DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I have been an avid reader of your blog for a few years and have finally mustered the courage to ask for advice. I really enjoy the laidback approach to answering some really serious matters, and the fact that you provide pictures of cute animals when things get really serious or disgusting. And of course the nerd culture references, especially anime references.

I understand that while I am from India and given the different social and cultural customs it might not be the wisest idea to ask someone living in the US for non academic advice, right now I would appreciate your advice. I honestly haven’t found any Indian contemporary who is not misogynist or believes women are a hive mind.

As for my background, I am a 25 year old dentist planning to pursue a master’s degree. I live with my parents and elder sister, which is pretty normal in India.

My parents are a classic example of everything that can go wrong in a relationship. My father is financially opaque and allegedly is more involved in his brother’s family and way more interested in chatting with strange women on facebook and watching really crude porn (he always downplays it by saying that he pressed some weird link, but that is all a lie, he is tech savvy enough to know how to block his facebook account) and complaining about my mother to anyone and everyone he meets, including me. My mother sees that as tantamount to cheating. Even prior to that she has felt that he is diverting more of his earnings to his brother’s family (who is employed).

This is not to say my mother is without blame. She has been narrating tales of all the injustices to me and my sister for as long as I remember, emphasizing how she sacrificed her pleasures after becoming a homemaker, while my father would be the representative of the family at all the gatherings of our extended families. I sometimes have felt sorry for my father who is never appreciated for whatever little he still does. Mother being a chronic complainer always sees the glass as half empty. 

Even my father has recently resorted to using emotional blackmail against me and my sister. For example, he likes to repeatedly mention how he gets emotionally hurt every time I have to physically shove him away from my mother when things turn nasty. When I reason that violence is not negotiable he counters by saying that I should atop mother’s nagging. It is like if mother uses words, he’ll use his fists. He wants to get a licence to hit my mother without consequences. And things get nasty, slapping, hitting with sticks and there was one time when he bit my mother on the arm.

For my parents, the house and the cyberspace are war zones and they must gather people to their sides. Their arguments stem from ridiculously petty issues but escalate to trash talking and in bringing up events that happened before I was born.

It comes as a surprise to me how I remained a good student all through my school years and eventually have become a dentist. 

The only impact of my parents’ toxicity that I am aware of is that I have grown to be extremely wary of expressing anger in particular and confrontations in general. My social life has been rather ordinary, even today I have a few friends from my school days with whom I am in touch. In dental school too I have been friendly with my peers, only the coming years shall tell me how many of them will remain in my life but I am optimistic.

What I wish to know from you is how should I approach dating. 

Seeing the disaster my parents are, I have no intention of getting matched with a person I have no compatibility with or to even have her live with them. I fear she’ll become just as bitter, resentful and toxic as they are. The conclusion I have made at present is to focus on my education and career, get a place of my own away from my parents and then think of dating. 

But I cannot exactly control when people come in my life. In India, most women get married before thirty and I fear that by the time I have enough money for a house away from my toxic parents (I assume i will be in my mid thirties by the time I become financially independent) there would be no single women left. Even during my years in dental school, three women got married and one of them gave her graduation exams while pregnant! It kind of like a biological clock for men.

This is what is always on my mind whenever I am interested in someone at the present moment. Though I fully understand that not all relationships will end in marriage and may collapse after that too, I don’t want to be the kind of person who is dating without any end point in mind. This may be an atypical thought coming from a man born in the late nineties by that is my old-fashioned way.

And I don’t think that anyone is there to “go on a journey to build and grow together.” Everyone seems to want the finished product, not a work in progress, financially or emotionally.

And to top it all off, it might all be pointless since the woman in question might be married off by her parents to someone else anyway. (Arranged marriages are very prevalent in India). Of course that applies to me too, but I don’t want to go down that path knowing how badly it can get when living with someone you are not compatible with.

I will appreciate your regarding my situation.

Thanks in advance. 

Joyless in The City of Joy

DEAR JOYLESS IN THE CITY OF JOY: So I’m going to have to give an obvious caveat at the start of this, JTCJ. Like you said: I’m an American and you’re living in India. There’s going to be a difference in outlook, culture and customs, and I’m going to be ignorant of circumstances on the ground that folks in Calcutta would find obvious. So I’m going to apologize for any blind spots in advance and recommend that you take my advice with suitable amounts of salt.

And with that, my thoughts.

My first thought is that arranged marriages aren’t automatically joyless or, worse, full of animosity. I actually have friends from India and Pakistan who chose arranged matches, and their relationships have been successful and happy. One of the keys for their success had been a willingness to take things at a relatively sedate pace; after they met people that they found interesting and compatible, they spent some time getting to know each other before getting married, with the acknowledgement that they could call it off if they had reservations. Another was that they (and their matches) focused on compatibility and mutual respect in who they were looking for. But most importantly were that they acknowledged that they were going to have to work to make their marriage successful. That meant that they were going to have to prioritize clear and open communication, to make sure that they understood each other. They also had to be mindful of how they handled disagreements and fights and make sure that they were actually resolving issues instead of just trying to stop the fight. That way, they weren’t going to be hoarding resentments and grievances like a passive-aggressive squirrel, storing hate-nuts for the winter. And they made a point of complimenting each other, admiring each other and expressing gratitude and their appreciation for one another; in fact, they made a point of trying to keep a fairly solid ratio of compliments to complaints. Complaints can trigger our inherent negativity bias, which makes them hit five times harder than compliments and gratitude. That makes it important to try to ensure that you don’t only appreciate or admire your partner, but that you express that appreciation, openly and frequently.

My second thought is that, well, they f--k you up, your mom and dad. It sounds like your parents marriage was a nightmare to grow up with, and I’m sorry you and your sister had to go through this. But while you can’t change your past — or your parents — their marriage doesn’t have to be your destiny. In fact, you’ve made the conscious decision to try to avoid that, which is awesome. Having that template of “ok, here’s what I don’t want” gives you something to build from. Because you’ve seen the way that bitterness and resentment can fester, you can look at the behaviors, beliefs and attitudes that lead to your parents acrimony and make a conscious choice to do things differently. They’ve given you the map of the traps and pitfalls that their relationship fell into, and you’re in a better position to avoid them.

Of course, knowing what you don’t want doesn’t automatically translate into knowing what a positive relationship looks like. And while there are some things that you can only learn through experience, I would suggest is that you might want to look for positive relationship role models. Those may be the marriages of friends or the parents of friends who are happy and nurturing. Talking to them about their experiences may well go a long way to helping you map out what you’re looking for and how to achieve it in your future relationships. Or, failing that, you may look to examples in pop culture for the kind of relationship you would want to have and work towards developing the skills and communication that you would need to help encourage that sort of connection. They’re not a perfect guide — after all, those relationships work because the writers say they do — but they can go a long way towards helping shape what you would want your relationship to look like.

(And here, I have to confess: I have a fairly limited knowledge of Indian pop culture, so I don’t know who I could recommend; perhaps readers could provide some suggestions. Though I will always recommend Gomez and Morticia Adams as an excellent starting point…)

My third thought is to be careful about falling into traps of making assumptions about others, especially on the individual level. While there’s a strong tradition of women marrying young, that doesn’t mean that every woman is looking for someone who’s a “finished  product”, nor is that even necessarily what they’re looking for. One of the ways that men can make dating harder on themselves is that they often end up responding to what they think women expect or are looking for, rather than what women actually want in partners and relationships. This is one of those times when having women as platonic friends is incredibly helpful; it gives you a much more accurate idea of what women want, as well as what their dating and relationship experiences are like.

By that same token, while I understand that you’re worried that there will be a shortage of single women by the time you’re ready to date… well, I hate using this phrase but feels aren’t reals, man. This is an incredibly common — and cross-cultural — anxiety in men; they worry that if they don’t pair up by some artificial deadline (usually their late 20s) then they’ll have run out of available women to date. Why? Because they’ll all have settled down and found boyfriends and husbands.

Except that’s not true. Even in conservative cultures, or cultures where there are traditions of marrying young, there are still people who don’t follow tradition or who don’t want to get married that young. I suspect that your experiences and outlook on relationships aren’t as uncommon as you might think, for both men and women. In fact, I suspect there’re more people than you realize who feel the same way, and it may well be worth your time to seek them out. These could be networking events for young (and single) professionals, social organizations, even just clubs for people who dig movies, anime or what-have-you. Expanding your social circle will go a long way towards helping you meet more like-minded folks… including women who may well be looking for someone to grow with, rather than someone who’s “finished”.

But more than anything else: pursue relationships with intention, modeling the kind of relationship you want and the behavior you want to see from your partners. And don’t be afraid for you and your partner to write your own “rules” for your relationship. One of the reasons why relationships will often fall apart is because they try to force themselves into a relationship model that doesn’t fit them. But the great thing about life is that you don’t have to follow other people’s rules; your relationship is a collaboration between you and your partner. While other people may have opinions, they don’t get a vote. You and your partner can define for yourselves how you want this relationship to work, what rules the two of you agree to follow and how you want things to progress. When you find someone you’re compatible with, the two of you can decide what you want your relationship to be.

Now in fairness: sticking to your guns and making sure that you find the partner (and relationship) that you want may mean being single for longer than you’d prefer. It could take time to find somebody who’s right for you and who you’re right for. It’s understandable that you may want to examine your “must-haves” and decide that maybe you can be flexible on some of them. That’s a completely valid decision. However what you don’t want to do is drop your standards out of a fear of being single. Getting into a Somebody, Anybody, Everybody relationship — where you’re just trying to fill the hole marked “girlfriend” or “wife” — is a great way to end up in a bad relationship. It’s one thing to compromise; it’s another when your relationship is compromised from the start. Make sure that you’re getting into a relationship with someone because you want to be in a relationship with them… not because you want to be in a relationship.

You’ve got a lot going for you, JCTJ. You know what you want, you’ve made great choices and you’ve got a game plan for a solid life. That’s all to the good. Don’t let your worries overpower your goals; the fact that you’re worried about something doesn’t mean that there’s actually something to worry about.

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 tried searching your site to find any stories about this, but didn’t find anything in the results mainly by title. Anyway, to the point, I wanted to ask if you have any tips in dating when the issue is that you may like the girl (or guy) you are dating, but you dislike (some of) her friends? Specifically, if you think some are enablers of bad behavior and/or having a negative influence on the girl (or guy) you are dating; and even worse if they also may not even like you anyway in return.

I think you must have come across this situation before and/or been asked this question right?

I am somewhat conflicted about this topic. For some things I read online, they seem to indicate that the friends your date have may determine your own compatibility with the date; that they can be red flags of issues to come. Other things I’ve read mentions about how you should try to be friendly with and/or impress your date’s friends so that they can provide some sort of positive feedback to your date by winning their approval. I know I can’t expect her to confront or disregard her long-time friends just for me as just a new date in her life. But I also definitely feel there are some stark contrasts/difference between her friends and I – compared to herself and I – which can lead to tensions, if not now then in the future.

How should I approach this situation?

Love Me, Love My Friends?

DEAR LOVE ME, LOVE MY FRIENDS: As a general rule, you can tell a lot about someone by who they hang out with. The saying that “you’re the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with” is fairly accurate. After all, we tend to connect with people who are like us; if you’re not a big fan of their friends, then the odds aren’t great that you two will be a good match.

But that’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule. God knows plenty of people don’t have friends so much as “friends”; people they associate with and may call their friends but who are actually incredibly toxic.

Similarly: it’s generally true that the opinion of a person’s friends can affect their decision about who they date or how long their partner sticks around. But it’s also incredibly common that folks date someone that their friends all hate.

(Notice very carefully that I’m trying to be gender-neutral about this. This is a phenomena that reaches across the entire gender spectrum.)

Now it’s a little unclear from your letter whether this is a thought experiment on your part or if this is something you’re dealing with right now. But in either case, I’d say that if you’re finding that you and your date get along like a house on fire, but you and her friends don’t mesh, it’s worth examining just why that may be. There can be a number of reasons why you and they may not get along that doesn’t mean that they’re either toxic for her or that spell doom for you. It could be that she had some bad experiences and her friends are very protective. It could be that you are someone who’s outside of her norm and they feel put off by that. Or you may have accidentally made a faux-pas out of ignorance or not being as up on some topics as they are.

Or it could be that you and they are just diametrically opposed in some way and that’s going to make it very difficult to get their approval (or for them to get yours).

But while our friends can influence who we decide to date… dating isn’t a democracy. If your partner is into you and you and she have something good going on, then that’s between you and her. The best thing I could recommend is to demonstrate that you’re somebody with honor and integrity who treats her with respect. You and they may never click or mesh well, but that’s ok; you don’t need to be best friends with HER best friends, any more than she needs to be BFFs with yours.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with having “your friends, my friends and our friends”; having separate social lives is good for the long-term success of relationships.

Although if they’re assholes or Trump voters, then nobody would blame you for not really wanting to hang with them in the first place.

Good luck.

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m a woman with a dating question—particularly a dating app question! I matched with a guy on Hinge about 2 weeks ago. I sent him a like first, he liked me, then we matched. He left it up to me to start the conversation; I was super busy so I never got the chance to message him, but I finally messaged him a couple of days ago. He hasn’t answered yet, what do I do?

We happen to attend the same university, and we have a mutual friend or two. We’ve never spoken in person, but would it be weird to friend him on Instagram (in hopes that he replies to my message on Hinge)? Thanks in advance—I really want this to work out with this guy!

Left On Read

DEAR LEFT ON READ: You don’t do anything, LOR. The ball’s in his court. It’s on him to respond or not respond.

Here’s the thing: there’re a lot of reasons why someone might not have responded yet. It could be that he’s not terribly active on Hinge and so he hasn’t seen that you responded or hasn’t logged in to see your message. You, after all, were super-busy before you messaged him; the same could be true on his end. Or it could be that he’s shy and isn’t sure how to respond. Alternately, he feels like it’s been too long for him to reply and now it would be awkward if he did.

Or — and this one always kinda sucks — it could be that he’s not that interested. He might have been just casually browsing Hinge and swiping on people without really being that interested in dating. Alternately, he might have matched with you, but decided to pursue something with someone else who messaged him before you did. Or — in what is the most unfortunate but likely scenario — he wasn’t that into you but swiped right on you just in case. This, unfortunately, is a really common thing that men do, especially on dating apps with swiping or “yes/no” mechanics: they swipe right on everyone in order to maximize potential matches, and then decide who they’re actually interested in after they match. Women, on the other hand, tend to only swipe on people they’re actually into. So many times, women will match with somebody that they really liked, only to discover that he was just trying to get a little serotonin boost from seeing the number on the notification badge go up.

What you don’t want to do, however, is jump to a different app to to try to connect with him. Or take it offline for that matter. This is a thing that a lot of guys do; they may get rejected on Tinder or Hinge, but message that person on Instagram instead in hopes of trying to get a second shot. It’s intrusive, it’s cringey and it’s an indication that they feel like their desire to get a date (or a blowjob or…) overrides her stated lack of interest. And while the dynamics are different when you reverse the genders — on average, women pose far less of a physical threat to men than men do to women — it’s still intrusive and not cool. Doing so in person is, likewise, not cool, for much the same reason; it ends up tells the person that you’re ignoring what is, in all likelihood, a soft no, because you don’t like the answer.

I say this because, at the end of the day, no answer is an answer. It’s “I’m not interested”, and that’s the end of the discussion. If he is interested, but hasn’t gotten back to you for reasons… well, he knows you messaged him. It’s on him to make the next move.

And if you do run into him in person… I wouldn’t bring this up unless he does. You can chat, flirt and see if the in-person interaction makes things easier than the potential awkward of a late reply on a dating app, and “hey, you never responded to my message on Hinge” can be a cute thing to discuss down the line if the two of you hit it off and go on a date or two. But unless that happens, bringing it up is going to be more cringe-inducing than romance-facilitating.

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 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