DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m not looking for advice for dating or sex but in relating to women as a loner, quiet, unattractive man. Specifically, at work. I’ve been reading several threads on Reddit among its female users that my kind of man is really looked down upon, even feared or looked at in disgust:

the socially-awkward causing them to feel “jumpy” around him

the virgin guy creeping them out 

the quiet guy ticking them off

several who felt the loners at the office were threatening to them due to the Oregon shooting

Which agree with my experience with women in the real world, and what they say in Twitter and Facebook and so on.

I really didn’t mind until yesterday, when my HR manager told me next week we were going to have “a talk” regarding my relationship with the female staff.

Now, I don’t treat women… at all. I try to avoid them. Since I started working 4 years ago female co-workers (except perhaps the mandatory-polite HR employee or recruiters) have been at best curt towards me. Which never bothered me, because that’s the relationship I have with women in general, both at college and outside. So I just ignore them and only just say “good morning” if I bump into them at the office kitchen or something and nothing else. Avoid even looking at them when they walk by me (and I make an EFFORT there, since I have terrible concentration and having them walk around my workstation all the time is really distracting). The few times I have to talk to a female coworker I do it in a polite, professional way, without betraying any sort of familiarity that might make them uncomfortable and jumpy or feel creeped out.

So when our new HR manager told me about this meeting I wondered if all those experiences these guys at Reddit talked about were real all along and it finally happened to me. I’m accustomed to being “the loner” and having women look down on me in social spheres or even try to avoid siting close to me in public transportation, but I never thought they would go out of their way to try to get me kicked out from work.

So what am I to do? Socializing with them is out of the question: I’m already 25, a kissless virgin with no friends or experience and, honestly, if it comes to being given the choice of being laid off or having to play the role of the pity-project or the laughingstock due to my inexperience and low social status, I’ll choose being laid off. I was hoping there was a way to just be ignored, or wondered if there was something that may have ticked them off about me. What could I have done?

—

Just The Guy In The Corner

DEAR JUST THE GUY IN THE CORNER: Ok, JTGITC, I get that you’re anxious and that you feel incomplete and depressed because of your relative lack of experience. It totally sucks when it feels like the entire world is sitting there silently judging you because you’re a little further towards one end of the bell curve or the other.

But I’m gonna be honest with you here, dude… you’re bringing a lot of this on yourself. It’s time to call in the bellhop because man we’ve got a lot of emotional baggage to unpack in this letter.

Let’s start with the obvious thing first: the fact that you’re a virgin really has nothing to do with anything. Being a virgin at 25 is relatively uncommon but hardly rare or unusual; it happens far more often than you’d think, for men and women. Whether you’re a virgin or not has nothing to do with your worth as a person, with your potential or even an indication of anything other than the fact that you just haven’t had sex yet. Period, end of.

The people who make the most fuss about a virgin being a shameful thing aren’t women, they’re other men; the idea of sex as demarcator of personal worthiness is part of the toxic masculinity package. Most of the women you’re going to encounter in your day to day life not only aren’t going to know whether or not your a virgin but frankly, most of them aren’t going to give a damn. 9 times out of 10, most of the people in your life really aren’t all that invested in whether you’re a virgin or not, and the ones who give you crap for it are proving themselves to be jerks.

Now, what are the people in your life going to care about more? Your attitude. The fact of the matter is, folks prefer being around positive people and avoid being around negative people because negative people tend to infect others with their negativity. It’s generally unpleasant to be around someone who responds to a “Hey, how’s your morning?” with a grumble and a f

k-off scowl. Same with the guy on the bus who looks like he’s imagining the best way to rip out the lungs of the next bastard who talks to him – most people aren’t going to want to deal with him, so they give ’em a wide berth. Someone who’s generally smiling and upbeat is much more pleasant to be around.

Frankly, there’s a lot in your letter that suggests to me that you’re the former, rather than the latter. It’s totally understandable that you might withdraw into yourself, considering how you feel about yourself; it’s a way of protecting yourself from being hurt by others. After all, folks can’t make fun of you or hurt you if you if you don’t let them in.  But now you’re faced with the classic Hedgehog’s Dilemma: nobody can get close because you’ve invested so much pushing them away, even if you aren’t consciously aware of it.

And of course, part of the problem with this negative outlook on life is that it very quickly becomes self-reinforcing. You treat yourself as though you’re worthless and you look for evidence that it’s true… and you’ll find plenty of it because that’s how brains work. It’s an intellectual fallacy known as “confirmation bias” – you’re basically doubling up on things that confirm what you already believe while discounting what you don’t, assuming you see it at all. Tracking down Reddit threads follows the same pattern; you’re going to only pay attention to the ones that fall in line with what you already believe.

Now let’s talk about your specific example:

The fact that you made people feel uncomfortable and ended up getting called into HR. Let’s start with the way you phrased things: that your co-workers “would go out of their way to try to get me kicked out from work.” I’m going to be honest here: I really doubt this. Yeah, there’re times when high-school never ends and even grown-ass adults can get all Mean Girls on others but frankly, those times are really rare. Most people don’t have the time, energy or interest for Machiavellian plotting against their co-workers; most of the time they just want to get through their day with a minimum of fuss.

On top of that, there’s not really anything your letter that inspires me to believe that your experiences happened exactly as you’re reporting them. You’ve got a pretty strong confirmation bias going here, and that’s coloring how you see the world and it’s blinding your self-awareness.

Before I get to your behavior specifically, let’s take a moment to examine the difference between intent and how it’s perceived. Fortunately, pop-culture has recently provided an excellent example in Rami Malek’s performance as Elliot Anderson in Mr. Robot. Anderson is, frankly, kind of creepy. He doesn’t mean to be; he’s socially awkward and clearly has anxiety issues. His behavior is off, in a way that makes people uncomfortable. It’s something of a shame because he’s got a good heart and he’s incredibly lonely. At the same time however, when people try to include him or connect with him, he pushes them away. He barely hides his contempt for most of the people around him and he’s still cold and stand-offish to others who’re actively trying to reach him. To be sure: it’s a defense mechanism. Deep down, he’s terrified of being hurt again by people close to him and he tends to keep people at a distance in order to avoid giving them the chance to hurt him. However, nobody knows that; they just see someone who makes them uncomfortable and apparently actively dislikes the people around him. As a result, people quite understandably see his behavior in a negative light. Meanwhile he tends to assume the worst in others, in no small part because that’s all he looks for. He looks for proof that his dour outlook on life is correct and – naturally – finds it, which just encourages him to be even more pissy to the people around him.

I suspect that, as with Elliot Anderson, the way you’re behaving isn’t being perceived the way you think it is. You may intend to come off one way – trying to avoid any contact beyond the bare minimum in order to ward off creeping people out – but I rather suspect you’re coming across much like the guy in the third link: surly, sullen, stand-offish and pissy. This is doubly true if you’re only behaving like this around women. People are going to notice when you’re only giving the go-away behavior (even if you’re not intending for it to come off that way) to women instead of men and that’s going to give them the impression that you really dislike women. So, yeah, that’s going to make people uncomfortable, and not unreasonably so.

So I know this is all coming across as pretty harsh. You’re probably feeling pretty defensive right now. Believe me, my intention isn’t to make you feel like a loser or a creep, because I really don’t think you are. I think you’re scared and hurt and lonely and you really don’t want to be, and I want to help you. But before I can help, you have to see the real issue and why your behavior and your attitude is contributing to the problem. And that’s not gonna be pretty. But I promise you: get past the ugly parts and life is gonna get better. Because now we’re going to talk about some practical steps to help fix things.

Ready?

My very first suggestion to you is that you quit reading Reddit, or at least threads and subreddits that focus on issues like social anxiety and being an older virgin. Despite it’s claims of being the front page of the Internet, Reddit is not a representative slice of the population. Hell, it’s not even statistically significant. Trying to gauge women’s opinions via Reddit threads is a giant mistake; it’s like trying to diagnose your cough via WebMD. All that’s gonna happen is that you’re going to convince yourself that you’ve got cancer and Venusian Death Lung and drive yourself into a panic.

Quite frankly, I think this is a large part of your problem: you’re continually reinforcing this internal narrative you have about being a pathetic virgin. When you surround yourself with people who only say “yup, it’s pathetic, people hate us and there’s nothing we can do about it”, you’re setting yourself up to believe that there’s nothing you can do. And that’s not true at all.

My next is to go into that HR meeting and listen. Don’t go in assuming that people are trying to get rid of you; all that’s going to do is put you on the defensive and make things more difficult. Instead, go in with an attitude that you want to fix things. This will totally change the tone and make things far less confrontational. Ask questions: what about your behavior made people uncomfortable? What could you have done differently? When given a chance, apologize for making people uncomfortable – not a “I’m sorry you were uncomfortable” passive-language non-apology but a legitimate “OK, I did this, I’m sorry” apology. After you’ve apologized, explain that you’re socially anxious and you tend to avoid people because you get nervous around them and worry about making them uncomfortable. To be sure: being socially awkward isn’t an excuse but giving the context for your behavior – as you’re trying to improve and make amends – can provide much needed context and help people realize what you’re doing.

Following that: talk to HR and see if they can recommend a counselor. I’ve written a lot about overcoming social awkwardness but you have some deep-seated issues that are best sorted out by talking with a professional instead of your fellow travelers on Reddit. This doesn’t mean that you’re broken, defective or otherwise bad; it just means that you’re carrying around a lot of pain and you would probably benefit from talking to someone who specializes in helping you deal with that pain. If your company’s HR department can’t recommend someone, then there’re a number of other places you can turn to find affordable mental and emotional health care.

Believe me, I understand how you feel. You feel like you’re trapped, that you’re stuck living a lousy life and being a defective person. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to be. As dismissive as this may sound, a lot of your problems really are in your head… but that’s actually a good thing. This means that you can identify the problems and – with time and effort – overcome them. You have the power to make your life better. Right now things suck, but you can make things better. Get through this immediate problem – it doesn’t have to be as dire as you think it is right now – and then get some help.

Take a deep breath and let down your defenses.

You can feel better. You can be better. You can overcome this.  You’re going to be ok.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I need your help. 

I need advice on whether my girlfriend is cheating on me.

We are in a long distance relationship; she is about 2 hours away and we see each other every other weekend. We’re going on 3 months now. The reason I think she maybe cheating on me is because for awhile she didn’t think it was important to communicate with me throughout the day. After we argued about that she’s gotten better, but she’s still acting shady. When she is around me she never wants to drink because she gets crazy, but when she’s not around me she will get drunk with her best friend. When she does go out, she doesn’t tell me and I don’t hear from her at all. The only way I know is when she brags about it the next morning. I’ve asked her why she doesn’t talk to me when she’s out and what she says is that its rude to text in front of other people, but she text in front of me all the time.

She is always talking about her past and it finally got to a point were I told her that I don’t wanna hear it, makes me think she is missing something. Whenever I try to talk about my problems with her, she gets defensive and takes everything to the extreme. For instance when I was talking to her about the drinking thing she said “Fine, I won’t drink and hangout with my friends anymore”. I love her and she says she loves me but I don’t know anymore. I just don’t wanna waste time with the wrong person. Everybody I talk to tells me she is, but I don’t know what to believe. Please help!

Totally Really Lost

DEAR TOTALLY REALLY LOST: there’re no signs that she’s cheating on you TRL, just a whole lot of signs that it’s time for the two of you to break up already, because holy God you two aren’t working out.

So let’s take this apart a little, shall we? To start with, you’re both doing the long-distance relationship thing wrong. When you’re in a long distance relationship, communication is key. It’s difficult to maintain a romantic connection over a distance; even video chatting isn’t going to be the same as when you’re in person. But one of the first things you have to do is establish your communication needs. Some people prefer to talk once a day, others like an end-of-the-week download with sporadic texting or IMing. But expecting constant contact throughout the day is going to be pushing things, even for the most “shmoopy” of couples.

Just on a practical level alone, there are going to be long stretches during the day when it’s just not practical to be texting, sending Snaps or chatting over Facebook. Sometimes, even amongst chatty types (and I speak as one of them; it’s a damn good thing that I have unlimited text messages) you’re just going to not get a prolonged conversation or even an immediate response. If you’re going to freak out about periods of radio silence over the course of the day, then you’re not ready for a serious relationship. If you can’t handle being out of contact with her, then it’s no longer about how much you care about one another, it’s about your needing constant reassurance and validation from her.  A relationship isn’t a deposition, especially one as brief as yours is. You’re not her parole officer and she’s not required to check in with you before she goes out with her friends, nor is she obligated to constantly be providing you with updates when she’s out having fun.

Now to be fair: talking with her about your needs and working to find a compromise that works for the both of you is a step in the right direction. It’s just too damn bad that everything takes about five dozen backwards after that. I’m going to be honest: neither of you are covering yourselves in glory here. You’re being clingy while she’s coming off as incredibly rude and inconsiderate.

When it comes to understanding people, there’s looking at what they say and looking at what they do. And right now, what your snugglebunny is saying and doing? Two very different things.

Let’s take the drinking issue. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean that you’re welded together at the hip, nor does it mean that you aren’t allowed to go out and party down with your BFF when your significant other is around. But it’s another thing entirely when it’s a Jekyll and Hyde situation; claiming not to like drinking because it makes her get wild, but going out and closing down the clubs when you’re not around is a sign that she’s not being straight with you… especially when she’s bragging (your words) about all the crazy times she had. You know. Those crazy times she told you she doesn’t like having.

Similarly, there’s her telling you that she thinks texting in front of other people is rude and then texting other people in front of you. Even allowing for the fact that this is the excuse she’s giving you for not taking time away from being with her friends to text with you (which is pretty impolite), the fact that she’s doing something that she believes to be rude to you tells you a little about how much she respects you. The way the two of  you argue isn’t any better; the passive-aggressive “well fine, I guess I just won’t hang out with my friends any more!” response is  just a way of shutting you down without actually addressing the issues at hand. 

This isn’t a healthy relationship for either of you. The best thing for both of you is to break up now. Even at the most generous viewing, she’s selfish and rude and you need to do some maturing so that you can get to the point where you don’t need to be in constant contact. Let her go find someone else and spend your time working on yourself so you can find someone who is right for you… and you can be right for her.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:  I got dumped unexpectedly last night by a woman I’d been seeing for about two months. I liked her quite a bit; I made it clear to her that I liked her, and that I wanted her, and that I was fine with moving at whatever pace was comfortable for her. I wasn’t exactly planning the proposal, but I was definitely at a point where I was thinking there might be some potential for something serious. 

When she broke up with me last night she said that she thinks I’m very sweet, and she has a blast when she’s with me, but the romantic spark never appeared for her. I was a little surprised by this–less than a week ago we enjoyed a pretty heavy makeout session that ended only when we agreed with some difficulty that it might be a good idea to slow down. I had originally worried I wasn’t building physical chemistry with her, but once we got to the point that most dates were ending with an hour or so of kissing and cuddling I figured I was in good shape.

So, what I’m wondering is: was there something I should have done differently, or done more of? Is this just a case of two people with a fundamental incompatibility? In short, did I screw this up, or is this just a case of something better discovered sooner than later?

Feeling Confused

DEAR FEELING CONFUSED: You didn’t do anything wrong, FC. The long and short of it is that you weren’t compatible and that was never going to change.

You wanted something that she just wasn’t going to be able to give; you wanted a relationship and she just wasn’t feeling that with you. You may have had the physical chemistry –  she was digging the sloppy make-outs –  but the emotions just weren’t there and there wasn’t any sign of that changing. Don’t get me wrong: she definitely liked you. After all, she was going out of her way to give it time to see if things would develop, but (and I hate to devolve to cliche) she just didn’t like you that way. Sexual attraction is great and an important part of relationships, but it’s not enough for a long-term relationship on it’s own.

There comes a point in a relationship when you have to check and see if you’re on the same page… and frankly, you weren’t. You wanted something serious with her and she just wasn’t feeling the same way about you. And so she ended it. And it sucks, I know. God knows I’ve been there. But in the long run… she was doing you a favor.

I realize that it doesn’t feel this way right now. It’s still fresh and raw and you have no real distance or perspective on the matter. It’s actually a testament to her feelings for you that she was willing to break up with you when she did. But by cutting things off early on, she was saving you both from greater pain down the line. Sticking things out would have ultimately meant that she was leading you on and that wouldn’t be fair to either of you; all that she would be doing is postponing the inevitable and ultimately making the pain worse when you eventually realized that the entire time you thought you were building to something serious, she was only sticking around because she was afraid to hurt you. That is the sort of pain that ruins people for a long, long time.

So she was cruel to be kind, breaking things off even though she liked you, liked making out with you and had fun with you. She risked the pain now to save you from worse later on. And that means a lot. She was being a better friend to you than you realized. Take comfort in that and realize that you’ll be in a better position to find someone who is on the same page as you.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been involved in a relationship for the past 7 years with a man to whom I kept at a distance for 5 of those years. Once he moved in with me I noticed he had a bad addiction to alcohol.

Most of the time, things were fine. He worked, he helped with the bills and we were still close. We danced on the sidewalks, we sang together we played together, but the problem is that his drinking spun out of control.

While I was in the process of remodeling my home, his drinking was at a all time high. He hit me, then swore he would never to do this again. I believed him.

Two months later when cooking in the kitchen, the dark side took over he grabbed me by the hair threw me to the ground and choked me to the point that I saw white and feeling like I was passing out and losing control. During this I bit his finger as hard as I could, and pinched him until I drew blood. Once he let go I got up and had three blows to the back of my head. I called the police and had him arrested.

How could all of this come from someone I loved?

The thing is, he was drunk off his ass when he did this to me. He spent 3 months in jail. He is now in treatment and has not drank a drop since then. He is in therapy and doing great. We can speak on the phone, we can text, but the courts have a partial no contact order.

My older kids have stated they will not speak with me if I give this man another chance. I love him, and he is doing great with rehab. When he’s sober, he’s the great guy I have known him for over 30 plus years — since high-school, really.

Do you have any suggestions in this regard? I feel torn and confused.

Lisa’s Being Torn Apart

DEAR LISA’S BEING TORN APART: Yes, I have a suggestion. You delete his number, his email, block him on every form of social media, put everything of his in a box and ship it somewhere else, and then get the ever-loving hell away from him. You hop the Nope Train to F

kThatSh*tVille with stops in OhHellNo and ByeFelipe and be grateful he didn’t hurt you worse.

It’s very sweet that you’re such a forgiving soul. I try to be as well. I like to believe that people can change. But, I’m sorry: I’m glad he’s doing great with rehab but when someone is trying to choke you to unconsciousness (IF NOT, Y’KNOW TRYING TO KILL YOU) and hitting you in the head, he’s out of chances.

That’s a “get the hell out of Dodge” clause right then and there. Do not pass Go, do not believe his promises to be better. Assault, battery and attempted murder are all relationship extinction level events and I don’t care how good he is now that he’s sober again.

I would suggest buying yourself a copy of The Gift of Fear and Why Does He Do That? and read up on abusers and abuse tactics. There’s almost always a honeymoon period (or several periods) after abuse – especially if it involves things like court-mandated rehab and jail time – where the abuser promises things are better and is the same person you loved before.

Is he truly better? Well, in an infinite universe, anything is theoretically possible. But not only am I severely inclined to doubt it in this case, it’s also a case involving horrific assaults on top of everything else. I’ve seen folks who’ve acted like that and made a big hew and cry about how much better they were. Guess what? They were still manipulative bastards afterwards and kept at it.

Thank your lucky damn stars that you’re no longer with him, and get him out of your life and never look back.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been working at my current company a little over a year, and basically developed feelings for this coworker. I had thought initially that she was interested in me as well, which is what resulted in me asking her out to coffee.

Well turns out, she didn’t like me, and nicely rejected me by saying that she was “talking with someone else” and didn’t feel like it was fair to me to go out with me as well. I was pretty stunned, as I had been pretty sure that she was indeed interested in me (She had asked about me, if I was in a relationship e.t.c).

Regardless of the reasons, or what was there or wasn’t, I got rejected, and that should’ve been the end of the story. There was a bit of awkwardness between us for a few days, but we relaxed back into just friendly coworkers.

I actually started to move on, joined a dating site, and began looking elsewhere (as one should). Now here’s where one of my most stupid mistakes to date happened.

See, this coworker of mine, was on the site as well, and turned up as one of my best matches. I was perplexed, confused, and had the stupid idea that maybe the thing with the other guy hadn’t worked out.

So I asked her out via the dating site messaging… again.

Yeah…

In retrospect that was the most bone-headed move ever, and it got about the same result as you’d expect. Turns out the the rejection before had just been a “soft” no (as you’ve talked about at length here), rather than her just not being interested in me at all.

To say I felt ashamed and stupid was putting it mildly. I had basically failed to take the hint the first time, and just unintentionally badgered this girl a second time.

She nicely said no in her message but her attitude at work changed quite a bit. She’s now completely ignoring me and everything to do with me. Which is problematic because we’re both kind of in the same area, albeit on different teams. There is a pretty evident source of anger, avoidance and just flat out annoyance it feels like now.

And the thing is I get why. I messed up, I realize that, but what I’m confused about is what I should do now. I can’t exactly leave my job at the moment or transfer to another department, and my instincts are telling me to just apologize to her somehow and fix this.

She clearly DOES have a problem with the fact that I asked her out twice, which, you know, fair enough. But I’m not exactly sure how to resolve this.

Do I ask her for a second of her time and just promptly apologize in person? Do I send an e-mail? We’re friends on Facebook, should I apologize there?

Or… Should I just leave everything alone and just try and deal with it. It’s getting exceedingly uncomfortable and awkward, to the point where it’s starting to not only look odd, but is bothering me as well.

What should I do Doc? I really am at a loss for what to do? I don’t want to make things worse and make her want to call HR or something like that. I’m decently experienced with turning people down and being turned down, but this workplace thing has me really confused.

I’d appreciate some of your insight on the matter.

Regards,

Trying to Fix This

DEAR TRYING TO FIX THIS: Dude. Things were fine when you asked her out and she turned you down. It was a little awkward at first but you acted like things were no big deal and everyone was happy.

Then you had to go and screw it all up by trying again, this time via a dating site.

Not gonna lie man: that sort of thing can feel a little less like “boneheaded mistake” and more “are you trying to find me everywhere I go?”

Yeah, I know you didn’t mean it that way. You know you didn’t mean it that way. But you have to look at it from her perspective: you didn’t take “no” for an answer and then went out of your way to ask her out somewhere else.

The biggest issue here is that you’re co-workers. You see each other every day. Imagine if you hadn’t seen her on Tinder or Plenty of Fish or whatever but you ran into her at a seedy singles bar and hit on her there. That’s going to feel uncomfortable to folks, like you’ve been putting on this persona at work but now that you’re not there, rules change. You didn’t even bring it up in person, just sprung it on her out of the clear blue sky.

The fact that you approached her online was just a little weird, even if you didn’t have that first rejection under your belt. So now it’s a little like “hey, found you here!” and “so, now that I know where you hang out, how about that date?”

So what do you do?

Well, you just let it go. I get that you want to apologize, but part of apologizing means doing it in a way that doesn’t make things even more uncomfortable and awkward. What she almost certainly wants, more than anything else, is to put this whole uncomfortable situation down the memory hole and pretend it never happened. The kindest thing you can do for her is do just that: pretend it didn’t happen and just give her space.

While you and I both know that this isn’t your intention, there are plenty of sketchy dudes out there who’ll use apologies – especially very profuse, over the top ones – as ways to make the person getting the apology feel guilty or as a way to continue bugging the person they’re supposedly apologizing to.

You know it was weird. She knows it was weird. Trying to make up for the weirdness is only going to make it weirder and even more uncomfortable. Give her the room to be uncomfortable. Be friendly, but a bit distant. Let her decide when she’s comfortable again and make the move to talk with you again – if  she decides she wants to, in any case.

The rule for avoiding weirdness is “Don’t start none, won’t be none”. So now you’re going to just have to go back and pretend like you didn’t see her on there and hadn’t had this awkward moment. Don’t bring it up unless she does specifically. Not “hints at it” or “says things that may be related to it” but specifically says “hey, it was a bit weird when you approached me on OKCupid” or whatever. Until then: it never happened and the two of you are cordial co-workers.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)