DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, I’m a tiny girl. And by tiny I mean, pretty flat, front and back. Weird saying this, I don’t even know you (but I value your words and love your blog– great job!). Anyway, so, I’m pretty bold when I like a guy. I will usually tell him, upfront and in-person. Unfortunately, I’ve only had the chance about three times to be this bold.

Other times, I’m held back by a… thing. Being a nerd, I hang out with nerd guys. And they all seem to be really into curvy girls. And that’s great! Girls of all shapes and sizes are beautiful, and I mean that. Despite self-esteem issues, I really try to stay fine with my own body type (I am twig-thin and am often accused of being “too thin”– I’m not, doctor says I’m healthy as a healthy horse, I promise), and am only shaken when confronted with the poisonous question of “Is what I have enough to please?” I guess I feel like there are fantasies I will never be able to fulfill for my guy (when he happens).

So recently, despite my previous forwardness, my confidence has dropped considerably because of eavesdropping on (I wasn’t really, I was actually RIGHT there) conversations in recent past workplaces (restaurant talk, what should I have expected?). Guys talking about how they at least need a “handful” … ok, well, guys tend to have bigger hands than ladies. Just sayin’. When I was younger, I used to Google search what guys thought of small girls, and the majority (though not all!) of my findings yielded glorious statements like, “I’m not a pedophile” or “Real men want real women with curves”, I was a wee bit crushed. I don’t feel like less of a woman because of it, just… less desirable. I was young and foolish, and while I know not to go looking for that stuff now, I was impressionable. 

I’m also surrounded by curve-love (which is great, curves should be loved!)  at conventions and other gatherings of geekdom (I tend to avoid comic book stores — some good experiences, but also some uncomfortable ones, as you’ve mentioned on your blog). While I appreciate curves, I always feel … ahaha, “under-dressed”? I’m terrified to cosplay most anyone (except Death from Gaiman’s “Sandman” – I love her). 

I think to assume that NO guy likes small women is pretty low of me, but what are the odds that, in finding a guy who does (and him being a geek who is NOT into loli), he doesn’t end up disappointed? Or want something more? Am I worrying too much? 

Thanks for reading,

Tempest in an A-Cup

DEAR TEMPEST IN AN A-CUP: You’re worrying yourself over nothing, ACoC.

Just as I’m always saying that women aren’t one monolithic hive-mind, neither are men. Guys are incredibly diverse in the body-types they go for. For every guy who goes nuts for Christina Hendricks’ hour-glass figure, there will be another who wouldn’t sleep with her with a rented penis and Kat Dennings cheering things on. 

By the same token, dudes who like petite women aren’t just into the loli/jailbait look. Kirsten Bell – to pick a celebrity – is quite petite, but folks find her incredibly attractive. So too are Ariana Grande and Krysten Ritter. There are plenty of men who go nuts for petite women, just as there are plenty of guys who go for big beautiful women. The big problem – other than people body-shaming naturally thin women – is that younger guys often have a hard time owning up to their own preferences. There’s a lot of pressure for guys to conform to the “Gimme BOOBS” stereotype and someone who diverges from that image may not feel as though he can own his preferences.

Sadly, the only thing that helps in this case is for him to mature enough and become self-assured enough to not give a shit about what other people think and just embrace that he likes, whether it’s big ladies or wee ones.

Be careful relying on the Internet as a barometer for opinions; not only is it an echo-chamber, but it gives a distorted view of how people really feel. The loud folks can seem far more numerous than they actually are. On the one hand, you have guys saying that “you need a handful”. On the other, the French have a saying: “a smaller-breasted girl holds you closer to her heart”.

Sexiness is about attitude as much as it is anything else. One of my friends is insanely petite – to the point of having to shop in the juniors’ section as often as not. She’s had her share of boyfriends and admirers over the years and is now incredibly happily married. Part of what made her popular wasn’t her measurements but her personality. She has an appealing mix of punk-rock-don’t-give-a-f

k and Zoe-Deschanel-perkiness that won people over. With the right attitude, a 32 A-cup can be even more alluring than someone with Jayne Mansfield’s measurements. It’s all in how you present yourself as a holistic person.

And just a side note about cosplay: cosplaying as Death is going to get you plenty of admirers. You might also try Ninjette from Adam Warren’s series Empowered. There’s also a wide variety of anime characters that you might find appealing. But more than just matching their fictional measurements, cosplay is about how you feel about the character. Pick a character you love and rock it, bra size be damned.

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 friends and I need your help. 

Our friend is in a super toxic relationship and Tuesday night he finally escaped the relationship. She then sent him around 80 calls, found his mom’s number, home number, and sister’s number and sent him text saying that she was going to kill him. Then on Thursday, she showed up outside of his door at 9 in the morning. (She goes to a college that’s 3 hours away, meaning she took a 6 am bus ride all the way here). She then proceeded to cry for six hours straight and threaten to kill herself.

Apparently, she has attempted this before. Eventually she guilted him into taking her back through emotionally manipulating him and threatening her safety. 

My friends and I have no idea what to do, it feels like we’re helpless to save him from this mess and we’re pushing against a brick wall. He even met a new girl a few days ago that is super into him and is not a manipulative psycho who actually treats him with respect. 

Any advice would be great. I feel like slapping him at this point. 

Stuck In The Middle

DEAR STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: Your friend doesn’t have a relationship. He has a hostage situation… and his girlfriend is both the hostage taker AND the hostage. The problem here – besides the fact that he’s backed himself into a corner by his  ex – is that there’s nothing you can do to save him.

This, unfortunately, is a universal truth for anyone who’s friends with someone stuck in an abusive relationship, regardless of gender: as much as it may drive you nuts to watch your friend suffer, you can’t force him to leave her. It’s going to drive you bats

t watching him waste away with his toxic girlfriend, especially when there are other, awesome, non-manipulative, non-abusive women out there practically throwing themselves at him and feeling completely powerless to do anything.

But, sadly, that’s the way it has to be. He knows he’s in a toxic relationship… but he’s the only one who can get himself out of it. You can’t force him out. You can’t go all relationship vigilante and try to drive her away, nor can you kidnap him and give him the Clockwork Orange treatment until you’ve deprogramed him from ever going back to her. He’s a grown-ass man, and the only way he’s going to get out of this mess is when he decides he’s had enough.

Now having had experience with this sort of thing before, I do have some advice for you and your friend.

Don’t talk s

t about her; he knows what she is. Don’t pressure him to dump her; he already knows this is what he needs to do. He’ll do it when he’s good and ready, and pushing him is only going to make him push back. The best thing you can do right now is be the friend he needs. You need to be as non-judgmental as possible; he knows he did a stupid thing and giving him s

t for a decision he made when he felt like his back was against the wall will only make things worse for him. The more he feels shame or embarrassment, especially if it’s coming from his support squad, the less likely he will be to come to you when he needs you. This includes comments like “FINALLY!” or “OH THANK GOD” if he talks about leaving her. The last thing you want to do is punish him for finally having the strength to do what needs to be done.

Give him your unconditional support – he’s going to need it. Be someone he can lean on and provide him strength when he needs it. If he asks for your opinion, then tell him how you feel. Phrase it in your concern for him: you’re worried about him, you don’t like how he’s been so drained lately or the way he’s been so depressed.

Also: keep him busy. Since she’s not actually on campus with him, it’ll be easier to keep him occupied and distracted. She may be using the electronic leash to try to keep tabs on him, but the more you and your friends can spend time with him, the less of an influence she’ll be able to exert. Having a life outside of her one-woman campaign of misery will also help build back his self-esteem and help remind him that he needs to establish strong boundaries

Here’s the other thing need you need to tell your buddy: she is not his responsibility. He’s not her doctor, her father, her legal guardian, or her guardian angel. Yeah, she’s threatened to kill herself if he leaves her, and that can be distressing; he’s a good guy and he doesn’t want her to be hurt, no matter how badly she’s hurt HIM. But here’s the thing: she’s not going to do it. This is an incredibly common manipulation technique that abusive s

tbags  – men and women alike – use to keep their partners in line. She’s relying on the fact that he’s a good guy and doesn’t want anyone to hurt themselves over him. It’s a way of making him feel as though he’s somehow responsible for her and playing on his sense of guilt. She only has as much power over him as he allows her to have… and right now, he’s allowing her to have a lot.

But even in the (incredibly unlikely) event she does hurt herself… that’s not his fault. Unless he actually has secret mutant powers, he didn’t cause her to do anything. She’s a grown-ass woman, fully capable of making her own decisions. If she’s in a place so dark that she actually would carry out her threat to commit suicide, then she’s such a danger to herself, then she needs immediate psychiatric help, rather than continuing to go to class.

Eventually he’s going to get around to dumping her again. When he does, you all need to go nuclear IMMEDIATELY. This means cutting off every avenue she has of getting in contact with him. All of you need to block her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, WhatsApp, Spotify, GoodReads… everything. All of you also need to make sure that your privacy settings are air tight, especially on Facebook; it’s absurdly easy to stalk people via friends-of-friends. Be sure to tell his family as well, and remind them to not give her information, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. She’s already dragged them into her drama once already, she’ll likely try again.

In addition: go to campus security. She’s shown up unannounced before, and odds are, she’ll do it again. Bring copies of the threats she’s made against your buddy, as well as bringing up all the other people she’s dragged into this drama. Do not let them brush you aside just because she’s a woman. She’s threatened to kill him and she’s shown up on his doorstep without warning; it’s their job to keep HIM safe and HER off campus.

If she does show up again – do not engage her. Don’t talk to her, don’t answer the door. Tell her to leave. If she won’t leave, call campus security. If she’s not on campus, the call the police. Your buddy has no obligation to talk to her, listen to her or otherwise enable her bulls

t. Opening the metaphorical door even an inch just gives her even more leverage to wedge herself back into his life. Cut her out.

Your friend is lucky to have friends like you. Help him stay strong, give him your support and be the shield he needs to keep the toxicity out of his life.

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’m 26 years old and finally graduated college, now I’m feeling an incredible amount of fear and anxiety about the future. Especially when I wanted 2020 to be a year where I could finally feel satisfied with my life. Obviously a lot has gone wrong this year and it’s even harder to meet people now than before and I feel extremely depressed and start to think I’ll never meet someone even though I know that isn’t true.

So many people have told me for so long that I’ll meet somebody and “It’s going to happen” and other sorts of positive compliments that feel meaningless when it’s been 8 years now and still I’ve never met someone who wants to date me. I’ve had close female friendships that I value dearly, I do know how to talk to women when I feel comfortable with them. It’s just the matter of introducing myself that I struggle with. And I never seem to be able to make it to the next step and I figure all the words of encouragement don’t mean anything really.

In general I have social anxiety and don’t do well in crowded areas with loud noises even if recently I’ve learned to manage it somewhat. I’ve also never had a job in my life, other than a decent amount of volunteer work, which also makes it scary to imagine meeting a lot of new people. I have Asperger’s syndrome and I’m on the autistic spectrum if that clears anything up on why my life seems so empty, though that may be my own negative projection talking.

Lately has been especially rough since I’ve started to feel really isolated from my family and I don’t feel I can really connect with them and I’ve lost two friends that I’ve known for a few years and while it was my decision to end the friendships when they both moved away while I was graduating college, for a variety of reasons, it still hurts a lot that I haven’t seen a friend in person in two or three months.

My family I’ve spent too much time with really, they’re kind of cloying unfortunately and don’t really seem to want me to move on and grow up. More than anything I just want to no longer feel alone, even if that’s a hard thing to quantify. I’ve felt alone for a long time and the quarantine has made it worse, right now is possibly the loneliest I’ve ever felt. I keep telling myself I can make it through it and I intend to I just don’t know how long it will take or what that will look like so right now is an emotional endurance test for me. I just really would appreciate any and all advice you can give me when it feels like I have almost no one in my life to help me right now for emotional support.

Thank You

Trying To Look Forward

DEAR TRYING TO LOOK FORWARD: When it comes to dealing with feelings of loneliness and despair, TTLF, it’s useful to start examining how much of what you’re feeling is of the moment, and how much of it is a matter of projecting into a future or imagining what you think will happen. This seems like a minor thing; what the hell does imagining things have to do with anything when it comes to loneliness? But one of the mistakes that we all make when it comes to our brains is that we trust them to be objective arbiters of reality; that what we see and what we experience is absolutely, perfectly real. That we are experiencing things exactly as they are and that our emotions are understandable responses to those experiences.

Except we’re actually really bad at understanding why we feel the way that we feel. Sometimes it’s a matter of our brains interpreting the sensations that our bodies are feeding it — we feel our pulse racing, our mouths going dry, our palms getting sweaty and adrenaline dumping into our blood stream and we have to decide: which is it? Are we terrified, or are we aroused? Then our brains cast about for an explanation that justifies why we feel that way: is there a tiger in the grass over there? No. Is there an attractive woman standing right there talking to us? Yes? Oh, that explains it: we’re aroused.

Other times, however, we feel the way we do because we’ve been imagining awful scenarios, and our brains are responding accordingly. As it turns out, our brains have a very hard time telling the difference between reality and what we imagine. So we end up reacting to situations that we made up out of whole cloth as though they were real. This is one of the core causes of approach anxiety; we have spent so much time imagining how badly everything is going to go that we have terrified ourselves to the point of paralysis.

In your case, TTLF, you have two separate issues. The first is that yes, you’re legitimately lonely. You’re feeling isolated and adrift, and the current lockdown is only making it worse; now you don’t even see strangers, never mind your friends. The other is that you’ve been spending time imagining a future where nothing ever gets better and that your attempts at meeting people are doomed to go wrong.

Let’s see if we can tackle both of those issues, shall we?

Right now, the actual loneliness and isolation is the larger issue. We as a society are increasingly, desperately lonely.  Men in particular are vulnerable to this; while men and women lose friends at approximately the same pace, men tend to not make friends at the same rate that women do.  Women are taught, implicitly and explicitly, to be more social. They tend to make friends faster, especially with other women, and the way that women conduct their friendships tends to mean that their friendships are deeper and more emotionally intimate. Men, on the other hand, start having a harder time making close friends almost as soon as they hit puberty; they’re taught that emotional intimacy is the same as sexual intimacy and so they’re often reluctant to make friends, especially with other men. Most male friendships are activity based — at least at first — and so it take longer and more repetition to turn an acquaintance into a friend, and then into a good friend.

And the quarantine is only serving to exacerbate that. While under normal circumstances, one could meet up with their friends regularly for drinks or games or what-have-you, COVID-19 means that we’re having to stay home to protect one another. That makes it difficult to make new friends, and just as difficult to try to solidify them.

But difficult isn’t the same as impossible. Nailing Jell-o to a tree is impossible; everything else is merely difficult.

Right now, I would suggest that you start by finding new communities and rebuilding your social circle. The easiest way to start doing this would be to focus on your interests and your passions: what are the things that you love doing and give you joy in life, and how can you enjoy those in a way that help bring you in contact with other people who enjoy them? If, for example, you enjoy gaming, then it may not be a bad idea to start looking into a tabletop gaming group, especially groups that meet regularly. Traditional RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder are great for this; not only can you play the games remotely via Zoom or apps like Roll20, but taking part in an RPG campaign means that you’re going to be meeting on the regular. You might see if your local comic store or gaming stores have set up forums or services for matching players with campaigns.

Similarly, you might want to look into MeetUp groups that relate to your interests. A number of MeetUp groups have transitioned to online meetings during the pandemic; it may not be the same as seeing people in person, but joining these meetings is a great way of finding people with similar interests and laying the groundwork for building friendships and expanding your social circle. It will take time to transition from “faces you see in the Zoom call” to “friends”, but this will help scratch the itch for socialization and help keep you going while we all white-knuckle our way through the lockdowns.

And while I know you had many reasons for deciding to end things with your friends who moved away after graduation… maybe it’s time to revisit those reasons and see if they’re still valid. If circumstances have changed, or your feelings have evolved since you and your friends split, then maybe it’s a good time to reach out to them and start seeing about rebuilding your friendship with them. It won’t be the same as before, but that can often be a good thing. With distance (literal and metaphorical) and perspective, you may find that the nature of your friendship has changed for the better. It may mean you’ve all learned to be more mindful of the issues that broke you apart.

Now as for the social anxiety and the inability to bring yourself to meet new people, I suggest a two-pronged approach.

The first is that you focus on the story you tell yourself about yourself. One of the most important lessons that we can learn is that we are bigger than our thoughts, bigger than our imaginations. The things we think don’t define us; they’re just thoughts. Noticing your thoughts and labeling them is important. It’s not that your life is empty, you’re having the feeling that your life is empty. It’s not that you can’t make friends, it’s that you feel afraid that you can’t make friends. The same goes with being attractive or unattractive; it’s that you’re having the thought that you’re unattractive.

By that same token, you want to change the way you imagine trying to meet people. Right now, you’re imagining future scenarios — scenarios that haven’t actually happened — where you’re unable to meet people. Your brain is reacting to those imagined situations, rather than the reality. You want to take control of those mental scenarios and train yourself into seeing them go well. Think of it as training or dress rehearsal. Imagine a scenario that you’ve been worried about — meeting people at an event, for example. Picture it as vividly as you can, with as much sensory information as you can manage. Not just the event itself, but leading up to it — how you get there, opening the door and seeing everyone there for the first time. Then, instead of thinking of how intimidating it is, or how nervous you are or how you aren’t going to be able to meet people… imagine it going well. People there are happy to see you! They’re warm and welcoming and interested in getting to know you. Maybe it’s a little awkward at first, but you have the confidence to push through the initial nerves and you can see everyone being happy to have you there.  Imagine the conversations, picture the warm smiles and how much you enjoy yourself and getting to know these people.

Then, after you let this imagined scenario fade… see how you feel. Is it a little less intimidating, a little less daunting? Note and name those feelings. It’s ok if it’s not a huge change; you’ve spent a lot of time imagining worst case scenarios. But by starting to imagine best case scenarios, you start to retrain your brain into feeling that meeting people is less intimidating and scary and more of an exciting and awesome opportunity.

The next prong I would suggest is to talk to a counselor about your social anxiety, especially someone who has experience with autistic patients. They’re going to be in a good position to help you drill down to the causes of your anxiety and help you find ways of addressing them — both in terms of easing the symptoms and also helping you build your confidence and assuredness. If you can’t find someone in your area, you might look into an app like BetterHelp or Talkspace; they can help connect you with a trained counselor.

Your feeling lonely and isolated is real and understandable. But while things are daunting, they’re not impossible. It takes time and effort, but you’ve got the strength and the courage to reach out and make those connections that will help you meet new and amazing people — for friendship, and maybe even something more.

Good luck.

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