DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I was hoping to get your opinion on a concern of mine.

I am in my mid thirties and foolishly waited until mere months before a global pandemic to start getting serious about living life and as pertains to your specialty, looking for love.

I wasn’t especially concerned as things kicked off, but as the situation worsened, I grew more and more despondent about it all. One thing in particular that I wanted to talk to you about was that most people where I live are not taking this at all seriously.

While I have observed plenty of carelessness in the general population, I thought I would look at my fellow employees as an example.

I work in a small company, and don’t know the exact number of employees off the top of my head, so let’s say more than thirty or so. Of these, I can count the number who are social distancing and wearing masks in both their professional and personal lives on the fingers of one hand. Many outright brag about not wearing masks off the clock, talk about their vacations to, I s--t you not, other states with extended family and friends, often pull their masks down off their noses or off entirely at work, say they will vote for whoever will stop this stupid mask nonsense, etc.

This obviously includes the potential dates I would be interested in, well, if they weren’t almost all already attached. Sucks to show up late to the party when everyone else already hooked up, but let’s not forget the Abundance Mentality that says there are more elsewhere, right?

Well, about that: I have decided for better or worse that not taking COVID-19 seriously is a dealbreaker for me. So, if these women are indicative of the general population, my available options have dwindled to basically single digits even in a crowd of more than a hundred people. What are the odds that any of these single digits also happen to mesh well with me otherwise and also happen to be single? How much abundance is there really? (A recent study or poll said that around 49% of Americans actually wear masks like they mean it…)

I guess what I want advice for here is: Am I wrong to expect anyone I want to date to care enough to wear a mask? Am I being overly critical? If so, how do I deal with essentially viewing everyone not taking COVID seriously in, shall we say, a rather bad light? Am I putting the cart in front of the horse here, since I have yet to actually get anyone to actually say yes to a date? Do you think I should consider dating someone who didn’t take COVID seriously in the future? Do you think I would have better luck moving elsewhere after all this is over? (I ask that because I was already planning to move to a larger city, but that kind of got put on hold…)

-No Longer Feeling the Abundance

DEAR NO LONGER FEELING THE ABUNDANCE: There’re a couple things to touch on here, NLFA. The first is the idea of perception vs. reality. Our brains don’t necessarily do all that well with a lot of abstract concepts. We tend to do a lot of extrapolation and filling in the gaps based on things that we already assume to be true because we feel like it is. Sometimes that comes down to simple confirmation bias, where we give credence to things that confirm what we already believe and dismiss the things that don’t line up with those beliefs. Other times it comes down to what’s known as an anchoring bias, where we tend to latch on to the first piece of information we got about a topic and use that as the basis for our decisions, even when it’s not necessarily relevant.

The other is simply a question of fundamental compatibility. I recently released a video on my YouTube channel about how to tell when somebody is right for you. One of the most important indicators of compatibility is that you and your potential partner have matching or well-matched values. This means looking deeper than just things like “we like the same tv shows or music” and focusing on things like “we have similar feelings about the role of faith in our lives” or “we’re on the same page that having children would be irresponsible”. Or, as Chidi Anagonye might posit: “What do we owe to each other?”

That last one hits dead bang in the center of your issue.

One of the things that’s incredibly frustrating about the various anti-maskers and people who don’t take COVID safety seriously is that they aren’t seeing past their own interests, comfort or convenience. It’s easy — if misguided — to be fatalistic and assume that “if I get it, I get it”. But the problem with that “If I get it” outlook is that getting infected with COVID doesn’t stay with them. If they get exposed and contract the virus, they may or may not suffer the consequences… but they also may end up infecting and killing other people, people who didn’t make the decision that they were cool rolling those particular dice. After all, the fatalities resulting of one the most infamous super-spreader events of the last several months — a wedding in Maine — were all people who weren’t at that event. They were innocent bystanders who died because of choices that other people made. And while those people may have been ok with taking that chance, the 170+ other people who got infected were never given the option to choose.

And even the upcoming vaccines aren’t going to be an immediate fix; it’s still going to take time to make life safe again, and that means continuing to take precautions.

It’s pretty clear that you take COVID seriously. You want to not just protect yourself, but the people around you and in your orbit. That’s a pretty fundamental value, something deep that reaches to the core of who you are. It gets at that question of “what do we owe others”. People like your co-workers, on the other hand, are less worried about what they owe others. They’re not as concerned, they don’t take it seriously and they don’t seem to consider the potential fallout of their choices. Hopefully they will never be in the position of realizing they harmed or even caused the death of people in their lives because of that choice… but right now they don’t seem to give it much thought.

That sounds like a pretty clear example of a deep, fundamental incompatibility to me. So no, I don’t think you’re being overly critical by not wanting to date someone who doesn’t wear a mask or take precautions. This isn’t like preferring to date a non-smoker or preferring to date folks who don’t drink alcohol; this comes down to the question of “do we have a responsibility to others, as well as ourselves”. And it seems like the answer for your co-workers is “not really”.

Now, I don’t think you need to limit yourself to dating folks who take COVID precautions to extremes or will only go outside wearing a hazmat suit, but wanting to date people who mask up and are careful about avoiding exposure or exposing others is an entirely reasonable choice. That is as decision that says far more about them as a person, and how well your core values mesh. And that’s going to be true both now and in the future, when the pandemic has ended.

But let’s go back to the part about perception vs. reality. Like I said: it’s very easy for us to make assumptions based on faulty assumptions because we’re not a logical species. When you hear and see the same thing over and over again, it’s easy to assume that it’s more widespread than it actually is. It’s very easy for me, for example, to assume that most of the folks I encounter will be familiar with Critical Role, because a lot of the people in my online circles are fairly devoted Critters. But if I step away from Twitter and talk to other friends of mine — friends who are also geeky and into tabletop RPGs — lots of them will look at me strangely if I make a “hello bees” joke or say “I would like to rage”.

(And then there was the time when one of my friends told me they were doing CBT and I had to double check that they meant “cognitive behavioral therapy”…)

You’re working in an environment where you’re seeing more people who treat masking up and social distancing like an annoying option — something they don’t take seriously. It’s understandable that, seeing this every day, you feel like this is far more widespread than it actually is. It’s more immediately present and it gets reinforced by your day to day experience. But what you’re seeing is a limited and, to a certain extent, self-selected population sample. According to Pew Research, the number of Americans who wear masks regularly has actually been growing steadily; as of August, 87% of Americans wear masks when going out and about. In June, it was only 65%. So while it may feel like you’re limiting your dating pool drastically by prioritizing mask use, the numbers are actually in your favor. While yes, you will be limiting your dating pool by filtering out people who don’t mask up… you won’t be limiting things that significantly. You may need to start looking for partners outside of your social circles at work, but I can promise you that there are far more sexy single folks out there who mask up than it may feel right now.

Fortunately, you aren’t stuck dating the people you meet at work or their friends. Online dating has exploded since March, because people are still meeting, hooking up and falling in love. It has meant that people are having to settle in for a longer preliminary courtship, as they weigh not just chemistry and compatibility but safety. But at the same time, this gives you more of an opportunity to qualify folks for the traits you’re looking for… including their COVID safety precautions. If you meet someone on Hinge or Bumble or Tinder and you’re both feeling like you’re ready to meet up in person, that’s a good time to bring up the question about COVID prep and what social distancing would mean for you two. While you may find that some of your dates are a little more laissez-faire about safety than you’d prefer, that’s ultimately just a sign that they’re not right for you. On the other hand, someone who wants to make sure you’re both masked until you both feel safe enough to take things a bit further? That’s a pretty good sign that you’re talking to someone who’s right for you.

And yes, if you’re finding that you’re not happy where you live or that the culture isn’t a good fit for you, then that’s a great reason to move if you can. And honestly, moving to a larger city to improve the odds of finding someone you’d want to date is just as legitimate and valid as moving for work. But don’t let concerns about whether it’s “reasonable” to move somewhere to improve your odds of dating keep you from changing locales if you’ve got the resources and the inclination.  Life’s short, the world is chaos; there’s no benefit to staying some place that makes you miserable if you have the option of leaving.

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: So, first things first: my partner (38NB, they/them) and I (28F) both have histories of abusive relationships. Their most recent partner before they met me was physically, sexually, and emotionally violent towards them; I had gotten out of a sexually predatory and abusive relationship with a much older man. We both understand that the trauma we’ve undergone shapes us, but does not define us. We’re working through it.

My problem is that I’m scared that I was simply the first partner in a long time to show them kindness and compassion, and that because of that they’ve spent the last five and a half years in a relationship in which, on some fundamental level, they do not want to be. This is in large part because I have a lot of flaws as a partner.

We live together and have done for nearly five years, but it was a case of me moving into their flat straight from my parents’ house rather than us picking a place together. I am long-term unemployed and contribute to household expenses as much as I am able but they’re still the primary breadwinner and I feel like I am leeching off them. I have triggers relating to showers (which I would rather not go into) that make personal hygiene difficult for me. I clean and help out and cook and the like, but I’ve had to learn how over the time we’ve lived together. I have serious depression and anxiety, for which I am receiving treatment and medication, but they had to poke and prod me into getting any treatment at all. I constantly feel like I have nothing to offer but being a considerate and caring partner – something that should be the default for any relationship, though the both of us are keenly aware that it is very much not.

Both of us drink heavily, something which lockdown has made worse, but they’re getting through a litre of gin every couple of days. They’re much more outgoing than I am and not being able to see their friends has hit them very hard indeed. When they’ve been drunk on the sofa, they’ve talked about how they didn’t see themselves ending up like this. Illness took their dreams of being a dancer in the West End, and now they’re pushing forty in a provincial fishing village that makes Toshi Station look like the height of urbane cosmopolitanism. And they look so sad when they say it. And then the next day, it’s like a switch has been flipped and it’s all smiles, and when I try to bring it up they brush it aside as me being paranoid. Which, to be entirely fair, is one of the symptoms of my anxiety disorder.

I love my partner, I really have to stress that. I love them with all my heart. I’m just terrified that I’m not worth loving back as much, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I’m making my partner as happy as they make me. I struggle to tell what’s my paranoia and what’s a genuine issue that I should talk about with them. They’re a really awesome person and I just… worry that I’m nothing more than the first person to be a good partner, and that having had such an unbelievably fucking shitty partner for five years makes me look way better than I actually am.

We’ve been together, like I said, for five and a half years. I’ve been really happy. The happiest I can ever remember being. And I wonder if I’m the only one in the relationship who feels like that.

Or if it’s all in my head.

Thank you for reading,

Relevant Black Sabbath Song

DEAR RELEVANT BLACK SABBATH SONG: Well let’s get this out of the way first, RBSS: yes, your partner is settling for you. But you are also settling for them. This doesn’t mean that they’re choosing you because you’re the closest warm body that said yes, or only person they could end up in a relationship with. It means that everybody looks at their list of what they want in a partner and realizes that no one person can provide ALL the things they want. Everybody goes into a relationship saying “Ok, I’m willing to give up on X, Y or Z because what I do get from this person is worth it”. And that goes for you too; nobody gets 100% of what they want in a relationship, but they get enough that they’re happy with the exchange.

Problems only arise when somebody prioritizes “having a relationship” over “a relationship with a person I want to actually date” — they’re just trying to fill a whole marked “relationship”, rather than choosing that person specifically.

Now with that said, let’s talk about the specifics of your situation. First and foremost, I think you’re drastically undervaluing offering someone kindness and compassion and what that can mean to someone… especially someone who was in a horrifically abusive relationship. Being somebody that they can trust, somebody who is safe and reliable and lets them feel secure is no small thing. The sense of being able to let your guard down and let somebody in without having to tense up or be afraid of how they’ll treat you is huge. That’s not “well anyone could provide this” or something cheap or meaningless. It’s very, very important and I suspect it was at the top of your partner’s “must have” list. So stop talking yourself down on that level.

Similarly: you have your flaws. Ok… and? Everyone does. Maybe it means that you wouldn’t be compatible with some people. But you’re not dating those people, you’re dating your partner. Similarly, you have depression and anxiety and your partner has been poking and prodding you to get into therapy. Here’s the thing: they wouldn’t do that if they didn’t care. People, on the whole, don’t try to push folks they don’t like into getting help. And hey, if it helps you process things, look at this as your partner saying “here’s something you can do: taking care of yourself will make our relationship better.”

You’re also seeing this relationship on a transactional basis and worrying that things aren’t perfectly balanced. But perfect balance is for Thanos… all the rest of us deal with things being a little unequal on one side or the other. But not only is that not inherently a bad thing, successful relationships balance those aspects out in other ways. You aren’t the primary breadwinner, but there are other ways you contribute, both to the household and to the relationship. They can be anything from housework to being the emotional port that provides them safety from the storm.

And then there’s the part about “I didn’t think my life would end up like this”. First of all, a thing you need to keep in mind is that alcohol is a depressant in the literal and emotional sense of the word. As I’ve said before: we’re bad at understanding why we feel the way we do. Our brains don’t just feel emotions, they interpret the input they’re getting from the body and backfill the reasons for it after the fact. As a result, getting drunk can make you feel lower than you actually are because it’s depressing your nervous system. It can even drag up feelings that you’d resolved because it removes filters and hinders your judgement. So, just as getting drunk impairs a person’s ability to consent, because they may be agreeing to something they don’t actually want to do, your partner’s discussing how their life isn’t the way they expected doesn’t mean that they don’t like the way things are now. It just means that there’re things that they wish could’ve been different. And hey, we all have that. Show me somebody who doesn’t look at aspects of their life that they wish  could’ve gone differently and I’ll show you a fictional character. But life not going in the direction you expected doesn’t mean that they can’t be — or aren’t —  happy now.

Shit, 90% of Christmas movies are people discovering their lives aren’t going the way they expected and realizing that this is OK.

(The rest are about terrorists invading Nakatomi Plaza or crime waves in Gotham.)

The biggest problem you have isn’t that your partner is “settling” for you. It’s that you aren’t recognizing that what you’re giving them is actually very goddamn valuable indeed. Safety, security, care and love are huge. Are you perfect? No. Neither is anyone else. Are you The Perfect Partner? No… but neither are they. Are there things you could possibly do to make things balance out a bit more? Probably, and you can talk with your partner about ways that you could do this. But that’s not the same as “being a bad partner” or “being the first person to be nice to them”. The important question to ask is are they happy? And are you happy?

And then it’s your responsibility to listen and take yes for an answer. Because the thing that’s worse than “settling” for somebody? That’s being told you’re settling, when you really aren’t. It’s telling your partner that you love them and being called a liar for saying that. Yes, there are things you can work on; everyone has those. And it may well be worth doing so, when you can differentiate actual areas of improvement from your anxiety dripping poison in your ear.

But most importantly: you need to recognize your worth and value and how important the things you contribute actually are. Being kind, caring and supportive isn’t just baseline, it’s important and it’s clearly something your partner lacked, desperately needs and that you provide. Don’t diminish that. And don’t steal misery from the future; enjoy what you have now.

All will be well.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: This is a pretty minor problem compared to a lot of the ones that you deal with, but I’ve really valued your advice over the years, so I thought I’d send it in anyway.

I was very nervous and awkward as a teenager, but I have spent the last decade working actively on my social skills. I’m proud of how far I’ve come! I’ll always be a bit dorky, but I am able to have conversations with a wide range of people. I have an upbeat personality and really like getting to know people, but I am also a bit over accommodating.

This leads to a dating problem—I feel like I lead guys on. When I’m on a date I tend to smooth over any conversational rough spots, get enthusiastic about their interests, and actively listen to the things they want to rant about. If someone isn’t engaging with me and I have to carry the entire conversation, I can and will do that. I can tell that a lot of guys leave our dates feeling like they’ve really connected, only to be completely blindsided when I reject them. I feel like I’m the woman on the other side of every story about how “I thought it was going so well, I just don’t know what happened.” Rejection hurts, and it especially hurts when you didn’t see it coming. I’m sure all women experience this to some extent, but my I-Don’t-Want-To-Date-You conversations can get super messy and make me feel like the bad guy.

I’m not trying especially hard on dates and never promise anything–it’s my default conversational style that’s the issue. I really want people to have a good time, and don’t know how to do “lukewarm.” To a lesser extent this is also a problem in my friendships, as it’s become a pattern that other people get much more invested in me than I do in them. I think sometimes by trying to be nice in the short term I end up hurting people in the long term, and I feel awful about that.

Do you have any advice on dialing it back? Should I learn to let awkward silences hang and invest in a resting bitch face? I know that there’s got to be middle ground between “what I’m doing now” and “actively being mean” but for some reason I’m finding it hard to navigate. Or should I just accept that part of life is sometimes accidentally hurting the almost stranger that you are eating a giant plate of tacos with? I don’t want to close myself off to other people.

Thank you for your time!

Feeling Rotten About Unrequited Desires

DEAR FEELING ROTTEN ABOUT UNREQUITED DESIRES: This is one of those weird times when I can understand what you’re going through, FRAUD, but man I can empathize with the folks you were on dates with. It can be really frustrating  and confusing when it seems like you were really vibing with someone and having a great conversation only to find out that… well… they weren’t actually feeling it. Now you’re left wondering just what the hell happened, when all signs pointed to everybody having a great time.

But while I can see why there would be dudes who feel like you’re leading them on, the problem is, ultimately, one of discomfort in the short term.

You mention that this is an issue that you have with your friendships too, which I think is a bit of a clue as to where the problem lies. The fact that this tendency towards over-accommodation seeps into your entire social life suggests that you have issues with being a people-pleaser. On the surface, that’s the sort of thing that sounds like a non-problem; what’s wrong with wanting to make sure people are having a good time? Well, it comes down to the cost of paying so much attention to other people’s emotional states. One of the problems that people-pleasers have is that this desire to accommodate others’ needs comes at the expense of their own needs. Giving so much to others often means that either the people-pleaser is missing out or giving up resources that they might need, whether those are material resources or intangibles like time or emotional bandwidth. So someone may agree to take up responsibilities at work that tax their ability to get their own work done. Or they may agree to so many things that they don’t have time or energy for and run headlong into burn-out.

And of course, people-pleasers tend to be a magnet for toxic people who love to take advantage of them.

In your case, your behavior is giving the impression of being far more invested than you actually are, leading to lopsided — or non-existent — relationships. I have to imagine that there’s also a psychic cost to this as well; dealing with the constant mistaken impressions or imbalances in your friendships must get exhausting under the best of circumstances. And that’s before we get to the (understandable) guilt at feeling like you’ve lead people on.

I absolutely get why you feel like you need to carry the conversation. There’s a strong sociological aspect involved here; even in this day and age, women are socialized to prioritize the feelings and emotions of men over their own… even when that hurts them. And let’s be real: those awkward silences or the inability to keep the conversation can be uncomfortable, even anxiety-producing. So I get why you feel like you have a duty to carry on the conversation. But — as you’ve noticed — the end result is a problem of its own.

So my first suggestion is that you start to interrogate just why you feel the need to be the person who makes sure everyone has a good time, no matter what. Does this come from a sense of a lack of self-worth? Are you trying to prove your value or justify your presence in people’s lives by being a people-pleaser because you don’t feel like you have any value on your own? Do you feel like you need to take on the responsibility because someone told you this is what you need to do? Do you not feel like you have the right to just hang back and not carry the entire conversation on your own? Or is it just as simple as feeling like someone needs to do something about that uncomfortable moment and you just end up always being the one to step up?

The more you can understand just why you feel compelled to do this, the easier it will be to dial it all back.

Notice I say “dial it back”, not “be mean”. There’s a vast difference between the two. You don’t need to overcorrect from being too accommodating to being mean or contemptuous.

That’s why my second suggestion is to do less. I realize this seems like a duh-George answer, but I think if you look at your life, you’ll see many places where you go above and beyond the call of duty, to the point of absurdity. By choosing to do less — to embrace the concept of choosing not to fill the emptiness — you carve out more time and emotional bandwidth for yourself. So, rather than rushing to fill in the conversational gaps yourself or carrying the entire conversation on your own shoulders, simply… hold back. Let the silence or the awkwardness be, instead of trying to fix it. This has two benefits. First: it means that the other person is going to have to take responsibility for their end of things. Dates — and conversations, for that matter — are collaborative exercises. The whole point is for mutual engagement and mutual connection. When one person is doing all the work, it’s no longer a partnership. At best, it’s a lecture. At worst, one person is doing all the work and the other person is alternately reaping the reward or sitting there in increasing discomfort. That ends up being lose/lose for everyone. The second benefit is that it ensures a more genuine connection with the people you’re dating. One of the mistakes a lot of people make is that dating is supposed to be easy. If you’re struggling to connect with someone, for example, that’s often a sign that there’s a fundamental incompatibility at play.  You may have incompatible interests or personalities. You may have a clash of values, or they may simply be uninterested. Forcing the issue by carrying the entire conversation on your own creates a false sense of connection because, well, one person’s trying to paper over that incompatibility by themselves.

(It’s worth noting: there’s a notable difference between an awkward but genuine connection and a lack of compatibility. It’s the emotional difference between trying to figure out what side of the USB plug faces up and using the wrong plug entirely.)

My third suggestion is that you get comfortable with discomfort. If you don’t fear an occasional awkward moment or lull in the conversation, you won’t feel the need to fix it. Every conversation has its peaks and valleys. Sometimes those moments where the conversation dies off aren’t signs of something being wrong; it’s just the natural rhythm of the interaction. If you can learn to be comfortable with momentary discomfort, you’re in a better position to tell the difference between companionable silence and signs that the two of you aren’t connecting. Plus: it means that you won’t be forcing yourself to prop up somebody’s entire emotional state on your own.

Don’t be afraid to prioritize your own comfort or your own lack of interest, especially on dates. You’re seeing if you and that person are a good match, not acting as a cruise director. Take a step back and let other people carry their end of the interaction. You’ll have much stronger connections with the people you do like, and you won’t end up accidentally leading on the people you don’t like.

Good luck.

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