self-improvement Archives

This is How You Solve Your Dating Problems

February 16, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, or what you look like; at some point your love life is going to go pear-shaped – quite possibly messily and all over the place. Sometimes it may only be for a few days or weeks. Other times, you end up in a dry spell that could last for months or even years.

Man in office clothes crawling on hands and knees in the sunny desert. — “How… how long has it been? Time passes so strangely here in the desert of the dateless.”
“It’s been two days, Bob.
“An eternity… an eternity…”

The frustration is understandable, even palpable. Many times, you don’t even know why you’re suddenly having all of these problems. It’s bad enough to be having a dry spell or to be struggling to date when you can’t even figure out what you’re doing wrong. Everyone’s had that frustrating moment of asking their friends what they should do, only to be met with a shrug. Worse, the only advice they may have for you feels less than useless or seemingly impossible to follow.

It’s understandable that many would give up; after all, how do you fix things when you don’t know where to start? What’s the dating equivalent of debugging your love life and can it be as simple as just turning it off and back on again?

Here’s how you can find your sticking points, fix your flaws and get your love life back on track.

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This Is How You Break Your Self-Limiting Beliefs

January 19, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I want to talk to you for a moment about a client I had. He, like a lot of my coaching clients, wanted to know what it takes to be someone women want to date. This caught me off guard; this was a guy who had a lot going for him. He was tall, good looking and fun to talk to. And yet, he didn’t struggle with meeting women so much as failed to so much as look at them. Never mind striking out, the guy got the screaming abdabs just thinking about going up to the plate.

pitcher throwing a baseball at the camera — POV: You’re in a tortured metaphor for dating and your crush is about to send a 110 MPH fastball straight into your insecurities…

Once we identified just what he thought he was missing and who he wanted to date, I worked with him on a plan that would help get him closer to his goal. We talked about style and presentation, and about where he could go to meet the kind of women he was into. We came up with a plan of action to build out his social circle and start cultivating the lifestyle that would make it easier for him to effortlessly bring more women into his life. Once he was satisfied with his new strategy, we scheduled a follow-up session to discuss his progress and make adjustments as needed.

Well, the follow-up session came around and he had done… precisely none of the things we talked about. He tried. He planned to do it. But when it was time to quit talking and start walking, he choked. Couldn’t do it. Sometimes he got as far as walking up to someone and then either walked past, or just turned around and walked away without saying a word.

“Look… I’m just not one of the guys who can do that,” he told me. It was fine for him to imagine women liking him and wanting to date him. But as soon as he tried to actually talk to someone he liked, his anxiety would flair up and convince him that he wouldn’t be good enough. All of his good points didn’t matter; there would be too many other guys who had more. He failed before he even started — not because of anything he’d done, but because he couldn’t believe that he could ever be the kind of guy who could talk to women or who women liked. And so he “tried”, failed and took that as proof that he could ever succeed.

His story isn’t unique. Lots of men have convinced themselves that they’re doomed to failure, and that they could never be good enough. And while they may have different reasons why— wrong body, wrong height, too shy, too whatever — the real problem comes from within. To a man, they let their self-limiting beliefs run their lives. Rather than working on their social skills and building a great life, they convince themselves to not even bother trying.

Maybe that sounds like you. Maybe you’re frustrated at how little you believe that anyone could want you. How much better would your life be if you could shut up that voice that says “why bother, it’ll never work?” How much would your life change if you could let go of the negative beliefs that hold you back?

Hold onto that thought, because today, we’re going to talk about how to break those self-limiting beliefs and become the sexy bad-ass you were always meant to be.

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How To Build An Amazing New Life

January 5, 2022 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

It’s a new year, which means that we’re in the midst of a veritable swarm of “new year/new you” pledges, think-pieces, think-pieces arguing against the previous think-pieces and — of course — a hell of a lot of “Make These 10 Resolutions For A Bright New Year” listicles and slideshows.

tortiseshell cat wearing a party hat, draped over the arm of a leather sofa, looking annoyed — Meanwhile, the rest of us quietly nurse our hangovers and question whether we’ve got the energy to take down the Christmas decorations before Valentine’s Day…

Now, I’m famously skeptical about the value of New Year’s resolutions. I find most of them to be less “resolutions” and more wishing that the changing of the year meant you magically became the sort of person who would do all the things you neglected to do last year. This, in fact, is the exact reason why most New Years Resolutions fail: because the people making them haven’t changed the reasons why they didn’t fulfill those resolutions last time. More often than not, the issue is very simple: that they keep getting in their own way.

This is rarely more true than when it comes to dating.

There’s a concept known as “inner game” — the idea that you can succeed or fail at something in your mind before you do it in reality. The concept of “inner game”, which originated in sports psychology in the ’70s, is that our minds have more control over our success than our physical skill does. If we allow our self-doubt, our insecurities and negative mindsets free rein, then we end up sabotaging our own performance. On the other hand, if we master that “inner game” and learn to trust ourselves, we find that things flow much more smoothly — almost without conscious effort.

Gaining control over that inner game means that we let go of judgement, of criticism and doubt. In doing so, we don’t berate ourselves for our failures or overanalyze our every action. We’re better able to let things just be, to see the result we want and move towards it. It means that we’re allowing ourselves to trust that we’re capable of success.

The problem is: most people tend to lose their inner game. They hang onto old failures and beliefs that damages their confidence. They cling to stubborn self-judgment, criticism and old wounds, clouding their minds with doubt and sabotaging their potential. And despite their best efforts to improve via brute force… they often find themselves stuck right where they started.

Not surprisingly, this leaves folks feeling frustrated and defeated, even angry. You’ve likely felt this way yourself. You’ve tried your hardest to change and still failed; clearly the flaw must be deep inside of you.

And it is.

Surprise!

young sad upset man holding his head with hand, looking at camera — “No offense Doc, but your pep-talks *suck*.”

However, the problem isn’t that you’re horribly flawed or fundamentally unlovable. It’s in the way you let your jerkbrain rule you, throwing your inner game like Floyd Mayweather boxing a YouTuber to a “draw”. You are, in a very real sense, getting in your own way, tripping over past failures and traumas. And until you clear those away, you’re going to continue sabotaging your own progress.

If you want to build the incredible new life you’ve been dreaming of, the first thing you need is to clear out the detritus of the past to make room for a new and grander future. Clearing the brush of the self-limiting beliefs. A cleanse for the soul for the new year, if you will. So if you want to make 2022 the year that you turn your love life around, it’s time to make a break with the past and build the foundation for your new, incredible life.

Here’s how.

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Is Dating Too Hard For Men?

November 19, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I’m 29M, from a European country. I’ve got a good career path (in training to be a doctor). I also have an introverted personality (more like crippling social anxiety when I was younger, but residency forced me out of this). I’ve never had luck with attracting women and have never had a girlfriend or a sexual partner.

A lot of the advice I come across seems either contradictory or platitudinous. For example, a lot of mainstream dating advice tells men to focus on their own lives and to stop caring about getting a girlfriend or having sex. This is how I lived my life for years while I was focusing on my studies and just doing things I liked. After years of not caring, suddenly at 29 I looked back and realized I still had no experience with women. I had a quarter life crisis because I didn’t want to end up dying alone never having experienced physical or emotional intimacy with a woman. I started paying more attention to how I dressed and going out more, holding eye contact longer with people, slowing down my speech and being more deliberate and calm with my choice of words. All things that I learned from “dating coaches” online. Truth to be told it made me feel more confident and at least it did more for me than any mainstream advice I had ever followed that told me to be myself, it’ll happen.

But it does seem like dating coaches for men are looked at with a tremendous amount of suspicion. Some of these guys might cross over slightly into PUA territory, but the terms are sufficiently vague that it gets confusing. In any case, PUAs and even dating coaches seem to be painted with the same broad brush as the worst among them (i.e. the guys who teach other guys how to “neg” a girl to lower her self-esteem). Approaching women in public is also vilified by many as borderline or actual sexual harassment.

I understand why since there are quite a few sleazeballs among them, but here’s the thing. In the mainstream, there is not a lot of advice out there to men who timid and who are not bold enough to express their interest in women. We are now in a phase of our culture where the dominant message to men is to encourage them to leave women alone, or at least to think before you speak. I’ve never had to internalize these messages, as I have always been too shy to act on any interest and I overthink everything.

So you can tell me “just treat women like human beings” all you want, I know for a fact that I have talked to women for 29 years in the same way I talk to men, with no underlying motives, with a genuine interest in who they are as a person, and that it has gotten me plenty of platonic friendships with women that I cherish, but never a date or sex. No mutual attraction that just organically manifested itself. (By the way, how insulting is it that the go-to assumption with guys who are not romantically successful is “he must treat women like subhumans”)

I’m not saying you coaches or worse, PUAs hold the answers, but it’s totally understandable why men would try out some of their advice when everything else fails. Obviously, as soon as I hear someone talk about childish and abusive shit like “negging” I switch off the video. But there do seem to be some actual some genuine people between the obvious charlatans.

This plays into my next gripe, which is really the number one thing that is giving me so much anxiety in this whole dating game. Which is my observation that male sexuality is demonized. I am well aware of the demonization of female sexuality, slut shaming and all the awful things that entails, and I am radically opposed to it. But at least those issues seem to be acknowledged through mainstream feminist discourse, while talking about the demonization of male sexuality gets you looked at askew like you must be a woman-hating MRA or incel. But it is everywhere, and it’s inescapable as a man. It seems that there is no agreed-upon way of showing your attraction to a woman that doesn’t carry a risk of labelling you as a creep or worse. Everything men do nowadays to try to act on their attraction to women is scrutinized to oblivion. Men who are just hoping to meet a partner (sexual or romantic) are met with some zinger like “Women are more than just potential dates or fucks, you know”, as if being interested in a woman automatically dehumanizes her. Attempts at getting better at flirting are met with suspicion and alarm and assuming the worst intentions. “OMG do you just want to manipulate women, women aren’t just a code to crack you know, we’re human beings.” (Again, this rings hollow when 29 years of treating women like normal human beings has yielded no results. Flirting is a different kind of interaction than normal social conversation, deal with it). It’s so tiring to walk on eggshells all the time, because trying to be more successful with women is now taken to mean that you think women are mindless sex objects with no worth beyond that. It’s not everyone obviously, but there is a sufficiently vocal minority spouting this stuff that seems to be growing.

It really fucking SUCKS to be told over and over again that your natural sexuality is disgusting and objectifying and creepy and unwanted and predatory and evil and dirty and sinful and harmful and dehumanizing and misogynistic. It’s like Catholicism without Jesus and Mary. But voicing your insecurities or sadness resulting from a lack of dating success just risks inviting scorn or assumptions about your moral character. I, for one, wouldn’t imagine in a million years telling a woman who is having dating troubles that she shouldn’t go out of her way to find men to date (a natural reaction if there ever was one) “because men are more than potential dates or fucks”. How twisted is that kind of thinking?

Look up any thread on r/AskWomen about where and how women like to be approached, and you’ll find that every location or context you can think of has its detractors. “I don’t want to be approached in the street, I’m moving from point A to point B”. “I don’t want to be approached in the bookstore, I’m here to read.” “I don’t want to be approached in the club, I’m here to dance.” “I don’t want to be approached at a bar, I’m here to have a drink with my girlfriends.” “I don’t want to be approached by a guy in my salsa class, I’m here to dance salsa.” It’s not about the personal preference, but the implication that often accompanies it that any guy who would approach is a creep or is exhibiting predatory behavior, because any kind of potential romantic interest is somehow predatory. The only uncontroversial “location” remaining to “approach” women is Tinder. Hours and hours of aimless swiping with near zero matches and certainly zero dates, your self-esteem eroding with every swipe. Dating, flirting etc. should be fun, but it’s not fun when all you are told is that women never ever want to be bothered by your nonsense and that you have to keep all your interest to yourself and bottle it up until it fucking explodes (this last bit is obviously never said, but it’s the logical end result).

Then there’s the advice that is centered less around flirting techniques and more around becoming all around more attractive man so that women will start chasing you. Go to the gym, lift, advance ambitiously in your career, dress fashionably, etc. However, this kind of advice is always underlined with the caveat that you should never do this to attract women, but authentically for yourself. Well, try as I might, I can’t lie to myself. I have no interest in lifting weights and subjecting myself to strenuous, repetitive exercise for its own sake. Any benefits (being able to lift heavier boxes, having bigger forearms) would not be worth it for me outside of the confidence boost from being more attractive to women. I don’t like looking at other guys’ guns, why would I suddenly feel a need to admire my biceps in the mirror? No, I have no problem whatsoever with doing things outside of my comfort zone and changing things about myself, but I can’t pretend that there isn’t some kind of underlying motive there. Same goes for signing up for more “female-friendly” hobbies like yoga or salsa. I’m sure that I could enjoy those things if I put my heart to them, but I wouldn’t really consider doing those things if they didn’t help meeting more women. But with all those people saying you’re a predator for asking out a woman from your salsa class, why not stick with my nerdy hobbies that involve meeting zero women, but at least I get to do something I truly love with a bunch of sweaty dudes whom I don’t feel any need to impress?

Finally, the nail in the coffin for me: the male gender role. I grew up as a sensitive kid in a warm family that encouraged emotional expression. As a young kid I used to gravitate more towards socializing with girls. Consequently, I’ve never had a problem forming fulfilling platonic friendships with girls, but the older I became, the more I started to have nagging thoughts that something about my demeanor just wasn’t very attractive to women, like most of them saw me as an asexual being, a little brother or “one of the girls”.

I believe now there is a multitude of reasons why the “male gender role” persists, some of which is “men’s fault”. But I also believe there is no escaping the fact that a certain degree of male stoicism and “strength” is seen as more attractive by many women, maybe even most, and that deviating from this lowers attraction. It’s certainly not all women, but it happens often enough that I hear a lot about it from other men, and finding women who deviate from this seems like a needle in a haystack. I don’t blame anyone for what they are attracted to (men’s general preference for beauty, youth and fertility isn’t exactly morally superior), but as Brené Brown says:

“Most women pledge allegiance to this idea that women can explore their emotions, break down, fall apart—and it’s healthy,” Brown said. “But guys are not allowed to fall apart.” Ironically, she explained, men are often pressured to open up and talk about their feelings, and they are criticized for being emotionally walled-off; but if they get too real, they are met with revulsion. She recalled the first time she realized that she had been complicit in the shaming: “Holy Shit!” she said. “I am the patriarchy!”

Even when texting a girl from some app, I now notice I seem to get better/flirtier responses when acting vaguely emotionally unavailable rather than as my true emotionally supportive self who is interested in the girl’s hopes and dreams. So this makes me think that even if I do manage to attract someone, it’ll be a struggle to keep her attracted to me and eventually the cracks will show and it’ll be back to square one again. Cue Nice Guy accusations. But as much as I’d like to be physically intimate with a woman, what good would it do if it meant I needed to suppress myself?

So what do you reckon? Should I just give up?

On The Fence

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How Do I Know I Won’t Be Forever Alone?

November 5, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr. NerdLove. I appreciate your sane advice for dating, especially in this age. Unfortunately I have recently got into a bit of a rut as I am trying to improve my non-existent dating life. Forgive me for my bad grammar as English is not my first language.

The best way for me to explain my problem is that I know that I have to improve. I have broken out of the victim mentality and I am ready to take actionable steps towards achieving my goals, but I seem to be getting nowhere and I am losing hope. I am starting to think that despite my best, I am just not lovable and can’t do something that everyone else seems to do naturally.

I don’t know what to do and I don’t have a stable philosophy or mindset to adhere to towards dating. Everyone seems to have their own agenda and everything seems to devolve into something about misogyny or sexism. I get even more worried as I worry that I’ll put all this effort into improving myself — for nothing — and end up just as single as before. I don’t want to be forever alone but as I am aware, I’m not really doing anything wrong. I don’t have a severe lack of confidence, I’m not shy, I’m not entitled, I don’t expect to get laid by collecting friend tokens and I don’t try manipulating women into liking me.

My situation is a bit weird. You might get this type of mail from people in their mid to late 20s but I can’t take the anxiety anymore. I’m extremely worried that I will never get a girlfriend. I’m 18 already and I haven’t even had my first kiss. I ruminate about this all the time. I used to like myself. I used to love my personality and I thought I was a cool person to be around. I used to not hate my appearance. I used to love myself and enjoy every single day. Then it all changed. My friends started getting girlfriends. It happened slowly. But then before I knew it, my closest friends had girlfriends. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, what am I doing wrong? Am I not good enough? Am I not saying the right things? Am I not flirty enough? How do you flirt? No one told me about how to do these things.

I don’t want to be left out. I don’t want to be a 40 year old virgin but i’m afraid that’s where its going to go. I don’t even know how to talk to girls anymore as I’m constantly worried about being too needy or being too avoidant or being too flirty or not flirty enough, and then what actually ends up happening is that my anxiety results in the lack of a spark and it all fades away. I am aware that I come off as really angsty but that is kinda true right now — I am terrified and depressed about this. I have read so many reddit posts on the ForeverAlone subreddit about people who are 19,20,21,25,30 even 50 talking about how they have never found love or lost their v — which terrifies me to my core.

I grew up thinking I was quite ugly but as a kid I didn’t care. Until very recently, after I learned to shave, participate in hygiene, get haircuts as well as losing almost 11kg and being in the best shape of my life, I thought I was quite ugly. I know that I’m pretty ok looking, and I like how I look — people tell me that I look at least 25, in a good way. However, this has still not really translated into confidence for me with women. I have talked to some on snapchat and I asked out this one girl that I had a crush on. I didn’t make any of the really obvious mistakes — only being a friend and seeking validation from her etc., and I do know how to hold a conversation — I have a decent number of close friends and some female friends too so I don’t really have anxiety when talking to girls, but none of that has ended up working out. The girl that I had a crush on gave me her number and seemed interested in the beginning, and we did hit it off but later on, as I tried to be more “flirty” or whatever, she indirectly referred to me as a friend, after which I told her I liked her and she rejected me.

A mutual friend told me that it wasn’t because of my looks, which was what I had assumed, but rather since she wanted to focus on her work and didn’t have time for a relationship but I can’t help assuming that it’s because of me. There have been girls interested in me in the past and I have been approached by them before but my confidence was so bad that I thought they were making fun of me by asking for my number and flirting with me. What worries me more is how fucking difficult getting good advice for this type of situation is. Trying to find good dating advice on the internet is almost impossible as its either just platitudes that don’t really work in the real world and just serve to make dating or trying to get better at it more annoying. “Just be yourself” — I was being myself. “Just be confident” Confidence is an extremely vague trait, “You’ll find someone someday” — No I won’t, not everyone finds love and those who do put in the time and effort to do so. “Love finds you when you least expect it” No it doesn’t, you need to actively look for it to find people. Being desperate wont obviously help but you must seek it to find it.

I’ve gone through almost all of the major philosophies of dating at some point, “Pick Up artistry”, which is at best cringe and at worst manipulative, “The Red Pill” which is something I thought was true for a very long time until I started thinking about how miserable it made me and “The blackpill” which depressed me so much I wanted to kill myself. I have tried reading up on advice that isn’t completely fucking mental and have arrived at your advice and the work of Nick Notas, however I am a bit worried that Nick Notas might just be another red pill misogynist. My friends who have some luck tell me some things to help, such as some truths about dating — the vast majority of people aren’t compatible, there is no perfect girl etc. but they mostly go into platitudes about love finding you or some bullshit.

The constant “no do this, no no no , do THIS instead” is driving me mental. I am aware that you shouldn’t just be yourself, but I feel like the way that I’m doing this feels so unnatural. I have so much information I don’t even know how to act anymore. I am overthinking everything. I am somewhat self aware so I know that I am generally doing something wrong towards this. I am aware that loving myself is an important part of this, and I know that self improvement to get me out of this depression is vital. I am planning to go the gym with my friends to try to bulk up in time for university and I know that approaching and talking to girls without caring about the outcome too much is vital for getting over the fear of rejection and learning what does and doesn’t work but I am dealing with a lot of learned helplessness right now. I have made a lot of progress, as I don’t fear rejection at all and can talk to girls but all I’ve really done is realise how much I don’t know — I don’t know how to flirt and I don’t know how to create attraction or whatever.

I have found that there are 5 types of flirting and most dating advice is catered towards the extroverted ones but since I am an introvert at heart, only the sincere and polite approaches work for me but I feel as if me being natural isn’t flirty enough or doesn’t create enough attraction. I feel as if my time is running out and if I don’t do something right now I’ll end up as some depressed virgin living in his parents house, forever alone. I am aware that a lot of this might have to do with my low self esteem, as I don’t really believe that I am worthy of love right now — All I see are my flaws and I feel like I have to change everything about myself for someone to like me. I have been watching a lot of this youtuber Hamza and I find that he has much in common with me and has gone through the same things that I have gone through and what he prescribes is something that is very close to the red pill but has a far stronger emphasis on self improvement and understanding that men can’t be loved conditionally and must put in the work to gain rewards but something about that just doesn’t sound right to me. Forgive me for my very disorganised rant, I have ADHD and find it hard to do these sorts of things in some sort of coherent order.

The best thing that I have to explain my frustration and confusion is this video

https://youtu.be/be_Ms3nVG10

which, in my opinion, is a pretty good look into some of the modern frustrations of dating. I’m just worried that I am doing this whole thing very wrong and don’t even know it. I wanna fall in love the natural way, I want to feel like I’m being genuine in doing so and not having to worry about being attractive over text or having a masculine frame or whatever the fuck and i’m just extremely confused and overwhelmed by this whole situation. Everyone else just seems to get into it naturally and I’m here struggling. After realising that I might not be a helpless case and taking the plunge into improving on this, I seem to have hit a wall and can’t get past it, and am losing hope as every single piece of advice that I find fails to help me out. Would appreciate some help or outsider perspective and maybe some reassurance.

Sincerely,

Anxious Worried Teen

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