DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My girlfriend and I are both virgins, and we’ve have been in a relationship for two years and change. Recently – around two years ago – we ended our long-distance relationship and finally started living together. Ever since I moved in, she’s been more and more insistent on having sex.

Simply put, I don’t want to have sex yet. She always respects it when I say no (otherwise I would have broken up her the first time she did this) but she seems to get very upset when I do. She’s been getting increasingly antsy about it each time. She’s even started telling people I wont have sex with her, and has been making remarks to others about how I wont have sex with her in casual conversation… whether it’s private or not.

I honestly feel quite close to screaming at her about it, but I don’t want to be the person to bring it to that point. The last thing I want is an argument. It’s incredibly upsetting because I feel as though she isn’t respecting my boundaries on this.

If it’s worth mentioning, I’ve still been regularly masturbating and my sex drive is still very much intact. I just don’t personally feel ready for this, the way that she seems to be. She even dropped condoms near me and said “We’re using these tonight” before going to work today.

Thank you

Stressed and Unsure

DEAR STRESSED AND UNSURE: Dude, I’m not going to lie: my immediate response is to tell you to break up with her right the hell now.

I wish you’d included a little more information in your letter, like how old you two are and just why you don’t want to have sex yet. Not because your reasoning makes a difference – you can decide you aren’t ready for any damn reason you choose – but because that would make it easier to give you an idea what to say to her about your desire to not sleep with her just yet.

But the truth is that it doesn’t matter what you say to her because the answer here is to get the fuck out of this relationship already. First, there’s the fact that the two of you are simply sexually incompatible. We tend to think of sexual compatibility as people whose wants, needs and kinks line up correctly or who have relatively similar sex drives. But another element of sexual compatibility is how you feel about sex in general and in your relationship in particular. She wants to have sex right the hell now. You aren’t ready yet and you don’t give an indication of just how long it’ll be until you are ready. That alone is a strong indicator that you two aren’t going to work out. Right now you’re in a situation that’s not fair to you, and it’s not fair to her. She would be happier in a relationship with someone who’s ready for sex and you’d be happier in a relationship with someone who’s willing to wait. The kindest thing to do would be for the two of you to break up so that you can find the people you are compatible with.

That having been said, there’s a much bigger issue here than the fact that you two are on different timelines regarding sex, and it’s one that’s way the hell more troubling.

I want to highlight something you said, SaU: “She always respects it when I say no (otherwise I would have broken up her the first time she did this) but she seems to get very upset when I do.”

First of all: getting upset at you for saying no – even if she doesn’t push the issue further – is the oppositeof respecting your no. She’s doing what a lot of people do in toxic relationships: she’s giving you the chance to say “no” but she’s making it abundantly clear that this isn’t the answer that she wants. Now she’s going to punish you until you say “yes” because it’s easier than dealing with the fallout of saying “no”.

But then there’s the rest of her behavior: bringing up your relationship issues with others to humiliate you, dropping condoms off and telling you that you’re fucking her tonight… that’s shitty, that’s unacceptable and it’s coercive as hell.

What she’s doing is trying to get you to change your mind without actually asking you to do so. By making a fuss – getting upset, demanding explanations, bringing it up in ways designed to embarass you in front of friends and strangers – she’s trying to pressure you into to saying yes, even though that’s not what you want. This, unfortunately, is a shockingly common tactic. Sometimes it comes with an implicit threat. Sometimes it comes with an explicit one. Often times it comes with just constantly ignoring the fact that someone said no by asking “So… how about now? What about now? What about now? Oh you didn’t mean it that time, so what about now?”

It doesn’t matter that you masturbate regularly or that your libido is raring and ready to go when you’re finally ready. This is shitty behavior when it’s a guy doing it to his partner, and it’s just as shitty when it’s a woman doing it to hers.

Now I will grant this: you two sound painfully young. It’s entirely possible your girlfriend has bought into the idea that all guys are horny satyrs and can’t quite process why you won’t fuck her already. She may not realize just how toxic her behavior is. But that ignorance doesn’t make what she’s doing any better; the fact that she doesn’t recognize what she’s doing to you doesn’t absolve her from doing it. If – and that’s one mighty big if – you think that she’s acting out of ignorance, then you need to sit her down and have the extended dance remix of a boundary-setting conversation with her. You need to tell her that you have something to say and you need her to listen to all of it before she says anything. Then lay it all out for her: why you aren’t ready to have sex yet, when you might be ready and why her behavior upsets you and – most importantly why she needs to cut it the ever-loving-blue-fuck out.

And then the ball’s in her court. Either she can respect your wishes and your boundaries…  or she can get the hell out.

Frankly, my vote’s on the latter. But who knows; sometimes people will surprise you.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Recently I hit it off with this girl at work. She is here on an international program and won’t be in the states for long. She said she was open to having a fun time and, well, one thing led to another and we ended up in bed together.

She told me her previous sexual experiences weren’t that good, so I decided to make it all about her that night.  She seemed to enjoy everything because in the heat of the moment she said “finally a guy that knows what a girl wants”

She stayed the night and, come morning, we started making out and had great morning sex together. She left a couple of hours later, kissed me and thanked me for a great time. We decided to remain friends who hook up on occasion.

We continued texting for a few days and decided to hang out again… only her roommates joined us this time. We went out for drinks and I could feel we were leaning closer into each other and I really wanted to kiss her. I guess she wasn’t into it because the next thing I know, she told me “We are just hanging out as friends.”

I pumped the brakes and decided not to follow through. I asked if she was going home after and she said that she had recently had her hair done and “I go home with you my hair will get sweaty.” This made me laugh.

Once the night came to an end I just felt awkward about the whole situation. Now I am wondering: how do I keep cool and not “scare her off”?

Trying To Stay Casual

DEAR TRYING TO STAY CASUAL: Alright my dude, let me give you the advice you really need right now: slow. Your. Roll.

There’re a couple things going on here. The first is that the fact that you hooked up and had that awesome night (and morning after) doesn’t mean that you’re gonna bang every time you hang out. Part of that whole “friends who hook up on occasion” agreement you made were the words “friends” and “on occasion”. While she enjoyed the sex and had a great time, that doesn’t translate to “sex is always on the table.” I suspect that what she’s much more interested in is a friend who she can hang out with, enjoy herself, have fun while she’s overseas… and if she happens to decide “yes, a dude going down on me would be nice tonight”, she knows that you’re going to be a reliable good time.

So don’t necessarily assume that sex is going to happen whenever you see one another. There will likely be times when she just wants company and companionship. That’s harder to enjoy if she feels like she’s gonna have to turn you down every single time you get together.

The other thing to keep in mind: her roommates were there with you. It’s entirely possible that she doesn’t want her roommates to know much about her business – especially who she’s hooking up with. Right now you’re a friend and a good time, not her boyfriend. She may not want to have to explain that you’re a friend with occasional benefits. Or she may just not like making out in front of her roommates.

Or it could well be that as much as she enjoyed your hook-up, it was a one-time thing and she doesn’t have any interest in another round – either in general or with you.

Now none of this means that you have to act like the sex never happened or that you have to behave like she’s a nun. Hang out with her, flirt with her, be your fun, cool self. Just be aware of her comfort and her interest. Let her take the lead to let you know if she’s in the mood for kissing someone or being kissed. The more fun the two of you have together without her feeling like you’re expecting sex at the end of the night, the better the odds are that she’ll be interested in another night with a guy who knows what he’s doing in bed.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a young lad only 15 and I recently asked a girl out that I had been thinking about for a small amount of time. I was very straightforward and direct as I usually am, she told me she wasn’t ready for a relationship, but gave me her number anyway.

I’m mainly trying to suss out what she means, any help would be great!

Thanks!

Don’t Forget My Number

DEAR DON’T FORGET MY NUMBER: It means pretty much what she said, man. She’s not interested in a relationship.

But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t like you or think you’re cool; clearly she wants to stay in contact if she gave you her number. So treat this as a low-key opportunity to talk, flirt and possibly hang out with someone cool.

Just don’t treat this as a way of back-door-ing your way into a relationship. If she wants to date you, she’ll let you know.

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 am 27 years old. I have this friend named D. I have known this girl since I was in high-school. The thing is, I have never actually met the girl in person. We have talked a great deal since getting to know each other and now we have become pretty good friends. Well, just recently, as in last year, our conversations began to become slightly heated. We have begun to talk more in depth about fantasies of being together. We have talked about this before, just not so intensely.

I should point out that D is married and already has one child by her current husband. I understand that finding an attraction to someone else’s wife is morally wrong. But I really do feel an attraction to this woman and I’ve told her so. Her response to me expressing my feelings to her were to ask me why I waited to tell her how I felt. The truth was, I wasn’t ready to tell her because I always believed that until I felt confident that I could support a significant other I didn’t want to express myself to someone like that. I should also point out that another reason I waited to tell her was because of the distance. She and I live away from each other by a distance of several states. Also, we’ve never actually met, although I’ve expressed significant interest in coming to visit her for at least a few days.

So back to my story. Recently the conversations have become more heated. Early this year, we decided to cross the line into sending each other explicit texts and pictures. Not much, but one or two is certainly enough to tease. That is not my only drive or reason for sending you this letter. I honestly feel that I can communicate freely with her and tell her whatever is on my mind and not have to fear anything that she may back. I feel as though we understand each other on many levels. I have already expressed my desire to be with her and just whisk her away to a world that currently only resides in my imagination. My question, and this is a big question, is… is it worth it? I’d be making a huge leap of faith here on my side.

I am already established in my career where I live and she’s established in hers. I have asked her what she would do if I decided to take the big leap and seek out a relationship with her. She expressed a desire to stay close to her family, which I understand since I have a close relationship with my family here. This would seem to leave me with the big decision of either uprooting my own lifestyle and trying to adapt to hers. Or maybe I could ask if she would be willing to move out to me.

I understand it would be gambling a lot and the two of us could stand to sacrifice big initially. I certainly don’t want to break into a marriage unless I was sure it could work, although I believe I already crossed this line somewhat when we started sexting. She has expressed discontent in her current living arrangement with her husband though. I don’t know if this means I am truly able to have a chance with this girl or if I’ve somehow just conveniently become her outlet while she is at a low point. I really want to believe that she has feelings for me the way I have for her. I’m just curious to know if all these feelings are worth making the leap to see her though.

Would it be better if I made a short trip to her area and talked with her? I am not looking for someone to make my decision for me. But seeing as you have given much sound advice in the past, I feel that you are a fantastic person in which to ask their opinion and get an outside view into the situation I am facing. I would appreciate any advice you can give to me, no matter how brief or long the advice is. I thank you in advance.

Leap of Faith

DEAR LEAP OF FAITH: Slow your roll, son.

This isn’t gambling; gambling implies that there’s a vaguely reasonable chance you could win. This is buying a scratch-off ticket and hoping for the million dollar jackpot.

Let’s start with the fact that you don’t really know this woman. You are talking about uprooting your life and completely disrupting hers (and causing not inconsiderable levels of trauma to her kid) when there’s a critical stage that you haven’t hit yet: meeting her in person.

Now look, don’t get me wrong: I believe that successful relationships can and do start online. I know people who met on World of Warcraft and got married in real life. I’ve got friends I’ve known for over a decade now that I met through an online forum and I consider many of them lifelong friends. But the thing is: I’ve met most of ’em out in meatspace. I’ve eaten with them, gotten drunk with them, danced with them been to movies and cons with them, I’ve sold comics with them, helped them hit on women (and men), even been to (and officiated at) their weddings and they’ve been to mine. There are several of them who I haven’t actually met in person yet and while I consider us friends, it’s just not the same as having met in the flesh.

And that’s a critical issue here. You may know each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. You may have had long text and IM conversations into the night. You may have run up insane phone bills talking to one another, but you still haven’t met in person. And to be perfectly honest, there is no substitute for that. No amount of phone calls, sexting or Skyping or trading photos back and forth is going to equal the experience of actually being in the same room at the same time. Yes, the Internet lets us build connections, even relationships with people from all around the world but we’re still animals and no matter how much we may connect on an intellectual level, that physical connection is absolutely vital. I’ve met people I’ve had insanely flirty emails and phone conversations with but when we met in person we had all of the charge of a damp squib.

And you really don’t want to find this out after she’s initiated divorce proceedings and you’ve quit your job and moved half-way across the country.

Of course, this is all before you factor in all of the other issues.

Could a relationship between the two of you work? Sure. Someone’s gotta win the MegaMillions jackpot, after all. But it’s pretty goddamn unlikely. You two may love each other as much as you can without actual physical contact but, frankly (and now this song is going to be stuck in my head) but love just ain’t enough. You’re coming into this with some serious problems – you live across the country from each other, you’re both firmly established in your own lives, she’s married, has a child with her husband and, like I said, YOU HAVE NOT MET IN PERSON YET. Any one of these is going to cause problems in a relationship. Put them all together… well, I hate to be blunt but I wouldn’t be betting on you crazy kids making it work. You’d be banking on being the exception rather than the rule and the odds of that are next to astronomical.

But hey, I get that when you’re in love, you’re in love and you want to give it a shot no matter how ill-advised.

So if you’re determined to ignore me and actually try to pursue this (DON’T), then my advice to you is to put everything about a relationship on the back-burner. Hell, I’d recommend putting it all back into the damn pantry for now. Start slow. Try taking a trip out to just visit her – not to have the “defining the relationship” talk, not to decide who’s moving where – hell, not even to sleep together (which, considering that she’s married, is another topic entirely). Just go and see  how the two of you do in person. Even if the two of you get along like a house on fire when you’re together in the flesh, do not start making relationship plans. There is a profound difference between seeing each other for a weekend at a time and living together as many a long-distance couple has found to their sorrow.

And believe me, visiting her is going to be difficult enough, what with the aforementioned husband and child. Unless the two of them are in an open relationship, it’s going to be pretty damned awkward for her to get some serious alone time with a dude from the Internet she’s never actually met in person before. You’re going to be lucky if you manage to get a movie together, never mind quality naked time.

You have feelings. Fine. But feelings aren’t going to make a relationship work, especially a relationship that requires disrupting your lives to the degree that this would. Take some time – a lot of time – to make sure this is a relationship that has legs in the real world before you make any hasty and life altering decisions.

(Side note: there’s nothing morally wrong with feelings, even if you have feelings for someone who’s in a relationship. It’s what you do with those feelings that matters.)

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I recently had a one night stand with some talent coming through my city. It wasn’t a drunken escapade, and it was an overall very pleasant experience. We cuddled, almost as much as being otherwise entertained, and he was really affectionate. He was leaving for the next venue the next day, and he stayed with me until he had to leave, I dropped him off with hugs and kisses and he said he’d like to keep in touch and will probably be performing again in a few months. I joked he has my number too, and wished him safe travels. 

So my question is this: am I deluded to think he actually wants to hear from me? Isn’t that how one night stands work, the cliched, “I’ll call you?” Are all single incident escapades that … intimate, for lack of better word, even after the sex?

I actually like him, despite living in different states at the moment, and would like to text him. What do I follow up with? 

(And for the record, I did go into the experience knowing it would probably be the only time I see him, and am okay with that, however I had a wonderful time and connected more than I expected, so why not reach out?)

Sleepless In San Antonio

DEAR SLEEPLESS IN SAN ANTONIO: There’s no law that says that hooking up with someone can’t be emotionally intimate as well as physically. Many an amazing relationship started as a one-night stand, even long-distance ones. Sometimes you get a friends-with-benefits relationship. Sometimes you end up as friends who had a fling. And sometimes that one night stand just doesn’t end. Over the course of my dating career I eventually made the decision that I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone, even just for a one-night stand, that I couldn’t see myself being friends with… and I’ve ended up with some great friends that way.

Clearly the two of you had great emotional chemistry as well being hot for each others bods. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t make at least an overture to stay in contact; send him a text and say “hey”. You don’t need any elaborate excuse to get in contact, just ask him how life on the road is going. Keeping it light, friendly and open-ended is the key.

Just keep your expectations reasonable and open; going in hoping that this is going to turn into a romance to last the ages is going to be a recipe for heartbreak.

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’ve been a fan of your website for a while now, and a lot of what you  write really speaks to me. I was wondering if you could help me out with an issue I’ve been having. I am, by all objective accounts, a pretty attractive guy. I’m a little on the short end, but I work out a lot, dress nicely enough, and I stay well-groomed. I am, after all, an Officer in the US Navy.

However, I can’t get out of my own head when it comes to dating. Any interaction with a woman turns quickly into over-analysis followed shortly thereafter by self-loathing. My internal dialogue ends up being along the lines of, “This girl is not being receptive because I’m too fat/short/ugly,” or “I am too fat/short/ugly to talk to this girl.” This has not worked out too terribly for me, as I am not a virgin, and have had girlfriends in the past, but it’s no way to meet someone I could actually settle down with.

A week or so ago, in an attempt to expand my comfort zone, I went on my first Tinder date. I thought it went phenomenally. We bantered, we laughed, we talked about our families and our hopes and dreams and at the end she said that she’d like to do this again. We texted a couple times after that, but then she stopped responding. I quickly went from elation to self-loathing and complete preoccupation with this girl. The fact that she didn’t respond reinforced all my initial aversion to talking to women. I fear rejection not because of public humiliation or anything like that, but rather the fact that rejection makes me hate myself. My question is what do I do about this? How can I get myself to a point where a rejection or a fade-away doesn’t make me question my worth as a human being, or more specifically, a man?

Thanks,

Bad Lieutenant

DEAR BAD LIEUTENANT: BL, you’ve got a nasty case of jerk-brain going on. You know, objectively, that you’re a good-looking dude. You know how to present yourself, you dress well… it’s just that you don’t let yourself believe it. As soon as you’re feeling even vaguely good about yourself, that little bastard voice in the back of your mind pipes up and repeats all of those little insecurities and doubts and shoots your self-esteem down in flames. Doesn’t matter that objectively, you’re a catch; your jerk-brain is there to kneecap you as soon as you think you’re making any progress.

This is one of the reasons why I point out that 80% of dating success is attitude – not just how you treat other people but how you treat yourself. I see this all the time in guys who’ve made sudden transformations. They’ve gotten in shape, they’ve changed up their wardrobes and have otherwise gotten their acts together looks-wise… but they still have the same doubts and anxieties they had before, and it slows or even stops the progress they’ve been making. You have to work on adjusting who you are insideas much as your outside.

Part of the problem you’re having here is that you’re making a lot of assumptions based out of low self-esteem and confirmation bias. But unless you’re Charles Xavier, you’re not a mind reader. You have literally no idea what’s going through somebody’s head. Your Tinder date, f’rex, may well have decided you were too short. However, it’s just as likely that she may have decided that there wasn’t any chemistry there. You may have let your anxiety get ahold of you and got a little pushy… or she might have decided that dating someone who’s active-duty might be too complicated for her. Or she may have been seeing other people as well and decided to pursue a relationship with one of them. There are dozens of potential reasons and very few of them have anything to do with you. Unless she straight-up tells you, you don’t know why she pulled the fade, and even then she might not be giving you the real or whole answer.

Rejection and the fade are all part of the dating game. Everyone experiences them. It just becomes a matter of learning how to handle them.

To start with, I suggest meditation. Mindfulness meditation can be great for getting a handle on how you feel and why, which is the first step in controlling those issues. It also helps to consciously reframe the situation whenever your jerk-brain pipes up with being too what-ever. When you start thinking about all the reasons why you were rejected, you have to remind yourself “no, I don’t know that,” and that this was a sign that the two of you weren’t compatible. The fact that things didn’t work out doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means you’ve eliminated one potential mis-match and now you’re free to find someone you do work with. Couple this with developing an abundance mentality and you’ll find that yeah rejection isn’t fun but it’s nothing to fear. There’ll be someone else just as amazing (if not better) later on and now you’re free to pursue her instead.

You’ve built up your exterior, now spend some time building up your interior. Remember: your brain is lazy and wants to stay in the groove it’s already in. Carving out a new, positive groove can be difficult but it can be done. And once you do, you’ll find that your dating life will be much more satisfying.

Good luck!

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: One of the big criticisms I’ve heard about the manosphere/The Red Pill/Pickup Artistry is that it doesn’t deal with the issues of men of color, especially East Asian and South Asian men. Yet as an Indian guy, the only people I’ve found who are willing to even discuss this issue are these very groups. Don’t get me wrong, they handle it in a very toxic, macho way that kind of ends up being along the lines of “get swole, buy our book for $34.99 and you’ll be able to conquer white b

*hes,” but that’s the only advice available for us; many “liberal” circles put the issue to “oh well most Asian/Indian men are very conservative and misogynistic,” which I feel to be something of an excuse, especially because a lot of first-generation Asian and Indian men tend to be disproportionately more liberal (at least from my own observations).

To make matters worse, an Indian-American acquaintance of mine bought into PUA/TRP-esque thinking, and has managed to have a surprising amount of success with women, despite previously getting rejected a lot. I’m honestly quite worried that my race will hold me back when dating (even many Indian women voice hesitation at dating us, and when I was younger, I heard “I don’t date Indian guys” a lot more than I’d have liked), but the alternative of buying into very misogynistic ideals that portray white women as the “prize” isn’t very desirable to me either, since it goes against many of my personal values.

I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, I can choose to be alone (or at least be severely handicapped in the dating game) or I can become a person that I’ll hate. Could you potentially direct me to some resources that deal specifically with Asian and Indian men’s issues without a lot of the vitriol from TRP, or at least address this somewhere on your blog?

धन्पवाद (Thank you),

Secret Asian Man

DEAR SECRET ASIAN MAN: OK, I’m going to preface this with the reminder that as a white guy, I’m not going to have the same in-depth knowledge, insight and experience into what it means to date as an Asian man. I’ve got, at best, second and third-hand information based purely out of my observations, so I don’t want to speak to other people’s experiences as though I’m an authority. Take everything I have to say on this topic with appropriate levels of salt. If I miss something, misstate it, leave something out, get things wrong or just inadvertently offend, then I apologize in advance.

Now with all that being said: the issues surrounding people of color of any ethnicity and dating in the US are incredibly complex because it’s all part of a giant tangle of issues surrounding America’s history with… well just about everybody.

OKCupid founder Christian Rudder mined the data on OKCupid and found that Asian and black men had a distinct disadvantage in online dating outside of their race.

(Meanwhile, black women had the greatest penalty of all, even from black men – a troubling issue in and of itself).

It’s easy to write this off as “people are racist”, but it ignores the tangled web of issues surrounding the history of minority races in the US.

One of the biggest issues is Asian men –  including Pakistani, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Korean, Burmese, Malay, Filipino, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. – face when it comes to dating is how they are perceived and portrayed in society and the effect that media has in determining our standards of beauty. For a very, very long time, Asian men were coded as un-masculine, if not completely sexless. Jokes about penis size abound, piled on top of stereotypes of academic obsession, sexual and social naïveté and an obsession with white women. The popular image of Asian men in media is the polar opposite of the hypermasculine ideal that we’re sold; brainy, doughy men are hardly men at all, etc.

Media representation doesn’t help either, not when the recognizable Indian face in the media is Apu from The Simpsons. Indian men in tv and movie are far more likely to be seen as Taj in Van Wilder, taking over the sex-obsessed foreigner role from Sixteen Candle’s Long Duck Dong. It’s rare that you’ll find Asian men presented on the same level white men, either as ass-kickers or as lovers in media. The few martial arts heroes are the exceptions. The fact that Steven Yuen’s character Glen in The Walking Dead was as much of a capable figure as Daryl or Rick – not to mention being able to be in an interracial relationship with Maggie – is depressingly unusual and rare in American television. There’re even fewer when it comes to portrayals or representation of South Asian men.

There has been some changes in the way Indian men are portrayed in media – iZombie’s Ravi is portrayed as a desirable catch for example – but on the whole those stereotypes get reinforced regularly. Even the Asian men who are portrayed as attractive are coded as being less “ethnic”; Ravi, for example, has a posh British accent rather than Bengali or West Indian accent.

Combine that with other issues regarding Western standards of beauty and attractiveness – especially surrounding skin color – and in-group stereotypes (the “Indian/Asian men are conservative/chauvinistic” beliefs you mentioned earlier) and you’ve got a perfect storm of post-colonial issues that can combine to make dating more difficult for Asian men.

But “difficult” isn’t the same as “impossible”.

With this all of this in mind, let’s talk about your circumstances, SAM. Right now, you’re falling into a common trap of a false dichotomy. You’re not stuck choosing between toxic TRP/PUA misogyny and being sexless. You’re falling for the same line of s

t that many other men have fallen for – the idea that in order to be successful with women, you have to be an ass

le who treats women badly. It’s bulls

t, period, end of story. There aren’t women out there who are thinking “Man, I really wish I could find a guy who would treat me badly, dismiss my desires, wants and fears and treat me like his personal Fleshlight!” Disrespect isn’t an aphrodisiac, no matter what people tell you and acting like a hypermasculine d

kbag isn’t the key to sexual success.

(Of course, it doesn’t help that the top results for “dating advice for Indian men” includes such luminaries as Return of Kings and Stormfront (!?)…)

As I’ve said before: the advantages presented by so-called “bad boys” are in presentation, not in the behavior. Confidence and assertiveness are attractive; arrogance and disrespect are not. Being willing to put yourself out there, to not shy away or be diffident has far more to do with dating success than negging or playing status games or treating every woman like she’s a club-going party girl. Treating your ethnicity as a handicap to overcome is going to sabotage you from the get-go; feeling as though you have to apologize for being Indian or Asian or overcompensating by acting like a hypermasculine douchebag is only going to sabotage your chances.

Now this isn’t to say that you won’t have challenges, but challenges can be overcome.

Sometimes it may be a clash of cultures, especially if you come from a traditional background and you’re trying to date people who don’t share that background. Sometimes it may just that people you’re interested in may not be willing to date a South or East Asian man; as frustrating as it may be, this is good for you. After all, if they’re willing to dismiss you based solely on your race, why would you want to date them at all?

Online dating may not work for you if you’re interested in interracial dating; as the OKCupid data has shown, people may be less likely to respond to someone of another race. This means you may want to prioritize meeting people in person and let online dating be your back-up.

The great thing about meeting people in person is that folks tend to be more open to serendipity in ways they often aren’t when it comes to online dating. We’ll often be attracted to folks we’ve met in person that we might have passed on if we saw them on an app, because we got a chance to know them as people first. That means that we’re more likely to encounter the qualities that draw us to them that we might never have known about if we just read their profile instead. They may not be our perfect match on paper but in person they’re just right.

Prioritizing meeting people in person gives you the advantage of playing to your strengths and using them to overcome any knee-jerk responses they may have on an app. Being able to win them over with your personality, your charm and your humor gives you a leg up when you can demonstrate it in the flesh instead of hoping that someone pauses long enough to read up on you before swiping.

That will help you find the success you want rather than being a misogynist assbag.

Good luck.

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