DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m reaching out to you because I feel like I’ve reached my wits end with trying to find a date or find a girl who’ll give me a chance despite my extreme ugliness.

Anyway, a little about myself, I’m 21 and I’m a University student living in the United Kingdom. I’m brown, short and ugly and no, please don’t think I have bad skin or that I’m obese; my problems aren’t really circulated around the things I do have control over, rather the things I don’t. I have a weird looking face, soft jaw and chin (growing a beard has helped there but it still doesn’t look that great), a bad eye area and a huge and crooked nose.

I’ve tried dating apps, since that’s the avenue most people my age take yet not avail. I don’t get matches with real people at all and my experience with online dating is practically harmonious with my real life experience. I’m just invisible.

Anyway, I just want some realistic and useful advice, I still do have a little bit of hope but it’s slowly slowly dwindling.

Thank you

Phantom of the Soccer Pitch

DEAR PHANTOM OF THE SOCCER PITCH: I’m going to start by pointing out that I get variations on this letter more or less constantly. In fact, if I had a nickel for every time I got a “I’m too ugly to ever date” letter — usually from someone who’s completely average at worst — I’d be having mecha fights with Elon Musk off the coast of Los Angeles. And that’s before I get to the folks on Twitter, the NerdLove Facebook groups and elsewhere.

For all that we talk about unrealistic beauty standards for women — and don’t get me wrong, they absolutely exist — men tend to have incredibly twisted ideas not just about their own looks but also what women find attractive. The incel community in particular has this down to a pseudoscience, inventing new, exacting forms of phrenology that would be fascinating from an anthropological standpoint… if it didn’t come from places of curdled hatred and rage.

The idea that “a few millimeters of bone” is all that differentiates someone from being a sex god and being completely unf--kable leads dudes to drastically overrate their own ugliness, often to the point of absurdity. You expect someone who looks like Deadpool crossed with a rotting avocado and what you actually get is… someone who’s completely unremarkable. Weak jaws turn out to be just not being as lantern-jawed as Bruce Campbell, weird noses are usually well within the norm, sunken eyes tend to be more of an issue of replacing sleep with caffeine and so on.  Most of the time, the issues that folks have aren’t that they’re irredeemably ugly, it’s their attitude and their presentation. Every time I’ve seen people insist that they’re too ugly to date, they’re wearing clothes that don’t fit, had nothing approaching a sense of style and often looked like they hadn’t seen the business end of a washing machine in days. Their hair is a greasy mess and they look (and on many occasions, smell) like hygiene is something that happens to other people.

Similarly, their attitude — both explicit and implicit — ends up being what drives people off, far more than any issue with their looks.  For all that people mock the “Virgin Walk/Chad Stride” meme, there’s a part of it that is accurate:

The “head down, refusing to look at anyone, closed off ” posture of the “virgin” is classic “don’t talk to me” body language. It radiates irritation and unhappiness — all of which pushes people away and encourages them to not engage with the person walking or standing like that. That  body language tends to be the visual representation of the sort of negative attitude makes people want to keep their distance. After all,  negative people tend to be emotional black holes; they suck the life out of the room and make other people feel uncomfortable.

So as I said, POSP, I’m skeptical that you are some mutant, fresh from a remake of The Hills Have Eyes. I think that the far likelier issue, both in person and with online dating, is about how you present yourself. Lighting alone can transform someone from a goblin to a sexual dynamo.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are, in fact, not blessed with facial symmetry. What do you do?

Well, you start with the fact that there’s a reason why “good looking” isn’t the same as “attractive”. There are more people out there than I can easily count who aren’t going to show up in a compilation of People’s “Sexiest Man of the Year” but who get more strange ass than a guy who got into a car chase, crashed through an ass cart and then plowed through a plate-ass window. The classic example, of course, is Serge Gainsbourg, a man who looks like his parents spent too much time in Innsmouth. Vincent Cassel, likewise, is someone who is best described as “very French”, not “good looking”, but is doing quite well for himself. Steve Buscemi — he of the meme’d out eyes — had a decades long marriage before his wife passed away. Vincent Schiavelli, who has Marfan’s syndrome, was cast whenever a role needed a character with an immediately recognizably odd face; he was married twice. Michael Berryman, who has made his living playing freaks, mutants, and monstrous killers, is happily married. Doug Jones, most known for being under makeup in various creature features, also has an incredibly unique and unusual face and build… and is not only married but has quite the devoted fanbase of adoring women who think he’s hotter than an erupting volcano.

The secret to not letting their looks — which range from “striking” to very, very odd — get in the way of their romantic success is due in no small part to presence and charisma. Their overall attitude isn’t (or wasn’t) woe-is-me, it’s “yup, this is who I am and I don’t give a good god damn if you don’t approve”. They aren’t hiding or trying to excuse their looks; they became comfortable with themselves. They don’t treat their looks as something that makes them unloveable, but rather as what makes them unique — and uniqueness tends to win out over classic good looks, especially over time. By owning who they are, rather than treating it like a liability, it becomes part of what makes them interesting.

Now it also helps that they’re charismatic as hell; they have to be, they’re actors, after all. But charisma is something that you develop, not something that you’re born with. A warm smile, swagger, confidence and authority all make you more magnetic. So does spreading positive energy to others — when you make others feel listened to, understood and appreciated, they’re more drawn to you than they are to others. This is known as The Reward Theory of Attraction. When you make people feel good, they prioritize their relationship with you versus with other people; we’re drawn to people who make us feel good, after all.

But you also have to treat yourself well too. Much of self-confidence comes not from what we’ve accomplished but from what we believe about ourselves. When you believe that you’re the human equivalent of a popped zit, you tend to treat yourself accordingly. This is one of the reasons why so many of the self-proclaimed uggos who write to me tend to have a presentation problem. They think they’re garbage and so they don’t see the point of doing more than the socially required bare-minimum. They don’t believe that they deserve good things and so don’t bother to put the effort in to take care of themselves or present themselves well. And since they’re dressed like a slovenly pile of crap, they feel like a slovenly pile of crap, and since they feel like they’re a slovenly pile of crap, they treat themselves like one. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, and one that only stops when they choose to break it.

This is one of the reasons I tell people that it’s important to fake it until they make it; by acting with confidence they may not feel (yet), dressing stylishly even when they don’t feel like they’re someone who can be stylish (yet) and so on, they’re training themselves to be more confident and self-assured. This is one of the reasons why, even if you think you’ve got a weird nose or chin or whatever, it’s important to take care of yourself, emotionally and physically. When you’re willing to treat your presentation as something that matters — wearing smart, well fitting clothes, working on your grooming and so on — you start to feel like you matter. And that attitude grows into self-confidence and self-assurance.

And here’s the thing: even small changes can be absolutely transformative. Watch any episode of Queer Eye and you will see just how much a simple hair cut, beard trim and properly fitting shirts and trousers can be a complete metamorphosis.

So what should you do, POSP? Treat yourself like you matter. Don’t beat yourself up because you think you’re too ugly; it just creates that self-perpetuating cycle I mentioned. You have to be the one to break that cycle.

Maybe online dating won’t be the best venue for you to meet people; that’s fine. Not everyone meets their partners on dating apps, nor is it the best place for everyone, even the conventionally attractive. Meeting people in person and letting them get to know how awesome you are can play to your strengths far more than Tinder or Bumble. While nobody is saying that conventionally attractive looks don’t help, the truth is that majority of people don’t date or start relationships with folks they just met; they tend to get to know folks over time.

Dress like the sexy bad-ass you wish you were, carry yourself like you’re worth a million bucks. Take your face — whether it’s unusual or completely average — and treat it as what makes you uniquely you rather than a source of shame. Learn to be bring those positive vibes, that personal warmth and authority, even that hint of swagger and attitude. The more you develop a positive sense of presence and an attitude of warmth and bonhomie, the more you will draw people to you. That, in turn, will help you meet more amazing people… including folks you may want to date and who will want to date you.

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’ve been dating my boyfriend for two years and our sex is amazing! Before I met him I used to have normal sex (nothing kinky and not many sexual partners), but with him, I became more advanced and now we both enjoy it.

Recently, we’ve been getting more experimental. Yesterday we went to the sex toys store for the first time and got some stuff including a 6-inch silicone dildo. My boyfriend likes incorporating toys, but yesterday he got really upset because as he stated the toy that we used was thicker/bigger in size than his own. I personally don’t wanna use that toy anymore, because I love my boyfriend and his penis and I don’t want him to feel uncomfortable. But now I feel we have an issue because of this incident.

I don’t know how to behave, how to make him feel better and I now I feel maybe it was too much to be so slutty.

Please advice.

Best regards,

Too Much Too Soon Too Fast?

DEAR TOO MUCH TOO SOON TOO FAST: On the one hand, it’s great that you and your boyfriend were finding some new ways to bring variety into your sex life, TMTSTF; that’s a core part of how you keep the spark alive in your relationship. On the other hand, it seems like your boyfriend has run head first into a surprisingly common issue: getting insecure about sex toys and penis size, especially if the sex toys in question are bigger than him.

A lot of dudes get hung up on the idea that bigger is better, particularly when it comes to penises. Straight cis dudes have a tendency to think that their junk aren’t big enough. In fact, according to a 2006 study found that only 55% of men were satisfied with the size of their penis… even though 85% of women were just fine with the size of their partner’s junk. This is thanks in no small part to a culture of restrictive and toxic ideas of what it means to be a man and what gives a man status or value. This has a tendency to get exacerbated by porn; porn made for straight cis men tends to fetishize the size of the performers’ dicks, with the implication that women need Dongzilla in order to be properly satisfied. This has the unfortunate tendency to leave a lot of men insecure in their own length and girth. After all, if they can’t compete with, say, Ron Jeremy, can they ever truly satisfy a woman the way they see in porn?

In reality, a survey of over 64,000 people found that women on average prefer a guy who’s got an average penis, instead of King Dong; larger dicks can be incredibly uncomfortable — hitting the cervix ain’t that fun — or cause injuries, including UTIs or internal tearing of the vaginal lining. Porn sex is to real sex like The Fast and The Furious movies is to your morning commute: fun to watch but not something to try to replicate in the real world.

But for a lot of guys, reality doesn’t matter. The fact that porn sex is nothing like sex in the real world never really factors into this equation — something that comes up again and again, in fact. Because despite what browsing PornHub will tell you, most women can’t and don’t get off from vaginal penetration alone. Women and folks with vaginas tend to need direct clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm, and penetrative sex, particularly penetrative sex in the missionary position, is the least effective way of achieving this. There’s rarely enough contact either with the external clitoral head or the internal wings to get them off.

This also tends to run headlong into the other reason why straight men often have issues with bringing sex toys into bed: because it takes away from the possibility that their penises are the only thing that are making their partners orgasm.

(Seriously: you will never find folks more obsessed with dicks than insecure straight dudes.)

Just as with penis size, men have been socialized to believe that penis-in-vagina sex is the only sex that actually “counts” — whether for losing one’s virginity or for “the main event”. Other forms of sex, including oral sex, masturbation and so on, is seen as “lesser” or a prelude to actual penetration. Just as importantly though is the idea that men can make their partners orgasm through penetration alone. If his wand by itself isn’t enough to make the magic happen, then something is “wrong”. For a lot of guys this means that the only orgasms that matter are the look-ma-no-hands types, where his pounding away like a jackhammer is what got her there. His partner touching herself means that he’s not doing it right. And using a sex toy means that he’s not “enough” or, worse, she won’t “need” him because her Silver Bullet or Hitachi or what-have-you can make her orgasm harder and faster than he ever could.

Combine those two together and you end up with someone who’s already worried that his dick isn’t enough and that he’s going to be replaced by the toys that he wanted you to use. Is it logical? No… but logic has nothing to do with this.

The issue here isn’t you or anything you did — certainly not being “too slutty”. The issue is his insecurities. And while there are things you can do to help give him some reassurance and walk him back from the edge… ultimately this is a HIM problem, not a YOU problem, no matter how much he tries to make it about you.

Now one thing that might help him start to get over this is to point out that sex toys are tools, not replacements for a boyfriend. The dildo isn’t going to do the job itself, any more than a hammer pounds nails without someone wielding it. It’s not the hammer doing the job; the hammer is just the method by which the job is accomplished. Similarly, it’s not a cop-out or substitute for him, regardless of how big it may or may not be compared to his bio dick. It’s doubtful that he’s going to be going around insisting that the only way to build a house is to cut the wood with his teeth and pound the nails with his bare hands. If he got you off using a toy, then it’s not the toy that got you off, it’s just the method by which he did it.  And if it’s a case of you putting on a show with them while he watched… well, again, it was the whole event that made it hot, including his being part of it. Without him, it’s not the same.

Remind him of that and hopefully he can start to realize that toys — regardless of girth — aren’t a threat to him or his masculinity. But making you think that it’s somehow your fault that he gets weird about this is a threat alright…

To your relationship.

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: There is this saying that, when people talk about a certain dilemma, they actually already know the right answer and just hope the other party will tell them what they want to hear, essentially giving them the go-ahead for the dumb decision they have been craving for.

I’m afraid mine is one of those dilemmas. Care to listen anyway?

My boyfriend and I are living together for nine years now. Peacefully co-existing gamers with their cat having the pants on. Essentially, on the most basic level, we have a good and loving relationship, and try as I might, there is not a man in this world I would trade him for. I love everything about him; even his angry stuttering when we fight is adorable. He once most gallantly presented me with a toy lightsaber, which I consider to be the most romantic gift I’ve ever received from a man, delivered in the cutest way. So… everything’s perfect, right?

Well, yeah. Except for my epilepsy and cancer. None of this makes him love me less and he takes care of me in the same way I took care of him when he had his femoral neck fracture. There’s a difference between tending for someone who is going to get better and tending for someone who’s taking the chemo in a worse way and has no real chance of surviving, despite the best efforts. It’s not the cancer that’s worrying me, though. I must sound like a total mensch when I say this, but my foremost concern is my boyfriend. His is carrying all the burdens, and his health is starting to go. He is often ill, worries too much to even be happy for a merciful few seconds, and he’s always exhausted. For his sake, I want to leave. I brought the topic up a few times, but he bursts into tears when I even mention not being here with him anymore.

Back then, I did have options. Not very attractive ones, but still: options. I left my home, my family and friends to live with my boyfriend. A lot has changed, but I could have gone back. This is not an option anymore. Besides having to live with my mother being a torture I would not want to inflict upon myself, she is very poor and cannot take care of me, too. I need a lot of attention and a lot of medication, and she simply cannot provide for what I need. Also, she’s still pretty traumatized thanks to my brother’s suicide three months ago, and I don’t loathe her enough to have her watch me, her last living child of three, die too. My father is alive, but unwilling to burden himself with me. Can’t blame him. We don’t know each other. No other family to speak of.

Now, the way I see it, the only way to cancel myself out of my boyfriend’s life is to go to a hospital, taking my chemo there, and ask random nurses to take turns holding my head while I vomit. I don’t want my boyfriend to go to pieces, and there is really no need for him to be there for me the whole time, going down with me and having a harder time getting back on track after I’m gone and can’t do, again, I apologize, fuck all for him. I told him he’d be better off without me as a constant burden. But he insists that, when I’m gone, he won’t ever recover from it. Which is very sweet, and very theatric. You know, I thought a hospital somewhere around here would be good, so he could visit me when he felt like it, but last time we tried that he visited me every day, sacrificing his whole personal life on it.

He just doesn’t get it. Or doesn’t want to get it. Because I will be gone soon and that is something he’ll have to live with. But once I even start talking about it, he tells me I’m immortal and leaves the room. When I tell him he should do something for himself for a change, he doesn’t know what. I tell him, something that takes his mind off things. And then he either says me gaining a kilo or us going outdoors for a short walk so I get a little fresh air would be something I could do for him. Doc, in all honesty, what the you-know kind of thing is that to wish for ONESELF? Two things I know: I’m probably the luckiest girl in the world, boyfriend-wise, and he’s a nutcase.

I really don’t know what to do anymore. I even asked his father to sit down with us and talk things through, but it won’t go in my boyfriend’s head. Is the right thing to stay here and have him go nurse on me until the inevitable occurs (which is MY best case scenario), or is the right thing to remove myself, a definitely negative influence, from his life? 

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

DEAR BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: Sometimes it’s impossible to know what to say. Sometimes there are no answers.

BRHP, I feel for you. You’re facing down something terrifying and you’re being insanely brave about it and it’s remarkable. I feel for your boyfriend too; I’ve been in the position of being a caretaker for someone I care about, knowing that all that remains is making them comfortable and easing their passing. It’s a difficult situation; you feel impotent and angry that you can’t do anything, mourning somebody in advance and wanting to someone to comfort you, feeling guilty because you feel like you’re being selfish when this person you love is so sick and you feel like you shouldn’t be feeling anything for yourself…

Your boyfriend is staying by your side and doing everything he can for you – even at the expense of his own health and happiness – because he wants to do SOMETHING. Feeling helpless can be maddening – we want to believe that somehow we can push back the tide, that there has to be something, some secret that’s been left unexplored that can change everything. We want make things better just through sheer force of our willpower if that’s what it takes. But to sit there and admit that there’s nothing we can do makes us feel like we’ve failed. So he may not be able to save you, but he’s damned determined to make every remaining moment count. He wants to do something, anything because he knows he’s going to have to let you go eventually and he’s just not going to do that without a fight.

Pushing him away isn’t necessarily going to make this easier on him. It’s noble to want to spare him the suffering. And I can imagine that there’s a part of you that doesn’t want him to see what’s going to happen. It’s been 18 years since my father lost his battle with cancer, and it was hard for him to see the looks on our faces when we saw what the treatments had done. But making him leave you isn’t going to make him improve; if anything I’m going to guess that things would get worse and he’d spiral into a deep depression. He’s trying to show you how much he cares in the only ways he has left to him. He doesn’t want to talk about it because he’s trying to be strong for you in the only ways he knows how. You stayed with him when he broke his neck; how could he do any less for you?

And you’re right: you’re probably one of the luckiest people in the world. The dating advice industry is full of stories of husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends who ditched at the first sign of trouble or who abandoned their significant others when they were needed most. He’s trying to show you that he’s going to be there with you all the way until the end of the line. If he can’t stop you from he’s going to make sure that you are cared for and loved and will not be alone at the very end.

This is a man who’s ready to fight God for another minute with you.

Sometimes there are no answers, just ways of making things less shitty.

There are two things that I see here that you can do for one another.

For his sake, you may want to look into finding in-home care . It’s not cheap, but it can be less expensive than going to the hospital and if you have insurance, that should help cover it. It’ll help ease the effort and stress of helping care for you and hopefully let him recover some of his health.

For YOUR sake, he should start seeing somebody – a counselor, a minister, someone – that he can unburden himself to. He’s going to need an outlet to express how he’s feeling and to process the grief and the anger and the pain he’s going through right now. Part of the problem is that he’s holding it all in – guys have a tendency to feel like we have to be rocks in times of crisis and never admit to needing help ourselves – and the stress of keeping it all inside is hurting him.

And you should be aware:  just as you’re lucky to have him, he’s incredibly lucky to have you. It takes an incredible person to be going through what you’re experiencing and to be worried about how it’s hurting someone else. You’re an incredibly strong and caring person and love like the two of you have is rare and hard to find.

Saying good luck seems trite under the circumstances but…

Good luck.

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