciate. I don’t want someone having sex just for the sake of shutting up their partner or for a quiet life. I’ve offered to try and do different things, all rebuffed.

Equally, when I’ve suggested things like we have a night for sex once a week, I’m told that removes the spontaneity of it, tried your tips for date nights and getting the heart racing and it was pretty much scorned as daft, I’ve tried romantic trips away, we have a good supply of babysitters, I’ve suggested that we go to counselling (that was rejected).

(Even when we do have sex, it’s me doing all the work, which again makes me think it’s only being done to shut me up.)

Now, we do do stuff together – though the wife’s preference is for going out with pals, workmates or to the gym (one thing that really annoyed me is when I suggested early morning sex, was told she would be too tired and then she started going to early morning gym classes) – and when she’s with her pals she’s more relaxed than with me (which can often feel more like a night with me, her and her phone, which you can rarely ask what she’s looking at as that bugs her though she has always maintained that she isn’t and hasn’t had any affairs).

So, as we have kids and as we aren’t screaming at each other (though we do often have very different points of view and this is something I’ve noticed more of later) and, to be honest, she is someone I like having in my life, there’s an empasse. It’s a relationship with no sex, no kissing (I could be standing in between the children and she will kiss them and not me) but I can’t see she’s done anything wrong (if anything, I feel like the asshole here), so it very much feels like a friendship – or housemates – in many ways, which I’m not mad about but it is what it is.

So, the question is this: how do I friendzone someone that I live with and find incredibly sexy and attractive because that may be the main way to save this relationship. I also need to work out a way of framing this relationship so that I’m not spending hours per day thinking about it and getting frustrated by it, because that – if nothing else – isn’t doing me any favours mentally, so friendzoning may help and partially stop this marriage feeling so lonely.

Sexless in Shoreditch

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Should I Lower My Standards?

September 28, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Doc, I started dating in my early twenties and in that time I learned a lot about who I gel with and who to stay the hell away from. However one thing that I noticed was a common theme:

I kept dating people I wasn’t really attracted to.

I felt that I had to “learn and practice” dating with people I didn’t have much interest and that I had to be “good” at it before going for who I really wanted to date. Mostly because whenever I meet someone I’m really attracted to, I always fuck it up, get oneitis, self-sabotage, and don’t know how to fix it. It feels like the universe conspires to make sure I don’t get what I want and that I don’t deserve it (which is confusing because it’s not like I’m asking for much or anyways. Just someone who is into books, deep conversations, and is on the nerdier and curvier side of physical looks. I really don’t care if someone is “hot” or “smokin” in the looks department). I think those are fair standards right?

I see my types all over the place so “scarcity” shouldn’t be an issue. If I mess up I can just try again. But the problem is that everything feels out of reach for me and that I have to settle for people I am not attracted to (despite having interests in common for friendship which is nice, but I am looking for something more than just friends.) I never have these problems with people I’m not attracted to, but I’ll have sex with them anyways to get my sexual needs met, and then I feel bad for not giving them my full undivided interest and attention when it comes to dating and then I eventually just fade things off.

Is finding sexual partners I want really just a never ending mirage?

Lowered Expectations

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