DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, long story short I am 21 and a long time lone wolf who was recently diagnosed with PTSD/Anxiety/Depression from a f

ked up childhood who has worked on challenging negative core beliefs with my therapist. I have made some good progress too.

I intellectually no longer see my mental health conditions as a bouquet of red flags that make me undatable or unattractive (Hell just writing that is making me facepalm with how stupid it sounds. How could any of that possibly be a flaw with my morals or character?) Now the main goal will be to keep that mindset when I get emotionally triggered.

Hell, the opposite is true. I am very datable. I have a quick-wit for humor and am just someone who likes to make sure everyone who hangs out with me is comfortable. I love bowling, cooking, and The Legend of Zelda series. My career goals are to get my Masters or Psy. D. in Clinical Psychology and become a licensed therapist so to say I am driven is an understatement. I went from a childhood house(s) in which the chief main concern was “will my mother have enough pills so she won’t withdrawal tonight?” to a damn near free ride to a top 50 university (of course, currently living with my father and mother who is now 4 years clean) so how can I be in any sense of the word a failure?

If only I could think like that during my anxiety episodes.

So celebrating my mental health success and newfound positive identity aside, I did have one question to ask.

I have absolutely no interest in ONS and seeing as most romantic relationships are started by being introduced by friends I was wondering when is the quote on quote “appropriate” time to ask someone out after you first meet them. Obviously you don’t want to wait too long as you will Friend Zone yourself but, in the same sense it doesn’t seem like “Hi I’m RTP and I just met you. Want to grab a drink?” would end well either as there wouldn’t be any established connection. Then again I don’t know how this dating thing really works anyway so I could be completely wrong.

Oh well, might as well suss this out now seeing as we are likely to have a lot of time on our hands before I can actually get back out there.

-Rejoining the Pack

DEAR REJOINING THE PACK: Congratulations on your progress, RtP! You’ve made some huge strides in your life and you should be justly proud of everything you’ve achieved.  So should you mother for that matter; getting clean and sober is no easy feat. These are success stories that should be celebrated.

Now as for your question: this is actually much simpler than you realize. People put far too much importance on the idea of a universal timeline when it comes to dating and attraction, and there really isn’t. The point when it’s appropriate to ask someone out is far more based on social context and calibration than it is length of time. Asking someone out at a funeral? Not really appropriate. Asking them out a couple hours after having been introduced by a friend at a party? Far more appropriate.

What I always suggest is that once you’ve met someone and you’re both having a good time talking with one another, then the time to ask them on a date is… well, pretty much then. It may not always be possible when you first meet them, but asking sooner is usually better than later. Not only do you make it clear that you’re interested in them as a potential lover rather than a friend, but you don’t end up with someone else asking them out before you had the chance.

There’re a couple ways of doing this. One of the easiest is to find things that you both enjoy and then suggest a date based around those. Did you find that you both like bowling? Awesome… hey, would she like to go bowl some frames this Saturday?

Alternately, you can do what’s called “seeding the date” by discussing something that you’re planning on doing (or want to do) that weekend or the weekend after. Then, towards the end of the conversation you can say “Hey, you know what? I think you might really dig that art exhibition I’m going to on Friday. I’d love to take you if you’re free.”

Or you could even say “Hey, I’m having a great time talking to you. I know this awesome bar/coffee shop/ice cream parlor; would you like to get a drink/frozen yogurt some time? Cool, I’m available at these times, what does your schedule look like?”

Hell, if all that happens is that you connect on Facebook or WhatsApp or you exchange numbers, you can simply propose a date by combining two different ideas. “Hey, how do you feel about cocktails and pinball? There’s this barcade I’ve been meaning to hit up and I think you’d really enjoy it. I’d love to take you this Saturday.”

The key is to have a specific activity and a specific day and time; you want to give them a reason to want to see you. “Hey let’s hang out some time” is too vague and too wishy-washy. What does hanging out entail? When is “some time”? This leaves far too much in the air or, worse, puts the responsibility of planning on her shoulders — something you want to avoid. Having a specific activity gives her something to look forward to. A specific date and time makes it easier to plan; if she’s not available on those days, then she can propose a different day or time. Proposing both makes it clear that you’re not expecting her to do most of the heavy lifting to make this date happen.

So don’t worry about the timing, so much as how you both feel. If there’s attraction there and you’ve been having a good time talking… go ahead and propose a date. In a worst case scenario, you’ll know she’s not interested and you’ll be able to move on.

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 46 years old. When I was 35, my husband and I had a terrible divorce with custody battle.  I won, but I had to give up my dreams of moving home to another state as a condition of custody. I put everything on hold to care for them, including a couple of relationships that ended because they weren’t conducive to family. One of which devastated me because I actually fell in love but he had no intention of committing to what I had to offer.

My eldest daughter moved out at 17, exiting with lots of drama as was her usual, and left me feeling battered. My youngest and I ended up breaking away and moving home right when she started high school. I may be home but I feel like I haven’t integrated back into my life. I don’t date, I barely socialize, my job is high stress, and when I get home I fall into my recliner and I am brain dead. As a result I have gained 40 lbs.

I need to get up and change everything, job, my health, socialize more, but I can’t seem to get my tail in gear. How can I find motivation when I have this crushing feeling that my life is over that I am too old and fat and tired?

I have this feeling that I am going to be alone forever if I sit here doing nothing day after day, but I can’t get out of this recliner except to do the exact same things that end up with me being fat, and tired, and lonely in this rut.

Can you help?

Still In A Cage

DEAR STILL IN A CAGE: I feel for you, SIAC. You got dealt a s

tty hand and you’ve been trying to deal with it as best you can. It’s admirable that you put your life on hold so that you could provide for your kids, but it’s also understandable that you want a life for yourself. And now that you’re in a position to start your life again… well, f

k, who’s got the time or the energy?

Here’s the thing: you’re looking at the big picture, and that’s actually a problem. You’re looking at this mountain in the distance and wondering just how in pluperfect hell you’re supposed to scale that thing. Hell, never mind climbing it, how’re you supposed to even get to it? Looking at all the things you’re wanting to achieve is going to be exhausting and intimidating and ultimately just leave you with a bad case of  “I don’t wanna”.

The way you get past that is simple: you stop looking at the big picture and focus on the smaller things instead. You don’t focus on climbing the mountain, you focus on just taking a step at a time, looking only at the next milestone. As you look at each milestone, you want to structure things so it’s easier for you to accomplish them without thinking about it or having to expend energy to accomplish them.

Take your job and energy levels, for example. All that stress builds cortisol in your system, which screws with your concentration, your mental acuity, even your weight. Small wonder you get home and can’t bring yourself to do anything. So, assuming that you can’t find a way to make work less stressful or shift to a less-demanding track or department at work, what you want to do is focus on de-stressing and easing the cortisol buildup. Part of the way you do this is through generating the chemicals that help reduce cortisol: in this case, oxytocin and dopamine. You generate dopamine in a number of ways: getting enough sleep, eating a healthier diet, exercise, and the satisfaction that comes from making plans and following through with them. And, again, if you take things in small, manageable bites, this is very doable.

Start with the small, easy to accomplish things. When you get home, drop off your stuff, change your shoes and then go for a walk around the block. Not even a power walk; just a leisurely stroll. Depending on where you live, this should take you around 10 minutes or so, maybe a smidge more. That’s it: just giving yourself 10 minutes to walk before you plop into the recliner. Do this every weekday as soon as you come home, so that it starts to become a habit. It’s a very small, very simple and low-investment change to make in your life, but it will make a difference. That little extra bit of exercise — just 10 minutes — will produce surprising dividends.  The act of building this into your daily routine will bring you emotional satisfaction. The walking will help engage your circulatory system, getting your blood moving and helping to strengthen your heart, which will help you feel better, physically and emotionally. The exercise itself will not only burn more calories — not many, but some — but cause you to produce more dopamine, which will help break down the cortisol.

Keep to this routine and you’ll start finding that you’ll have more energy and less brain fog than before. As you keep at it, you’ll find that you’re ready to take on a little more. Maybe you’ll decide to walk two blocks instead of just one; awesome, go for it. Just that little bit of improvement will increase the benefits you’ll reap.

Meditation is another practice that can help you not just de-stress, but relax and chase away the brain fog. As with walking, this doesn’t require a significant investment of your time. You don’t need an hour with music and incense and a mat; five minutes a day in a comfortable chair with an app like Headspace is all you need. As you incorporate it into your life, maybe you’ll find that you’re ready or able to give a little more time to it. If so, great! If not, that’s fine too; five minutes will make a significant difference.

There will be other ways to streamline your life in ways that will make it less taxing and leave you with just a little more energy than you have now. Preparing meals for the week in advance, for example, can free up your time and be one less thing to think about each day. Taking a little time on Sunday to make dinners for the week puts you in the position to just open the fridge, grab something and heat it up for dinner. This reduces the time, effort and  brain-power that you’ll need to expend after you get home from work, freeing up your physical and mental resources and giving you a little more time and energy to use — or not use — as you see fit. And as a bonus, the act of planning the week’s meals, preparing them and stashing them every Sunday provides a sense of achievement and satisfaction. You’ve checked that off your weekly to-do list, which gives you a feeling of control over your life… which in turn, helps increase dopamine and decrease cortisol and stress.

These changes are small but add up over time. Taking these little steps build on one another — increasing your energy and drive and decreasing your stress.Think of it as the compounding interest of mental and physical health; as you decrease the amount of stress in your life, the benefits you get from those changes multiply accordingly. The less stressed you are, the more energy you’ll have. The more energy you have, the more you’ll be able to do. The more you’re able to do, the less stressed you’ll be. You’ll be happier and healthier without having to turn your entire life upside down or making radical changes that you would end up abandoning after a few weeks. And as you progress, you’ll be ready to hit the next milestone. Maybe it will be walking for 2o minutes. Maybe it’ll be meditating for 15 minutes. You might decide to try new and different recipes to keep your meals balanced and healthy. Each milestone you cross builds on the ones that came before and increases the benefits accordingly.

Now, you may notice that this is all about your physical and emotional health, not dating. There’s a reason for that: right now, you’re feeling lower than a snake’s ass in a drainage ditch. You feel helpless, defeated and out of control of your own life. Making these little changes serve to not only make you feel better but to remind you that you do have agency in your own life. These improvements will put you in a better place physically, mentally, and emotionally, which will make you feel better about yourself a person. You’ll find that your mood improves and discover how much more comfortable you are in your own skin. You’ll learn that you actually like yourself again.

That is what will make you feel like you’re ready to get social again. You’ll have more energy, so you’ll feel like getting together with friends. Hanging out with them will help knock the rust off the social skills you haven’t had an opportunity to use.  You’ll feel better about how you look and so you’ll have more confidence to talk to the sexy singles you’ll encounter.

Because here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as “too late”.  There is no window of opportunity, after which there’s no chance for you. People find love in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Hell, right now, retirement communities and senior living facilities are dealing with unprecedented levels of sexual activity because hey, turns out old folks still date and bang.

And all it takes is being willing to commit to walking for 10 minutes a day. That’s it.

You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for SIC. You’ve fought harder, accomplished more and come further than you realize.

You’ve got this. I promise.

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 had a normal love life until my early 30’s. Once I hit about age 32 (when women, I think, start evaluating dates more as potential long-term partners), all I got was first dates. After this happened many times and being turned down for a second date by a woman who I was positive had a great time, I told her what was happening to me and asked what I was doing wrong. She told me I didn’t meet most women's financial standards for a man. She suggested I trade in my brand new sub-compact (which I bought debt-free) for a used ‘Vette and describe my job in a way that would make it seem higher in the hierarchy than it was. I wrote her off as a shallow, materialistic jerk. Several years later, though, when I was on vacation, there was mix-up with my car rental and I got a convertible sports car instead of my usual economy. Four women flirted with me because of the car.

I’m a social worker. My income has been a hair above or below median family income in my city for years and is likely to remain at that level. I work with people who’ve sustained spinal cord and brain injuries. I’m well-known in the disability community as a fierce, relentless warrior who’ll go to the wall to get my patients what they need. I’ve saved countless families from homelessness, guided people through unimaginable emotional trauma, gotten a brain-injured wife out from under the control of the husband who battered her into a coma and forced insurers to spend thousands they didn’t want to. Does all that not matter to the vast majority of women since I drive a Prius and live in a 700 square foot condo?

I can’t imagine doing another job solely to increase my income, but I don’t want to go through the rest of my life with no significant other. I swim laps and lift weights so I check the box of being in good shape. Since I've been a social worker for years, I must have good social skills. I have diverse interests so I almost never take a woman out for dinner and movie. A date with me is usually a play, concert, poetry reading, art exhibit opening, etc. and I always pay, so I check the box of not being a cheap, boring date. I’m good with money so I have literally no financial worries. My condo’s paid off and I travel all over the US on vacations. If I cut out the trips and sold the Prius, I could easily afford a loan to get a Porsche, but I love to travel, and the freedom of having no debts, although not as much as I love having a girlfriend.

Should I buy the Porsche and describe my job in misleading terms? That seems like a lousy way to start a relationship, but it’s a lot better than no relationship!

Brental in the Rental

DEAR BRENTAL IN THE RENTAL: Congratulations BitR: you've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "never take advice from someone who's promises to teach you 'better dating through hypnosis and mind control", but only slightly less well known is this: women don't give that much of a s

t about your car.

So I get that you're frustrated with your current dating life; you're having a dry spell for reasons that seem inexplicable to you. I understand why you would be casting about for answers. However, the problem here is that you're taking advice from someone who is taking her own reasons for not wanting to date you and making the sort of universal declarations about the Female Hive Mind that you usually only see from MRAs and MGTOWs. Whenever I hear people say that you have to have X car or Y income in order to date, I always want to see some actual numbers. Not just whatever Psychology Today article they're failing to understand, but some legitimate, peer-reviewed research, published in a reputable journal. And then I want them to explain to every male/female couple at any particular Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon that they don't actually exist. Even a cursory look around the country is all it takes to see that people who aren't driving Porsches and Corvettes are still somehow meeting, falling in love and getting married.

If your date had some strange Carrie-Bradshaw-esque "Could I really date someone who doesn't have a 'cool' job?" moment, then hey, more power to her. Everybody gets to set their standards wherever they choose… even if those standards seem incredibly shallow and arbitrary to the rest of us. But honestly that sounds far more like the kind of advice you could expect to get from dodgy subreddits, not something that's actually practical and worth pursuing.

Now I understand why this advice burrowed its way under your skin like a tick; it hews very closely to one of the common and pernicious beliefs about what women want from a man — advice that's usually given by other men who don't actually listen to what women say they're interested in. Men are far more likely to insist that women only want to date the guy with the high-power job, the sports car and the bigger paycheck; women, on the other hand, tend to insist that no, they really want to date someone who’s a responsible adult who can actually contribute to the household finances and handle the responsibilities that come with being an adult in a relationship.

But because belief that women fundamentally want not just a provider, but a socially-impressive provider has been reinforced over and over again by society and pop culture, it's very easy to believe it. You've heard it over and over again and that often means that there's a part of you that worries it might be true. So when someone comes along and spins the exact same yarn to you... well, yeah, it's gonna tweak that little anxiety.

But like I said: if only people who made above the median income were getting married, then at least 38.1 million people would be unable to ever find a partner. Believe me, if that were the case, we would be hearing about that all the time.

This isn't to say that having more money might not bring some women to the table who might not otherwise be interested. Money is a great way of attracting certain types of women. However, just having lots of money ends up attracting women who are interested in money, not you. And hey, some folks are cool with that. But it doesn't sound like what you're actually looking for.

I do, however, want to dig into your example of how a car made a difference to your social life. You say that four different women flirted with you because of the car. What, exactly, makes you sure that it was the car that made the difference? Did they only flirt with you after you said "hey, did you see my sports car over there?" Were they uninterested until they saw the valet pull your car around and then suddenly changed their minds? Did they see you drive up and start flirting after you hopped out? Was it literally the car that made the difference? Or could it be that driving a "cool" car made you act a little differently, a little less insecure and a little more cocky and self-assured? Especially after someone you went on one date with told you to get a Corvette?

Because I rather strongly suspect that if we drill down, we're going to find that the car was just of a magic feather — something that gave you permission to unlock behavior and an attitude that you haven't had access to in a while. It's kind of astounding the things that will affect how we behave; something as simple as telling somebody that a white coat is a doctor's coat instead of an artist's smock can cause people to perform better on cognitive tests. Believing that your rental gave you extra cool points can be all that it takes to have a little more swagger in your step and a willingness to act a little bolder. People are more likely to respond to that than seeing that you had a Jaguar logo or whatever on your keyring.

The problem isn't your job, it's not your car and it's not your condo or the fact that you're in great shape, financially speaking. It's that you listened to one person who thinks that Prius' just aren't "cool" enough.

There're any number of reasons why you might have hit a dry spell in your love life. It could be anything from changing demographics in your city, to the women you're pursuing and where you're meeting them, to changes in your presentation, attitude or even just having a rough couple of months where s

t just didn't work because sometimes you hit a bad patch for no reason. But what I can tell you is that there isn't a woman out there who says to herself "man, the last thing I want is a guy with compassion, who saves lives, travels extensively and is almost entirely debt free. Better to find a guy driving a car he can't afford and lying about his job."

Are there women out there who'll judge you by how "impressive" your job is or how "cool" your car is? Sure. But then ask yourself why, in pluperfect hell, would you want to date them in the first place?

There're some amazing women out there looking for a guy exactly like you. Focus more on meeting them and less on the women who clearly aren't right for you.

Good luck.

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