DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a mid-20s male and to be honest, I’m completely lost when it comes to dating these days and I always feel like I’m one step behind everyone else (it probably doesn’t help that I lost my virginity late to my friend, who basically took pity on me). I was brought up in a world where if you like someone, you ask them out, and they go out on a date with you. You keep going on dates and if you like the person, you mutually agree to get into a relationship. If not, you go your own separate ways.

Now it seems like asking someone out on a date (as in a ‘date date’ like a coffee date as opposed to drinks in a bar, which seems decidedly skeezy) is a bad idea, because it feels like you’re asking them to commit to the idea of a relationship early on. So you have to play all these head games about how you’re not looking for a relationship so you can disqualify yourself as relationship material and not scare the other person off. To make matters worse, I’ve asked my female friends for advice and they’ve told me that I’m too much of a ‘good guy’, as in the sort of guy who girls settle down with (I’m an economics grad student and a stereotypically nerdy guy) and not the sort of guy that girls would want for a one night stand or something more casual. Which is fine, but I want some of the more casual stuff (sex being part of the pyramid of needs) and it seems it’s easier to go from hooking up to a relationship rather than meeting to a relationship. So it basically feels like prima facie I’m excluded from the more casual stuff because girls make a judgment call about me rather than getting to know me.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places (online dating is tough, but I’m kind of busy and it’s the easiest way to filter through potential partners). I know I sound very bitter, but it seems like that finding a relationship the conventional way these days is virtually impossible and that you need to play hookup culture and all of these stupid games to get anywhere with anyone rather than just being honest. What can I change? Thanks.

Ground Down Grad Student

DEAR GROUND DOWN GRAD STUDENT: You have two problems going at the same time, GDGS.

The first is that you are way too in your own head here. Your idea of how dating works is based on… well, I’m not entirely sure what it’s based on because it doesn’t really resemble anything I’m familiar with. What you’ve described sounds more like somebody’s idea of how “bad boys” operate as reported by someone who’s only heard of the idea before and hasn’t seen it play out.

I’m not quite sure where you got the idea that asking someone out for coffee (or that asking someone out for alcoholic drinks is inherently skeezy) is asking them to commit to anything other than a couple bucks for the price of a latte but… well, that’s not how this works. That’s literally not how ANY of this works.

Unless you are talking to someone who lives their life like an Overly Attached Girlfriend meme, literally nobody sees meeting someone for coffee as being asked to commit to a relationship. Asking someone out for coffee is, quite possibly, the lowest investment date possible. In fact, I advocate that people invite people they’ve met off OKCupid or Tinder to coffee as a pre-date date – literally, to see if they want to go on a date in the first place.

All playing head games does is make things even more confused and annoying for everyone. Whether you present yourself as a potential boyfriend or “not relationship material”, most people are going to take you at your word. Nobody really has the time or the emotional investment to try to tease things out from a first date. So what you end up doing is sending the absolute wrong message for the person you’re trying to attract. Being open and honest about what you want and what you have to offer is like a super power. It filters out the people who don’t want the same things you do and the ones who you simply aren’t compatible with.

So your second problem is whether you’re too “nice” for people who want casual sex. Generally when women tell you that you’re “too nice”, what they mean is that you’re passive and unassuming. Part of the reason why the men who are looking for casual partners (that is, the ones who aren’t complete games-playing s

theads) get casual sex is that they’re proactive about it. They actively look for people who are also looking for casual sex. They show that they are sexual beings by flirting, by building sexual tensionand looking for an opportunity to make their move.

(And before you ask: no, asking for a kiss doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly in the “don’t sleep with” pile.)

And it ain’t like nerds aren’t getting laid, my dude. Nerds get freaky too; in fact, there’s a pretty high crossover between science fiction fandom and BDSM participation.

It sounds to me like you’ve leaned a bit into the “I’m The One Women Don’t Like” identity you’ve got going over, which is going to handicap you more than anything else in your life. If you want to have those casual hook-ups, then I strongly suggest you do is start looking at what it is about the guys who do get casual sex are doing that you aren’t.

And, for real: you need to let go of these ideas that asking someone out on a proper date is automatically asking them for a relationship. It’s a date. You’re seeing if you guys dig one another and if you enjoy spending time together. Everything else comes from that. Stop trying to play head games or thinking you have to trick people to get what you want. I don’t know where the hell you picked that up, but it’s BS and you need to let it go. Be up front about what you want and look for the people who want the same things from you. You’ll be much happier and actually find people who you want to date and who want to date you.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve been following your page for a while now and it’s been incredibly helpful.

I’m 28 years old, and have taken about 10 years to go from “the one who was not good with girls”, to being comfortable in my own skin.

I’m still a nerd at heart, but I’ve worked on myself a lot, and have taken many of the advice pieces you write to heart.

My question to you is something I’ve been struggling with for a while now. For some reason, I’ll find a girl who I think is “the one”, and who I genuinely think could be the one for me, but it always seems to fall through.

I went to a party the other week, and met a girl who in my opinion was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. She was an actress, and was currently working on a play to be released this year. We spoke for a long time, and seemed to click. We kissed at the end of the night and exchanged numbers. I overheard one of her friends saying that she may be seeing a guy who is a bigger name actor.

Eventually, upon further communications it became apparent after a single date that the big name actor was the guy she was interested in, and not me.

Some time after that I went on date with a girl who was a cheerleader, and posed heavily on Instagram for photos. We didn’t click as much, but we still got along. We even slept together, so there must have been chemistry there. Eventually she mentioned that she was interested in a guy who (upon casually stalking), turned out to be really good looking. To be frank, I don’t blame her for being interested in him, but it kinda sucked when I felt we had chemistry.

Another time I went on a date with a girl who ended up at my house, but ended up dating a biker a few weeks later. Or there’s the girl who chose a guy who worked for Facebook.

The point is these incidences are not isolated. It seems that since being single I’ve been on countless dates with people I find attractive, but they’ve ended up being interested in other guys, who frankly seem to have something just that little bit “extra”.

It feels like dating is like the film Gattaca. In the film, society has been reduced to valuing people based on their genetics. Ethan Hawke’s character works incredibly hard to maintain his position as a space cadet, masking his genes with Jude Law’s characters’, who attempts suicide when he wins a silver medal in the Olympics, sentencing him to a life in a wheelchair. Though an extreme example, dating seems to feel like you’re always up against a “bigger fish”, and people value others on genetics. It seems that there will always be the one who will be just that little bit better than me. Sometimes they’re actors. Sometimes they’re artists. Sometimes they’re musicians. Sometimes they’re bikers. The point is, I always seem to meet my match and lose.

I know for a fact that I must be close to “the one”, or at least the girl that I tell myself I want. It just seems like I’m so far away from finding that one girl. I must be attractive enough and good enough with girls to get these dates. But how do I solve this?

What’s the next step doc?

Do I accept my fate as second best for now? Do I dig down further to become this actor/musician/biker/artist? Any ideas?

Second Place, First Loser

DEAR SECOND PLACE, FIRST LOSER: Alright, I’m not quite sure where to start here.

Oh wait, yes I do: there is no “One”. I mean, dude, in your letter you talk having found “the one” four times. So clearly there isn’t a One or you keep dating clones. Looking for The One is an invitation to overinvestment and heartbreak, especially when you’ve only been on a date or two. These women aren’t The One, they are women you’re interested in and who are very nice… but if things don’t work out, there are other women out there who are just as amazing if not more so.

As evidence: I’ll point back to the fact that you just listed four of them.

Next is the fact that you’re not doing badly dude. You got one woman’s number and a kiss, and slept with two others. You may not have gotten a relationship out of any of it, but that’s a pretty respectable result. You really need to stop talking yourself down because things didn’t end with cartoon hearts and cherubs flying all over the place.

But most importantly is you’re doing what my lawyer friends call “facts not in evidence”. You’re making up a lot of reasons for why these women are dating people who aren’t you when you have no idea what’s going on in their heads. I mean, did the cheerleader tell you that she picked that guy over you because he’s better looking? Did the woman who date the biker tell you that she picked him over you because he had a Harley and you didn’t? Did the other woman tell you that she only dated men who had Facebook stock in their portfolios?

No?

Then stop listing those as reasons why they weren’t into you.

Straight talk: women don’t keep spreadsheets of dudes and tally up their pros and cons. There’s no woman out there who’s listing all the attributes of her potential suitors and picking the one who rates highest on the graph. All you know is that, for whatever reason, these women didn’t want what you had to offer as a romantic partner – though clearly at least two of them were down to clown, so clearly you’re not exactly chopped liver.

There will always be dudes who have things that you don’t. There will be guys who are handsomer, richer, more adventurous, whatever. But the fact that they’re more X than you doesn’t mean that you aren’t in the running or that women don’t value what you have. They may have those advantages, but there are women who wouldn’t bang them them with a borrowed vagina with Ryan Gosling doing the pushing. Women don’t date attributes, they date the holistic person. And like I said: you aren’t doing so bad, my dude. You’re describing a quality problem to have.

You’re not second best, because you’re not in competition. It’s not ranked, it’s just pass/fail. They want what you have or they don’t. End of.

Now, if you want to find and develop things that may attract women to you, then by all means do so. But do it because it speaks to your soul, not because you think it’ll get you laid. If you have a love and passion for music, then go and learn how to play an instrument. But if you’re picking up guitar because you think it’s going to get you laid… well, you’re going to end up looking less like Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicles and more like the dude playing guitar in the staircase because he thinks women’ll think he’s deep and sexy and not realizing how kinda sad it all is.

But like I said: you’re doing well. Dating is a numbers game, and there’re going to be false starts, people who you like but don’t like you the same way and vice versa. You’re going to have first dates to nowhere and second dates that seem great to one party but the other decided they weren’t feeling it. But then, you do find the ones that work… and those are the ones that make you glad you held on there.

If you’ve been reading my column, then you know: I never said it would be easy.

I said it would be worth it.

Hang in there dude. You’re doing far better than you realize.

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 keep encountering this same issue with girls that I take on dates or girls who have expressed a certain degree of interest in me. The issue is they run off with other men in front of me.

Examples:

I took a girl swing dancing a few weeks ago as a first date. We had a really fun first hour or two dancing, then this guy (who was a much more experienced dancer than me, swing has a steep learning curve) danced with her 4ish times in the span of 20 minutes, walking up to us when we were talking and whisking her away into a world of dips and spins. When I came back from a cigarette he was taking her into the side room (which is where I take girls when I want a more intimate environment). I told her that I wasn’t ok with what was going on and she insisted that it was alright because we weren’t in a relationship. She stopped dancing with him and spent the rest of the night with me, but she was cold and standoffish and the date ended not long after.

Last night I went out dancing at an EDM show and spent most of the night grinding up on a friend of a friend who was in town for the night. She pulled me away from dancing with other girls to dance with her and started being more physical with me after I told her she was attractive. I went for a kiss and she didn’t pull away but didn’t kiss back. There was a linebacker looking guy who occasionally stood on the periphery. After the show they started talking and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I took her to leave and at the exit linebacker found us. He made a joke about if he was allowed to shake her hand then the two of them started making out. I had no idea what to do and what I tried failed so I just went home.

Another girl a few months ago I met a campout expressed interest in a relationship and told me she lived in my home town. There was a time when I told her to pick between me and another dude and she picked me. Two days later into the campout she told me she’d want to spend the evening with me, within 10 minutes she had run off with another dude and told me she was actually traveling out east with him and didn’t live in my town. When the other guy came up he had a way of putting his arm around her and drawing her into a circle of people that made it difficult for me to talk to her.

I realize these girls aren’t right for me. I do have some insecurity about girls who are attracted to me choosing another man, that’s how my only relationship ended. I used to not be jealous, thinking if I let girls do what they wanted they would come back to me eventually. Now I am jealous and I believe too domineering when threatened, this solution doesn’t seem to be effective. I know the trick is just to be confident what what specifically can I do in these types of situations? I do have a lot of faith in myself and am not upset up about any of these rejections, I’d just like to stop them in the future.

– Bravest Warrior

DEAR BRAVEST WARRIOR:You have a problem BW, but it’s not the problem you think you have.

You think you have a problem with women ditching you. What you have is a problem with insecurity and reading certain social situations correctly.

Let’s start with the most obvious example: the etiquette of dancing, since they seem to be tripping you up fairly often.

Social dancing (swing, salsa, merengue, ballroom, etc) and club dancing both have their own rules and if you’re not familiar with them, it can result in some confusion. The dance floor at the club especially can trip people up who aren’t used to club culture.

In your first instance, you took your date swing-dancing. That’s cool – swing dancing can make for an awesome first date! But here’s the thing about swing dancing: it’s generally understood that when you’re at a swing event, you’re going to dance with many people. In many swing dancing communities, the general rule is one dance at a time; in some groups, it’s two consecutive songs. In general, you’re not to dance with the same person the whole night through. You’re expected to go up to strangers, dance with them, talk while you’re dancing and generally have a good time. You’re going to be interacting with people with a wide range of skill and experience, which means that occasionally you and your date are both going to be dancing with people who are way better than you. Trust me: this is a feature, not a bug. This is part of the fun of going swing dancing.

Now on the other hand, we have clubs, DJs and EDM. At clubs and DJ shows the generally accepted rules is that the dance floor is an entirely different world from the rest of the club. People will grind with folks, get freaky and generally come across as though they’re two seconds away from just straight bangin’ right then and there… but that doesn’t mean that they actually want to screw you. This is especially true if it’s not someone you’ve already had a lot of chemistry and flirting with earlier. People will practically dry-hump you on the dance floor but not want to so much as hold your hand off of it. This is just part of the club atmosphere. If you want to hook up with someone at the club, you don’t treat their behavior on the dance floor as an indicator of interest; you look to see how they respond to you when you’re at a table or flirting in a corner or by the bar. When you went for the kiss and she didn’t kiss you back you were being given the message: she’s not into you. She didn’t dislike you, but someone who’s interested in going home with you isn’t going to just passively stand there while you try to plant one on her. She may have appreciated your being into her. She may have liked dancing with you. But at the end of the night… well, you just weren’t her type.

(I’m also willing to bet that she already knew the linebacker. But that’s another issue entirely.)

In your third example… oy. This part is so unclear that it’s almost impossible to tell just what the hell happened. Near as I can tell… you were flirting with someone, she was flirting back but she was kind of hanging out with another dude? And you told her “Yo babe, it’s him or me”, and she kinda said you but then told you that she was actually traveling with him so… yeah? So we’re going to disregard a lot of this.

Now let’s break down what else is going on here.

In your first example, this guy is dancing with your date then he was walking off with her into a side room. Now, you don’t mention whether anything did happen or that you were assuming something was going to but either way… this is bad behavior on her part. You (general you) don’t ditch your date to hang around other people, whether there’s going to be sloppy make-outs with said others in the near future or not.

HOWEVER.

The idea that she was about to slip off to tongue-wrestle with a guy while she’s on a date with someone else is so cartoonishly over the top that I’m wondering whether there’s some serious failure to communicate involved in this. I’m willing to bet that either you misunderstood what was going on between them or she didn’t see this as a date date.

Is it possible she was a big enough asshole to ditch her date to go share mouth-bees with a rando? Well, it’s not impossible – I… may have stolen a guy’s date before… – but it’s vanishingly unlikely. And if this IS the case… well, she’s an asshole and you’re well rid of her. However, if I’m right and there’s some miscommunication going on? Then you need to be much more clear about the fact that you’re taking her out on a romantic date, not a platonic friend hang-out in order to avoid possible confusion.

If there’s one ongoing thread in these situations it’s that you get threatened when women you’re interested in talk to other dudes and you’ve been unable to shut them down when they seem to be squeezing in on your territory. And I suspect this comes down to the fact that you once got dumped for another guy. That sucks. That sucks a lot and it can totally shred your ego. But I think you’ve let this go to your head; you sound like you get incredibly defensive when other people talk to women you believe are “yours” on some level. Let me tell you: this isn’t attractive in anyone. I don’t care if you’re Quasimodo or Ryan Gosling – if you’re going to start to bristle like Big Moose whenever some dude talks to Midge, you’re going to lose a lot of value and respect with everyone around you. You end up coming off like you’re having a temper tantrum, which is going to turn anyone off… doubly so if you’ve only just met them.

So. What do you do about all of this?

Well, in the short term: you calm the hell down. You learn to assess the situation more accurately – especially with an eye towards understanding the social contract. Don’t assume that a dance is more than just a dance – especially at a nightclub. Be much more clear about your intentions with people you want to date. Don’t get so overly invested in someone you just met that you let it destroy you if they don’t go home with you at the end of the night. Don’t throw a fit because someone you like doesn’t like you back. If she’s decided she wants to make out with someone else there really isn’t much else to do besides wash your hands of her and move on.

In the medium term: the way you avoid having women ditch you for other guys is that you learn how to connect with the women you meet. The worst thing you can do is to try to constantly chase off other guys – this inevitably comes across as though you believe the only way she’d choose you is because you’ve removed her all her other options. A woman who’s into you, who you have chemistry with, who’s digging what you’ve got to offer? She’s not going to leave because Studly GoodNight wandered up and told her to ditch the zero and get with the hero. Avoid the women who are like that because they aren’t the women you want in the first place.

In the long term: you need to work on these self-esteem issues, man. It sucks that your last relationship ended with your girlfriend leaving you for another guy, but there comes a point where you have to be willing to let go and move on. If it’s still hurting you – and it sounds like it is – then the best thing you can do is talk to a therapist or counselor. And in the meantime: start cultivating an abundance mentality. You seem to be treating every woman as your last chance to get into a relationship, and that’s only going to hurt you in the long run.

You can do better than this. You can BE better than this.

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 don’t date much … at all … but read your page regularly as it’s helped give me some perspective on many of my dating frustrations. About a year ago when I met this very attractive and very interesting woman through work, but didn’t think too much of it. For the record, we don’t work at the same company, but our respective jobs require us to be in contact regularly.

Around Christmas time, I was trying to put together an unofficial Holiday get-together and invited her, along with some other people we do work with. She couldn’t make it, but did mention she’d like to get together for drinks sometime. Not “get together with all of you” … “get together with you”.

This sort of jogged my memory about all the other times she seemed to get a little flirty that I didn’t pay too much attention and came to the conclusion that she might be into me a little. Because I have always been kind of bad at judging interest I ran the scenario past a female friend, who agreed I wasn’t being crazy. So I asked this woman out and she said yes.

What happened next was a complete clusterf—k of scheduling. The only time I had available she was busy and vice versa. We finally settled on a lunch meeting which had to be canceled for weather reasons.

Last week she indicated she had some time available this week, I e-mailed her some times that worked for me. 9 days later she writes back to apologize for not writing sooner, but her boyfriend was in town, and now she’s heading out of town for a work thing.

I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll say this … maybe the boyfriend is real, maybe he isn’t. Maybe she understood I was asking her out on a date, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was into me when I was oblivious and not so much when I was interested. I accept all of this. I completely accept that she has a right to change her mind and act accordingly. I still have contact with her through work, and am eager to maintain a courteous relationship as the work she does with us is great and I don’t want to jeopardize that.

But here’s the thing. She still wants to “get together” for a lunch thing or something like that, and I have no interest whatsoever it that anymore. The scheduling rigmarole, the boyfriend that seemed to come out of nowhere, I’m done.

So the problem is I don’t know how to tell her “no” without looking or feeling like a pouty, spoiled brat. Right now my plan is to simply tell her “Sorry, way too busy” if and when she brings it up. But that kind of feels like the coward’s way out.

I am very open to better ideas on how to get out and stay out of this, should you have one.

Signed,

Enough’s Enough

DEAR ENOUGH’S ENOUGH: Honestly, EE, unless she’s proposing getting together for a specific event at a specific time and place, there’s no real reason to go out of your way to say “no”.

A generic “let’s get together sometime” isn’t an invitation that needs an immediate RSVP – it’s more of a polite space-filler. It is, for all intents and purposes an affirmation of “yes, I think you’re a decent enough person that I feel the need to make this general invitation that I don’t really expect to follow through on.”

The odds that this is going to come up again if you don’t specifically go out of your way to mention it is fairly low.

I will say that I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the confusion of whether she was interested in you or hiding the existence of a boyfriend or what-not. I suspect there may have been some misunderstandings along the way – people do meet up with folks for drinks or lunch just to hang out and talk after all.

The fact that you both were trying to find times to make your schedules line up and not giving the standard flake line of “well, maybe some time soon” is an indication that she was genuinely trying to find time to meet up rather than mouthing polite fictions because society teaches women to not say “no” directly.

Considering how much effort you were putting into trying to make this Schrödinger’s Date happen, she may have brought up her boyfriend just as a way of saying “I’m not sure if you’re reading this as a date and I don’t want to call attention to it in case I’m misreading things, but just in case…”

By the time you hit the point of it taking more than a week for her to get back to you… well, it ain’t great, but I tend to believe in Hanlon’s Razor: never attribute to malice what might otherwise be equally explained by incompetence. In other words: maybe at that point she was giving you the brush-off or maybe it was literally an out-of-sight, out of mind event, where other things got her attention and she remembered later on that she owed you a response.

(I say this as someone who needs constant reminders to reply to emails and scheduling concerns; if I don’t set up about a dozen notifications, lots of crap gets lost in the shuffle and I end up forgetting about them until it’s too late.)

TL;DR version: I think there was enough back and forth that there was genuine interest in a platonic meet-up and the stars just never aligned to make it happen. As it is: I think you can just let things slide without needing to say anything. Worst case scenario – you’ve both established you don’t have the time; “sorry, I’m insanely busy” is a polite enough way of turning her down.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE:Throughout my non-existent dating life I have noticed something: the women I’m attracted to are not attracted to me and vice versa.

Now my friends say that I should stop setting my standards so high and go out with one of the girls who like me and that I could learn to like them. I feel as though this is disingenuous to the girl and also that if I can learn to like someone then someone else can learn to like me. It also seems to me that most dating advice is about being to get anyone and not someone.

What I mean is that I feel as though the message is “if you find ways to improve your life and make yourself more attractive you will eventually find someone who is willing to date you but it may not be the person you want.”

I guess in the end my question is, if who or what you want is unattainable then why bother trying? Perhaps that is a very pessimistic view and I am a pessimist but I just don’t see the point in settling for something I don’t even really want.

Don’t Want To Settle

DEAR DON’T WANT TO SETTLE: The first rule of dating, DWS, is that you have the right to set your standards wherever you want to. If you decide that the only women you’re interested in are 6-foot tall opera singers who resemble Lupita Nyong’o but with Mass Effect tattoos, well, hey, you do you.

But you have to go into that understanding that just because you want something doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to get it. One of the things that drives me crazy in pop-culture is the way that we’re taught that expecting near-perfection means that the universe is obligated to provide you with someone who meets that level and that “settling” is some sort of moral failing.

Similarly, we tend to believe that only the very best, the créme-de-la-créme could make us happy… which frankly, is a very good way to make yourself miserable.

If you’ve set your standards to the point that only people in the top 1% of their class – whether that is in terms of physical beauty or accomplishments or money or talent or what-have you – then you’re explicitly acknowledging that you’re trying to play on the hardest difficulty setting.

It’s like deciding that if you’re going to do track and field, you’ll only be satisfied if you can do so at an Olympic level… that’s great if you want to do this, but you have to be willing to acknowledge that you’re trying to be the best of the best of the best – something that’s achievable by less than a percentage of those who attempt it. If that’s going to be your definition of success, then you have to be willing to acknowledge that you might not get there. I’m all in favor of “chasing your dreams”, but there comes a point where you have to recognize that you’re not going to get there.

To paraphrase Chuck Wendig: not everyone can be an Olympian, but that doesn’t make running a marathon any less of an achievement. You may not be dating the hottest woman alive, but that doesn’t mean that the woman you are dating is any less special or incredible.

Here’s the thing about standards: they’re great to have, but they mean that you need to be able to give equal value in exchange. This doesn’t mean looks or money or status, but it does mean that you have to have something that is equally important to what the people who meet your standards, otherwise you start getting into the realm of entitlement. If the only people you want to date are supermodels, to choose a random example, that’s your choice… but not only are supermodels rare on the ground, but they are going to have their own standards. You’re going to have to bring a lot to the table to make that happen.

(I’m not suggesting that you’re only interested in dating supermodels, DWS; it’s hyperbole to make a point.)

The other thing you have to realize is that nobody – no celebrity, no model, no international playboy – gets 100% of what they want in a relationship. You get 60, 70, 80% of what you want and decide that you’re willing to forgo the rest because, hey, what you do get is just that awesome and makes up for what isn’t there. I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 – a list of all the ways his mistress doesn’t measure up to fabled beauties but his love for her makes her far more precious to him than any goddess could ever be.

Do I think you should go out with someone just because they like you and see if you can learn to like them? Well that all depends: are there things about them that you do like? Are there indications that they may have qualities that would make you happy? Are you willing to give them a chance to show you what they have to offer – just as women are constantly pressured to give guys a chance to make their case?

Regardless: I do think you should examine your standards. I think everyone should. But you need to do so with the understanding that having standards doesn’t guarantee that you’ll find someone who meets them, or that you’ll meet the standards of the people who meet yours.

And then you have to decide which is more important: maintaining those incredibly high standards and being alone, or relaxing them and finding somebody who’s amazing but not “perfect”.

Good luck.

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