DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I am a straight white male 52 years old, never married, no children and not many relationships as I’m very choosy and like my own company, but always looking out for that special one and I tend to obsess over those rare encounters with potential mates which didn’t work out. I’m well educated and well spoken. I might call myself a ”Sigma male” introverted, intellectual and remote, but confident and not unapproachable or unattractive. I’m physically reasonably in good shape, take care of my appearance and have lost weight in recent years after I stopped drinking. Although I’ve lost some hair, my hair colour has never faded and I have a youthful face and demeanour so I’m often taken for about 5-10 years younger than I really am. I often get interest from women much younger than me even in their 20s. I’m usually not interested as I find them too immature and obsessed with social media, which I hate.

I was recently on a 20 day study course spread over three months and because of COVID, the first part was online. One of the participants was a very attractive young woman I estimated to be in her late 20s possibly 30, but who I later found out to be only 25, but very mature, poised and self confident. She had a Middle Eastern background, with thick dark hair, large dark eyes, full lips and light skin, strikingly beautiful with an exotic, even charismatic vibe, well educated with flawless English and clearly from a very privileged background. She’s the kind of woman with that magic vibe who all the men swoon over and who’s always the centre of attention and slightly apart from everyone else even other women. During the online course she seemed to take an interest in me. It’s hard to tell in meeting rooms, as there are many other people in the meeting, but I definitely felt she was flirting with me, judged by her reaction whenever I spoke and the efforts she made to interact with me directly and signs you pick up like name-checking, pouting or playing with her lustrous dark hair to attract attention.

The second part of the course a month later was in-class so I was curious to see if my suspicions were confirmed and was determined to act if there was, as she was certainly out of the ordinary. Because I have not been in many relationships I tend to take things very slowly and wait for clear signals and invitations. I take the view that if something’s going to happen it’s got to happen naturally not by pushing or contriving it. In the first two days, I picked up on all the classic flirting signals one learns to recognise, but strangely we rarely came into contact so I never really got a chance to invite her out during the course. Flirting does not always mean anything more than flirting, but it was definitely aimed at me. I did not really notice any obvious opportunities to approach her, but I admit that I can be somewhat obtuse and self-absorbed and might have missed some signs she was expecting/inviting an approach from me. We had a couple of brief conversations but not enough for me to feel certain. I also wondered whether her cultural background from a conservative Muslim country might play a role so I probably confused myself. There’s also the age gap. She’s a classic millennial always messaging on her phone and highly active on SM whereas I’m a senior Gen X-er, all but invisible online and I only have a small circle of friends who are spread all over the world.

Anyway, on the final day when we had to give an individual presentation something snapped and she went from merely flirting to being almost brazen, locking me with direct and intense eye contact several times that I couldn’t hold for long without feeling embarrassed. She even called out my name audibly several times and offered to help me prepare, and vocally applauded my presentation, which took me aback. In hindsight I realise at that moment I needed to establish at least some reciprocal eye contact to signal I was interested and wanted more. But my shyness got the better of me and I turned away avoiding eye contact and went straight back to my seat and I think she took that as a rejection.

At the after-class drink with the other students I expected we would finally make a connection and exchange numbers, but it never happened. She ignored me completely like I was invisible and talked to everyone but me and left early without saying a word. It’s over a month ago now and as she lives in a different city I rarely visit, I wonder if it’s even worth trying to get in touch as women forget men quite quickly, especially since there is only an outside chance we will ever be in contact again. I’m not sure if she was annoyed or frustrated with me and felt I hadn’t reciprocated her interest or thought I was just playing with her out of vanity. As a very attractive young woman she will certainly not struggle to find men where she lives and will probably forget me quite quickly. I can’t do that so easily. There’s a remote chance we may run into each other again, but it’s hard to know under what conditions and if she’d be interested. Women at that age can grow up and change quite quickly.

All the best,

Sigma Prime

DEAR SIGMA PRIME: You know, it’s kind of serendipitous, SP; just before I pulled your letter, I had I just finished listening to an episode of Behind the Bastards about sigma males.

It’s really too bad that the whole alpha/beta thing doesn’t, y’know. Actually exist. The entire concept is based on outdated and incorrect information about wolf packs, and the scientist who popularized the term has been fighting like hell to correct the record. On top of that, the whole idea of the sigma male came from an white supremacist SF writer  who wanted to explain why even though he totally could be an “alpha”, he chose to not interact with people at parties and that made him totally hot. As is, alpha/beta/omega/sigma hierarchical s--t has about as much relevance as a Harry Potter house sorting quiz.

Unless you’re into A/B/O fiction, but that’s another kettle of fish entirely. And also far more litigious.

I bring this up because the whole idea of the alpha/beta hierarchy is a type of magical thinking, especially once you get to the “sigma” bit. The idea that women are just “naturally” attracted to certain men and not others and that some (those so-called sigmas) are the desirable because they keep to themselves is appealing because it gives people the belief that they’re at the top of some sort of social pyramid and that all things will flow from there. It takes away the need to actually work at things because being an alpha (or sigma) means that it will all just come naturally to you and women will just be drawn to it.

(Men who buy into the idea but identify as betas also find it perversely comforting; it means that they were uniquely cursed by fate and so they’re given permission to wallow, rather than to strive to be more interesting and socially adept.)

That magical thinking acts as a sort of confirmation bias, convincing folks that they’re seeing things that aren’t actually there. 

Such as, say, signs of flirting or interest. Particularly with a younger and attractive classmate.

Here’s the thing, SP: when it comes to signs of attraction and indications of interest, looking for individual signs mean nothing. They’re points of data that mean nothing on their own. Without context, they’re just noise. Somebody who plays with their hair could be exhibiting preening behavior… or they could just be someone who plays with their hair when they fidget. Pouting, name-checking… all of these could be signs of interest, or they could just be personal quirks. As a general rule, you want to look for what body language experts call The Rule of Four: four (or more) signs of interest that overlap or happen in rapid succession.

The problem is that, if you are indulging in some dickful thinking, it’s very easy to read interest into signs of basic friendliness and politeness.

And let’s be honest here, SP, you’ve said yourself that all of this is ambiguous. It’s difficult to tell flirting behavior in, say, a busy Zoom. Even things like the way she reacts doesn’t guarantee anything, since you have no idea what she’s seeing on her screen. She could well be reading Buzzfeed, reacting to a private message sent in chat, or looking at somebody else. After all, the way the zoom windows are arranged on your screen aren’t arranged the same way they are on hers.

Similarly, what you’re describing as “brazen” flirting sounds, stripped of the desire to bang her, a lot like basic friendliness and politeness. Offering to help with your presentation, saying your name, applauding your presentation… that doesn’t sound like “how about you come over for a hot cup of f--k my brains out”, that sounds like someone being nice and supportive to a classmate. And if she were that into you, your not making reciprocal eye-contact isn’t going to be thing that ends her attraction.

I mean, dude. She ignored you you at the party because, frankly, she had no real reason to talk to you. She clearly had been talking with and socializing with her other classmates, but you and she never exchanged more than polite chit-chat after class. If you had interacted more before the very last day then hey, maybe you would’ve been in on the conversation at the bar afterwards, but you didn’t. The only interaction you two had besides brief smalltalk were your checking her out and some basic politeness on her end.

You had a crush on your classmate and you were rounding up a whole lot good manners to someone having the screaming thigh-sweats because you wanted to believe it was true. Except you knew, at some level, that this was the case because if her interest was that blatant and “brazen”, then you knew it was a done deal already. All you had to do was ask her on a date and you would’ve been in like Flynn. It would’ve just been the count-down until the two of you slipped back to your place for a night of squishy noises and creaking bed springs.

But you didn’t. Because, at the end of the day, this was a crush and a fantasy.

Look, my dude. You’re shy. That’s cool; lots of people are shy. You worry about being rejected. That’s also cool. Lots of people get anxious about rejection. But when folks try to dress shyness and approach anxiety up as “feel like it needs to happen naturally, without pushing it” or “waiting for clear, unmistakable signs”, you set yourself up for a lot of missed opportunities. Those all just become ways of excusing yourself from having to actually take the initiative and risk being turned down. And honestly, the whole “sigma male” thing tends to  be folks who explain why they’re totally as good as an alpha but just don’t want to work at it. Being a loner or separate from everyone else doesn’t make you mysterious or cool, it usually just makes you the dude who keeps to himself. If you want to date someone, you have to take chances and make moves. Approaching someone and asking them out on a date isn’t “pushing” things, it’s how people get dates. If you never so much as start a conversation with somebody, you can’t really be surprised when they don’t have much to say to you later on.

So no, you really don’t have a play here. I mean, you didn’t talk before classes ended and now it’s been months since then. Your trying to get ahold of her is going to seem like its coming out of the clear blue sky and I can all but guarantee that the most positive response you will get is a polite “thanks but I’m busy.” But the truth is that you’re much more likely to get thunderous silence.

If you want to actually have a chance with anyone, then you can’t just sit around and wait. You have to be willing to make things happen, starting with actually talking to her instead of analyzing her every move like it’s the damn Zapruder film. If you’re going to sit around and wait, you’re going to be waiting for a long, long time.

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 can’t move on from my ex. Or, really, I don’t want to move on. I’m still in love with her and I feel like we can make things work somehow—even though we’re not speaking at the moment.

The story: At the beginning of 2020, I separated from my wife of two and a half years (call her A). We had been long-distance for most of our relationship, and having problems for a while, although I didn’t acknowledge them until they blew up in our faces. I was sad and conflicted about our separation, but also relieved. It felt like the right decision for both of us.

About a month later (the end of February), I connected with B. I wasn’t looking to get serious with anyone, and I told B that. B was looking to date seriously, so I sort of thought we wouldn’t go anywhere. But we had such a strong connection, physically and emotionally.

After we’d been on a few dates, B left town to visit family. It so happened that this is when the COVID lockdown started, and she ended up staying with her family for almost 3 months. During this time, we texted every day. Soon this escalated to regular sexting, and then phone calls and Skype sessions. We talked for hours on end. At one point during this time I tried to break things off, because I didn’t feel ready for the kind of relationship she wanted. B was understanding. But, I texted her again a few days later and we went back to the same pattern.

We kept this up until she came back to town at the end of May. By this point I was all in. I told B I was in love with her and wanted to be exclusive. She told me she was in love with me too and wanted to date me. She did ask whether I thought I wanted to have kids, because up to that point I had told her I was unsure. I told her I was still unsure, but open to the idea. That seemed to satisfy her.

Things were great at first. We spent a lot of time together. The sex was (I think) the best the either of us had ever had. We were extremely open and emotionally vulnerable with each other. Most of the time, I felt totally at ease with her. But my uncertainty about having kids seemed like it started to weigh on her. In July she started expressing serious concerns about the fact that I wasn’t sure about having kids. She was also looking for a partner who would be the primary breadwinner, and she was worried that I wasn’t interested in this — or that I was interested in it only because it’s what she wanted. (Some more background: I was just finishing up a graduate degree program and unsure on my next steps — and likely many years away from making the kind of salary that could support a family.)

When these issues came up I would say things to assuage her, and we would carry on as if things were normal. But they kept coming up every couple weeks or, sometimes seemingly triggered by unrelated issues. (E.g., one time I liked the post of someone I had hooked up with in the past; B saw this and took it as evidence that I wasn’t ready for a committed relationship with the prospect of kids, etc).

In August, I made a trip out of town to see A, to close the door on our relationship–this would be our first in-person meeting since the prior fall. B and I had discussed this, and she was very supportive of my going to see A. But when I got back, B said she wanted to end things. She said she felt like she was getting in the way of my and A’s relationship, and didn’t want to feel like our relationship was caught up in the middle of that. I argued with her because I was so sure of my feelings for B and that things with A were over. We ended up deciding to take a break.

But, although B continued to insist we were on a break, we continued seeing each other, sleeping together, acting in every way like boyfriend and girlfriend. This continued for a couple weeks, during which we had more tense discussions about the issue of whether I really wanted to have a family and be a provider. I insisted that yes, I wanted this. And I did want it. My relationship with B had changed my perspective: I had never been with someone I was so passionate about. Unlike with A, I was excited about the prospect of having kids and building a family with B. But B felt like I only wanted these things because she wanted them, and that this put too much pressure on her.

At the same time, by the end of August, all of these conversations and the uncertainty about our relationship had started to make me insecure and needy. I was hyper-sensitive to her being less physically or verbally affectionate, or to her not wanting to have sex. When I expressed these things to her, she seemed to react both with understanding and attempts to soothe me — and frustration. The last week of August was filled with tension, with both of us getting frustrated with each other over small things. B broke up with me at the end of the month.

But we kept seeing each other. I sort of thought that this would be like the last time we “broke up”. Things were different, though. B expressed that she felt like she wasn’t in a place to have a relationship. I told her that I was fine with this, that I just wanted to know if she was dating or looking to date other guys, and she agreed. While we kept acting “relationship-y” in many ways and we continued to be sexually intimate, she wanted to stop having intercourse. As the weeks passed, she was comfortable with fewer and fewer sexual activities–she said she didn’t feel comfortable being so intimate with someone she wasn’t dating. She was also cagey about whether she was looking to date other guys, and expressed frustration when I asked about seeing a dating app on her phone, for instance. (I wasn’t snooping–an app notification popped up when she was showing me something on her phone.)

Our hangouts were usually pleasant, though, and B seemed genuinely more relaxed / at ease now that we weren’t dating. But this new arrangement only made me more needy and insecure. We would frequently have conversations negotiating our status (e.g., whether she was seeing other guys, what kind of sexual activities she was comfortable with, why we couldn’t just dating). I tried to say I was fine with the new situation, but obviously I wasn’t, and it would keep coming out. We agreed to stop talking/hanging out for a week at the end of September. After briefly resuming our quasi-romantic relationship, a final conversation about a month ago led to B insisting that we stop talking altogether.

I know this story sounds crazy. But I haven’t felt so strongly about someone ever. Despite our problems, I still feel like our chemistry is incredible. I can’t stop thinking about how to get her back–how much time I should go before reaching out, what I should do or say to convince her that I really want the things that she wants, whether I should try to be friends with her again, and so on.

I’ve been doing all the things you’re supposed to when you go through a breakup — focusing on personal growth, exercising, hanging out with friends, going on dates, etc. But I can’t get B off my mind.

I think I probably just need to hear some hard truths, so lay it on me.

Sincerely,

Stuck in Love

DEAR STUCK IN LOVE: OK SIL, here’s the hard truth you’ve been looking forward to: B isn’t in good working emotional order and your going back to her would be a bad idea.

Now let’s back up and talk about why you can’t get over her or get her out of your mind.

Your relationship with B always felt precarious, because she seemed to blow hot and cold, and you never quite felt secure with things. The most consistent thing about your relationship with her is how inconsistent it was. At first, you and she weren’t on the same page with relationships: you wanted something serious and she didn’t. When there was this enforced separation, things got hotter and heavier and you wanted to end things… except you didn’t. This apparently defined your relationship until you were in person again, having amazing sex and being vulnerable and you decided that you were all in.

The problem is that B wasn’t. B always had at least one foot out the door. You were barely together for two months before she started expressing doubts about you — whether you were going to be the primary breadwinner, whether you actually were open to the possibility of kids. That, in and of itself isn’t a great sign. I mean, at the very least, she didn’t seem to accept that as a grad student, your career was only just starting and that it was going to be a while before you were making “raise a family” money. But she would stay and things would feel normal… except for the seemingly random moments when she would be on the verge of dumping you again. You’d reassure her, things would go back to normal… and then you would commit some error — one that you could never possibly anticipate — and she would be using this as proof that you didn’t care for her or were lying about wanting a relationship with her. Worse, she would never believe you when you tried to tell her how you felt and then would accuse you of putting pressure on her.

And it’s worth noting that this was very much the other way around. She was the one pressuring you. 

This continued well into when she broke up with you — except she continued to act like your girlfriend. You were still being intimate and behaving in ways that other people would, reasonably, assume meant that you were dating. At least, until she decided that she was done… right up until she wasn’t again.

The thing that’s notable is how unsecure you felt in the relationship and how hyper-vigilant you were about the state of things. This isn’t surprising; B was so hot and cold, alternating being lovey-dovey and accusing you of lying about changing your mind, it’s not surprising that you were always on your guard. You had reason to be; you could never know what was going to set her off and make her accuse you of lying or take some random interaction as “proof” that you weren’t in it to win it. So now you’re always trying to figure out exactly what would bring back the lovey-dovey B, instead of the B who would accuse you of putting pressure on her to be in this relationship. Even after she dumped you, she was continuing to treat you like a boyfriend, until she didn’t anymore… and then brought you back again for your “quasi-romantic” relationship. And then she dumped you again.

This is a form of what’s known as “intermittent reinforcement”, where her approval and affection were seemingly given at random, as were the punishments. This ends up exploiting a quirk of human psychology; we work harder for rewards when they’re erratic and inconsistent. The part of our brains that look for patterns become convinced that if we work hard enough, we’ll figure out the triggers and get those rewards more consistently. Since you never knew whether she was going to accuse you of lying to her or not really wanting children or if you were going to go back to the hot, hot sex, you were working harder and feeling more unstable. Nothing was consistent enough for you to find the pattern or feel secure. Even when the relationship ended, it didn’t end, end at first. That consistent inconsistency, those constant mixed messages, keep you on the hook and make you put more and more effort in because your brain is sure that you’re closing in on what will make this work.

This is the exact same sort of psychological phenomena that games like Candy Crush and slot machines exploit to keep you coming back over and over again. Those tiny hits of dopamine from the rewards are enough to make you keep trying to power through the punishments, while the anxiety makes you feel like you need to work harder to keep her around.

So it’s small wonder that you’re still drawn to her and can’t get her off your mind. The things that she did were almost perfect for getting you literally addicted to her. The uncertainty — are you “broken up” again or not? — means that there’s just enough doubt and hope that you feel like there’s still a chance.

Now I can’t say whether she was doing this to you deliberately, or her weird unwillingness to believe you just made her luck into this behavior. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because whether it was intentional or not, this behavior is toxic. Even if this was entirely unconscious and unintentional on her part, then at best it’s an indicator that she’s not in a good place emotionally to date. No relationship can survive when one person is saying “I love you and I want to make this work” and the other is calling them a liar. Nor can it work when break ups aren’t actually break-ups, except when one person wants them to be. Again, under the best of circumstances, that’s somebody stringing you along. At worst… they’re keeping you around because they like the attention and don’t want to be without intimacy and sex until they find a new partner.

And honestly… your relationship lasted approximately 6 months — longer if you factor in the “broken up” parts. That much drama in six months is not good, nor is it an indicator that you and she have any sort of future together.

Even if you were to get back together with her, all that’s going to happen is that you’re going to have the 12″ dance remix of your previous relationship: the exact same thing, only faster and more intense.

You need to write this off as a lost cause, SIL and go cold turkey on this addiction. That means that you need to take the full nuclear option; not just going no-contact, but deleting her number from your phone, blocking her on social media… even getting rid of photos, emails, the lot. All these represent is the temptation to relapse. Keeping her number or those old emails or what-have-you will just make it easier to give in to temptation and try to reach out again. The more barriers you can put between you and your ability to get in contact with her, the easier it will be to resist the urge. The more you can excise her from your life, including reminders of her, the easier it will be for you to let go and move forward. It sucks and it’s going to hurt… but it’s going to be far better for you than holding onto the false hope that you can still make this work. She is not in good working order, she treated you badly and you want someone who actually wants to be in a relationship with you.

That’s not her. There will be others. I promise.

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: Hello Dr. NerdLove! I am a 17 year old nerd girl who needs some help. 

Basically, I’ve been desperately madly in love probably three or four times in my life. I have always thought of myself as fat and unattractive, so in relationships, I have found myself to feel as if I put in much more effort into the relationship than the other person, to have either me ending it because I feel as if I am the only one who cares, or the other person ending it because they feel as if I like them more than they like me.

These two relationships were a few years ago. After that I had some minor crushes, until I once more fell head over heels for an amazing guy. I was in love with him for a good about six months… during which he a) broke up with his first girlfriend and b) got a new one. As I got over him, I noticed that I was starting to fall for my best friend (this all happened in boarding school). All my life, I have claimed that all humans are bisexual, and that we fall in love with a person and not a gender, but this was a theory I developed before I started feeling sexually attracted to people at all. 

I left boarding school this summer to move to my hometown, where I was overwhelmed with loneliness – a feeling that only got worse as I started school here. My friend (acquaintance, person in my life whom I don’t really care for) told me that she’d met her girlfriend over an LGBTQ dating website – and since there aren’t really any other dating websites for people under 18, I figured why not.

Over this website, I met a girl. We met up in early December, and have sporadically been going on dates since. I’d call her my girlfriend if someone asked.

This is where my problem starts.

I am not actually attracted to her. 

She is beautiful, and smart and everything, but I’m not actually attracted to her, or in love with her. Now, you might be wondering why I’m together with her if I’m not attracted to her, but the thing is, I feel like I would so much rather be in a relationship than be single. Being single is the worst thing ever. And it is completely insane that someone actually wants me! She actually likes me and says that I’m pretty!

I find myself feeling a bit turned on by her every now and then – but then I realize that I’m not actually desiring her as much as I’m actually just desiring another human being. I’m quite introverted and like being by myself, I often even prefer that to being with her – and if she asks to hang out, it’s a mix of “woo Achievement unlocked: got a girlfriend” and “I really just want to be on the internet”. 

So basically, this is making me confused. I thought I was attracted to girls as well as guys (I will also admit that I went through a phase where I watched lesbian porn a lot, even though I found it objectifying), but not being attracted to her has me thinking that I might actually be painfully, boringly straight. Or maybe I’m just not attracted to her – and I can’t decide what’s worse. 

As I said, I’m a bit introverted (outspoken and witty at times, but social interaction exhausts me), and I’m very picky about who I hang out with. It takes a lot for me to like a person for who they are and not just because I need a friend and they will have to do. 

I am quite intellectual, and I have quite high standards of intelligence for the people around me. I don’t find that anyone in my new high school matches the intelligence and depth of the classmates in my boarding school, and I’m not patient enough to get to know them well enough to discover such a side to them. I have a feeling that my relationship with my girlfriend an attempt at making up for the intimacy (physical and emotional) that I lost moving away. If I break up with my girlfriend, I will be alone. It’s not Oneitis – it is being realistic. Two years went by with me being single, no matter how I tried. Boys don’t like me, and the 0.3 who might, I don’t. I’ve been asked to a date once in my entire life, and I have never had someone else initiate a relationship with me. Really it’s all about loneliness. Both platonic loneliness and romantic loneliness. I love being alone – I just want it to be of my own choice rather than because I don’t have anyone.

So, what I’m really wondering is can I make myself fall in love with, or at least feel more attracted to her? And if not, should I break up? She knows I’m not in love with her – we’ve talked about that. She doesn’t know that I’m not really attracted to her. 

I don’t want to be alone. I really, really don’t. I suspect that I am somehow, subconsciously, waiting for something else, and that I will leave her as soon as someone else comes along. Is that wrong though? If I know it is not going to happen within the near future?

And the other part, is it possible to be in love with only one girl in your life? I don’t want to be a hasbian – but I am attracted to quite a lot of boys, and not that often or to that many girls in real life. But if a guy only enjoys gay porn, wouldn’t that be a sign that he is at least bisexual? 

Please help! 

– Confused Nerd Girl

DEAR CONFUSED NERD GIRL: There’s a lot to unpack here, but let’s take it by urgency. The more immediate needs first, the other, longer-term issues after.

So first things first: break up with your girlfriend.

You know all of those guys you dated where you cared more for them than they  did for you? Remember how much that sucked?

Guess what you’re doing to your girlfriend.

You said it yourself: you’re not attracted to her, you prefer not to spend time with her and you’re keeping her around because you think being single is worse than being with someone you don’t actually like all that much. This is selfish behavior; you’re basically using someone else, someone who actually cares for you, because you’re afraid of being alone. All that’s going to happen is that eventually either your girlfriend is going to realize what’s going on – that she’s a glorified security blanket – or you’re going to find someone whom you are attracted to and end up dumping her. In either case: this is going to hurt her like you wouldn’t believe and it’s all your fault. It’s unfair to her for you to be in a relationship with her under false pretenses, a relationship that she has no reason to believe is not genuine and based on mutual respect and attraction.

Break up with her. Now. Do it quickly and cleanly; don’t give long rationalizations about it, don’t tell her that you’re basically using her. Just “I’m not ready to be in a relationship with anyone and it isn’t fair to you to keep stringing you along”. The cleanest break heals fastest and she’ll be able to move on to someone else, someone who actually cares about her and wants to spend time with her, not treating her like a trophy that says “I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!” to make you feel better.

Next: human sexuality isn’t nearly as cut and dry as some people make it out to be. Sexual orientation isn’t just a continuum, it’s a multi-axis graph, including who you’re sexually attracted to and who you’re romantically attracted to. Some folks are sexually and romantically attracted to people of other genders. Some are sexually and romantically attracted to folks of the same gender. Some are sexually attracted to all genders, but may be more romantically attracted to one than others.

And even within those parameters, there can be a fair amount of variation. Some of those in between fall closer to being gay and may round up to gay rather than bi or pan; others fall closer to straight and may round up to straight. Still others may bounce around a bit as they learn more about themselves or even find someone who is the exception to their usual preferred type.

Now, I’m definitely not the person to tell you what your orientation is or what any of this means. That’s ultimately something that you’ll figure out — and you may find that it changes for you over time. Getting worried about what-this-all-means will cause you more stress than anything else. What it means is that sexuality can be a moving target and as you get to know yourself and grow more confident and secure in yourself, you’ll find your answers. You may be straight-ish. That’s perfectly fine. You may be bi or pansexual. That’s completely legit too. You may find that you’re sexually attracted to people in general but romantically you lean towards men. That is also real and legit.

But the thing to keep in mind is that how you feel for this person specifically isn’t strictly definitional for your entire life. You may just not attracted to your girlfriend, specifically, rather than it being an issue of not being attracted to women in general. One stale relationship with a girl doesn’t automatically mean that you’re not bi; it just means that she doesn’t do it for you.

(Incidentally, it’s worth examining the type of porn that you’re watching; a lot of “lesbian” porn is filmed by men, for a male audience. If that’s what you were watching, then it’s no wonder you found it objectifying. There’s a lot of porn out there made by women, for women, and that may be more to your taste in general.)

Finally: a very big reason why you’re so determined to find a significant other ASAP is because there’s a part of you that still believes that you’re unattractive.

You want to believe that you’re attractive to others and having someone to date is a sort of proof that hey, you’re actually pretty awesome after all!

The problem is that a) this is a s--tty basis for a relationship, b) it’s unfair to the person you’re dating and c) it doesn’t actually solve the underlying issue. Right now, whether you’re in a relationship is about finding a source of validation, someone (or something) that makes you feel as though you really are attractive after all.

Except… it won’t. Not for very long.

Your real issue – how you feel about yourself – is still there; all that’s happened is that you’ve papered over the hole and are trying to pretend that it’s all taken care of. And as with any surface solution, it doesn’t last. You’ll still have those nagging insecurities creeping around your brain, making you need more and more reassurance and validation from your partner that yes you are attractive… and there will still be that part of you that eventually will quit being able to believe them. And so the cycle repeats itself, over and over again as you keep trying to treat the symptoms instead of addressing the actual problem at its source.

You need to spend some time working on yourself and learning how to love and accept yourself and internalizing that locus of control. I know it sounds like pop-psychology-good-feelings-woo-woo bulls--t but it’s true: you need to be able to love yourself before you can really have a healthy relationship with others. When you can’t love and accept yourself, it’s much, MUCH harder to accept or receive love from others. You have harder time believing that they could love you when you don’t believe you’re worthy or deserving of BEING loved.

And that also damages the relationships you get into. After all, what you want is a partner-in-crime, not a nurse or a shrink who’re supposed to magically heal you through the power of their luuuuurve.

I’d recommend talking to a counselor or a therapist to help with your self-esteem issues, as well as learning how to make yourself feel attractive. And – of course – my standard recommendation of “live an awesome life” filled with passion (even if it’s a quiet passion), exploration (even if it’s by yourself) and intellectual engagement: it will make you feel better as a person as well as making you more appealing to others.

And honestly: you’re 17. You’re VERY young. I realize that time seems to drag on forever and everything feels amplified and larger than life when you’re in your teens, but being single – even for an extended period of time – isn’t the worst thing in the world. You need to cultivate patience. You don’t know people at your school because you’ve made snap-judgements about them and – by your own admission – you haven’t taken the time to actually get to know them on an individual level. Your own attitude towards them is part of what’s holding you back. The sooner you start to change that, the more emotional intimacy – and more potential relationship partners – you will have.

Good luck.

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