DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: How in the heck does a man actually feel like a sexual creature? How do you start feeling worthy of having sex and being comfortable expressing that I want to have sex in this world?
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I say this as sometimes (a lot of the time actually) it’s just not worth trying to meet people. It feels as though as everyone has a million stories about creeps trying to hit on them and as a man with no experience in asking people out, I’m going to come off as creepy a heck of a lot before I even have reasonable social skills, a 9 in charisma (out of 20).
I just don’t want to be the creep, even accidentally and I never asked anyone out in school, so I don’t have the practice to help me. I also never asked anyone out and barely socialized at all in college, meaning that I’m waaaay further behind socially than most people.
Now if I were a time traveller, I’d get my past self to socialize more but I do not have such technology, besides if I did it would be consumer-model, I. E. Terrible as slackers can’t afford nice things without taking out a loan.
Anyway, while we’re talking stats, my strength is less than 5, I’m puny, my Dexterity is 10, my best stat in that it’s the speed and reflexes of an average person, my Constitution is abysmal, 4, I get horribly horribly winded from a light 10 second jog, my Intelligence and Wisdom is 6, I’m deficient in my studies and haven’t seen enough of the world to prevent myself from getting ripped off and my charisma is a 4, I get by (barely) socially with my D&D games but I dont have a life outside of it.
My idea of a bad evening is when my computer updates and I’m stuck inside with a bunch of books I only read in the mornings over breakfast, and a ton of ideas for stories to write but not the get up and go to even write out a draft.
I got off topic, point is I now only see love as something that happens in fiction, a nice little lie to sell products on deceitful holidays like Valentines day.
I’m not angry about the love is a lie thing, I get by alright with a monk-like lifestyle right now, I just need to learn how to feel like a sexual being, as in feeling worthy of actually having sex and expressing that fact in case I meet someone that wants to spend their life with me and I want to spend my life with them, and living life like In the life insurance ads, happy in our old age.
But how would I feel like any woman would actually be interested with me? I’m the proverbial anime fan on prom night.
There needs to be something standout about me for any woman to be interested, me being a sports star, or an investor, or one of those losers you find on TED talks, trying to give others false hope. I need to be an inventor, or a scientist or a programmer who doesn’t want to take vast amounts of user information via social networking websites.
Women aren’t interested in 20-something loser man child who all they want to do is write stories, they… just want somebody better.
So anyway, how the hell does somebody even feel ready to ask somebody out? Leaving aside all the potential public shaming that could occur, my brain just doesn’t accept it as a concept. I mean the attraction’s there, but it always thinks ‘pass on by’ and I do, unwilling to ask someone out because it most likely won’t be worth the effort.
What would I gain? A nice conversation perhaps, maybe even a hug goodnight. What’s to lose? Getting beat up, publicly shamed, sneered at, or worse.
Now I was thinking about being a pillar of the community to find meaning in my sexless life, but something tells me that people will sponge off my generous nature, never learning how to do anything for themselves and just expect handout after handout. I want to help people but I don’t want to be their caretaker.
I got off track there again, apologies doc.
Thanks,
Iron Hand
DEAR IRON HAND: Alright, I’m gonna do something I don’t normally do. Iron Hand, I want you to just shut up.
This isn’t “Oh sweet Zombie Jesus shut up already you annoying idiot”, it’s “shut up and just DO it already”. You just spent over 700 words and god knows how many minutes talking about all the things you don’t like about yourself and why you can’t possibly ask anyone out. That, honestly, is time wasted. For all the time you just spent listing all the things that are supposedly wrong with you, and all the reasons why the universe is arrayed against you, and you have to suffer the slings and arrows of having leapt off the blocks at the start of whatever social skills race you seem to think you’re in, you could have spent it DOING something about it. And by something I mean literally anything.
But you haven’t. All those things you’ve told me about? They’re excuses. And they’re not even GOOD excuses. 99.999% of them are things that you have just straight made up out of whole cloth. I don’t know if you’ve spent too much time on Incel or Red Pill forums or if this all came straight out of your own head, but you’ve painted a Heironimous Bosch painting of a world that, frankly doesn’t exist. The idea, for example, that you need to be the top 1% of anything to date, for example, is rank bulls
t and so easily disprovable that I wonder if YOU even believe it. All you need to do is go to a Wal-Mart or Mark and Spencers on a Sunday afternoon to see people who are emphatically not Elon Musk or LeBron James who have girlfriends, boyfriends, husband and wives. If we had to be the tip top of society to date, the human race would’ve gone extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago.
But like I said: these aren’t reasons. These are excuses. Because literally everything you list about why you can’t do something is a) BS and b) eminently fixable… if you get up off your ass and do something about it. Because right now? It sounds like you’re waiting for all of these changes to just magically happen, since they didn’t just happen for you as a kid. But that’s not going to happen. I mean, if you want to talk about anime fans on prom night, let me give you a relevant quote:
“Those who only complain about their helplessness will not change a thing.”
Nothing is going to happen unless you MAKE it happen.
We have a saying around NerdLove Industries, IH: “Deeds, not words.” You’re giving me a lot of words. If you want things to get better, then you have to quit with the words and start doing the deeds. You want to build your stats? OK, cool… then get out there. You want to work on your strength and constitution? Then hit the gym. Download a copy of “Zombies, Run” and start practicing for the zombie apocalypse. Throw some TV shows onto your smartphone and hop on a treadmill. Want to develop your social skills? Then go and practice them. They’re called social SKILLS for a reason; they’re something that you can improve if, IF you use them.
Tired of those bad, lonely evenings in? Then get up and get out of your house. Join a Meetup for something you’re into. Find the subreddit for your city and see what’s going on around you. Check out the week’s events in your local alt-weekly. There are hundreds of things that you can do and places to go on a daily basis to get out, meet people and generally be a social animal.
Will you be perfectly, socially fluent right off the jump? No, probably not. But that’s not the point, because nobody is. People don’t get off the couch and suddenly run marathons either. Everybody starts from zero and works up from there. If you want to get better, then you’re going to have to go out and grind some experience points, because you sure as hell aren’t earning them sitting around at home complaining about being lonely.
Did you get a later start than other folks? Sure… but that doesn’t mean a damn thing. You can still start now. Nobody’s going to give a damn about your being a late bloomer unless you make it an issue.
And if you actually go out and talk with people instead of creating these elaborate and oddly specific fantasies about what will happen to you if you actually interact with folks. Nobody’s going to beat you up, nobody’s going to publicly shame you and the only folks who’re going to try to sponge off of you are grifters who want you to stay exactly as you are. Don’t want to get scammed? Then go out there and take some levels in bad-ass.
The only person who can help you meet your goals and achieve your dreams is you and that’s never going to happen unless you actually commit to it. So get off your butt, make a list of the things you want to fix, make plans about how you’re going to fix them and then do it. If you need to know where to start, then grab some of my books and work from there. But if you want to become someone who’s worth dating, then you have to decide that you are going to be the one to make it happen.
It’s up to you and only you IH.
Good luck.
DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I go basically everywhere alone. Concerts, conventions. . . everywhere. Sometimes, not always, it’s nice to have a random casual conversation with another human being. But almost 100% of the time the men I speak to seem to think that I’m hitting on them or something. (And I do not just speak to men. I’ll drop a casual, “did you hit that traffic too?” to ANYONE.) And then the conversation gets shut down quickly.
Example:
Me: Nice weather for the show.
Guy: My wife is off getting our beers.
I’m not exaggerating. Within 2-3 sentences the wife or girlfriend is dropped into the conversation. This is from men young and old, attractive and not. (It happened tonight at a show with an extremely unattractive older overweight guy.)
And I need to mention that I am not dressed suggestively. I am not remotely attractive either. And I don’t give off flirty signals like some desperate stray dog out to hump some leg. So, why does this happen? I feel like they’re putting me in my place. It makes me feel like I got dropped into a scene from Dietland when all I want to do is exchange a casual sentence or three.
Just Trying To Be Friendly
DEAR JUST TRYING TO BE FRIENDLY: So one of the questions I get a lot is about why women don’t make the first move and why guys are expected to be the initiators and aggressors. The reactions you’re getting, JTTBF? That’s one of the reasons why. Because we’ve been living with the cultural expectation that men are supposed to make the first move for so long, we tend to think that women who take the initiative are far more invested than they actually are. Guys assume that if a woman is approaching them then either a) it’s a trick or b) she must really want him; after all, she’s flouting society’s accepted rules to talk to him.
This, in all likelihood, is what’s happening to you. You’re being friendly and making casual conversation, but to these guys either you’re leading up to asking them for a date or trying to sell something. So they’re trying to wave you off by bringing up a potential partner.
Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done about this because hey, that’s in their heads. Now, if you still feel like being chatty, then you could just say “…ok?” in a puzzled voice to give a sign that you’re not sure how that’s relevant before moving to a different topic. If they’re otherwise cool folks who just misread the situation, they’ll apologize or follow you into the new conversational thread. But if they’re absolutely convinced that you’re there to hit on them, there’s not really anything you can do, nor is it your responsibility. They’re just being stupid and you can go talk with someone who actually does appreciate casual conversation.
Good luck.
Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com)