DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I was talking to a group of female friends the other week, and it got onto the subject of dating and relationships. When the conversation turned to discussing my experiences, I told them the truth – that I hadn’t dated in many years, and that women don’t seem to have much interest in me. This was something of a shock to them, and it led to a good few minutes of me being told that I am very handsome, that I’m really good at making women laugh, that I make them feel comfortable (which is a nice comment to receive, honestly…) and such like. I’ve had this conversation many times before, to no avail, so I ended it as soon as I could.
Throughout adulthood, I’ve had many moments like the above, and I’ve received a lot of compliments from people regarding my appearance and personality. It’s been pretty consistent since my early twenties, and has only gotten more regular over time. I’ve had everything from people just assuming I have a partner, to thinking that I’m sleeping with people from my friendship group or at work. It’s not just the biased impressions of friends either – I’ve had people approach me at nightclubs, or in the street, to offer similar compliments. I just don’t understand why they think this. I’d like to think I’ve got a lot going for me, but the reality is I’m just an average guy, and I’m certainly not at my peak (for example, I’ve had to move back home to save money).
And the other matter, as mentioned before, is that women don’t show even the slightest hint of interest. I’ve noticed throughout my life that women within my age range, and of a certain “attractiveness”, don’t even acknowledge my existence, and the remaining choices are out-of-bounds, for one reason or another. My career is dominated by married, older women, so that’s a no-go. My hobbies are female dominated, but beyond platonic interactions, there’s nothing of note there. And on the rare occasion that I do go out to party, there’s no eye-contact from across the dance floor.
Yet everyone thinks I’m a womanizer, and they’ve even used that exact term. “You could get any girl you wanted”, “You have loads of options”. Urgh! It hurts, honestly, because I would have loved to have met someone special by now, or at the very least have some experience with relationships or a few casual encounters. As it stands, the last time I went on a date was when I was twenty years old.
I’m no closer to understanding why people think this of me, and certainly no closer to changing my circumstances. Any advice on this one, Doc?
Who Do You Think I Am?
DEAR WHO DO YOU THINK I AM: You know, WDYTIA, I’m going to do something I don’t do very often: I’m gonna get a little inside baseball. I chose your letter not because it’s an especially insightful or unique question but because it’s an illustration of something that comes up a lot. And in examining this, I think you’ll glean some important insight into your issues if you take a second and actually apply it.
Humans, as a species, derive a lot of conclusions based on incomplete information. Our brains are almost custom-designed for it. After all, seeing patterns and recognizing recurring issues, even if you don’t understand everything about it, is pretty important for survival. If Throg and Zzaz and Gary all eat similar looking red berries that come from similar looking plants, and all of them get sick and die, we can make a reasonable inference that hey, maybe eating those berries is a bad f--king idea.
The problem is, however, that making inferences off relatively little information doesn’t mean that we’re always coming to the correct conclusions. This is especially true when you start getting into intellectual blind spots. While we may be making inferences and drawing conclusions based around what we’re observing, that doesn’t mean that we’re doing so out of pure deductive reasoning and logic. We’re frequently letting our biases, suppositions and preconceived notions inform those observations and conclusions. If someone watches Thag and Zazz die from eating red berries, they may decide the issue isn’t the berry but the color red, for example.
The same comes from making judgements about other people. Your friends are working from relatively limited information – how you look and act when you’re around them. They’re drawing inferences from that information based partially on their own experiences but also on their own cognitive biases and beliefs. So they see you and the qualities you have and make assumptions based on the information they have, while bolstered by their beliefs. And since they don’t have a 24/7 live feed of your entire life… well, they’re drawing incorrect conclusions based off of limited information.
Funny thing though… you’re doing the same thing. You’re making a lot of assumptions of the people around you, based on limited and unreliable information and a whole lot of biases and beliefs coloring what you’re seeing. Your beliefs about yourself are affecting what you’re seeing and – critically – what you’re not seeing and how you interpret all that information.
So an important question to ask yourself would be: if your friends, who presumably are intelligent and observant individuals could be so very wrong about what they think of you… maybe, just maybe you are also wrong about what you think you’re seeing (or not) when you’re dealing with women. And maybe your friends are seeing something in you that you don’t because you refuse to believe it about yourself.
So, if we assume that your friends — and those strangers coming up to tell you similar things — aren’t just stroking your ego, maybe this is your opportunity to try pushing back against those self-limiting beliefs, challenging them and addressing the serious possibility that you were entirely wrong about them.
And while you’re doing that, it may be the right time to experiment a bit, test that hypothesis and see if you’ve got more appeal than you give yourself credit for. In fact, a solid test would be to start actually making moves and talking to those sexy someones you’ve been seeing, instead of coming up with reasons to believe that you’re not desirable or interesting to anyone.
Y’know. For science.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com