DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Owing to my reflection on some recent events in my own life within the last week or so, it occurred to me that I may have accidentally creeped someone out a bit over time, and now may be facing some social consequences for it, to say nothing of feeling like an idiot.

For background information, the someone is a young lady who I have had an off and on fancy for, whom I happen to have shared a musical ensemble with for about a year and a half or so. She seems fairly shy and fairly hard to read, which has proven a bad combination with my social ignorance: she has shown interest off and on, e.g., randomly bothering me or asking what I am doing, even fairly recently, but I have not acted on her signals in a timely way. Consequently, our relationship has mostly consisted of occasional brief chats and awkward eye contact across the room, other than the occasional outings with the other ensemble members.

In the past month or two, though, I felt stronger feelings for her and, in what I now rather feel was a mistake, attempted to hang around with her more around campus as a puppy might. On top of that, in what I now know and believe to have been a terribly stupid way to try to signal my interest, I took to seeking more eye contact with her. I think this fawning may have backfired rather badly. I was more or less politely signaled to piss off with a round of “I don’t know where we’re goings” to what seemed to be a group meeting a few weeks ago. While there may have been other reasons, I now suspect that it was probably not unrelated to making her or others uncomfortable by my nonverbal social stupidity.

Fast forward to this week, more or less. Things seemed a bit better, and I was tired of my not making my intentions relatively clear, so I asked her by text to coffee with a firm option of Wednesday or Friday. After a notable delay, she said she was very busy and was not sure that she could manage anything. Given everything else, and my understanding that she had just quit her job, I figured she was just letting me down gently. However, things have been appreciably more awkward since, as may be expected. The main differences I have noticed with her is that she is now often blushing when I am around, but she also seems more averse to contact in general, though she does not present with obviously defensive body language or anything like that, and does seem to glance at me every now and then. I can’t help but wonder if she is actually trying to get my eye contact or is trying to check if I am looking at her. Feeling like I cannot win, I have tried to ignore her and give her space since that exchange, out of my fear of having creeped her out, but I find it hard to completely ignore her as she still confuses me. Now I worry that she was just trying to spare my feelings, and my reaction to that is sending the wrong message of my being angry with or otherwise insulted by her: this is on top of my concerns that I have become the “weird guy” in the group for the time being, which makes it difficult to assess how involved I should be with anyone for the moment.

So the rub of it is this: I would like for things to at least be cordial, if not amicable, between us and her social circle, as a lot of them are my fellow musicians. I believe I accidentally did some socially stupid things and may now be viewed with some suspicion or other form of disdain. I am tempted to apologize to her for having creeped her out over the last few weeks, but I am not even completely sure if I have offended her, and am worried that apologizing for what could be nothing could make me appear to be an insecure and paranoid person, which I admittedly am to a degree. Asking her if I have bothered her seems like an even worse idea. However, I also rather naturally would prefer to not be a pariah in the group on account of all of this, and would like to correct things as smoothly as possible.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

Did I Err?

DEAR DID I ERR: One of the keys to social success is self awareness. Sometimes that means having a good handle on your emotions, understanding how you feel and why you feel that way. Other times, it means understanding the social dynamics of a situation and recognizing when, say, someone’s being polite, rather than flirting. And sometimes that self-awareness means recognizing that maybe you aren’t actually reading the room correctly.

I think you’re really not reading things correctly, DIE. In fact, I think pretty much everything you’re dealing with is spiraling out of your being a little socially unaware and you’re drawing all the wrong conclusions from… well, damn near everything.

If we look at the inciting incident, for example: the behavior you’re describing and the way you’re describing it doesn’t really sound like someone who’s showing romantic interest in you. It sounds much more like someone who’s being cordial with an acquaintance. As a general rule of thumb, one of the ways you gauge the difference between someone who’s being friendly and someone who’s flirting is to look for repeated patterns of behavior, especially ones that stand out from the norm. Occasionally saying hi is fairly typical. Making a point of talking to you, asking about your plans beyond trying to make casual conversation, finding reasons to be around you when she doesn’t have a reason to be…. those are signs that she may be interested in you. If you’re not sure, start by examining whether she acts like this with other people or if it seems to be something she does around you.

But the way you were acting around her wasn’t exactly signalling your interest, either. I can tell you from personal experience that hanging around someone like a lost puppy doesn’t really endear you to them. Neither does trying to make prolonged eye-contact from across the room. Being in someone’s proximity and nothing else doesn’t create or engender feelings. Neither does giving someone the hairy eyeball, for that matter. Spending time with someone makes you more familiar and that familiarity can increase comfort as they get to know you… but that has to be paired with actually interacting with them in some way. There’re folks I see every Wednesday at my local comic store, but that doesn’t mean I’m particularly warm to them; they’re just folks I see regularly. On the other hand, there’re bartenders, waitresses, store clerks and other folks I see on the regular and talk to frequently; those are folks I’d say I’m on friendly terms with, since I actually chat with them and have gotten to know them over time.

So I don’t think you were really getting the signals you thought you were getting.

Eye contact works much the same way. It’s not just meeting someone’s gaze, it’s using eye-contact as a form of non-verbal communication. Someone meeting someone’s eyes — say, a waitress dealing with a troublesome customer — and giving a knowing smile and an eye-roll, for example, is a way of communicating. In this case, it’s sympathizing with her and saying “well, get a load of THIS a--hole.” Similarly, doing the classic “meet her gaze, look away, look back and smile” is a way of signaling interest; you’re showing that you saw her looking at you and you like that. Just staring at someone could mean anything from “you look familiar and I don’t know why” to “you’ve got something stuck in your hair” to “I want to lick the inside of your ribcage.”

So no, I don’t think the issue here is that you’ve been getting mixed signals. I think the signals she’s been sending, such as they are, are pretty clear; she thinks of you as another guy in the group. The only mix-ups have been that you’ve let some wishful thinking color your interpretation of things.

I think your misreading things is causing you to severely overthink… well, everything. I suspect the most likely answer to all of this is that you made it clear that you had a crush on her via the hanging around etc., you asked her out on a date, and got turned down. Now she’s trying to do the polite thing of just acting like nothing happened and just continue on as normal. The problem is that because you’ve been trying so hard to read the tea leaves and determine whether you’ve creeped her out and if you’re about to get kicked out of your group that you’re accidentally sending all kinds of weird signals and she’s not sure what to make of it.

The best thing you can do, honestly, is to assume the best: you got a crush on her, s--t got a little awkward, now you got your answer: she’s not interested in you the way you’re interested in her and now things are basically normal. You just need to calm down about everything and go back to behaving under the assumption that nothing’s wrong and you can just relax. Getting hyper-vigilant about “oh god does she hate me now” is just going to make you more anxious and throw a bunch of false-positives your way that’ll only make you even more anxious. So take a deep breath, relax, and assume that the status quo is where things were before you did your lost puppy routine. Everyone’ll be happy to get back to the status quo and you can start relaxing.

And in the meantime: maybe spend some time working on your social skills. I have some exercises on doctornerdlove.com that’re designed to help you learn to be more socially fluent and better able to read the room.

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 live in NYC. As I am walking on the street over Union square, all of a sudden a girl comes up and stops me to talk about her non-profit company, which helps conserving nature. Now apparently like others she tries to stop others, explains about her organization’s motto to help the prevent the environment, and finally, asks for a donation. She asks for a donation, and I end up paying. Usually, I am good at passing this kind of situations, but I loved staying with her, and listen to her at that moment. She talks a bit about herself, and I do about myself as well. After all the conversation and formal talking and the payments, I ask her if she is interested in having coffee with me sometimes. She said “sure.” I ask her to put her number on my cell phone, and she does.

Now, I am having a panic attack because I have not called her yet, and do not even know how to or what to talk about. There is this fear of rejection that I am feeling within me, which is blocking me to talk to her. Yes, I would LOVE to go out with her, because she is beautiful and a very down to earth person.

I would appreciate if you could give me some suggestions or advices as soon as possible on how to approach with that first phone call and keep the ball running. Thank you so much I appreciate your patience.

– Strangers Waiting Up And Down The Boulevard

DEAR STRANGERS WAITING UP AND DOWN THE BOULEVARD: I hate to say this Strangers, but the question you’re asking isn’t the one you think you’re asking. Before I get to the meat of your question, I’m going to use you to talk about something else for a second: the science of persuasion and how to tell whether someone genuinely likes you or they’re trying to get you to do something.

Yes, I know this seems random. Stick with me for a second and you’ll see where I’m going with all of this.

We all like to think that we’re strong-willed individuals who never fall for blatant manipulation tactics. We like to insist that ads don’t really work on us; we know what we like and why and Madison Avenue can go screw. We like to think that we’re the gimlet-eyed, hyper-rational man with minds like steel traps who understand everything about ourselves and can spot a user from a mile away. And it’s a nice fantasy, but there’s a reason why advertising agencies are still around and why car dealers are extremely good at getting you to buy expensive add-ons that do absolutely nothing for your car except pad out your payments a little more.

There is a wide-swath of people whose jobs require being professionally friendly. Bartenders, waiters and other service-industry jobs that rely on tips all will be extra friendly or flirty because they know it makes the difference between a 12% tip and a 20% one. Marketers and salesmen want to show that they’re on our side, looking out for our interests because that can make the difference between making the sale or not. Their jobs demand that they understand all of the little things that make us decide how and when to do something. This includes the people standing around with clipboards who want to get you to talk about their organization and make a donation or two.

In your case Strangers, you met someone soliciting signatures and donations, vibed with her for a while, had a nice conversation, made a donation and got her pone number. How much of this is professional interest and how much is genuine? Well, let’s examine some of the techniques that they use.

One of the things you’ll notice is that they’re all incredibly friendly – even effusive. They’ll compliment you right off the bat. They’ll want to compare notes with you and – wouldn’t you know it – the two of you have so much in common! What’re the odds that you’ve met a total stranger who just seems to synch with you so well?

Well, the odds are pretty good when they’re deliberately forcing commonalities.

We’re more likely to do things for people we like, so folks soliciting donations and signatures will go out of their way to make sure we like them – which means that they are going to show interest in us first. We instinctively like people who like us – their showing interest in us makes us feel important and validated. It’s a powerful feeling and one that makes us more inclined to spend time with that person.

Next, they’ll step up the game showing how they’re so similar to us – we’re essentially “of the same tribe”.  They will find the things you have in common – you’re from the same state, you have similar backgrounds and opinions, they like the same things you do, etc. They’ll incorporate subtle influencers like mirroring your body language back to you, which makes you relax and feel more inclined to trust them.

Then they’ll use what’s known as the “yes ladder” to make you more likely to agree with them. It’s an intriguing quirk of the human psyche: the more we say “yes”, the more we want to continue saying “yes”. So they’ll often start with a simple question, something low-investment – “Do you care about helping the environment?”  or “do you have time to talk about saving the children?” for example – that you’re almost guaranteed to say “yes” to. They’ll go into their spiel with regular check-ins, asking if you agree or use phrases like “don’t you think?” which also prompt you to say “yes” again. They’ll ask for another small favor, like agreeing to sign a petition or to be put on the mailing list. By this point, you’ve been prepped for the bigger ask: to make a donation, which has been their goal this entire time.

Now when it comes to street solicitors, having an extended conversation isn’t a sign that they like you especially out of everyone else. Keeping you in the conversation, especially if you haven’t committed to making a donation, makes you more likely to actually give in. The longer you stick around, the more likely you are to do what they want. This is why stores are designed to encourage browsing; the more time you’re there, the more likely that you’re going to buy something.

At this point, hopefully you see where I’m going with this. Your real question isn’t how to ask her out, it’s whether she likes you enough to even make the attempt. And, well… I hate to say it, but I suspect that for all her politeness and seeming interest, your new friend was more interested in getting you to donate money than going on a date with you. Giving you her number doesn’t necessarily mean anything – it may well have been hers, but in a world of caller ID and voicemail, it’s easy enough to avoid calls that you don’t want to take.

Now I could be entirely wrong. I wasn’t there, I don’t know her and I didn’t watch how she interacted with you. And to be perfectly honest, as long as you’re not expecting the sun and stars,  you don’t really lose anything by asking her out on a date. I realize that it doesn’t feel that way; it feels like your entire future balances on that next phone-call. But honestly? This is a no-lose scenario. The worst thing that happens is that she turns you down. And if she does? Your life doesn’t really change. You’re no worse off than you were the day before. Meanwhile, if she agrees to go out with you, then hey, you’ve got a date! How awesome is that?

So just be direct; call her up, give her a reason to remember who you are and tell her that there’s this cool thing you’re doing this weekend that you think she’d enjoy and you’d love it if she’d go with you. Bada bing, bada boom. And if she does say no? Well, then at least you’ve got an answer and you can move on to find someone who is interested in seeing you.

Good luck.

And for future reference, how can you tell whether someone is being friendly out of professional interest or actually likes you? You watch for signs of genuine interest. How much information about herself is she volunteering without your prompting her? How much of it isn’t immediately relevant to the conversation but is designed to make her look cooler? The more she qualifies herself, especially without your prodding, the more she likes you; she’s polishing herself up for your approval. How much is she pumping you for info? The more interested she is in you, the more questions she’ll have – and I mean ones that really get to the heart of who you are rather than the shallow “interview” questions that allow for quick but superficial commonalities. Is she doing a lot of grooming behavior – straightening out her shirt, smoothing her hair, etc. – as she’s talking to you? Is she doing a lot of unprompted touching or reciprocal touching? Is she going out of her way to hang around and talk to you even after she’s gotten what she wanted? The more signs of genuine interest you see, the greater the odds that she actually likes you. Don’t just look for one sign; look for clusters of indications. One sign can be anything, especially when taken out of context. Clusters of signs are more reliable indicators that she’s into you.

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 a 17-year-old boy in Korea and my life’s been great, I have many friends, my grades are super good, and I have passion and confidence.

But nowadays I’ve been thinking about love and I have some questions.

You see, I had a crush whom is my close friend. Our personality matched so much and I thought we would be good for partners but it turns out she only thinks of me as a ‘friend’, and am not interested in dating before turning 20. Sooo I was down but now I got over it, but because of crushing and failing questions about love started to linger in me, and then I started Googling about the subject, and I found some articles.

And they were like “Looks are the 80% that determines romance, you only say personality is more important because you want some excuses to lower your look standards, because you can’t date hot buds. Looks make up for flaws and people who says inner self is important are lying to themselves. People date someone who has the same level look with them.”

And I was kinda shocked when I read the article and people saying “That’s the reality, the truth.” I always thought personality is much more important and if the personality is really truly matching I could even date an ugly girl. Sure, a cute face is cool but it isn’t everything.

And I also thought love was something like wanting the partner beyond anyone else, not being attracted to any other more than the partner, and feeling something another level with each other… In other words, your partner becomes the most beautiful person in the world in your eyes.

But what those guys are saying and agreeing with was that you love someone based on superficial attributes mostly, and if you date with an average/ugly girl or guy it only means that you compromised to reality. And that also means you just settled, the partner isn’t the most beautiful in the world in your eyes, you just settled because she’s the best looker in the pool of girls you are able to date. So there are much more attractive girls but they are out of bounds so you choose her. A lot of people were agreeing with this, and the community was a major one, not a small one which only certain types(usually losers) of people gather. 

Man, if love is like that in reality it sucks. I found my crush the most attractive girl in the universe even if she isn’t in the eyes of the public. She’s quite cute, but to tell the truth there are some girls who are objectively more good-looking than her. But I didn’t feel anything to them. And if someone whom I have been crushing on has feelings to me too, I thought we could have love like I described earlier.

But if the things they said are reality: Love really seems hollow. It’s not romantic: it’s shallow and strategic. I’m about 6~8/10 when it comes to looks (My opinion) so I wouldn’t have serious damage in my relationship chances even if that was true but the problem is the concept just seems HOLLOW if adult love is really like that.

So Is love really like that? What is it like? Are the things that I said/experienced about love only because I’m teen, and real life and love are just look-based calculations? Am I secretly compromising when I say ‘looks don’t matter’?

And am I look-based too? come to think of it I had 2 crushes, and both of them were at least average looking objectively. So if an below-average girl has wonderful personality and really clicks with me could I love her too? Or I’d just kick her out even if I know right now that I shouldn’t do that? Would I have liked my crush in the first place if she was ugly?? Yes we became BF the day we met and I’ve never found anyone that has personality so similar and matching with me(She agreed on that too). But what if she was ugly? Would I still have been attracted to her? I feel I would’ve, but what if I just think like that because I have been crushing on her? If the answer is no I just feel guilty and such.

My message is kinda messed up, but the main question is about looks and love, and about true love. I hope you could give me wise advice about those topics. Thank you for reading.

Worried About Romance

DEAR WORRIED ABOUT ROMANCE: Before we get deep into this WAR, let me give you a quick rule of thumb: if you see a post or an article that refers to 80% or 20% when it comes to dating — such as “80% of dating is about looks” or “20% of men date 80% of women” — you can pretty much write it off as bulls--t right away. This is a common misapplication of the idea of The Pareto Principle which states that 80% of consequences result from 20% of causes. Economist Vilfredo Pareto originally proposed this upon realizing that 80% of privately owned land in Italy was owned by the richest 20% of the population, and that this held true for many other countries. This distribution has been found to hold roughly true in other areas, such as health and safety where approximately 80% of injuries are due to 20% of workplace hazards, or that 20% of video rentals account for 80% of video store profits.

And since some folks love trying to ice skate uphill, people have attempted to apply this to relationships and dating. It’s short, pithy, and it feels true… especially when you’re a would-be tech or finance bro who’s 100% convinced that you have insight into something that nobody else could possibly have thought of before. In reality, however, trying to apply economic principles to things as complex and nuanced as human attraction and relationships is a fool’s errand. But as we’ve seen, there’re always plenty of fools willing to give it a go anyway.

The same goes for the Principle of Assortative Mating — the idea that people date folks who are roughly on the same “level” as they are. Again: this is an attempt by people to take something generally applicable in one area — non-human animals tend to mate with other animals with similar phenotypes — and apply it to things that don’t fit at all, in hopes of giving scientific validity to the things they believe to be true. Once again, this falls apart if you look at it for more than a few seconds because people who buy into this are working backwards. They’re trying to justify their beliefs by saying that X is caused by Y truths and nothing can change that because it’s somehow inherent. In reality, however, this ignores… well, pretty much everything, from cultural forces that define what makes somebody attractive to the socio-economic and class factors that can affect who we meet and spend time with.

Your experience with your crush is actually much more valid. While people may have a general consensus of who is considered to be attractive or what features make somebody good looking, getting to know somebody actually makes them more appealing to you. In their paper “Relational Mate Value: Consensus and Uniqueness in Romantic Evaluations”, University of Texas: Austin researchers Paul Eastwick and Lucy Hunt discovered that uniqueness counts for far more in attraction than generic good looks. While there may be a group consensus about attractiveness at first, when that group spends more time together and gets to know one another — such as, say, when you’re at school and spending most of your day with your classmates — that consensus disappears. People end up having very different opinions about who’s hot or who’s not once they get to know each other on more than a superficial level.

Plus, while people make a huge fuss about good looks, the Halo Effect (the idea that being conventionally attractive causes people to think that you’re a better, smarter or more moral person) or the Dark Triad’s (psychopathy, narcissism and manipulative personality) effect on attractiveness, the truth is that personality actually has far more of an effect on so-called “mate value” or desirability for relationships. In fact, altruism, kindness and confidence rank far higher in terms of mate preference and long-term relationship success than looks.

Now, does this mean that looks aren’t important? Not really. Nobody is going to deny that being more conventionally attractive is an advantage, nor that it gives people a leg up in making first impressions. But not only is “conventionally attractive” a cultural construct, but it’s an advantage that doesn’t last long. Very few people start relationships with someone who they’ve only just met; those “love at first sight” relationships may start quickly, but they burn out quickly as well. More often than not, they’re based on superficial attraction and not deep, meaningful commonalities; it doesn’t take very long for that initial period of “holy crap, she’s got a body to make a bishop kick in a stained glass window” to fade. As a wise man once said: someone could be the sexiest woman in the world, but eventually it starts to feel like f--king the couch.

Just as importantly however, is the fact that while we may find people attractive, what makes us want to spend time with them — which, in turn, helps make them more attractive to us and vice versa — is how they make us feel. When somebody’s presence in our lives make us feel appreciated, validated or otherwise feel good, we prioritize our relationships with them. This is why you’ll see people who seem to be dating people who are “out of their league”; they may not be as physically attractive as their partner, but they have other qualities that caused their partner to fall for them. That almost always ends up being something that makes them feel amazing when their supposedly less-desirable partner is around.

This, incidentally, is why people used to joke that rock and roll was God’s gift to ugly people and why there’re so many jokes about girls falling for broke, unemployed dudes who are in a band or play guitar…

So why do all of those folks on those forums insist that it’s all about looks? Well… in part it’s because they’re projecting. They’re prioritizing looks because they feel that having a girlfriend who’s a 9 or 10 or whatever makes them special and gives them social status. They aren’t interested in girlfriends as something other than a trophy that glorifies how awesome they supposedly are. They’re also almost always trying to justify their lack of success with landing 9s and 10s; they insist that it’s because women only want certain kinds of guys (that supposed 20%) and they’re s--t outta luck because of the ratio of their brow to their jaw or some other phrenology bulls--t, rather than acknowledging that they have awful personalities and think women are just prizes for being The Top Man.

So, yeah, WAR: a big part of why you fell for your crush is because of how much you and she clicked. And it’s certainly possible that you could date someone who most folks would think isn’t conventionally attractive because you got to know her and realized how much she had to offer… and how that made her more attractive to you. The folks who insist that it’s all about looks — or even mostly looks — and define those looks as stringently and conventionally as possible are telling on themselves.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some words of wisdom from the sage:

“You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful, and then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they’re dull as a brick. But then there’s other people, and you meet them and you think ‘not bad, they’re okay’, and then you get to know them, and their face sort of becomes them, like their personality’s written all over it, and they just they turn into something so beautiful…”

Good luck.

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