DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a 33-year old man, and I’m writing this because I’ve realized a troubling pattern to my relationships. Namely that, whenever I start one, I become quite worried that she’s far more interested in me than I am in her, and that I’m unintentionally leading her on.

This is vain to an almost grotesque level. I have no reason to think that a woman would be so incredibly into me that her life would fall apart if I expressed disinterest. Nonetheless, I find myself troubled by the irrational fear that she might.

A bit about me: I’m a late bloomer when it comes to dating. I didn’t get my first serious girlfriend until I was 31 years old. In this case, she actually was far more interested in me than I was in her. Due to my inexperience, I didn’t really pick up on this, and I hurt her feelings when I ended the relationship.

This troubled me all through my second relationship, a year later. In this case, my fears turned out to be unreasonable. My second girlfriend liked me, but was not in love with me the way I feared. I will admit to feeling a certain relief when she broke up with me, since it meant I’d never have to worry about this with her.

Now, I’m not saying I shouldn’t keep this concern in mind—I don’t want to become callous. But having this dread hanging over my head is making it harder for me to pursue a relationship. I’m not someone who’d let a bad partner walk over me, but I hate the idea of causing emotional pain to someone who is a good partner, but whom I just don’t love enough.

I have recently met a woman, though we are not officially dating. I’m not sure if she and I will even get to that stage. Nonetheless, I’m have this same fear.

Any advice on how to handle this? 

Too Much To Handle

DEAR TOO MUCH TO HANDLE: First of all, here’s a truth that nobody really likes to acknowledge: in every relationship, there’s going to be an imbalance of feeling. There will always be one partner who cares more or who cares less because hey, we’re human and love is a chaotic emotion. More importantly though is that this isn’t static either; there will be times when one partner is more invested than the other and times when that will switch. As long as those swings aren’t too extreme, it all balances out in the long-run. Welcome to the human experience; none of this shit makes logical sense because emotions could give two shits about logic and fairness.

Second of all: Dude, there’s only one thing to do here: stop overthinking this shit. You can’t control how other people feel, nor are you responsible to manage their feelings for them. You are presumably dating grown-ass adults. This means that they have a responsibility for handling their own affairs – literally. Now, it’s one thing if you’re so afraid of hurting people’s feelings or causing them upset that you’re promising them things that you can’t or won’t deliver on. That’s a shitty thing to do to someone, even if you’re doing it with the best of intentions.

But if someone else is reading more into a relationship than is actually there? You can’t control that. You can maintain a casual frame, sure. You can be clear and straightforward with how you feel about the relationship if they want to have the Defining The Relationship talk. But at the end of the day, people are ultimately responsible for managing their own feels. And frankly, the fact that you’re walking around, constantly on the lookout for signs that maybe, maybe they feel more for you than you’re comfortable with? That’s no bueno, my dude. You’re not only putting up artificial barriers between you and the person that you’re dating – which is going to hurt them more in the long-run than breaking up if the relationship’s run it’s course – but you’re keeping yourself from actually enjoying being in a relationship with someone.

Look, like I said to SitB: rejection sucks. This is true no matter which side of it you’re on. In best dating practices, you want to cause as little unnecessary pain as possible, because pain is inevitable. However, if you’re always going to have your guard up, you’re going to end up making things worse for both of you.

Like SitB, you’re letting these imagined scenarios run away with you and it’s getting in the way of your real life. You need to learn to be in the moment and appreciate what you have now instead of constantly being on guard for those What-If weasels.

Be up front about what you want and what you have to offer. Don’t try to avoid the DTR conversation for fear of leading someone on. But at the same time: just let yourself be present and accept the relationship for what it is, not what you’re afraid it might become. The harder you police other people’s feelings, the more you’re going to end up choking off relationships that might have worked if you hadn’t been so hypervigiliant and guarded.

Don’t let your anxiety close you off from what might be a wonderful experience my dude.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I just found out that my husband is watching porn with Asian girls. I don’t have any problems with him watching porn, I think is pretty normal and understandable. The problem is that now, I’m feeling really insecure. I always knew that he is attracted to Asian women (for the record, I’m not Asian), I know that he has some female friends who are Asian. It’s just that the fact that he is searching for porn with Asians makes me think that he is unhappy not being with an Asian girl. What can I do? What does this mean? Could it mean he’s not attracted to me? Or is this normal?

Worried I’m Not The Right One

DEAR WORRIED I’M NOT THE RIGHT ONE: What does it mean that your husband watches Asian porn? Assuming that he’s not avoiding having sex with you in order to masturbate to porn instead… well, mostly, it means that your husband is turned on by Asian women. But that’s an “in addition to”, not “instead of”.

It’s generally a bad idea to try to divine somebody’s personality or fetishes from their porn habits; it’s rare for someone to be attracted by ONLY one type. Your husband can be hot for Thai or Indonesian, Chinese or Japanese or Korean women and still also be attracted to you. Someone can love large breasts or full-figured women but still love and be attracted to a woman who’s petite. Someone can have a thing tall, Nordic men and still love their Indian boyfriend of average height.

There’re two basic truths when it comes to relationships. The first is that we pretty much all want to sleep with people who aren’t our partners. That has absolutely nothing to do with how attracted we are to our significant others or the strength of our relationships, it’s just part of being human. The second is that no one person can be all things to somebody. For many people, porn is how they fulfill their desires for sexual variety without stepping outside the relationship; it scratches the itch and doesn’t harm anyone.

Now, as I said: if he’s forgoing having sex with you in order to jerk off to his porn collection instead or he’s covertly seeking Asian women on Tinder and his relationships with his female Asian friends is crossing the line from “friend” to “adultery”, then you have a problem. That’s when it’s possible he’s got a fetish that he’s trying to indulge.

(Side note: I don’t advocate snooping to find out if this is true; snooping is pretty much ONLY justified in retrospect. If things are so bad that you’re willing to contemplate violating his privacy, then you might want to consider counseling first.)

But if this is just him indulging a fantasy that doesn’t interfere with the intimacy and affection the two of you have? Then it’s no big deal. Sometimes folks don’t want sex, they just want to skip to the orgasm at the end, and masturbating is the most efficient way of doing that.

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 viewer/reader of your site for a while now, and I’ve even read your book, and I’ve got to say you have a lot of great advice. I’m not historically one for asking advice online, but there’s something I’d really appreciate if you could help me with.

My core problem is this: I still live with my parents, and I’m finding it to be a massive psychological (if not physical) hindrance to getting involved in the world of dating.

To provide a little context, I’m 25 years old (and turning 26 in a couple of months). I graduated from university about a year ago with a music degree in saxophone and composition (very lucrative, I know), and I’ve been living at home and slowly building a clientele of saxophone students since then. I’m making enough money to pay my bills but not enough to move out, and while my family is happy to support me and I love them very much, I’m dying to get my own place and become more independent. For further context, I went to university in the same city my family lives in, so I’ve basically never left home.

While I’m aware that my living situation isn’t terribly unusual for someone my age in today’s economy (my city is on the expensive side too), it still bothers me. When coupled with my rather lackluster dating history, consisting of one brief fling in high school and about a dozen attempts since then that amounted to nothing, my morale when it comes to dating is pretty low. A couple of years ago I had kind of decided that I wouldn’t bother trying to date again until I moved out, but now I’m not sure exactly when it’s going to happen and I don’t know if I really want to hold myself to that. I don’t know if it’s wise to hold myself to it either. I’ve been interested in someone or other at just about any given time in my post-pubescent life, so it’s not that I don’t feel the urge to date.

To be clear, I don’t have any major hangups about my looks or my personality. I think I look decent enough when I care to trim or shave and put some actual effort into my appearance, and I think my personality is good aside from a few minor foibles. It’s mostly just my stereotypically pathetic “mom’s basement” living situation (although I don’t actually live in the basement) and my lack of dating experience and success that’s giving me problems. Telling potential dates that I still live with my parents isn’t something I really want to do, but I figure it has to come out sooner or later. I dread the hypothetical “Want to go back to your place?” that I have to meet with an awkward “Haha, here’s the thing:”.

Anyway, I’m not here to write America’s next seminal novel, so I’ll wrap it up. Basically I have a confidence problem, driven primarily by my living situation and secondarily by my weak dating history. I want to get out on the dating scene, but I’m afraid that nothing significant will or can happen until I’m living out on my own (or with roommates who aren’t relatives). I’d rather not bother at all if I’m doomed to rejection down the road. Am I right to be worried, or is this unnecessary concern? How can I cope with this? What should I do?

Sincerely,

Sax In The Basement

DEAR SAX IN THE BASEMENT: There’s this thing I see people do all the time: they try to game out scenarios in their heads before they actually are in a position to test them out. In theory, this is supposed to be a way of psyching yourself up and getting yourself ready to actually Do The Thing. In practice, this becomes a classic example of worst-case thinking, a cascading series of What-Ifs that inevitably plays out in the most humiliating way possible. What’s supposed to be an exercise in planning and confidence building ends up becoming a case of letting your brain weasels out to play. So even though you theoretically have total control over the scenario in your head, your anxieties take over and suddenly you can only imagine things playing out in the worst way possible.

And because our brains such at distinguishing what we imagine from what we actually experience, we experience the anxiety and fear of that rejection over and over again. We’ve gotten so used to it that we can’t actually imagine things playing out any differently.

And so… you’ve basically set yourself up for failure. Like the s

ttiest version of the Midnighter, you’ve played that interaction in your head a thousand times and you know how you’re going to get shot down in flames every single time.

And that’s the problem, SitB. You don’t have a living situation problem and you don’t have a confidence problem, you have a fear problem. Your biggest dilemma isn’t that you’ve been rejected for living with your parents, it’s that you expect to get rejected for living with your parents. You haven’t struck out yet because you haven’t even stepped up to the plate in the first place.

Your living with your folks? Your lack of dating experience? Those are just excuses. You’re afraid of the getting rejected. The reasons are just flavoring to the stew of anxiety you’re serving yourself.

And hey, guess what? You’re going to get rejected because everybody does. Nobody out there, not Michael B. Jordan, not Brad Pitt, not Chris Evans, goes 5 for 5. Everybody gets turned down and turned away because hey, not everyone’s gonna like you! So yeah: some women will turn you down for living with your parents… just like some women will turn you down because you’re a saxophone player, or because your hair is the wrong color or because you look like their ex or because sun is aligned in Sagittarius.

It’s like playing blackjack: you can do things correctly and build the odds in your favor as much as possible, but there’s always going to be factors outside of your control. You can’t make yourself rejection-proof because at the end of the day, a lot of rejection has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the person rejecting you.

As much as it sucks, rejection is part of the game and there is no avoiding it. Much like studying martial arts or playing contact sports, if you’re actually going to do more than just observe from the sidelines, you have to accept that eventually you’re going to get hit. The key is learning how to take the hit and – more importantly – realizing that you can take it. And to be perfectly honest: you’re better off taking the hit early on and learning how to shake it off than you are to keep letting it be this huge thing that just gets scarier and scarier. The longer you wait for a time when you won’t get hit (which doesn’t exist), the bigger it will loom in your mind and the worse it will be.

Now having scared the piss out of you, let me reassure you: it’s not nearly as bad as you think it’s going to be. The fact that you live with your folks, for example, isn’t the dealbreaker you think it is.  In this day and age, more and more people your age are living with their folks – more than a third of millennials at this point. The economy sucks for average folks, housing is expensive as s

t in most major cities and everybody’s overloaded with student debt. Most of the people you’re likely to meet and want to date are going to recognize that this is a reality of the modern economy, not a failure to launch.

And to be perfectly blunt, the bigger issues you’re going to face living with your parents are going to be the same you’d face living with roommates: namely “bringing someone back home without announcing it to everyone in the house”.

Now here’s how you deal with that fear of rejection: you accept that rejection happens, that it sucks and all that it means is that you and that person weren’t right for one another. You don’t invest emotionally in someone you’ve just met – especially someone who has no empathy for your living situation.

Similarly, you don’t treat the fact that you live with your parents as this huge, shameful secret. It doesn’t define you, it doesn’t mark you as a loser. It’s just part of where you are now. All you need to say is “Yeah, I’m living with my parents at the moment. Trying to find an affordable place in this city is insane” and most people will nod in sage agreement.

Women aren’t as concerned about the fact that you live with your parents so much as “do you have ambition? Are you working to something bigger, or are you just coasting?” You’ve got a job, you’re paying your bills, you’re making moves. Those are all net positives. The rest is just temporary.

So here’s what you do, SitB. Start making progress towards moving out. Save up some money, start talking with friends you could conceivably live with, look at “roommate wanted” ads on Craigslist. It’s not critical to your dating future, but the fact that you’re actually making some forward motion will help ease the brain weasels and give you more confidence. When those brain weasels start to thrash around, you’ll be able to point to those and say “shut up, we’re almost there.”

Meanwhile, stop waiting for s

t to be perfect before you start dating. If you want to date, then start putting yourself out there. You’re worried about your lack of dating experience? Fine: then you go start getting some experience. Go ahead and tell yourself that it’s not for anything serious; you’re doing this just to know that you can do it. Treat it as the casual exercise that it is. If you find someone amazing, awesome. If not, that’s cool too; you’re grinding out your XP and leveling up so that you’ll be even more ready when you do have your own place.

Also: get an app like Hotel Tonight; that’ll help for the times when you need a place to go with your new sweetie and you can’t bring ’em back home.

You’ve got this, SitB.

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 lacking courage with women in my life, and been taking steps recently to have more courage and take action to go talk to women I’m interested in. Yesterday, I took one of these steps. I went to talk to a performer of the improv show I went to, she was absolutely brilliant (and pretty!). I interrupted her with her friends after the show to congratulate her, and we had a nice little chat, she made conversation with me and seemed interested. She asked if I’d be coming back to the next show, which is in one month, to which I replied I definitely would. Now I didn’t want to bother her as her friends were interrupting, and it was another (scary!) step to take her number right away/suggest we meet again, which I didn’t do. So I wished her good night. (Aside: It’s hard to reconcile being proud of taking little steps while still being disappointed in oneself for not being perfect)

Now the next show is in one month and I think it’s a long time to wait. And I’m pretty good at finding people on Facebook, if you catch my drift.

My dilemma is this: should I contact her online, offering we meet again, or should I wait a month to (possibly) talk to her again? On one hand, I want to strike the iron while it’s hot and act with urgency but I don’t want to make her feel stalked; and on the other, I prefer the engagement of face-to-face but a lot of things can happen and pass in one month, and the logistics of talking to her again could be difficult.

Thanks Doc, keep on keepin’ on

Taking Little Steps

DEAR TAKING LITTLE STEPS: First of all TLC, you should be proud of yourself. You’ve done something that you’ve had a hard time with in the past – going up and starting conversations with people. That’s awesome. Don’t let the fact that you didn’t do or accomplish everything you’d hoped for get you down; self-improvement is a marathon, not a sprint. Take each milestone as it comes instead of getting upset that you haven’t hit the next one already. Trust me: success breeds success, and those little steps add up over time. Take pride in what you have done and let that motivate you for the next step.

So with that in mind, I want to make sure that you don’t screw up your progress and set yourself back by making a couple common mistakes.

Because believe me, tracking this person down on Facebook would be a mistake right now.

Here’s a quick rundown of social media etiquette: certain platforms have different expectations of intimacy. Twitter, for example is an open platform; it’s generally expected that you’re tweeting out to the general public. In an awkward metaphor, it’s somewhere between standing on a soapbox and having a conversation with people out on the street. Some people prefer private accounts and only interact with mutual or approved followers, but for the most part there’s a low expectation of privacy and intimacy.

(Of course, this can quickly lead to problems with people sea-lioning…)

Instagram is similar; it’s an outward facing system designed for people to promote themselves and build an audience of people who want to see their content. While there ARE folks who prefer to keep their IG private and locked to friends only, it’s generally safe to assume that people on Instagram are cool with their content being put out there for public consumption.

Because a lot of people – especially creative types and performers – use Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat for public promotion, it’s not terribly unusual to follow people you don’t know well or know at all.

Facebook, on the other hand, is more intimate. While there are people who will leave their Facebook accounts wide open and who collect as many friends as possible, most people reserve Facebook connections to people who they have a certain level of familiarity with. The accepted level of familiarity may vary – some people will accept friend requests from friends of friends or people they interact with in Facebook groups and professional pages, while others will only accept requests from family and people they know very well. When you get a friend request from someone you only barely know or have only met once… well that can be a little awkward, especially if you don’t otherwise have any social contact with her.

In your case, TLS, you really don’t have a social connection with this person. Unless you’ve left some details out of your letter, you don’t share overlapping social circles or mutual friends to vouch for you; if you did, you wouldn’t have to track her down on Facebook. All you’ve had at this point is one conversation after a performance. And while it’s great that it went well, you’re still a stranger to her. And believe me, having someone who you have met once or twice in passing track you down on Facebook is seriously creepy.

Here’s the other mistake you’re making – you’re overestimating her potential interest in you. As with most things in life, context counts. In your case, you’re coming up to a performer after their performance and chatting with them briefly. They’re still in performance mode, as it were – enjoying the endorphin rush of another successful show, appreciating the kind words and compliments from the audience, engaging with fans, etc. Unless she was going out of her way to engage you, then odds are good that this was her-as-performer; asking if you were going to come to the next show is more about getting people to come back and fill the seats. It’s like meeting creators at conventions: they’re there with a purpose, and that purpose isn’t about making new friends. It’s rare that you’re going to become fast friends after a brief conversation at their table.

So to be perfectly blunt: there really isn’t any urgency here because there’s no emotional momentum to lose.

I know this is feeling kind of harsh and upsetting; despite all appearances I REALLY don’t like stomping on people’s hopes. But right now, you’ve made such great progress that I’m trying to keep you from ruining it by overstepping things and feeling even worse when things don’t work out the way you’d hoped. Believe me, that painful mix of feeling rejected and “how could I be so stupid” hurts way more than dialing your expectations back. Trust me: I’ve been there and done that so many times I bought the factory that makes the shirts.

So here’s what I suggest: hang tight, practice your approaches – both cold and warm approaches – and get better at starting conversations with people. Take the month to just work on being social. When the next performance comes around, see if you can talk to her a little more afterwards. Don’t go into it hoping to get her number; just work on getting comfortable talking to someone you’re attracted to. And if things are going really well, then ask if you can friend her on Facebook. Simply say “hey, I’m really enjoying talking to you, and I’d like to continue later on. Is it OK if I friend you on Facebook?”

If she’s cool with it, she’ll tell you how to find her. If she’s not – she may say she only talks to close friends or family – then… well, it’s going to be disappointing, but you should still be proud of yourself. You’ll have made another significant step. And those steps are going to lead you to some amazing times in the future.

Good luck.

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