DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I got myself into a little bit of a pickle. I’ve been married 4 years and about a year in, at 30 years old, was diagnosed with bipolar depression. It took us about a year to get the meds figured out but it has been life changing to finally have some relief. The only issue is a severe decrease in libido. I don’t have any interest at all. I stopped masturbating, my husband and I have mechanical sex MAYBE once a week that is a literal chore for me. Sex just kind of grosses me out these days. I’ve talked to my psychiatrist about it, and he didn’t seem concerned since I can still reach climax, plus it took us so long to get the right combination of pills I’m terrified to change anything up. From what I understand this is kind of a common side effect, so who’s to say this wouldn’t happen with any other medication we try.

I’ve talked to my husband a little about it, I asked him to turn on the charm a little more (his idea of foreplay is “wanna do it?”) to see if that would help but he didn’t really come back with anything. I offered an open relationship (something I’ve always been open to), but he says he just wants to have sex with his wife. I’m not really sure where to go from here. Do I just keep doing my weekly chore for all of eternity? I don’t want to pressure him into the open relationship but should I talk to him about how much I dislike sex and offer that avenue again? I feel like that’s just hurting his feelings and breaking a lot of wifely expectations. I just don’t know where else to go from here. Any advice you have is appreciated.

-Disinterested

DEAR DISINTERESTED: You’re dealing with a really common problem Disinterested, and one that a lot of people with mental health issues face. First, there’s the fact that it took you time to find a combination of therapies that work. That is, possibly the most frustrating part about getting help; it can be stupidly difficult to find the right medication and the right dosage of that medication in order to get the results that you want. That means a lot of folks are stuck with the question of “is this actually working or do I need to wait longer?” and “do I dare risk trying something different?”  Then there’s the question of the side-effects those medications have and whether the cure ends up being worse than the disease. A lot of medications for issues like depression, for example, have “lowered libido” as a side-effect. Hell, when I was on Zoloft to help manage my depression, it killed my sex-drive deader than disco.

So I totally understand where you’re coming from. So let’s talk about what you can do about this.

My biggest concern in this case is your psychiatrist and their lack of concern with your concerns. One of the things that we don’t often talk about is how profoundly sex negative the medical and mental health field can be. While doctors get plenty of training, that doesn’t mean that they’re without their biases… including a lack of concern – or even interest – in women’s sexual health. It’s not uncommon for doctors to dismiss women’s concerns about their sex lives – especially their libido – because… well, how important could that be? I mean, when a proposed male medical contraceptive turned out to have side-effects, it was yanked from studies with a quickness.

Plot twist: those were the same side-effects women face with birth-control pills.

So I’m not terribly surprised that your psychiatrist brushed off your concerns, with a “well, you technically can still orgasm, so what do you want?” Which may be true… but that doesn’t solve your problem.

Now to be fair: your husband does sound like he could step up his game too. The fact that he’s not exactly putting in effort into your sex life certainly isn’t helping with the issues surrounding your libido. In fact, for many women, the reason why their libidos crater is, frankly, that they’re bored. I suspect that this is, at the very least, a compounding complication to your lack of a sex-drive. But seeing as your libido’s death came along with the new medicines, it’s best to start there.

The first thing I suggest is that you advocate for your needs with your psychiatrist. Those side-effects are having a detrimental impact on your quality of life and you can tell your doctor that the “cure” is causing you problems that you aren’t willing to tolerate.  Tell them that you want to try other medications and that you want to prioritize ones that won’t destroy your love life in the process. Yes, I get that it can be terrifying to try another medicine or combination of meds, especially when this one seems to be working. I get that it can be intimidating to confront your psychiatrist – someone with years of medical training – over this. But ultimately this is your life. What good is it going to do to get your bipolar depression under control if it’s going to cost you your happiness and your marriage in the process?

If they balk? Well… it may not be the worst idea to consider the possibility of a different psychiatrist. In that case, you may want to visit the American Association of Sexuality Educators,Counselors, and Therapists website; they have a referral directory that can help you find a sex-positive mental health professional in your area who can hopefully connect you with a psychiatrist who won’t dismiss your concerns about what your medications do to your sex life.

But I also think you need to sit down and have an Awkward Conversation with your husband and lay out exactly what’s going on. He deserves to know that sex for you has become a chore and one that you dread. Were I him, I’d want to know if my wife was dreading the idea of sex with me because good-god-damn, I would not want to be subjecting her to something she hates. Knowing that you’re having to lay back, grit your teeth and think of England may be the kick in the pants that he needs to actually listen when you tell him you need him to put in more of an effort to seduce you and please you.

And if that doesn’t work, if his putting more effort in doesn’t help ease the way sex squicks you out right now? Then knowing how it makes you feel may mean that he’ll be willing to discuss alternatives for the two of you while you adjust your medication.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ll get right to the problem, I’m a 22 year old guy dating a 20 year old woman, and it’s going well. We really admire and respect each other, have great physical chemistry, and have healthy communication and boundaries. I just have one problem: she smokes, and I want her to quit.

Now this may seem like a pretty normal, bog-standard problem, but there’s a bit of wrinkle in the context of our relationship specifically. See, I have a kink that involves seeing women I’m attracted to smoke, and because we’re pretty open about that kind of thing with each other, she is aware of this. She likes the fact that I have this kink, because she assumes (semi-correctly) that this makes her more attractive to me. The thing is, as we’ve grown closer, I’m realizing more and more that I don’t actually want to indulge this kink, because I am much more worried about her health, and I ultimately feel that it’s inappropriate for me to make such a request.

Moreover, I’m getting a bit anxious over the whole thing, I’ve had a few nightmares over the thought of having to bury her in 20 years or so, and the thought of having to see her waste away.

The problem with my asking is I think she’d take it very poorly. As mentioned before, she specifically said that she was glad that I have this kink, and I don’t know how she’d feel about me suddenly not wanting to do anything with it, not to mention that she’s mentioned being a bit resistant to the idea of quitting.

In turn, I’m not sure if I want to break up over this or not. Everything else is fine, and I’d further be worried that she’d try to dig in and find some “other” reason besides that for the breakup, and that I’d put more self doubt than she already has on her shoulders.

I guess my questions are the following: Should I ask her to quit? Should I consider breaking up? and finally, if I do decide to end things, how should I explain why?

-Scared To See Her Leave

DEAR SCARED TO SEE HER LEAVE: Y’know, my dude, I think you may have jumped several steps here. There’s a world of space between “talk to her about quitting” and “now she’s going to leave me” but you seem to have decided that this is the inevitable end result. Without, y’know. Actually talking to her. Yeah, you have your kink – it’s actually a surprisingly common one – and she gets spun up by how hot it gets you… but presumably you’re into her even when she’s not smoking. And honestly, there’re ways you can indulge that kink without nicotine. I mean, vaping is a thing. So, for that matter, is weed. Hell you could combine the two…

But the issue here isn’t the smoking or the alternatives to smoking. Not really. The issue here is that you have a concern and you’re afraid to bring things up to her. That is your bigger problem and the one that you need to work on.

You don’t say how long you two have been together, but it sounds like it hasn’t been for that long. If the two of you have only been together for a couple of months… yeah, it’s gonna be a pretty big ask. It’s a little presumptive to say “hey, I know when we got together I was really into this thing that you do, but now I feel weird about it and I want you stop doing that thing for me right now.” While you may have the best of intentions at heart – hey, not wanting to see your lover die from a horrible disease is pretty understandable – it’s kind of presumptive to make demands of somebody you haven’t known for that long.

Not to mention “yes, we’ve only been together for a little while, but I’m getting anxious about something that may happen 20 years down the line, at a time when we may or may not still be together” is… well, that’s kind of an example of what I mean when I talk about people investing too much, too quickly in a relationship.

But even if we allow that you’ve been together for long enough that this isn’t a big ask or that it’s reasonable to make plans for 20 years down the line, you have more options than “ask her to quit smoking” and “leave her right now”.

What you should do instead is – as I just told Disinterested – is sit down and have an Awkward Conversation. In this case, you want to bring up that you’ve been hesitant to indulge your kink because of the potential health effects and it feels weird to be getting a boner when you also keep thinking about cancer and tumors. While you don’t necessarily want to tell her to quit, you do want to at least let her know that this is a concern for you and the dissonance between your kink and the side effects it could have on her are causing you anxiety.

(I would leave out the part about getting worried that you’ll be burying her in 20 years.)

Now I stress: the point of this conversation isn’t to get her to quit. It’s to simply lay the groundwork for you to be able to actually talk with her about your concerns instead of assuming that you only have two, mutually exclusive possibilities. Because I can guarantee you: there will be other, more immediately pressing concerns in your relationship. And if you can’t talk to her about how you feel? Well, your relationship’s going to fall apart sooner, rather than later.

And seriously: it’s admirable that you’re thinking 20 years down the line, but focus on your immediate future for now… like, maybe 3 months down the line instead. Take some time to make sure this relationship’s got legs before you start borrowing trouble from a potential future.

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: Thanks for all the hard work and great articles, lots of great advice which has helped in the past –  your book New Game+ has been a huge benefit to me. My question is a quick one, around how sexual desire changes when you get older.

I’ll hold my hands up and say from the get-go that I myself am very young, only 26! However, I’ve have usually been in relationships with older women (10+ years older than me). Recently, I have been in a wonderful, loving relationship with an older women over the past year or so. However, in my day to day life, I come across lots of other interesting and attractive women, many of whom are young (18-26, I work at a college). Understandably, I find many of them sexually attractive – but I struggle on a somewhat daily basis with feelings of guilt and lust, as I am noticing the age-related differences between the younger girls and my partner more frequently.

Concurrently, I was listening to podcast by Russell Brand recently, and he mentioned how he has gotten to the point of having such a rich spiritual and emotional connection with his wife that he doesn’t feel the need to put another person in between that space anymore. This got me thinking – as you age (50+, 60+, 70+), your lusts for nubile flesh and younger women (or men) must be increasingly harder to fulfill. Instead, you will need to prioritize experiencing the whole emotional and spiritual connection with another person in its entirety (rather than just wanting them for their hot ass!). I am also aware of your other blog post about how society fetishizes younger women of a certain demographic, and we are living in an Instagram and porn-addicted world where our standards of sex are enormously warped.

So, tell me Doc, can you successfully lust after young, nubile partners as you age – will it make you happy, and sexually satisfied? Or should we instead prioritize only valuing the spiritual connection with another person during sex? Or can you have both? 

Benjamin Button

DEAR BENJAMIN BUTTON: Most of the time when someone writes to me with questions about something that’s years – or decades – down the line, the problem is that they’re borrowing unhappiness from the future. A future that, in fact, may never come to pass.

You, on the other hand BB, aren’t borrowing trouble so much as just making crap up to get worried about. Worrying about whether you’re going to be able to be a dirty old man – or, y’know, the male lead in most Hollywood movies – in 40 years isn’t just missing the point, it’s managing to miss the entire planet the point resided on and sending things out past the Van Allen Belt.

So let’s break this down a little, shall we?

First, you’re assuming a whole lot of facts not in evidence – starting with the question of whether you’re even going to be into the same type of women as you get older. As easy as it is to think that you’re gonna want nothing but jailbait and women in their early 20s, you may find that your tastes have changed drastically as you get older. There’re plenty of folks who hit their 30s and 40s and realize that while that young flesh may be hot to look at… a lot of times, that’s all there is. They’re great eye-candy but you can’t have a conversation with them, nor are they nearly as good in bed as women who’re more age-appropriate.

(Seriously: the reason why we used to say that women hit their sexual peak at 35 is because by 35, women tend to have run out of f

ks to give and are shucking off the sex-shame-y bulls

t society has thrown on them. A woman with no f

ks, who’s come into her own sexuality is a glorious and terrifying thing to behold.)

Second, let’s be real here: this is less about whether or not it’s generally possible for an older man to get with a younger woman – clearly it is. This is about whether or not you’ll be the kind of man who can hook up with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter. In other words: this isn’t about whether your desire gets harder to fulfill and far more about your ego and a desire for validation. After all, young women are seen as having a certain value and cachet, so clearly someone who can manage to date or sleep with one (or two or three) is clearly of high status.

Except for the part where that’s not how this works. Yeah, Hef had his rotating stable of girlfriends… but he was Hugh Hefner. Basing your assumptions on how dating will work in your later years on Hef is like basing your career trajectory on Mark Zuckerberg’s.

Plus, beyond the allegations of mistreatment and sexual misconduct, do you honestly think that those were a relationship of mutual respect and interest? Dude wanted arm candy to show off and to put on shows for him while his girlfriends liked the advantages that being Hef’s girlfriend gave them. There may have been affection, but this was a one-sided relationship at best and – going by many of the books and stories that’ve come out since – kinda horrific.

Women, as a general rule, don’t date someone for value or status, they date someone who they have a legitimate attraction and connection with. Much of that connection is built on mutual respect, shared experiences and commonalities. The wider the gap you have between two people – especially in age – the harder it is to have those commonalities. Try talking to someone who’s 18 years old. You two will have fewer points of commonality or cultural touchstones than someone who’s 24-28 – never mind the differences in where the two of you are in your life.

So being an old guy with a young girlfriend… it’ll be theoretically possible, but unlikely, and the odds of it lasting is even more unlikely.

Third: I’m glad that Russell Brand has a close and passionate relationship with his wife, but I think you tried to put 2 and 2 together and got “moops” instead. Nothing that he said has anything to do with whether or not you’ll want young chicks as you got older.

Now if you’re asking whether you’ll want other people despite being in love with your partner… yes. Yes you will. So will your partner. We’re a species designed to seek out novelty, including sexual novelty. As I’m so often saying, a monogamous commitment says that you choose to not sleep with anyone else, not that you won’t want to. Similarly, passion fades over time with a partner. The newness and novelty inevitably goes away as you get to know somebody. That’s just part of being in a long-term relationship – that closeness and intimacy means that you know them in ways that you didn’t at first. The way that you keep the spark alive and vibrant is by recognizing that you can’t re-experience the novelty of getting to know your partner, but you can inject novelty and excitement into your lives… which will also bleed into your sexual connection. So part of keeping that spark alive is to not let your lives – sexual or otherwise – fall into a rut.

So yeah: you’re asking the wrong questions and inventing problems to get worried about that have absolutely nothing to do with your life now. Instead of worrying about whether you’re going to be the old guy in the club instead of the Most Interesting Man in the World, try focusing on the relationships you have now. You’re better off learning how to build, maintain and nurture what you have now – a practice that will serve you over your entire life time –  rather than worrying about whether  your future self will be able to score with young women.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I recently reconnected with two friends over spring break, after having not seen them for years. We talked and had a lot of fun, but we were at a diner and my one friend, J (f, currently 20), was revealed that she’d had a problem. She told me about a crush that she had on an underclassman at her school, K (f, currently 19), and how they were best friends but never in a relationship. J asked K out to prom one night, and K couldn’t say no. But once they got to prom, J spent most of the time dancing and flirting with other guys instead of spending time with K. K felt incredibly betrayed, even though they were never really “dating”. Smaller moments, such as ditching a group cosplay at a convention and J dating other people that both she and K knew – people that H didn’t like –  further splintered the relationship. K eventually went so far as to ask whether J saw her as a friend or girlfriend, and J wanted nothing but more but to stay best friends. Currently, the two of them rarely talk.

While she told me about this, I tried my best to comfort her. I asked her questions about how she felt, what she was and wasn’t okay with in the relationship, gave suggestions on what I would’ve done, and gave timid “I’m sorry J”s during the hard parts of her story. But after that discussion I could still feel that she was gloomy and unsatisfied. I thought her talking about it would make her feel a little better, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It made me feel that somewhere in the conversation I may have said something wrong or may have not said something right.

My question is how should I have a conversation like this again? How do I comfort a friend who is going through a rough break up or still stuck on something that never was? When someone comes to me with something like this again, I want to know how to go about it so that they feel like they have a better grasp on their own emotions.

Thanks,

Friend Indeed

DEAR FRIEND INDEED: Not gonna lie, FI… I’m not exactly sure what your friend was expecting. J seems to have gone out of her way to be awful to someone that she supposedly had a crush on and who clearly had feelings for her. There’s only so many times you can dropkick someone’s heart before they say “f

k this noise” and bail.

(Frankly, I’m amazed it took  as long as it did for K to decide to peace out of the entire relationship.)

As a general rule, when somebody’s hurting, most of the time, what they want is comfort. Sometimes that means somebody to listen and let them unload all of the pent-up emotions they’ve been feeling. They may want a neutral party to listen – someone who won’t cast judgement or who wasn’t involved – so they can open up and get an answer to “am I the asshole?” Sometimes it means someone who can be there physically for them – a warm body to cling to and cry on so that they don’t feel alone or abandoned or lost. Other times, they want somebody who will tell them that it’ll all be ok and that as bad as this is, it’ll all fade in time and they’ll feel normal again. Still other times, they want somebody who can divert and distract them, to take their mind off their pain, if only for a little bit.

What they usually don’t want is someone to solve their problem for them or to suggest solutions. This is a problem a lot of guys have; we’re socialized to believe our value is in doing things and solving problems, so we try to throw out solutions when what most people want is to be heard. This is why it can be good to ask whether someone wants action and solutions or tea and sympathy; it makes it easier to know what emotional protocols to engage.

Now not being there, I can’t tell you exactly what J was needing. The cynical side of me suggests that she was hoping that you’d reassure her that she wasn’t a bad person and didn’t blow up a relationship out of… I dunno, undergad drama, I guess. If – and that’s a mighty big if – that was the case, I’m not surprised that she went away unsatisfied.

But the thing you need to keep in mind is that you’re not magic. You can do all the right things and offer somebody the kind of comfort they want or need and not fix them or make them feel better. A lot of times, people will still go away sad and that’s ok. That’s not a failure on your part to comfort properly, it’s just that they still have to feel the hell out of their feels. But while you may not have cured them, you did offer them comfort and solace for a little while, when they needed it.

And most of the time, that’s exactly what they need.

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: My life is hell and always has been. Especially, for the last four years. I am twenty one years old chronologically, but biologically I am probably in my late thirties, early forties. This is because I have done absolutely nothing for the last four years, and I mean nothing except self destructive behavior and have my self esteem destroyed by my parents (very controlling, domineering and mean at times).

For the last four years, I have not been in education, employment or training. Almost every day, my day would be spent lying in bed on the internet, pacing around occasionally and eating a lot of junk food. That sounds very bad and it’s is, but it’s not until very  recently I have realized just what a intolerable lifestyle this is and how I could have done so much better. I hate it and always have, but for almost all of the last four years I have thought it was the best lifestyle I was capable of. I have no idea why I didn’t try to change it.

There were a couple of people who I spoke to during this time who urged me to change my ways and do something to change it. I never did, as I genuinely felt getting a job was beyond me. I know now it was not. These people remain the most positive social contact I ever had. I treated them poorly and obviously I regret that, but not as much as I do not listening to them.

What hurts most is, I used to be handsome guy three or four years ago and got a lot of attention for my looks. Now, I look nothing like that and very old and tired. Plus, my body is far too young to look and feel how it does.

I have bumped into a few people from high school, too. Their reactions always make me feel bad, as people who I know liked me always seem sad and like they pity me when they see me, whereas people I know who disliked me seem quite happy to see me now. I did not treat anyone badly in high school, so it hurts that they take pleasure in seeing me fail.

What makes it worse is that my brother is going to sixth form in September, as I did five years ago. He has a girlfriend, is going to school and recently got a job in the local cinema I almost applied for at his age (closest I ever came to applying for a job and wish I did it now). It brings back a few memories of me at that age and I can’t stop thinking of what might have been.

I regret everything about the last five years and have become the worst version of myself. It has been my dream to find somebody to love and move in with and finally be free from this prison cell, but my self destructive and lazy habits have robbed me of that hope.

I should have joined the army when I was forced to leave sixth form at 17. If I had I could have been in good health, looking great and flirting with women I like yet i am lying in my bed, unloved and alone. Is this all that life can show to me?

I feel ashamed of myself for how I lived for the last four years. I know it’s my fault I am in this mess and I should not be depressed about ruining my body and appearance as others have much worse problems. Yet, still; I must mourn!

Can I change Doc? Can I become a socially successful attractive guy and get an awesome girlfriend( my own age)? Will I finally leave home even with the poor job prospects I currently have and finally be free? What do I do?

P.S I don’t even enjoy junk food I are it because that was just how things were. My whole family had bad eating habits. How I have lived, both in terms how I treated my body and how barely did anything for four years. It all seems very silly now, but it always does afterwards, doesn’t it?

P.S.S one of those supposed reasons I didn’t apply for a job was because I was too shy for it. When I considered working a the cinema at 16 my parents actively discouraged it for that reason. I shouldn’t have listened to them.

Stuck In The Past

DEAR STUCK IN THE PAST: Alright, SiP, I sympathize. One of the hardest things to do is look at your life and decide that things need to change. So this is going to sound harsh, but trust me: it’ll help you come out stronger and better on the other side.

The first thing you need to do, SiP is let go of this all-or-nothing outlook. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you’re making a lot of dramatic pronunciations without any actual weight or evidence behind them. I mean sure, you’ve been eating crap and living a sedentary lifestyle, but that’s not the same thing as having aged yourself prematurely. It just means you ate a lot of processed crap and didn’t exercise.

(Hell, in a lot of places, we call that “being a college student”)

And y’know, it’s a shame that you’ve been doing that for the last few years but it’s hardly an irreversible condition. In fact, considering that you’re 21, you can probably turn things around quickly, with minor adjustments to your lifestyle and diet. Just cutting out junk food, sodas and processed carbs can result in some pretty significant improvements to your health. Similarly, just getting up and walking for an hour a day will do wonders for you and your cardiovascular health.

But the bigger issue here is… well, are you going to choose to do it. You’ve framed all of this as being out of your control. Even your solution is for somebody else to save you from yourself. But that’s never going to happen. Hell, the closest that’s come to your fantasy were your friends who tried to get you out of your rut.

Nobody’s going to ride to your rescue, so you may as well save yourself. If – and that’s a mighty big if – you choose to do so.

That’s your biggest issue here: you’ve chosen, over and over again, to do nothing. You chose not to apply for jobs, you’ve chosen to eat crap and lay around and feel sorry for yourself. These are all things that are well within your control, man. But you have to decide that you’re going to actually make those changes.

And the first step is to take responsibility. Not in the self-pitying “woe is me” posture you’ve taken on, but to accept that you are in a hell of your own making. It sucks that you let things get to the level that you have, but you did. But just as you put yourself into this mess, you can dig yourself back out of it again. It doesn’t need to be a massive change; in fact, massive changes are more likely to hinder you; you’re more likely to give up early on. Small changes, micro-revolutions that show you that you’re not powerless will help build the foundation that will let you build the life you want.

Don’t worry about what your brother is doing; he’s on his own journey, not yours. What he does with his life is just that: it’s his life. It’s no reflection on yours. Similarly, don’t worry about the haters. Their disdain has nothing to do with you and their supposed enjoyment of your situation doesn’t affect you any more than you allow it to. Someone looking down their nose at you can sting, but only if you accept their judgement as valid in the first place.

You’re young and in the prime of life SitP. You have the benefits of your age and place in life. You have few debts, you have the metabolism and energy of youth and you don’t have obligations that limit what you can do or where you can work or live. You can go out tomorrow and start finding work; maybe not the most glamorous of employment, but even just working at the cinema is a foundation for change.

But only if you choose to take those chances. Only if you make the conscious decision to take control of your life.

It’s your life. It’s within your power. It’s up to you to make it happen.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ll start by saying what most people do: I LOVE your blog. There’s a lot in here that has helped me so much in many social aspects, plus it’s just fun to read your posts.

To cut straight to it, my dating and romantic life is pretty much non-existent. I’m 28, with a pretty decent job and career ambition. I have only what I can describe as an aversion on most days, and a lack of skill on others, in regards to interacting and flirting with women I like on a romantic level. I’ve been told by lady friends that I’m not bad to look at, that I’m a “good/great guy, etc” and although I find it hard to believe given my lack of success in the dating realm, I also know that my confidence is low, so I try to take the compliment(s) to heart instead of my own self-limiting beliefs. However, at the risk of sounding somewhat like the others with similar problems, there are some factors that certainly don’t help my chances, and I’d wager that at least of them are rather unique.

I’m about 5’7, definitely a nerdy guy, and I was born with a “small” but noticeable birth defect in my hand. It doesn’t hinder me from much, but it looks pretty weird, and when people notice, I can tell. Most people tend to stare. It definitely has led to some confidence issues and approach anxiety, since I HAVE been rejected, judged, etc. due to this in the past (school kids are dicks. Who knew?). Making a good first impression that much harder, and in some cases, undoes the first impression.

I do try to actively remind myself that these factors do not necessarily mean I’m doomed to be forever alone, nor do they mean that I’m doomed to be alone forever, as I’ve had romantic and sexual success in the past, but that success has always been few and far between, and for the last few years I feel like I’ve gotten worse when it comes to women to say the least, and I can’t help but think these things are working against me, and that there’s nothing I can do about it.

I always end up being the friend, and while I understand there’s nothing wrong with just being friends with women, it kinda becomes discouraging that every woman I find myself interested in ends up rejecting me on that level.

I’ve been reading and internalizing a lot of your advice, from trying to lead a more interesting life and pursuing my hobbies alone, to reevaluating my fear of failure, adopting and applying an abundance mentality, and so on, but it doesn’t seem as if I’m getting anywhere. I know my overall confidence is still in major need of work, but it feels as if something else isn’t clicking. Maybe it is just me and I need to accept that while I may not be the worst pick, I’m still not good enough.

I honestly hate the idea of throwing a pity party for myself because it changes nothing, but I don’t know how else to view the situation. It seems more like a reality than just a self-limiting belief. Any help you could provide would be awesome.

Sincerely, 

The Hand I Was Dealt

DEAR THE HAND I WAS DEALT: Here’s the thing about life when you’re visibly different, THIWD: it becomes a superpower. You’re gifted with the ability to see which people are shallow assholes and which people are worth getting to know. People may react with surprise when they see your birth defect at first, but you’ll quickly find the people who will accept it as just a detail about who you are and the people who will treat it as some sort of sign of God’s divine disfavor or who will think that an issue with your hand means you’re somehow deficient.

Yeah, this means that there will be many people who’re gonna get filtered out, you have to ask yourself: are these people you’d actually want in your life?

And honestly, being unique works out to your advantage in the long run.  You want to nail that first impression and set their expectations of you, but letting them get to know you and your uniqueness – including your hand – means that you become more appealing to them as a person. Don’t be ashamed of your uniqueness; your hand may not be something a lot of people expect or have ever seen before, but it’s part of your story and what makes you, you. And I think we can both agree that you’re pretty awesome.

The other thing to keep in mind: you’re not Charles Xavier. You can’t read people’s minds and you have no real idea why people might turn you down. One of the things that’s tricky to remember is that the things we think are obvious or consequential to us aren’t necessarily what other people are focused on. It’s easy to assume that it has to be That One Thing that looms so large in your mind – especially if it’s particularly visible – but you have no idea if it’s actually that or something else entirely. The more you focus on That One Thing – your hand, in this case – the more it looms in your attitude and the way you act when you meet people. That, in turn, makes it harder for you to connect with folks; you’re essentially pushing them away first, even if you aren’t aware of it.

Yes, there may be folks who can’t get past your hand, but clearly there are people who can – your own romantic history is confirmation of that. It’s part of who you are and shaped you into who you are today, but it’s not what defines you. Never forget that.

You got this.

Good luck.

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