DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I need your full, honest opinion if I should continue to remain just friends with this guy (Let’s call him “A”). Let me give you a backstory (I apologize in advance for the length):

“A” and I met through mutual friends when we were teenagers and were instantly drawn to one another emotionally and physically. We were able to talk about anything for hours and had a lot of common interests. We were able to be there for each other when things were bad, good, and everything in between. But there was also the sexual attraction that couldn’t be avoided. We went out a few times that always ended up with us making out at some point, but nothing more. We were never “honey, sweetie, baby, I love you” to each other.

Fast forward to a few years—“A” had previously moved away and seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth. His phone number was no longer the same so I had no way of contacting him. However, thanks to social media and mutual friends I was able to re-connect with him again when we were just about 20. It was like nothing ever changed. We were still able to make each other laugh and hang out with friends and watch movies like no time had passed. “A” had an on-again-off-again girlfriend and I had just gotten out of a terrible relationship from high school. We were able to talk each other through the weirdness of it all. However, this time when things got a little heated between us, it went all the way, but once and only once (we were both single at the time of the hook up, of course).

I think – without saying it out loud to each other — “A” and I knew our wants and needs in life were totally different and our paths were not the same. We kind of mutually knew that a true romantic relationship wasn’t in the cards for us because we knew deep down it would never work out long-term. We had continued to hang out a little after that and never really talked about our hook up after it happened. It wasn’t bad or awkward, but I just don’t know if it was truly meant to happen.

“A” had confessed to me one night that his ex-girlfriend recently admitted to him that she was a few months pregnant with his child. He was beside himself at how his future was going to look and I got uncomfortable. Kids were never something I wanted for my future and even if I stuck around, I’d know he’d always be tied to this unruly ex-girlfriend that he always complained about. I’m ashamed to say it, but I kind of politely ghosted him after that. I had texted him one day telling him I wasn’t sure if we should see each other or talk as much anymore, especially because he was so torn about what he should do moving forward with this girlfriend (he wanted to be a good father and try to make amends with the girlfriend and I didn’t want to get in the way of that). He was sad, but understood and we kind of just ended it there. I would find him online years down the road (I didn’t friend request him or anything) and saw he remained in his relationship with his girlfriend, and they welcomed a second baby since our “split”. It seemed to be going well for him and I was happy.

I am now in my 30s and have been in an amazing, loving, and supportive 10+ year relationship with the most wonderful man I have ever met. We’ve been through everything together, have no issues, and we know that we’re both in it with each other for the long run! But recently, “A” found me on Instagram and messaged me that he was thinking about me and he hopes I’m well. I politely messaged him back and said the same. He admitted his same previous girlfriend had left him after 11 years after admitting to cheating on him for quite some time. He was heartbroken, but I picked him up and brushed him off and talked him through it. He clearly sees through my photos I am serious with my boyfriend. I told him how stable and happy I am and “A” tells me he’s happy that I’m happy.

“A” and I got to messaging each other about our past and he mentioned how weird it was that things just never lined up for us. I agreed but admitted to him that I truly think we were never meant to be a couple, but just friends. He agreed to this… and now… what?

Is it possible for two people who have had such an intimate relationship in the past be friends today? I understand that our situation was clearly a “friends with benefits” circumstance, but it’s really hard for me to see this person and not think: “We’ve had sex”. I also know that my current boyfriend has no issues with me being friends with other guys, but this particular situation is for some reason not sitting well with me. Is it possible to get over this? Is my gut telling me this cannot happen? I know if I had to end this friendship with “A”, he would understand, he’s never been cruel or a jerk, but I would feel like an A-hole again for being the one to cut ties.

Give it to me straight—am I overthinking this and risking losing a potential friend? Or am I being stupid for considering a previous fling could ever be just a friend?

Sincerely,

Damn Confused

DEAR DAMN CONFUSED: Here’s what I’m seeing in your letter, DC: you and A had a lengthy friendship where you were both sexually attracted to one another.  You both knew that you weren’t right for each other romantically and you wouldn’t work as a couple, but the friendship was still deep, intimate and meaningful. At one point, you and A had sex. Since then you’ve split, reconnected, talked about your history and acknowledged that you two were never going to be a couple.

What I’m not seeing: a reason why you and he couldn’t be friends again, just because you had sex.

Here’s the thing: for all the power and importance that people assign to sex and sexual attraction, at the end of the day, attraction is just attraction and sex is just sex. The “meaning” of the act, or the attraction, tends to be whatever people are bringing to it, not something inherent to the act itself. The idea that men and women can’t be friends without sexual attraction getting in the way has far, far more to do with bulls--t ideas around male and female sexuality and toxic ideas about masculinity than the inherently transformative power of sticking tab A into slot B or whatever combination of genital metaphors you care to think of. The reason why sex “gets in the way” of cross-gendered friendships (and yet, never seems to be a problem for gay, bi and pan folks) is because of how much bulls--t gets heaped onto the idea of sex and What It Means. Folks assume that being attracted to someone and acting on that attraction means more than just “I think you’re hot, you think I’m not”,  guys use friendship under false pretenses to get sex or — as I suspect is the case — people just are afraid to actually talk about their feelings with each other and hope that not saying anything will somehow make it all better.

Case in point.

If the question were just “can two people who had a close friendship and were physical in the past be friends”, then yes; there’s absolutely no reason why they couldn’t, just based on the fact that they f--ked once, twice or, hell, every day and twice on Sundays. It’s the rest of your history that makes me hesitate.

I think you’re massively overthinking things, DC. In fact, you’re overthinking things so much that I’m wondering what the real issue is here, because I’m pretty sure it’s not just you bumped uglies. If anything leaps out at me in your letter, it’s the fact that you bailed on A after he told you his ex was pregnant. You say that kids were never something that you wanted and that he’d be tied to his ex… but what, exactly does that have to do with being friends? There’s also the fact that there’re so many caveats and qualifiers in your letter — about how your boyfriend has no problem with your being friends with other guys and so on — that I wonder if you’re sitting on some unresolved feelings about A,  your one-off hook-up and his being back in your life again. That, plus your emphasizing how much you love your husband and how great your relationship is with him is leading me to think that you wanted (and may still want) more from A than you’re willing to admit.

That is going to be a much bigger issue about having any sort of relationship with A going forward than the fact that you two banged, once, more than a decade ago.

Now were I a betting man, I’d say that the real crux of the issue is the fact that y’all (and by which I mean, mostly you) tried to avoid talking about your hook-up. It sounds like A was more interested in at least discussing the nature of things with you and you’ve shut him down a few times. So while I’m going to give you a break — very few people are great at dealing with complicated emotions in their early 20s, especially when all of pop culture keeps telling us that men and women can’t be friends without sex getting in the way — it sounds like there’re more than a few unresolved issues lingering around.

I strongly suspect that most of the hesitancy around whether that relationship could’ve worked was coming from your side of things, and I’m wondering exactly what the issue was. Was it just a values dissonance, where you and he had disagreements on something fundamental that would’ve caused problems down the line? Was there something about him that made you feel like you shouldn’t want him despite the fact that you very clearly did? Is it possible that there was some sort of disconnect between who you thought you were “supposed” to date vs. what you were feeling?

That, I think, is the question you should be asking yourself. What about this relationship is causing you so much hesitancy and why? If you were to actually dig in and explore why, despite this mutually fulfilling, emotionally intimate and sexually charged connection, you felt like you and he couldn’t work and why you had to cut him off once his ex was pregnant, I think you’ll be able to answer your question. Getting some clarity there will, at the very least, help you be more honest with yourself about why this is troubling you so much.

While I freely admit I’m Captain “Yes, Be Friends With Your Ex”, that doesn’t mean that you should try to maintain a relationship with every ex or former FWB. If there’s some underlying cause for feeling weird about your history with A, or that being friends with A would prove detrimental to your life or emotional well-being, then there’s no real need for any handwringing. Hell, you can just choose not to be friends with him because you just plain don’t want to be. But based on how much it seems like you missed having him in your life and how strong the hesitancy you’re feeling is… I think you should put a little more energy into a deep dive of your own feelings before you worry about next steps.

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 recently read your article in the Washington Post about calling women crazy (or stopping). Your points are valid but it left me thinking, what’s the solution? When you don’t call and your lady is pissed, what then? My reaction is to cite the reasons why, then get pissed because it seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal and all of a sudden it is. She says “all I want you to do is hear me and acknowledge or take accountability.” Then I’ve been accused of gaslighting, which I don’t feel I am doing but am willing to consider.

Is it simply not acceptable to point out irrationality or over reaction any more ? See the thing is we as men and including myself believe women are crazy because behavior seemingly comes out of nowhere with unexplainable intensity. I myself acknowledge I believe this on a deep level. I don’t call my partner crazy out loud, but I do in my head.

So when your woman is having an emotional reaction you don’t want to deal with or are unprepared for, what is the solution? Obviously we shouldn’t dismiss them and call them crazy, irrational, or ask if they’re on their period, but what next? Seek to understand?

Also one more question, why is it not a legitimate question to ask where a woman is in their cycle when it so clearly affects emotion? Supposedly it’s dismissive but it seems like a totally valid question like, “how tired or hangry are you?”

Thanks for your input.

Feel Like I’m Taking Crazy Pills

DEAR FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS:

Congratulations, you have been awarded one (1) yike.

OK, more seriously: I want to preface this by saying that, while I get a lot of trolling attempts (badly) disguised as  legitimate questions, I believe you’re asking this in good faith and you’re trying to wrap your head around something you’ve never thought about before. So, I’m going to take this seriously and — hopefully — explain things so you understand, rather than just straight dunking on what’s, honestly, a Paleolithic take.

That being said: hooo boy, super chief, you decided to stick your d--k straight into the beehive, huh?

So, as part of the answer to your question, I want to pose a question to you — something for you to think about while I explain: why are you asking a straight, cis-gendered guy about why your ladyfriend is pissed at this question? Why are you more willing to listen to what a dude has to say about this than… well, pretty much all women who’ve dealt with this before?

(I mean, besides the fact that I’m the one who wrote the column that kicked off your question.)

Here’s the thing: often men will listen to what another man says, even if he’s saying the same thing that a woman just said. There’s an implicit bias there, a belief that a man saying something is inherently more logical, reasonable or believable. This is, honestly, a big part of why calling women crazy or overly emotional or — f--king hell — asking if they’re on their period — pisses women off; it’s inherently dismissive and insulting. It’s the underlying implication that they’re “too emotional” to be reasonable or that there can’t be an understandable, even logical reason why this would make folks feel insulted or dismissed.

Now, there’s a lot going on in your question that I don’t think you realize is there, so we’re gonna take a few minutes to pick things apart. Let’s start with the easiest first: why is it a bad idea to ask if a woman is having her period? Because it implies that her menstrual cycle makes her dumb, irrational or otherwise unable to think clearly. Leaving aside the sexism in this, let’s put it this way: how much does your temper change when you’re hungry and you’re not going to be able to get something to eat for another couple of hours? How often do you get short-tempered when you’ve got a splitting headache or you’ve tweaked a muscle in your back and you can’t stand up without pain? For that matter, calm and collected are you at the end of a long day when you’re exhausted, you want to get home and just put your feet up, but before you do you need to hit an ATM and the person in front of you clearly doesn’t know how to use it?

I ask because these examples should help you understand just how insulting it would be for folks to ask you if your hormones are out of whack. Case in point: when you’re hangry, your blood-sugar has plummeted; this tends to release cortisol (the stress hormone) into your system. That tends to create a lot of irritability and aggression in people and the lower blood-sugar impedes brain function. Similarly, if you’re in pain or you’re exhausted, you’ve got far less patience for people and you’re much more likely to be short-tempered and snappish with others. Minor irritations grow to anger, your tolerance for others’ shortcomings drops and literally everything just starts jumping on your last nerve.

So, if you were to be dealing with cramps, bloating, incredibly inconvenient bleeding (and potentially staining your clothes) and idiots every month, you’d have times when you were more likely to get pissed at people. Especially folks who, and I’m just spitballing here, tell you that you don’t really feel the way that you feel.

Case in point: you give the example of forgetting to call and your partner getting upset at you. Your response — “here’s why it happened, here’s why it’s not a big deal” — is an example of telling someone that she’s doesn’t have the right to feel the way she does. Here’s what you’re missing: the reason why she’s upset isn’t just that you hadn’t called — everyone knows that sometimes s--t happens. It’s that you’re ignoring her end of things. You don’t know how worried she was that she hadn’t heard from you yet.  You don’t know how much your not calling may have affected the rest of her day — did she have to put plans on pause because she needed to talk to you first? And, just as importantly, you’re missing the fact that there’s a certain lack of consideration to not call or text when you said you would. While, again, s--t happens and people understand that, there’s also the feeling that you didn’t care enough to actually remember to do the thing you promised.

The reason why your response makes her mad is because your response isn’t “I’m sorry I didn’t call, here’s what happened,” it’s “look, you’re not allowed to feel upset about this; your feelings aren’t valid because X, Y or Z.” Is that what you’re intending to say? I would hope not. But it’s still how you’re coming across. You’re telling her that the way that she feels — her very understandable irritation at this lack of thought — isn’t correct and you know how she should feel better than she does. That is pretty damn insulting.

Look at it this way: have you ever had someone lecture you — incorrectly — about something, when you know far more about the subject than they do? You know how irritating it is to be told that you’re wrong about something that you’re an expert in by somebody who clearly isn’t?

Imagine that was your life. Every time you turned around, someone was telling you how you’re wrong about a thing you are clearly not wrong about. And in this case, the thing that you’re supposedly wrong about is how you feel.

And to make matters worse, you aren’t taking responsibility for the lack of consideration for — in this case — not calling when you said you would. Perhaps you could’ve called or texted and said “hey, X is happening, I’ll have to call you later”. Or you could’ve lead with an apology for not calling. Leaping straight to “hey, it’s not a big deal” isn’t helpful because while it may not be a big deal to you, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t for her. When she says she wants you to hear her and take accountability, this is what she’s saying. She’s asking you to listen to her, understand why what isn’t a big deal to you can still be a big deal to others and acknowledge that you’ve caused an inconvenience (at best) to someone else. Not doing so is callous and rude.

If someone you were doing business with just ghosted you when you had a call scheduled, you’d be pretty pissed, right? You’d want an apology and explanation, yeah? You’d be pretty pissed if they just said “hey, calm down, it’s not a big deal,” considering how much they disrespected your time, yeah?

Well, the same goes for when your partner is annoyed that you didn’t call when you said. All you’re doing in this example is telling her that your time is important; hers isn’t, and she’s not allowed to be upset about it.

Small wonder she gets pissed about it.

Here’s the other part that you’re missing: this irritation isn’t coming out of nowhere. It seems that way because you didn’t see what has lead up to this point. Sometimes you weren’t there for it, but often you didn’t notice. So it’s not that her being upset at you came screaming out of the clear blue sky with no warning; it’s that you missed the causes and only noticed when the metaphorical last straw broke the camel’s back.

Remember that example I mentioned about being exhausted,  in pain and dealing with idiots who’re wasting your time at the ATM? If you came home and someone did something that hit your last nerve — turned off the TV when they didn’t know you were still watching it, made a loud noise when you were about to nap, something — and blew up at them over that, it would make sense to you. You’ve been dealing with bulls--t all damn day and this just pushed you over the line. You’d say that your blowing up was justified because look at all this crap you’ve been putting up with.

Well hey, guess what? Goes both ways, my dude. If you expect that level of consideration and understanding from others, you better be ready, willing and able to give it in return. Thinking “ugh, chicks be crazy,” is just giving yourself permission to not consider someone else’s perspective.

You ask what the solution is when “your woman is having an emotional reaction you don’t want to deal with or are unprepared for“? Well, it’s like you said: seek understanding. Start getting more comfortable with emotions — theirs and your own — so that you don’t get so thrown by the fact that people have them. Stop trying to avoid dealing with them and start actually communicating with people and figure out what’s actually going on instead of dismissing them out of hand. Don’t demand that people are only allowed to have reactions that you approve of or think are “reasonable”, especially when you have no idea what they’re actually feeling. And for the love of God and your own body, start actually listening to what the women in your life are telling you instead of assuming that you know better.

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

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Going in to the new year, one of my goals is to try getting onto online dating. It’s been hard to overcome internal stigma, since every married person I know has gotten married the “old-fashioned way,” i.e. meeting their spouse in college, which I royally screwed up, resulting in me being isolated from my college circle when they all paired off and started raising families in places far from where I had to live.

So I’ve spent an embarrassingly long time hovering over the “create account” button on Hinge (based on my research, it tends to best align with my goals, i.e. get married) because I can’t seem to stomach the idea of having my face out there to be seen and evaluated (even though that is technically what happens when I go outside). I started to leave social media more and more about 8-9 years ago when my only relationship ended and I saw an increase in focusing on taking pictures of yourself, so I’m generally not used to self-photography as a whole. I’ve hated my appearance for as long as I can remember. At all levels of fitness, hairstyle, facial hair, etc. I just got a new haircut recently to see if it would help; it didn’t. I try all kinds of photography, filters, and such, but every photo I’m in looks terrible because, well, I’m in it. And I can’t just put bad-looking photos out in the world, especially on a platform where people decide whether or not you’re worth dating for them. And I’m not even sure what photos I could do. Like, do I go with my casual night-out clothes, formal dress, kendo uniform(I really enjoy martial arts and dating is partly about showing your interests, but I’m afraid that an ugly overweight white dude wearing a kimono and a sword just screams “hopeless weeb.”), etc.?

But it’s like I just can’t hit the button, because then it’s out there for private (or potentially public) ridicule. I take a picture, but I never think, “this is good” or “this will work.” And I don’t have anyone trustworthy who can honestly evaluate my appearance or sense of style or any of that. I can’t go to a random Reddit thread or something because that would just be a nightmare, and if by some chance someone I know sees my face on an online “Am I Ugly?” thread, well, that would be dreadful. Nor do I know anyone who could reasonably help me with the photography end of things.

And the thing is: I’ve never liked my appearance. I’m likely not going to. But that would be alright if I could date someone who does like it, or at least tolerates it enough to date me. Though I have no idea what there could be about my personality that someone would pick me over other options, but apparently “put yourself out there” is the first step.

So how do I get to a point where I can hit the button and at least reach a point where I have pictures that function for their intended purpose?

Broken Mirrors

DEAR BROKEN MIRRORS: There’s a lot going on here, starting with denigrating online dating as inherently inferior to “the traditional manner” or the idea that you “screwed things up” by not finding and marrying your college sweetheart, but for right now I want to zero in on something important.

If you’re a regular reader of mine, you’ve probably seen me reference Ru Paul’s famous quote “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

This is classic example of just what they’re talking about.

The problem you’re having, BM, isn’t that your photos are bad. It’s that you’re incapable of being an accurate judge of how they look. You don’t like yourself very much and this includes your own perception of your physical appearance. If I could have a nickel for every time someone told me that they were the love child of Quasimodo and the Toxic Avenger and they turned out to be average looking at worst, then I’d be swimming through my money bin like Scrooge McDuck. In fact, this is something that’s come up so often that it’s practically its own genre of letter here at NerdLove Industries.

Everything you talk about is just built off of your starting position that you’ve got a face so ugly that your mom must’ve had to tie a steak to you so the dog would play with you. It’s the emotional — not logical — extension of your premise, an exercise in rationalizing and validating how you already feel by inventing new scenarios to make yourself feel bad by… potentially feeling bad in the future.

You are, for all intents and purposes, hurting your own feelings by inventing these new nightmare scenarios. I mean, let’s be real here: what do you think the odds really are about anyone you might know or want to date browsing Am I Ugly threads on Reddit? Do they make numbers large enough to actually capture the unlikeliness of this ever happening? No, this is your jerkbrain dripping poison in your ear and pretending that this outlandish outcome is even remotely plausible. All it does is continue to justify beating yourself up over your self-perceived sins — sins that, in all likelihood, bear no resemblance to reality.

The same goes with how you imagine people’s reactions or interpretations of your theoretical photos. Would someone think that photos from your kendo class would scream “goddamn weeb”? Or would it be that they can see the difference between  a mall ninja with a mail-order katana from Wish who “studied the blade” and someone studying a martial art in a formal and structured class?

Not to mention there’s the fact that if someone looks at your hobbies and thinks “ugh, pass”, all they’ve done is demonstrate that they’re not right for you and self-selected out of your dating pool. Let’s be real here, king: if someone thinks your hobby is ridiculous or cringe, then what that really means is that they’re emphatically not your type. That’s a them problem, not a you problem.

But you can’t see that, because you’re starting from a false premise. Yes, you think you’re ugly. Get enough beers in me and I think it’s a great idea to try to mash up Warren G and Nate Dogg’s “Regulate” with Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgetting” at karaoke. The fact that we think those things doesn’t mean it’s true.

Yeah you’ve got eyes, but you’ve also got a brain… and that means what you see isn’t accurate. We aren’t objective, dispassionate observers of reality; our brains filter what we see according to what we think. We, quite literally, see things that we expect to see. Your expectations and your attitude are your filter and those affect how your brain interprets the signals that come from light hitting your retinas. Expect to see Arseface in the mirror and yeah, that’s pretty much what you’re gonna get, regardless of the reality on the ground. This is Confirmation Bias 101: you see and accept the things that confirm what you already believe and miss or literally do not see the things that go against it.

As such, you’ll have to forgive me if I reject your premise here. I don’t buy that you’re too ugly to date or to take a good photo. I believe that you believe it… but you’ll have to forgive me if I doubt the source.

Now as one of my pop culture daemons is wont to say: I reject your reality and substitute my own. Let’s talk about what to do without the filter of “but Doc I’m too ugly”.

First and foremost: you want about 5 or so pictures for a dating app at a minimum. You want your primary photo to be your best picture of you (AND YOU ALONE) with a clear and unobstructed view of your face. You want some photos that either are full-body or at least waist up and a couple candids — you with friends, you doing things you love, things that speak to who you are as a person. Your photos should be telling a story, and that story is “Who is Broken Mirrors” and “What would life be like if I were to date him”. So if kendo class is important to you, then yeah, I’d say some photos from the class would be great. That goes a lot further towards “this is a thing he’s passionate about” than “look at this weeb”.

I would also recommend that for a couple of those photos, you dress the way you would if you were to be going on a date with the person looking at them. And I mean a date that you would want to go on, not some theoretical “ok, if I want to make it with the ladies, I have to only go on THESE kinds of dates.” If you’re normally a suit guy, then yes, wear a suit. If you’re more of a “cool jacket, tee and jeans” guy out on a date, then there you do. Think of your archetype for a starting point: how would you sum up your ideal self in a few words or less? Cool English professor? Bad boy biker with a heart of gold? Sharp-dressed Mad Man about town?

(If the answer is cyberpunk street samurai… ok, that’s gonna be a problem.)

What about the pictures themselves? Well, there’re a lot of ways to look good in photos and — truthfully — looking good in photos is a skill, not an inherent quality. There’s a reason why America’s Top Model is an actual competition, rather than just several weeks of pretty people showing up and being told that they have a job.

Now, learning that skill can be tricky. It takes practice to get to the point where you can truly grock things like “what lighting looks best” (indirect sunlight) and “know your angles”. The way you learn how to look good in photos? You take lots of photos of yourself. For all that people mock women as shallow or juvenile for taking lots of selfies, part of why women often look better in photos than men do is because they take lots of pictures of themselves. All those selfies are part of how they learn to work with the camera, how to find the angles and poses that work best for them and generally present their best self in pictures.

So my advice to you would be to start getting comfortable with the front camera on your smartphone and just taking lots and lots of selfies. You can delete all of them, but getting used to seeing your face is gonna be a big part of getting over your belief that you’re ugly.

However, if you want to shortcut this a little, I would recommend talking to a professional… a professional photographer, that is. There’re a lot of photographers out there who offer — or even specialize in — pictures for apps like Hinge and OKCupid. Many of them offer package deals; you get x number of locations and/or costume changes and Y number of pics at the end. Look up some of the photographers in your area, check their portfolios and Instagram accounts and see whose work speaks to you the most. Then book a session, pick some favorites (or ask a friend to help) and put yourself out there.

And here’s the thing: you seem to be assuming that your Hinge or Bumble account will be carved in stone as soon as you hit “publish”. It won’t. The great thing about dating apps is that they’re impermanent and malleable. You can change and refine your profile every single day if you want. You can pull a complete Ship of Theseus over the course of a year until it looks nothing like your original profile. So if those initial photos don’t work or you decide you’ve got some better ones later, you can swap them out with no issues. Hell, it’s actually a good idea to do so; being active and updating your profile gives you a little boost in the algorithm. And trust me: nobody will think badly of you for changing out your photos; everyone should do it more, if only to make sure they represent who you are accurately.

But this is ultimately a bandage over the hemorrhage that is your self-esteem. That is gonna hurt your dating chances far more than any photo on any dating app that doesn’t involve turkeys and a distressing amount of lube.

Now, I think talking to a counselor about your self-esteem and your disliking yourself is important. But one of the things I would suggest in the interim would be to actually talk yourself up. Not to other people, but to yourself. As cheesy as it sounds, looking at yourself in the mirror and saying nice things about you, your looks and your body actually helps. Part of what you’re doing is training yourself to see yourself in a better and more positive light. Even if you’re starting with “ok, I’ve got nice eyes”, it’s still a start. You’re forcing yourself to acknowledge a good thing about yourself. The first ones are hard and you may feel like you’re struggling to find them… but the more you do it, the more you’ll see and the easier it’ll become. You’re teaching yourself to find and see those qualities. You are, for all intents and purposes, hacking your confirmation bias; after all, if it’s going to be part of your psyche anyway, it may as well be useful.

What I don’t recommend is deciding you need to do one thing and then the other. You don’t need to talk to a counselor until you’re ready to date and then open an account on Hinge. You can do both at once. In fact, I recommend doing both — you can work on them simultaneously. Otherwise, one just becomes the excuse you give for why you can’t do the other “yet”.

Just as importantly: don’t worry about getting your app set up “perfectly” or waiting until you’ve got the best possible strategy. Sometimes the answer is to leap off the cliff and figure out how to fly on the way down. Waiting, on the other hand, just tends to help you find more excuses to keep waiting and ‘when I’m ready’ just becomes a point further and further away until you can’t see it on the horizon any more. So get yourself a case of the “F--k Its” and put yourself out there. Be afraid… but do it anyway.

Oh and one more thing: keep the mirror selfies to a minimum. And especially not as your first pic on your profile.

Good luck.

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